10 masterpiece albums that actively hurt rock bands
Any artist will want to have at least one masterpiece under their belt during their lifetime. Even if they aren’t performing to the best of their ability onstage or in the studio, they can always reference at least one time when they got it right to capture that spirit again. Then again, if you ask artists like Oasis and Metallica, success can be both the best and worst thing that could possibly happen to you.
For all of the great songs sprinkled throughout these albums, there are just as many points where the band got hurt by their albums in retrospect. Since everyone loved how they sounded at the moment, a lot of them ended up getting dogged for not playing the same thing on the next album, leading to them spending the rest of their days chasing their tail, trying to find that spark one more time.
Then again, there’s an easier way that these albums wrecked rock bands…they didn’t enjoy making them. They may have written some great songs and got to cut loose in the studio, but the amount of animosity that started during these sessions was enough to tear the band apart by the time they started the next album.
Compared to other artists who try their best to capture the vibe that they got on their masterpiece, there’s a good chance that artists may have done a lot of things differently had they known what that level of success would do to them afterwards. They may have been white-hot following these releases, but the thing about getting that hot is that no one walks away without getting burned.
10 albums that hurt rock bands:
10. Hysteria – Def Leppard
Any band who makes one classic album should consider themselves the lucky ones. Even though they may have captured the zeitgeist for a little while, there’s only a handful of artists who can make lightning strike twice in the same place. Def Leppard may have looked like any average glam rock band, but Hysteria gave them both the best and the worst of playing with perfection.
Before the record had even finished, the band were already hurting once Rick Allen lost his arm in a car crash midway through production. As if the album wasn’t already doing a number on the band members’ well-being, the amount of success they garnered became too much for Steve Clarke, who eventually went down a rabbit hole he would never dig himself out of.
Knowing that there was never a way that the band could top what they had previously done, the sessions for what would become Adrenalize led to Clarke hardly showing up after numerous stints in rehab, leading to the band giving him a leave of absence. All of that time recuperating was no use, though, with Clarke passing away in 1990 before the record could be released. Most people talk about the sales figures bringing people down, but Clarke is one of the few artists whose nerves got the better of him before his next masterpiece even came out.
9. The Stone Roses – The Stone Roses
Anyone even remotely interested in Britpop probably can tell you where they were when they had the first Stone Roses album. While they may have come early in the scene, the sounds of ‘Madchester’ led to British rock absolutely exploding in the next few years once Oasis took their sound to the top. It’s never easy trying to keep that momentum going, but that didn’t mean the band didn’t try on Second Coming.
Since the last record had done so well, the band descended onto Rockfield Studios to work on their masterpiece. And so began the lengthy time of trying to actually come up with material featuring John Squire piling on as many guitar passages as he could with zero regard for any of their audience’s attention spans.
Although there are still good songs on the album, the band got buried under their own hype half the time, leading to an album that feels like the band trying desperately to figure out what made them unique in the first place. What The Stone Roses accomplished seemed to come naturally in the early years, but you’d be surprised how much one forgets when all you’re supposed to do is be yourself.
8. Use Your Illusion – Guns N’ Roses
It’s everyone’s goal to outdo what’s been done before. You already have millions of songs that sound like you, so why not try to branch out into more expansive territories now and then? That’s usually easier said than done, though, and Guns N’ Roses all walked away with a few scars when putting together the basis for Use Your Illusion.
Since Axl Rose was hellbent on trying to make something completely different, the entire double album collection feels like everyone started to veer in every direction without ever settling on a theme. While the idea of putting hard rockers, piano ballads, and even flamenco-style guitar solos across two albums’ worth of material sounds fun, there comes a point where even the seasoned pros are wondering what the hell the main idea of everything is by the end.
It’s not clear if the band even had an answer for that; instead, they worked themselves raw on tour until everyone had had enough of each other once they settled down in Los Angeles. By that point, the streetwise band that many had known was gone, and Rose was left trying to figure out what the hell Guns N’ Roses even was. Considering Chinese Democracy took over a decade to put out afterwards, suffice it to say it was a hard code to crack.
7. Dookie – Green Day
Punk rock has always been cruel to its biggest stars. Although it might seem counterproductive to call out the spokesmen of any genre, there are just as many punk rock bands that have sold out towards the end of their careers as there are those that stayed the course. And even when you come out on the other side, like Green Day, you still aren’t completely out of the woods.
After becoming the biggest post-Nirvana rock band, Green Day returned to their stomping grounds and were greeted with boos. For them, the fact that people were singing along to songs like ‘Basket Case’ was a betrayal of what punk was supposed to be, leading to the trio being banned from playing at their home club, which remained in effect until 2015.
Billie Joe Armstrong even remembered going into one of his old clubs and seeing his name written on the wall of the bathroom, saying that he should be killed. While the band’s success didn’t waver for a second on the next album, Insomniac, it started many years of confusion as the band wondered what they even were anymore.
6. Dirt – Alice In Chains
None of the grunge heavyweights were necessarily ready to become famous. There were some that may have ridden the waves of fame, but the idea of anyone from Seattle getting famous didn’t seem plausible, which meant that no one was prepared when it actually happened. Although Alice in Chains were always closer to metal than grunge, their album Dirt was when they started to succumb to their vices in the worst way possible.
While the album features some of the greatest vocal lines that Layne Staley would ever lay down, the lyrics left nothing to the imagination of what was really going on. In between the albums, Staley had become a massive heroin addict, and every one of these songs served as a diary entry into the mind of a junkie, from crying out in pain on ‘Rain When I Die’ to digging a deeper for himself on ‘Angry Chair’.
