Feuding Siblings
- jamesgeraghty
- 7 minutes ago
- 9 min read
Feuding siblings in music seems to be a trope as old as the hills, well certainly back to the start of the rock n roll era anyway. But why is it that the argumentative families that come to mind are almost always based around brothers? Have there ever been spiteful sisters, or combative brother-sister pairings in the world of music? Let’s have a look.
Brothers
With the recent reunion across the UK after several decades, it would be easy to start this section off with those sweary Mancunian Gallagher brothers. But that seems like a waste of my typing - not least because they seem to have the combined musical talent of a drunk, one-armed badger, and most of that talent is contained in just one of them. What they lacked in talent and originality, they made up for in ‘character’ and verbose belligerence.
So, where do we really start? Here are just a handful of musical acts with famously (and often violently) argumentative brothers - and I could have made this list way, way longer.
Ray & Dave Davies (The Kinks):
They combined to become one of the greatest and most successful British bands of the 1960s - Ray Davies with his wonderful, often witty lyrical talent, and the raw guitar sound developed by brother Dave (the crunchy fuzz on You Really Got Me could be said to have pretty much invented heavy metal). But despite the success and the gift for making music, their rows and falling outs are almost just as legendary. Dave once noted that, “Nothing good ever happened without a fight of some kind. As the years wore on, the struggles became greater, the battles more brutal, the mind games more intense, weirder, and the lows much lower.” To be fair though, Dave also fought with drummer Mick Avory, including one legendary episode on stage in Cardiff in 1965. In the second song of the night, Davies insulted Avory and kicked his drum set over. Avory’s response was to knock Davies unconscious with his hi-hat stand.
The Kinks: Tired Of Waiting For You (official video) Waterloo Sunset (audio only)
Inarguably, two of the best songs to come out of the 60's, courtesy of Ray and Dave (and co.)
Tom & John Fogarty (CCR):
When the brothers first started making music together, Tom Fogerty was the lead singer in their band, but by the time they had become Creedence Clearwater Revival, John was the main man - writing and singing most of the songs. He may well have been more musically talented than his older brother, but John’s usurping of Tom still left a bitter taste. Tom once wrote to John in very angry tones, “You have never given me (or Doug or Stu) credit in public.” The issue of John’s domination of the band culminated in Tom leaving in 1971 after the recording of sixth album, Pendulum. It carried on, even at the point in 1990, where Tom was dying and friends of the pair had to persuade John to go and visit him. For his eulogy, John would say, “We wanted to grow up and be musicians. I guess we achieved half of that, becoming rock n roll stars. We didn’t necessarily grow up.”
CCR: Fortunate Son (official video) Up Around The Bend (audio only)
Tom and John may only have had a working musical relationship for a decade or so, but they really knew how to tear it up!
Chris & Rich Robinson (the Black Crowes):
Older brother Chris Robinson had a pretty large record collection as a youngster, meaning Rich didn't need to start his own collection as he could borrow from his big brother. They would go on to write plenty of great songs together in the Black Crowes, with the irony being that before long, they would often resort to going around in separate tour buses. It seems that at some stages in their relationship, almost anything could go, except as Rich would note, “Chris and I have one unwritten rule - we can’t hit each other in the face.” There were several splits, or hiatuses, for the band, not all down to the brothers - but after the one in 2015 (which was apparently about a dispute between them over a proposal on the ownership of the band), the two did not speak at all for several years. Then, in late 2019, the pair appeared on the Howard Stern Show to announce that they had resolved their differences and were going to head out in 2020 on a thirtieth anniversary tour for their first album, Shake Your Money Maker.
The Black Crowes: Twice As Hard (official video) No Speak No Slave (live in 1992)
Chris and Rich's often troubled relationship meant they understood the blues better?
Nathan, Caleb & Jared Followill (Kings Of Leon):
It’s worth bringing the Followill brothers into this conversation, because, how does the dynamic of three brothers in the same band work (not to mention their cousin Matthew)? It seems the answer is, not always very well! Nathan and Caleb in particular seem to be able to fight over pretty much everything and anything. Once Caleb walked off stage midway through a show in a huff, with Jared remarking to the crowd, “hate Caleb, not us.” The fraternal tensions culminated in one horrific 2007 drunken rage - Nathan managed to dislocate Caleb’s shoulder, break a $7,000 mirror and stab his bed with a kitchen knife. Nathan would scream, “You get drunk and you talk s**t. Your band cannot stand you.”
Kings Of Leon: Sex On Fire (official video) The Bucket (live in 2013)
Three brothers might equal more trouble, but it also can mean good tunes!
Don & Phil Everly (The Everly Brothers):
This is perhaps the first case of bitter siblings that I recall hearing about, as this was a duo popular in my house when I was a youngster. And when you are a brotherly duo, where do you go when things are not smooth sailing? Well, frequent acrimonious splits seems to be the answer. When on song, Don and Phil Everly had harmonies as sweet as pretty much anyone out there and an array of well crafted pop-rock-country tunes to work with. But as the 1960s wore on, their fame wore off, and that was replaced by addiction… to speed. The antagonism reached its peak at a show at Knott’s Berry Farm in California in 1973 - Phil destroyed his guitar and stormed off - Don announced that they had now split up and finished the set solo. He played the show solo the following night, telling the audience, “The Everly Brothers died 10 years ago.” They spoke only once in the following decade, and that was at the funeral of their father. They did however reunite and perform again after that, with periodical shows right through until Phil’s death in 2014. Don would later admit that they had become estranged again in later years saying it was down to “their vastly different views on politics and life.” It was only when they focused on the music that things gelled, “It’s almost like we could read each other’s minds when we sang.”
