logo
8 Bands divided by lawsuits: It's not just Jane's Addiction

8 Bands divided by lawsuits: It's not just Jane's Addiction

Al Arabiya17-07-2025
Bands behaving badly? It's only rock n' roll. Members of alternative rock band Jane's Addiction filed dueling lawsuits Wednesday over singer Perry Farrell's onstage scuffle with guitarist Dave Navarro at a Boston concert last year–a fracas that prompted the cancellation of the rest of their reunion tour and a planned album. They join a long and storied tradition of bandmates suing one another, taking interpersonal and legal troubles from the recording studio to the courtroom. Here's a look at a few very famous cases.
Jane's Addiction WHAT HAPPENED: Navarro, drummer Stephen Perkins, and bassist Eric Avery sued Farrell in Los Angeles Superior Court seeking at least $10 million, alleging that Farrell's behavior on their recent tour had ranged from erratic to out of control, culminating in an assault where Farrell punched Navarro both onstage and backstage. HOW IT WAS RESOLVED: It hasn't been; it's just getting started. Farrell and his wife, Etty Lau Farrell, sued the three bandmates in the same court Wednesday, blaming them for the conflict and the violence.
The Beach Boys WHAT HAPPENED: How much time do you have? The late great Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys leader, feuded with his cousin and bandmate Mike Love over songwriting credits dating back decades. Love had sued Wilson several times beginning in the 1990s. HOW IT WAS RESOLVED: Wilson often wasn't the victor–except in 2007 when US District Judge Audrey Collins threw out one of Love's lawsuits against Wilson. In it, Love alleged that a free 2004 promotional CD of re-recorded Beach Boys songs cost him millions of dollars and violated Love and Wilson's partnership.
Oasis WHAT HAPPENED: The sibling rivalry between Oasis brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher is well established. Their brawls not only led to the band's dissolution in 2009 before their 2025 reunion but also a legal upset. In 2011, Liam sued Noel for saying Liam's hangover caused the cancellation of a 2009 festival performance. He said in a statement that the lawsuit was not about money but that he wanted an apology and for Oasis fans to know the truth–that laryngitis prevented him from performing. HOW IT WAS RESOLVED: The lawsuit was dropped.
Creedence Clearwater Revival WHAT HAPPENED: The post-breakup decades of Creedence Clearwater Revival were marked by so much legal and personal infighting that you might think CCR stands for Conflict Clash Repeat. In 1996, singer-songwriter-guitarist John Fogerty sued ex-bandmates Doug Clifford and Stu Cook for performing under the name Creedence Clearwater Revisited. That case settled in 2001, but the bandmates sued Fogerty in 2014 alleging he was violating the settlement by continuing to publicly slag off the Revisited name. And they said Fogerty himself was now illegally using Creedence Clearwater Revival in concert advertising. Fogerty sued back in 2015, saying Cook and Clifford weren't paying him proper songwriting royalties for their performances. HOW IT WAS RESOLVED: A federal court merged the two cases, and the resulting hybrid was settled under confidential terms in 2017.
Fleetwood Mac WHAT HAPPENED: Fleetwood Mac and feuds are practically synonymous. Breakups and divorces between members are essential to some of their best songs. The conflict resumed in the 2010s when the band kicked lead guitarist Lindsey Buckingham off their 2018 tour, and he sued. Buckingham claimed he was told five days after the group appeared at Radio City Music Hall that January that the band would tour without him. He says he would have been paid at least $12 million for his share of the proceeds. HOW IT WAS RESOLVED: Later that year, Buckingham said they had settled the lawsuit.
Journey WHAT HAPPENED: At some point, two key members of Journey stopped believin' in each other. And all over an Amex. Longtime guitarist Neal Schon sued longtime keyboardist Jonathan Cain in 2022, saying Cain was refusing to let him use the band's American Express card. A counterclaim came from Cain, who said that Schon was running up enormous personal charges on the band's account. HOW IT WAS RESOLVED: A judge in 2024 appointed a custodian over the band's financial decisions, specifically empowered to settle disagreements between Schon and Cain.
Hall & Oates WHAT HAPPENED: In 2023, Daryl Hall sued his longtime music partner John Oates, arguing that Oates' plan to sell off his share of a joint venture would violate the terms of a business agreement the Hall & Oates duo had forged long before. The move quickly prompted a judge to temporarily block the sale. HOW IT WAS RESOLVED: The lawsuit and arbitration are ongoing.
The Beatles WHAT HAPPENED: Their artistic partnership had been over for months, but the Beatles had to break out the barristers to break up their business. Paul McCartney went to London's High Court of Justice in 1970 to dissolve the Fab Four's 1967 contractual partnership, which included the Apple record label. McCartney, above all, wanted to get rid of manager Allen Klein, whom John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr wanted to keep as overseer of their business. 'The only way for me to save The Beatles and Apple,' McCartney told British GQ in 2020, 'was to sue the band.' HOW IT WAS RESOLVED: The court ruled in McCartney's favor and appointed a receiver to oversee their ventures in 1971. But negotiations and wrangling continued until a long-term solution that would become known as The Beatles Agreement was signed by all four members in 1974.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

