50 Years Ago: Everly Brothers Tumultuously Break Up On Stage
The Everly Brothers were one of the most important acts in all of American music. There is a reason they were first ballot inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and are in the Country Music Hall of Fame as well. Though some consider their music mostly within the rock realm, the home base for their career was Nashville, and country songwriting duo (and fellow Country Hall of Famers) Felice and Boudleaux Bryant wrote most of their big hits like “Bye Bye Love,” “Wake Up Little Susie,” and “All I Have To Do Is Dream.”
But all great things must come to an end, and that’s what happened 50 years ago today, July 14th, 1973 in a rather spectacularly catastrophic fashion. It was the culmination of years of turmoil and conflict between brothers Don and Phil Everly, as well as conflict with the country music industry.
– – – – – –
Unlike many of their contemporaries, the career of The Everly Brothers seemed to hit a brick wall in the early 1960s, and they never really rekindled their popular magic later in life. The country music industry was to blame, and it led to a deeper conflict between the two siblings.
The well-known guitar player, producer, and country music executive Chet Atkins was a close friend of the Everly family dating back to before the brothers were a duo and were known more as a family band with their father Ike. Chet brokered the brothers’ first record deal with Columbia in early 1956, and also introduced the brothers to Wesley Rose, son of Fred Rose, who was the well-known songwriter and founder of Music Row publishing house Acuff-Rose. Wesley Rose also became The Everly Brothers manager.
In 1961, the brothers had a falling out with Wesley Rose. At the behest of Rose, they only used Acuff-Rose writers, including Felice and Boudleaux Bryant. But as time went on, The Everly Brothers wanted to record other songs. Wesley Rose adamantly refused, so the brothers dropped Rose as their manager. At the time, Acuff-Rose had a virtual monopoly on all the best songs and songwriters in the music business for the type of music The Everly Brothers played. The duo’s falling out with Wesley Rose meant they no longer had access to ‘A’ list song material.
Both Don and Phil Everly were songwriters as well, and wrote many of their own songs. However, in a strange twist of fate only fit for Music Row, because the brothers were still signed to Acuff-Rose as songwriters, the falling out with Wesley Rose meant that the brothers lost access to their own material as well, and any material they may write in the future.
So The Everly Brothers began recording cover songs, and started writing under a collective pseudonym of “Jimmy Howard.” However, when Acuff-Rose sniffed out what was happening, the publishing house brought legal action against the brothers and obtained the rights to those songs as well. Between 1961 and 1964, one of American music’s most brilliant and popular bands was resigned to singing cover material, and their popularity plummeted.
In 1964, the conflict finally abated with Acuff-Rose, and The Everly Brothers began to record their own material again, along with resuming work with Felice and Boudleaux Bryant. But not only had popular music in America mostly passed them by, due in part to the turmoil, both brothers were now addicted to amphetamines. Don Everly was also taking Ritalin, and eventually suffered a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized due to his addiction issues.
By the late 1960s and the release of their album Roots, The Everly Brothers were beginning to turn things around, and remained popular in England and Canada. They were also announced as replacement hosts for The Johnny Cash Show for a stint. But behind the scenes, things were beginning to fray between the brothers. Don released a solo album in 1970, but it was mostly unsuccessful. So they began recording together again for RCA, but the entire time, Don was ready to break away from his brother to be a solo artist.
All of this led up to what was announced as the final performances before a two-year break for The Everly Brothers set to take place at Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, California on July 13th and 14th, 1973. It was supposed to be a joyous occasion for the brothers who knew some space would do them good, and wanted to keep things amicable. But that’s not exactly what happened.
The July 13th performances went fine, but by the time Don Everly was set to take the stage on July 14th, he was clearly drunk. He was slurring words and forgetting some of the lyrics to the songs—something unheard of for Don Everly even in his worst state. Warren Zevon happened to be playing keyboards for them at the time, and recalls of the evening,
“I’d seen Don perform with the flu and a temperature of 103. I’d never heard him hit a sour note or be anything short of professional in front of an audience. But, this night, he walked onstage dead drunk. He was stumbling and off key and I remember Phil trying to restart songs several times. It was embarrassing.”