The Everly Brothers: Bye Bye Love (on Ed Sullivan) All I Have To Do Is Dream / Cathy's Clown (live in 1960)
Often hostile relationship. Often sweet, sweet harmonies...
Sisters
Off the top of my head I could think of only maybe one pair of stormy sisters, and even after a spell of internet research, the list didn’t grow all that much.
Ann & Nancy Wilson (Heart):
Although Ann and Nancy Wilson had been playing together in Heart for decades, it was an incident in 2016 that really turned their relationship sour. Ann’s husband Dean Wetter was arrested in August of that year - pleading guilty to assaulting Nancy’s twin 16 year old sons, because they had apparently left the door of his RV open! The incident occurred when the band were playing in Auburn, Washington and there were still more tour dates to get through. They did play them, but the sisters would only communicate via third parties the whole time. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the band went on hiatus following the end of the tour. They did reunite and tour again in 2019, but by 2022, Nancy was touring with her own version of the band, Nancy Wilson’s Heart. Then, in December 2023, the real Heart played a few more shows together.
Before they were at each others throats, they knew how to rock (but couldn't seem to pronounce the word barracuda properly)
LaVerne, Maxene & Patty Andrews (The Andrews Sisters):
They were the epitome of sweet harmony singing from the pre-rock n roll, boogie-woogie era of American music, having started performing together from 1925, when Patty was just seven. Their songs were vibrant and made people happy, and surely butter wouldn’t melt…. But no, their feud was long and intense. One of the sources of friction was around arguments they had over the money in their inheritance when their parents’ died. Then there was the time in 1951 when Patty went and joined another group without bothering to tell her sisters. Things were also not helped by Patty’s husband Walter Weschler (also the trio’s pianist) who had been demanding that she should get more money. LaVerne and Maxene only learned that Patty had left them when they read about it in a newspaper gossip column.
There was a bitter two year separation, that Patty said was caused by their parents' deaths and the arguments over the inheritance. Patty explained in a 1971 interview, “We had been together nearly all our lives, then in one year our dream world ended. Our mother died (in 1948) and then our father (in 1949). All three of us were upset and we were at each other’s throats all the time.” The trio formally ended in 1953, although Maxene and LaVerne tried to soldier on as a duo for a time - they even had Red Skelton dressed in drag lip-synching Patty’s part in a song, when they appeared on his show in 1954. Patty was displeased and issued him a cease-and-desist letter. Patty blamed Maxene for many of their ongoing issues over the years - “Ever since I was born, Maxene has been a problem, and that problem hasn’t stopped.” They did however, reunite in 1956 and release more singles through 1959, but the music scene had moved on and they didn’t attempt to keep up. Their final appearance together was in 1966, before LaVerne died the following year. The remaining pair had an often estranged relationship, with sporadic appearances together through to Maxene’s death in 1995 (Patty died in 2013).
The Andrews Sisters: Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen (audio only) Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy (from Buck Privates film)
More proof that three siblings can not like each other much but still make great songs.
Brother & Sister
Well, racking my brain didn’t come up with anything much on this front, I mean surely The Carpenters couldn’t possibly have had bitter fights?? It turns out that indeed they didn't, in fact it seems that they never had a cross word in public or private, and were generally best friends as well as being a successful brother - sister act.
After some intense (well several minutes) research, I came up with one potentially bitter brother-sister act.
Angus & Julia Stone:
This Australian brother - sister combo started performing together in 2006, writing their own material separately, before working together on the structure and harmonies. While I had read a few references to them having a fractious relationship, in the end, deeper research didn’t seem to back that up very much.
It seems like the only negative thing in their relationship came when creative tension arose after the release and touring of Down The Way in 2010/11, which led to them doing stuff apart for a few years. In fact they were happy doing their own thing, and it was legendary producer Rick Rubin who heard their music, decided he must work with them, and then persuaded them to get back together.
Angus & Julia Stone: The Beast (official video) Big Jet Plane (official video)
So it seems like the brother - sister musical relationship tends to be a much steadier one.
***
I guess an article like this warrants some sort of conclusion - is all of this tension fully pre-ordained in the sibling DNA? Is the tension essential for at least one of the siblings to become creative, or would that creativity have happened anyway? My last, somewhat cynical question might be - on occasion, might there be an element of PR in the ‘broken’ relationship - create some bother to make yourselves seem interesting, and maybe mask a lack of creativity?
I have hypocritically said that Oasis didn’t warrant my time for this article, and yet I have devoted an entire paragraph to them and am now mentioning them again. I will cheekily ask, “since Liam has no discernible talent and the talent Noel has is beholden to his reliance on borrowing from the 60’s, is some of their fighting to garner attention and divert from their adequate but possibly overhyped musical output - just to make sure everyone is still watching?”
I should add at this point, for full disclosure, that I have no siblings of my own so arguably do not have enough insight into this question. But I do have two teenage children and the tension between them is almost completely absent.
I think the main question out of this, is why is the list almost all brothers, with barely any bickering sisters - why do brothers bring the worst, and sometimes, the very best out of each other?
So there we go, a conclusion that poses another question rather than answering the premise of the article - a cheap cop out for sure, but since I don’t think I have the answer that is the way it must be. Enjoy the tunes though…..
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