George lucas finally comes to comic-con to give a preview of his new museum
George lucas finally comes to comic-con to give a preview of his new museum

Al Arabiya

time3 minutes ago

  • Al Arabiya

George lucas finally comes to comic-con to give a preview of his new museum

George Lucas is finally coming to the stage at Comic-Con. And while Star Wars is sure to get a mention, the 81-year-old is making his debut appearance at the San Diego pop cultural extravaganza for a more earthbound reason: a preview of his long-in-the-works Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles. The Sunday panel discussion in Comic-Con's vaunted Hall H will act as a relatively quiet closing act to the four-day festival that brought its usual series of big, bombastic looks at upcoming sci-fi and superhero projects. The museum-centered session is also meant to be a broader discussion of the new institution's subject matter: the histories and traditions of narrative art across time and cultures. Lucas will be joined by fellow filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro and art director Doug Chiang, who has worked on a steady series of Star Wars films starting with the Lucas-directed prequels in 1999. Queen Latifah will act as moderator. Lucas is easily on the Mount Rushmore of figures whose work has had the greatest inspiration on the kind of films and other pop cultural celebrated annually in Hall H at Comic-Con. But the convention was'nt a common showcase for blockbuster films when he was directing them himself. He sold Star Wars and Lucasfilm to The Walt Disney Co. in 2012, and Disney has used different venues to make big splashy presentations about its properties. The museum, founded by Lucas and his wife, businesswoman Mellody Hobson, is set to open next year in Exposition Park near the Los Angeles Coliseum, several of the city's other museums, and the University of Southern California. The 11-acre campus and 300,000-square-foot building, designed by architect Ma Yansong, includes galleries, two theaters, and related spaces.

Tom Lehrer, song satirist and mathematician, dies at 97
Tom Lehrer, song satirist and mathematician, dies at 97

Al Arabiya

time4 hours ago

  • Al Arabiya

Tom Lehrer, song satirist and mathematician, dies at 97

Tom Lehrer, the popular song satirist who lampooned marriage, politics, racism, and the Cold War, then largely abandoned his music career to return to teaching math at Harvard and other universities, has died. He was 97. Longtime friend David Herder said Lehrer died Saturday at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He did not specify a cause of death. Lehrer had remained on the math faculty of the University of California at Santa Cruz well into his late 70s. In 2020, he even turned away from his own copyright, granting the public permission to use his lyrics in any format without any fee in return. A Harvard prodigy (he had earned a math degree from the institution at age 18), Lehrer soon turned his very sharp mind to old traditions and current events. His songs included 'Poisoning Pigeons in the Park,' 'The Old Dope Peddler' (set to a tune reminiscent of 'The Old Lamplighter'), 'Be Prepared' (in which he mocked the Boy Scouts), and 'The Vatican Rag,' in which Lehrer, an atheist, poked at the rites and ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church. (Sample lyrics: 'Get down on your knees, fiddle with your rosaries. Bow your head with great respect, and genuflect, genuflect, genuflect.') Accompanying himself on piano, he performed the songs in a colorful style reminiscent of such musical heroes as Gilbert and Sullivan and Stephen Sondheim, the latter a lifelong friend. Lehrer was often likened to such contemporaries as Allen Sherman and Stan Freberg for his comic riffs on culture and politics, and he was cited by Randy Newman and Weird Al Jankovic, among others, as an influence. He mocked the forms of music he didn't like (modern folk songs, rock 'n' roll, and modern jazz), laughed at the threat of nuclear annihilation, and denounced discrimination. But he attacked in such an erudite, even polite, manner that almost no one objected. 'Tom Lehrer is the most brilliant song satirist ever,' recorded musicologist Barry Hansen once said. Hansen co-produced the 2000 boxed set of Lehrer's songs, The Remains of Tom Lehrer, and had featured Lehrer's music for decades on his syndicated Dr. Demento radio show. Lehrer's body of work was actually quite small, amounting to about three dozen songs. 'When I got a funny idea for a song, I wrote it. And if I didn't, I didn't,' Lehrer told The Associated Press in 2000 during a rare interview. 'I wasn't like a real writer who would sit down and put a piece of paper in the typewriter. And when I quit writing, I just quit. … It wasn't like I had writer's block.' He'd gotten into performing accidentally when he began to compose songs in the early 1950s to amuse his friends. Soon he was performing them at coffeehouses around Cambridge, Massachusetts, while he remained at Harvard to teach and obtain a master's degree in math. He cut his first record in 1953, Songs by Tom Lehrer, which included 'I Wanna Go Back to Dixie,' lampooning the attitudes of the Old South, and 'Fight Fiercely, Harvard,' suggesting how a prissy Harvard blueblood might sing a football fight song. After a two-year stint in the Army, Lehrer began to perform concerts of his material in venues around the world. In 1959, he released another LP called More of Tom Lehrer and a live recording called An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer, nominated for a Grammy for best comedy performance (musical) in 1960. But around the same time, he largely quit touring and returned to teaching math, though he did some writing and performing on the side. Lehrer said he was never comfortable appearing in public. 'I enjoyed it up to a point,' he told The AP in 2000. 'But to me, going out and performing the concert every night when it was all available on record would be like a novelist going out and reading his novel every night.' He did produce a political satire song each week for the 1964 television show That Was the Week That Was, a groundbreaking topical comedy show that anticipated Saturday Night Live a decade later. He released the songs the following year in an album titled That Was the Year That Was. The material included 'Who's Next?' ponders which government will be the next to get the nuclear bomb…perhaps Alabama? (He didn't need to tell his listeners that it was a bastion of segregation at the time.) 'Pollution' takes a look at the then-new concept that perhaps rivers and lakes should be cleaned up. He also wrote songs for the 1970s educational children's show The Electric Company. He told AP in 2000 that hearing from people who had benefited from them gave him far more satisfaction than praise for any of his satirical works. His songs were revived in the 1980 musical revue Tomfoolery, and he made a rare public appearance in London in 1998 at a celebration honoring that musical's producer, Cameron Mackintosh. Lehrer was born in 1928 in New York City, the son of a successful necktie designer. He recalled an idyllic childhood on Manhattan's Upper West Side that included attending Broadway shows with his family and walking through Central Park day or night. After skipping two grades in school, he entered Harvard at 15, and after receiving his master's degree, he spent several years unsuccessfully pursuing a doctorate. 'I spent many, many years satisfying all the requirements, as many years as possible, and I started on the thesis,' he once said. 'But I just wanted to be a grad student; it's a wonderful life. That's what I wanted to be, and unfortunately, you can't be a Ph.D. and a grad student at the same time.' He began to teach part-time at Santa Cruz in the 1970s, mainly to escape the harsh New England winters. From time to time, he acknowledged a student would enroll in one of his classes based on knowledge of his songs. 'But it's a real math class,' he said at the time. 'I don't do any funny theorems. So those people go away pretty quickly.'

