Before we go any further, let’s make one thing clear. The women below didn’t destroy any bands.
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This deep dive is, however, an investigation into the claims that they did. The erroneous, untrue claims that they did. The largely sexist claims that they did, really.
Below are the stories behind the four women who allegedly caused four giant bands to end.
1. Yoko Ono v. The Beatles
For decades, Yoko Ono was the person to blame for the fall of the Beatles. The claim was always that she got into John Lennon’s head and pushed him away from his Beatle brethren. But as we learned in more recent years, thanks largely to the 2021 docu-series by Peter Jackson, The Beatles: Get Back (co-produced by Ono), this just wasn’t the case. Sure, Yoko was around the band often, at Lennon’s behest, but she didn’t cause him to leave the group. Their dynamic had just run its course after starting the band in their early teens.
Later, after Lennon left the former Mop Tops, he and Ono, a singer and visual artist, started a group together. Born in Tokyo City, Ono got no relief from the Western press after the breakup of the Beatles. Further, she was cast as something of a mind-controlling person over Lennon. An experimental artist, she was never taken seriously by most. Today, though, that’s changing now that the truth is out that she’s not the reason the Beatles broke up. The breakup falls on the constantly bickering John, Paul, George, and, to a lesser extent, Ringo.
2. Courtney Love v. Nirvana
The wife of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love has endured a lifetime of rumors that she is the reason Cobain went crazy and even killed himself. She was also rumored to have been the one to pull the trigger. These rumors aren’t true. In fact, if you ask former Nirvana touring soundman, Craig Montgomery, Love may have only been responsible for refining Cobain’s songwriting and making him the artist we know him as today.
Love talked about their relationship in a recent wide-ranging conversation on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast. She says she’s over it and has forgiven the world. People thought she killed the biggest rockstar ever (Cobain died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the home he shared with Love). It’s hard to put that aside. Especially in the wake of the biggest band in the world dissolving after its frontman died by suicide.
Years later, comedian Margaret Cho published a piece called “Courtney Deserves Better From Feminists,” saying that Love was worthy of better treatment from the world, including those who allegedly supported women. Love, who has suffered from drug addiction, was also the frontwoman of the acclaimed rock band Hole. But even those years are marred by some saying Cobain wrote that band’s best songs.
3. Stevie Nicks v. Fleetwood Mac
The feuds between the members of Fleetwood Mac have become legendary, especially the one between Nicks and lead guitarist Lindsey Buckingham.
Prior to any arguments, the two were longtime collaborators, even releasing an album together in 1973, Buckingham Nicks. In fact, Nicks and Buckingham first met during Nicks’ senior year at Menlo-Atherton High School in California. She saw him play at a Young Life club. “I thought he was a darling,” Nicks recalled, according to Inherownwords.com. The two formed not only a musical partnership but a romantic one.
In 1974, British artist Mick Fleetwood called Buckingham and asked him to join a band. Buckingham refused, saying he and Nicks were a “package” deal. Fleetwood brought them both on. By the mid-’70s, the band became one of the biggest in the world. But as the group rose, Buckingham and Nicks’ personal relationship faltered.
Nicks eventually ended the relationship. In 1981, she began her solo career, causing issues to widen in the band. Buckingham left the band in 1987 and spent the next years of his life working on a solo album, Out of the Cradle, which he released in 1992. Many of the songs dealt with his relationship with Nicks and his decision to leave the band.
Stories abound about Buckingham getting violent with Nicks on stage, hitting her and throwing a guitar at her. “Lindsey and I had a very bad fight … right before we were getting ready to go back to L.A,” Nicks said decades later of a fight during their sessions for their hit album, Rumors. “And I said, ‘We’re done. I think that this is over. I don’t think that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can put this back together again.’”
Around 2018, Buckingham, who once called Nicks a “schizophrenic bitch,” clapped back. “I think sometimes [Stevie] might find it difficult that I was lucky enough to find my soul mate late in life and got married,” he told CBS. “And that was something she never did.”
Today, the two remain largely at odds, sometimes still going at it in the press over who got who fired.
4. Lauryn Hill v. The Fugees
It is known today that at the height of the ’90s hip-hop band, the Fugees’ success, the group’s Wyclef Jean and Lauryn Hill, were an item. But when that dissolved acrimoniously, so did the group. Was it Hill’s fault? Some think so. Many more, though, blame Jean. In the video below, Jean talks about their romance and the resulting breakup of the band, saying the group’s third member, Pras, blames Wyclef and Hill’s relationship for the band’s demise.
Pras is even quoted as saying Wyclef was “playing with her emotions.” And as well all know Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. After Wyclef and Hill broke up, she began to see Bob Marley’s son Rohan. Hill became pregnant. Wyclef thought it might be his. But it wasn’t. Then Hill went solo, and released the 1998 album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, which included the Wyclef diss track, “Lost Ones,” and the group has been essentially over ever since.
So while Hill may get the blame in rumors, it was not on her, it would seem.
Photo by Susan Wood/Getty Images
