10 songs that broke a bandmate’s heart

‘Red Sector A’ – Rush

Rush isn’t normally the first band you go to when you talk about tales of heartache. It was hard enough figuring out what half of their songs were about to begin with, so having to focus on every single instrument in the mix as well as the lyrics was always a difficult balancing act. But while Geddy Lee made it all the more difficult to figure out what they were on about with that massive range of his, it didn’t take a sleuth to piece together the horrors of what was happening on ‘Red Sector A’.

Grace Under Pressure already gets far too much hate for being one of the band’s synth-heavy records, but right at the beginning of the record, this tune pulls no punches when talking about the horrors of those that struggled during the Holocaust. Since Lee’s parents were both Holocaust survivors, a lot of what Neil Peart took inspiration from was listening to what the frontman’s mother had to say about her issues and then putting the story together from their conversations.

And given how much hatred in the world fed into this kind of song, it’s bound to be harrowing for anyone of Lee’s stature to sing along during every single show. There’s a silver lining to everything, knowing that his parents were able to make it out of there, but the fact that it even happened in the first place is why people should have no problem wanting to fight against any Nazi.

‘The Teacher’ – Foo Fighters

The amount of heartache that Dave Grohl has had to deal with all his life isn’t for the faint of heart. He was no angel by any means, but looking back on his career, getting over the death of Kurt Cobain was never going to be easy, nor was deciding to carry on with Foo Fighters once Taylor Hawkins passed away. Even if But Here We Are is a love letter to the band’s fallen friend, though, that’s nothing compared to the episodic journey that they had in store for the penultimate track.

Given that Grohl had recently lost his mother as well, the whole song comes off as a massive tribute to the woman that helped give him the drive to succeed. She was always there throughout his career and more than happy to cheer him on at every opportunity, and while the song can get downright heavy in some places, it’s not really meant to have that kind of doomy effect on the listener.

Each piece of the musical puzzle is like listening to Grohl analyse his grief in real time, and by the time you hear those final screams of him saying ‘goodbye’ at the end of the song, it’s easier to piece together what you’re listening to. This is someone trying to capture every part of the grieving process that they could, and while it might not be the first Foos song anyone should listen to, they’re going to be in for a treat once they get to this part of their career.

‘Rocket Queen’ – Guns N’ Roses

Guns N’ Roses aren’t the kind of artists to wear their hearts on their sleeves. They have their sensitive side in places, but there’s hardly any reason to think that they are going to write the kind of tune that would make them shed a tear. They were more about making kickass rock music every single chance they could, and if there were any broken hearts along the way, it was going to come as the result of being stabbed in the back.

While the band put everything they could into Appetite for Destruction, there was always something missing when they began working on ‘Rocket Queen’. The song was there, and it was clear that they had the magic in the final take, but the midsection needed that extra bit of spice to push it over the edge. And with a few drinks and not the best moral compass, Axl Rose figured the next best thing to make the song work was to have sex with drummer Steven Adler’s girlfriend on the studio floor as the tape rolled.

The resulting audio did bring a bit more of an edge to the final recording, but how do you imagine the conversations around the practice space were going to be after that? It’s not exactly the easiest thing in the world to work on a classic album to begin with, but it would be hard enough for anyone to look one of their bandmates in the eye once they found out about that kind of sleazy move.

‘So Sad’ – George Harrison

George Harrison‘s career was always predicated on the concept of yin and yang. For every great album he ever had, there were bound to be a few more low points in his life, but he couldn’t have asked for a better start to his solo career when All Things Must Pass shot to number one after leaving The Beatles. But lingering in the background was one of the most bizarre love triangles the rock world had ever seen.

Although Eric Clapton had eyes for Harrison’s wife, Patti, for years, it wasn’t until she left the former Beatle that he started to vent his frustration in song. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Dark Horse is one long divorce record, but outside of the occasional tune bringing up his separation, ‘So Sad’ really is one of the only times where he starts to truly sound heartbroken behind the scenes.

He seemed to look at the entire world as Maya compared to his relationship with God, but even with all of the worldly possessions, you could tell in this tune that Harrison had a lot more on his mind than the typical chants of the Lord. Other songs on the record do delve into full soap opera territory, but this is the one instance where things lean closer to pure melancholy than anything else in his catalogue.

‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’ – Green Day

There’s no real point in trying to listen to a pop-punk try to have a heart. It usually doesn’t work that well, and unless you’re one of the biggest names in the genre like Blink-182, you’re better off playing songs that are about relationships half the time. But with Green Day, things hit closer to the bone most of the time, and with a few more years under their belt, Billie Joe Armstrong was finally ready to address his trauma head-on.

He already had to deal with his battles with anxiety half the time, but if ‘Basket Case’ was still fun, ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’ took the pain of losing a father and brought it to the nth degree. Armstrong had lost his father before he even entered his teens, and while his voice does have a softer cadence than normal, most people wouldn’t have seen the real effects of the tune until they played it live.

Everyone had the lingering feeling of dread after September 11th to think back on, but when looking at Armstrong performing it, it can be a grim experience, especially when he gets to the line about how long it’s been since his passing and barely finds the strength to finish the lyric. ‘Father to A Son’ may be the happier version of that story from Saviors, but Armstrong knew that while that grief would get smaller with time, it was never going to fully go away.