As the crowd started jeering, Don Everly lashed out at the them, and at Phil. Embarrassed and frustrated, Phil slammed his guitar down on the stage, smashing it. As he walked off the stage, he said to the promoter, “I’m really sorry, Bill, I have to go. I can’t go back on stage with that man again.”
Surprisingly, Don tried to continue the show, telling the crowd famously, “The Everly Brothers died 10 years ago.”
Don Everly later recalled to Rolling Stone,
“I was half in the bag that evening—the only time I’ve ever been drunk onstage in my life. I knew it was the last night, and on the way out I drank some tequila, drank some champagne—started celebrating the demise. It was really a funeral. People thought that night was just some brouhaha between Phil and me. They didn’t realize we had been working our buns off for years. We had never been anywhere without working; had never known any freedom. We were strapped together like a team of horses. It’s funny, the press hadn’t paid any attention to us in ten years, but they jumped on that. It was one of the saddest days of my life.”
Though the hiatus was supposed to only last a couple of years, it would take another 10 for the brothers to reunite on stage at at the Royal Albert Hall in London on September 23, 1983 in a concert that was recorded for an album and a cable special. Meanwhile, their infamous breakup on stage would go on to define the spectacular destruction of a band in public.
The Everly Brothers would continue on and off for the rest of their lives. Phil Everly died in 2014, and Don Everly passed away in 2021. Despite the turmoil the brother duo experienced, they left a legacy that crossed genres and generations, and is still lasting today. There’s nothing like the blood harmonies of The Everly Brothers, no matter the bad blood that came between the brothers at times during their legendary career.
July 14, 2023 @ 10:13 am
That is a shame. The Everly Brothers were so influential. I can appreciate Chet Atkins as an artist, but he was a real piece of shit as a human being. Ditto , the Roses.
July 14, 2023 @ 10:32 pm
I like how you feel qualified to pass judgment on the humanity of and casually dismiss one of the towering figures in the music business history with a gross and vile vulgarity.
July 15, 2023 @ 6:49 pm
Mercy sakes. I have the vapors. How dare anyone critique a “towering figure?”
July 15, 2023 @ 9:29 pm
You call that a “critique”?
Anyway, I see from the thread below that you have an obsessive and maniacal hatred of Atkins. (Unless I’m reading you wrong and that’s acttually the way you speak of anybody everybody whom you disapprove of.)
July 15, 2023 @ 11:26 pm
Thumbs down for no Catholic priest joke? (I saw it below and it won’t let me reply to it.)
RCA had so many of my favorite artists in the 60s-70s…I dunno, maybe he wasn’t active as much when they were there? Chet didn’t produce a single one (well, he produced Waylon and what a ton of money I wasted on those fancy Bear Family box sets).
RCA also for some reason was much better at cd compilations, etc back in the day than the other major labels. I’d have to do a quick 15 min experiment on youtube/itunes to find out, but to this day I fear that MCA/Capitol artists from back in the day who aren’t megastars are getting screwed in terms of people nowadays being able to easily find their music. I believe they’re all getting screwed, or their estates at least, by the digital copyright laws.
Of course I don’t give Chet any credit for that. He played guitar good, that’s all I got for the man.
February 15, 2024 @ 8:05 pm
dagnabit….i scrolled all the way down looking for that Catholic Priest joke……did read lots of opining on the E.Bs.
July 14, 2023 @ 10:26 am
There are few things sadder in the music industry than when an artist loses the rights to their own material. It’s unsurprising that this caused the friction that it did. Sounds like a lot of wasted long-term potential caused by Music Row.