Lindsay Lohan brings the glam as she jets off from Dubai
Lindsay Lohan brings the glam as she jets off from Dubai

Arab News

time12 hours ago

  • Arab News

Lindsay Lohan brings the glam as she jets off from Dubai

DUBAI: Dubai-based Hollywood star Lindsay Lohan is making a dazzling return to the spotlight with the 'Freakier Friday' press tour, flying from the UAE to Los Angeles before heading to Mexico City. For the latest updates, follow us on Instagram @ Lohan, who is married to Kuwaiti financier Bader Shammas, wowed at the world premiere in LA last week in a pink custom Miu Miu gown, featuring a sweetheart neckline, flowing skirt, and sparkling crystal embellishments. Her accessory of choice? A crystal-studded karaoke mic clutch by Judith Leiber — a playful nod to her character's band, Pink Slip, in the original 'Freaky Friday.' A post shared by Walt Disney Studios (@disneystudios) She also took a moment to pose alongside 'The Parent Trap' co-stars Lisa Ann Walter and Elaine Hendrix, the latter of whom even makes a cameo in the sequel. For the next leg of the tour in Mexico City, Lohan hit the red carpet in a dramatic magenta Balmain gown from the brand's Resort 2026 collection, featuring a strapless draped silhouette and gold chain neckline. A post shared by Lindsay Lohan (@lindsaylohan) 'Freakier Friday' is the sequel to 2003's 'Freaky Friday' starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Lohan. In the follow-up film, Curtis and Lohan reprise their roles as Tess and Anna Coleman. The story picks up years after Tess (Curtis) and Anna (Lohan) endured a swapped identity crisis. Anna now has a daughter of her own and a soon-to-be stepdaughter. As they navigate the myriad challenges that arise when two families merge, Tess and Anna discover that lightning might indeed strike twice. Nisha Ganatra directs the sequel with Kristin Burr and Andrew Gunn as producers. Speaking to Empire, Lohan confirmed that punk-rock Anna still lives on: 'The second I started with my guitar coach again, it was like we never left,' she said. 'It was the same guitar, everything.' As for Anna's new solo? 'We made it more difficult for this one,' she added. 'I'm such a perfectionist — we rehearsed a lot.' About playing a grown-up version of her character Anna, Lohan said, 'The whole world looks different. Everything is about your child. But we have to remember to make time for ourselves too, live our lives, fulfill our dreams. Moms are always trying to juggle it all, and that's what Anna's going through in this.'

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store