‘Release’ – Pearl Jam

The entire grunge scene always had a complicated relationship with addressing their feelings. It wasn’t common for artists to wear their emotions so vulnerably at the dawn of hair metal, so hearing Kurt Cobain cry out in pain or Layne Staley address his addiction issues was going to be an eye-opener for the casual rock and roll fan. But before Eddie Vedder properly joined Pearl Jam, he already had a lot of his own demons to work through when it came to his family life.

While the first verse of ‘Alive’ directly deals with the fact that he never properly got to know his father, ‘Release’ is where he finally lets everything out. Playing out like the conversation he wished he had with his old man, a lot of the performance comes down to the way Vedder sings, reaching higher and higher in his register while the band chills out on a droning chord sequence throughout most of the tune.

‘Black’ might resonate more with the fans, but Vedder almost couldn’t make it through the song when they first played it, since Jeff Ament recalled him running away and hiding after he was finished singing the tune for the first time. There was one part of his family that wasn’t there to see him become a rock star, but even if he didn’t have that father figure, he could always count on music to bring his chosen family together.

‘The Needle and the Damage Done’ – Neil Young

The story of Neil Young isn’t the kind of story that can be told about only one man. If you manage to tell the entire tale of one of the greatest songwriters of all time and somehow not mention Crazy Horse, you’re leaving out a core part of his history. The band was as important to him as the E Street Band is to Springsteen, so when there’s someone that’s suddenly missing from the practice space, there’s no real way of reconciling that.

For as fun as performing with Danny Whitten could be, Young knew that he was living with a death sentence after becoming a heroin addict. Whitten may have tried as hard as he could to kick his demons, but even while he was still performing, ‘The Needle and the Damage Done’ was Young working out what his issues were as they were happening, as if he was trying to find some kind of way to break through to Whitten with a guitar in his hand.

Tonight’s the Night does a better job at being the sad aftermath of that story, but the fact that the only rendition of this tune that made it onto a record was a solo acoustic performance says a lot more than a full band rendition. It doesn’t have the same punch as Crazy Horse would have had, but by stripping everything away, you can feel every raw nerve that Young has in his body as he’s singing.

‘Love is Blindness’ – U2

The road to making Achtung Baby was bound to be more than a little bit strange for U2. They were already having trouble figuring out who the hell they were, and even if they didn’t realise it at the time, they needed to act fast before the alternative wave kicked in and rendered every one of their previous records obsolete for daring to be looked at as some grand rock star posturing. But if ‘One’ was the track that helped bring the band back together, ‘Love is Blindness’ came close to destroying The Edge.

The band had already been going through their fair share of disagreements, but after finally separating from his wife, a lot of what turned up on this record was The Edge tearing himself apart on record. While the live versions of the tune occasionally have the guitarist taking over for Bono with an acoustic rendition of the piece, that’s only because no one could have ever played the guitar part on the record again.

When talking about the recording, Bono remembered the guitarist nearly demolishing a guitar when playing the final solo, leaving everything he could on the final tape as he pounded away until the strings were reduced to powder. That does make for a great song most of the time, but that doesn’t mean that any artist should be mandated to get into that headspace whenever they perform it live.

‘Here Today’ – Paul McCartney

Nothing was ever going to break the bond between John Lennon and Paul McCartney. What made The Beatles work may have been the four of them working off each other perfectly, but even through all of their business bullshit, there was always going to be a certain level of respect between the songwriting duo. And while things could get particularly heated during their final days together, McCartney could only stand to remember all the good times when he found out his friend had been murdered.

It’s monstrous to think that one of the biggest symbols for peace in the world was gunned down in New York City, but the only way Macca could think of to remedy the situation was to write a song about it. And while ‘Here Today’ isn’t the knockout hit that most people would expect from such a gigantic topic, what’s there is the perfect note that a lot of us wish we could have written to one of our loved ones if we had a chance.

After all of the mudslinging in the press, McCartney isn’t afraid to tell Lennon he loves him in this song, and even if he needs to hold back tears to this day playing the tune, it’s not because he’s still broken up about his murder. It’s about remembering the person who helped change his life when he was in Liverpool and was the closest thing to a blood brother that he ever had during his career of playing music.

‘I Don’t Want To Know’ – Fleetwood Mac

No band gets to be one of the biggest acts in the world without knowing the word ‘compromise.’ Thousands of people might not like the idea of one person’s song getting on the record, but it’s always about what’s best for the record rather than whether or not everyone is getting treated fairly behind the scenes. But that still wasn’t enough for Stevie Nicks to tolerate what happened to her when performing ‘I Don’t Want To Know’.

While this is one of the sunniest pieces of Rumours in many respects, the fact that it even existed was enough to break Nicks’s heart. She had already lined up tunes like ‘Dreams’ to be her emotional outlet towards Lindsey Buckingham, and while the guitarist got all the songs he wanted on the record, the fact that this song was shorter meant that it made the cut instead of ‘Silver Springs’, which was clearly a far better composition.

The song did get its due during the tour for The Dance, but if ‘I Don’t Want To Know’ did anything wrong, it was the fact that it got recorded at all. Nicks wanted to leave all of her emotions on the table on this record, and yet here she was singing a bright and happy song when she was at her emotional lowest.