July 15, 2023 @ 3:46 pm
Check Atkins was a.piece of shit as a human being. Narcissistic bastard. Ruined the carreers of the Everly Brothers along with the Roses power. Roses and Atkins hopefully.in hell together.
July 16, 2023 @ 1:46 pm
Used to be that there was a general understanding that unless you’re talking about despots, murderers and the worst felons–Pol Pot, Jeffrey Dahmer, et al–you don’t go around calling people excrement and “consigning” them to hell. I mean, if Chet Atkins is in hell, where will you wind up? Are you certain that the Judge of all men will judge you better than Chet Atkins? I wouldn’t take that bet for myself.
Chet Atkins was a gifted and accompished man who lived a fairly long life and did a lot of things, some good, some bad. If I believed in this stuff literally, I’d say I hope that I’ll meet him in heaven. But I can still say it, metaphorically
July 31, 2023 @ 12:36 pm
Chet Atkins did a concert in 1987 you can see on YouTube titled “Chet Atkins and Friends”. Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Mark Knopler,
Waylon Jennings and the Everly Brothers performed and spoke about Chet. Great concert. I don’t think anyone performing on that stage had anything but respect and liking for Chet Atkins. The Everly Brothers in particular spoke highly of Atkins.
July 14, 2023 @ 10:31 am
Typo alert, Trigger: “…Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, California on July 13th and 14th, 2023.”
July 14, 2023 @ 10:53 am
Great article.
I met Don once at Noshville. He was really kind, and really eccentric.
July 14, 2023 @ 11:00 am
After their reunion I was lucky enough to see them perform on a number of occasions. They were great. Their music is timeless. Great article.
July 14, 2023 @ 7:05 pm
Where is Noshville? I’ve never heard of it. I’ve heard of Nashville.
July 15, 2023 @ 4:46 am
Noshville Delicatessen is located at 4014 Hillsboro Cir, Nashville, TN.
July 14, 2023 @ 11:16 am
On the bright side we did get a wonderful song out of that awful evening: Warren Zevon’s Excitable Boy which comes from the wonderful album of the same name. The little Susie in the song refers to “Wake Up Little Susie.” Kind of shocked Zevon didn’t sing “Well he took little Susie to the Berry Farm/Excitably Boy they all said
July 14, 2023 @ 12:15 pm
I was only 6, but I was there with my parents and have always remembered the smashing of the guitar.
July 14, 2023 @ 2:02 pm
I loved the Simon and Garfunkel / Everly Brothers tour early this millennium. Kind of a festival of reconciliation.
July 14, 2023 @ 8:40 pm
I got to see that show in 2003. I remember Paul Simon saying “Our heroes were the Everly Brothers…. And, ladies and gentlemen, here they are!”
July 15, 2023 @ 9:00 am
And kinda ironic Paul and Art ended their professional and personal relationship in much the same way Phil and Don did…with much acrimony towards each other.
July 16, 2023 @ 8:57 am
Was at the simon&garfunckle tour show in Toronto.
Everly brothers were the surprise Quiet second act add on the show tour
Was a good concert but not spectacular from them .
July 14, 2023 @ 3:01 pm
The Royal Albert concert is streaming, and it was a great show, a nice time capsule for Everly Brothers fans.
July 14, 2023 @ 3:24 pm
Many of their 80s recordings are really good, for example EB84, but I think they are mostly overlooked
July 14, 2023 @ 4:54 pm
Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits seemed to like Chet Atkins just fine.
July 14, 2023 @ 5:33 pm
There are multiple layers to Chet. He wasn’t a villain necessarily, but he had his moments, for example his stranglehold on the recordings, dictating the songs and musicians with no creative freedom allowed as an artist.
That’s why Waylon said adios and left nashville for Texas. Willie felt the same. Chet was a micro manager and a dictator. He pissed numerous artists off.
Later in life he was pretty cool. Someone like Knopfler he respected because of the talent. If Chet loved you, then he treated you like royalty. That’s the rub on him.
