Top 5 - Worst Mistakes in Rock & Roll

Everybody makes mistakes. We wouldn’t learn anything if we didn’t. Sometimes groups make mistakes, bands do, record companies, managers, etc. Here are my Top 5 Worst Mistakes in Rock & Roll.

5. Van Halen - Dumping both Dave and Sammy in favor of…Gary Cheron!? Yes, it happened, for Van Halen III, a completely forgettable album that didn’t have the fun of David era or the hits of the Sammy era. Thankfully, it was a one and done and eventually both Sam and Dave would re-join in different forms and different times before Eddie’s death a couple years ago.

4. Creedance Clearwater Revival - The Mardi Gras album. Band tensions, inflated egos, and rivalry got in the way of another successful band. John Fogerty demanded that his band mates contribute equally to the song count on the last album, and that meant about a 1/3 of it actually worked. The album does include Sweet-Hitchhiker and Someday Never Comes, both Fogerty’s and both radio staples, but the rest of the album is completely, and well, forgettable.

3. Sex Pistols - Sacking Glen Matlock (a guy who could actually play and write) and replacing him with Sid Vicious, who could really do neither, but did look the part. The band would be over within a year anyway.

2. The Beatles - Decca records passed on signing the Beatles in favor of signing Brian Poole and the Tremeloes. Dick Rowe, the Decca Records A&R man who rejected a demo tape of 15 songs The Beatles. telling manager Brian Epstein that guitar groups are on their way out.

1. Guns N Roses - Axl Rose tried to keep the GNR alive, but in ten years of waiting and a lot of promise all we got was Chinese Democracy. Axl did manage to get most of the original line up back together after years of a revolving door of great “session” guys like: Tommy Stinson, Buckethead, Josh Freese, Richard Fortus and Robin Finck.

Mistakes happen to the best of us.