The band’s momentum didn’t stop for a second, but Staley was getting worse by the day, barely ever showing up to the recording sessions for the band’s self-titled album and forcing the band to go on hiatus after he was in no shape to perform on the road. Alice may have been on the rise, but Staley was racing himself to an early grave without knowing it.
5. Hotel California – Eagles
Nothing that the Eagles ever did was by accident. Throughout their time together, everything had to be perfect down to the slightest detail, and there was no way Don Henley and Glenn Frey would steer their ship off course. Other people have opinions, though, and the making of Hotel California meant that many egos got bruised when they eventually got called to work on the songs.
Looking to put together the archetypal sound of California, half of the album seemed to be planned out in the duo’s head well before the band started working on it. That meant that everyone would have to play exactly what they had in mind, which led to friction between Henley and guitarist Don Felder on ‘Victim of Love’ when the guitarist was banned from singing the song he wrote.
Although the band kept things in one piece long enough to get the album out, the tour saw the band start to fracture, with Randy Meisner leaving after nearly getting into a fistfight with Frey backstage. While they limped towards their next album, The Long Run, the band’s camaraderie was officially over, leading to most of them moving on to solo careers after a blowup concert in 1981. The band got back together numerous times, but that version wasn’t the classic Eagles. It was a nostalgia act that happened to contain all the band members.
4. Rumours – Fleetwood Mac
When talking about the biggest hits an artist has ever sustained, it usually comes back to the financial or the physical side of things. Most artists can deal with a few injuries on the road, but the biggest disappointment usually comes when they see their pride and joy slowly drop down the charts and never be heard again. Fleetwood Mac never had to worry about Rumours going out of style, but their hearts would have to take time to recover for the next few years.
During the album’s production, there was hardly any room to talk to anyone in the band unless it was about drama. Since the band were in the midst of breaking up with their bandmates and writing songs about how much they hated each other, half of their downtime was spent as far away from the studio as they could possibly get while also moving through a mountain-sized pile of cocaine.
Although the band had earned the right to get a little weird on the album Tusk, the raw wounds from Rumours never took proper time to heal, with Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks continuing to snipe at each other before getting into a physical altercation before going on tour for the album Tango in the Night. It’s always playing with fire when dating one of your bandmates, and Fleetwood Mac could serve as the poster children for what happens when you can’t leave your emotions at the door.
3. The Black Album – Metallica
There are usually two camps for Metallica…those who hate The Black Album and those who need to lighten up a bit. Yes, the band’s 1991 self-titled album may have given them the kind of success beyond anything that thrash had ever done, but that shouldn’t be a problem as long as they stayed true to what they had been doing in the first place. The band’s heart was still in metal music, but the afterglow of the album loomed large in the band’s later career.
Considering the album still does Dark Side of the Moon-level numbers to this day, the band was committed to making something more grandiose on every album. First, there was the Load era where they traded in metal for hard rock, then there was making a garage album of covers, and then we had them moving into orchestral territory on S&M, each of them pushing the band that much further.
That creative ingenuity may have had its fair share of surprises and even transcendental moments, but their need for change also came at the expense of St Anger, leading to years of memes about the band overreaching when they went into the studio. Ever since, the band have gone back to their roots as a thrash metal band and have seen no real reason to change up what they had started. Because while experimentation like ‘Nothing Else Matters’ can work wonders for someone’s career, you’re only three steps away from going down the drain again.
2. The White Album – The Beatles
There have always been loads of people willing to give their two cents as to when The Beatles started to go wrong. Some might say that their decision to leave the road doomed them to an early grave, others will say shoddy business decisions, and the less evolved might say that Yoko Ono directly told everyone that the band needed to break up. While there is truth to every one of them, the cracks really started to show the minute that they started work on The White Album.
Before they had even started, the loss of manager Brian Epstein had already cast a dark shadow on the band. Now, with no one to reel them in, no one in the band wanted to hear one of their bandmates call the shots, leading to months on end where the band would be snipping at each other whenever they were working on one of their songs in the studio.
While the joke is that The White Album is four solo records crammed together into one, it’s probably better served as the best the band could make with how much infighting was going on. Abbey Road and Let It Be may have been masterpieces that came afterwards, but those weren’t to make the next Beatles vision. They were made to tie a bow on their career because every Fab knew that they had started to reach the end of the line.
1. What’s the Story Morning Glory – Oasis
Is there really a downside to fame? As much as people might be too introverted to try to become a pop starlet, there’s not much of a detractor that comes with being celebrated for making music you can spit out. There is a downside to getting too big too fast, and Oasis seemed to fall on their sword directly after reaching the throne of rock and roll gods.
Even though Definitely Maybe seemed like one of the best indie albums ever made at the time, the fact that Noel Gallagher had another one up his sleeve was too much for fans to take. What’s the Story Morning Glory may not have been a hit with the critics, but it blew everything else out of the water, leading to a huge tour capped with the band playing the legendary Knebworth gigs, etching them into the Mount Rushmore of 1990s rock bands.
And then…they weren’t anymore. After the band tried to conquer the world again on Be Here Now, something had gone drastically wrong, as Noel started to lose his touch as a lyricist, and the Britpop bubble burst when the album failed to cure cancer and become the lovechild of The Beatles Sgt Pepper and Sex Pistols’ Nevermind the Bolloks. Most artists want to get to the top as quickly as possible, but if there’s anything to take away from the Oasis story, it’s that a slow burn is sometimes totally fine.