July 14, 2023 @ 7:26 pm
Chet knew and respected talent. He was honest enough and controlled his ego enough to admit that Jerry Reed surpassed him as a player. That is admirable. He also was a mature counsel to younger performers and tried to keep them on the straight and narrow and off the drugs and booze. That, too, is very admirable. The insurmountable problem with Chet is that he was solely motivated by money. He wanted his performers off the booze and drugs so he could burn them to the ground and milk them for all he could make off of them. He realized that a lot of the Nashville Sound was complete, overproduced horseshit, but, as he related, the “Nashville Sound” was simply the sound of coins jingling in his pocket. Chet would have pimped his wife if he saw a windfall. I view him as the “Gene Upsahaw” of country music, if that makes any sense.
July 15, 2023 @ 8:35 am
Let’s set a bit of the record straight on Chet Atkins. He was a very complicated man. With a lot of very complex layers. But since you’ve been brought up Jerry Reed, let’s really dig deep into the country guitar world.
Make no mistake, Jerry Reed was a guitar player without Peer. They didn’t just hire him to play guitar man for Elvis Presley himself because he was the one who would do it cheapest. They couldn’t find anybody else who could play the part. If there were another guitar player who could’ve played it, Elvis could have afforded it. The fact that Jerry Reed alone could do it is testament to his abilities.
But Jerry Reed was not a standard issue trained guitarist. He had a lot of unusual, tunings and techniques that were his, and his alone. I better comparison then chet Atkins is thumbs Carlisle. Nobody says thumbs Carlisle was better than chet Atkins, because chet couldn’t play Alabama jubilee the way thumbs could. There’s simply no comparison in the playing styles.
Chet was, as we all know, using his fingers on the higher strings, to fill in the melody notes, and his thumb beat out bass notes on the lower strings. He wore a pick on his thumb, and when he broke into doing leads, he was essentially flat picking with it. And then he could fill in extra notes with his first finger. He was also quite the accomplished sweep picker. Several decades before the metalheads.
Chet developed his style based partly on classical guitar techniques, partly on parlor guitar techniques, and partly on Merle Travis style
The things Chet was doing were sensible and comprehensible, And they were a very natural progression of the evolution of Guitar techniques. Jerry was an outlier. His whole musical ability was nonstandard.
As far as General flatpicking goes, Chet could not have kept up with the Rot Clark’s or Glen Campbell’s of the country music world
But he didn’t need to, because his style of music was a lot less silver bells, and golden slippers and a lot more misty And Girl from ipanema
When you put the guitar in his hands and put him out there with other musicians, Chet was a very normal guy.
But when you put him in an office, he was the Scott Borchetta of his day.
That is to say, a trend chaser, without meaningful artistic vision, who couldn’t differentiate between a work of art and a consumer product
The problem was that Chet How do years of experience on the other side of the coin. He knew what audiences responded to, he had a sense, or so, he thought, of how trends and tastes were changing. And he tried to apply all of those things to make every artist on his label a superstar. He simply either lacked or rejected the vision of diversifying his talents to fit different images and styles of music.
And I gotta say, in his defense, the people who were going against the grain at that time, in that era, we’re totally making their own roads. And many of them had personal image problems.
Sure Buck Owens had the Buck Owens Ranch show, and he had the Beatles doing act naturally, But he was still just as much an outsider in the general country music world. Who was sharing a lot of his popularity with people who wouldn’t have been caught dead, listening to Patsy Cline.
It’s easy in 2023 to look back and think that country music fans were just as enamored with Buck and merle, haggard as they were with Patsy Cline and Jim Reeves. But the simply was not the case.
The fan bases were rather different in those days. We have to understand that Nashville was a sophisticated city, Nashville was going to be an American Prague, and American, Paris, the popularity of the Opry really affected the future development of Nashville away from being the sophisticated city of scholars and architects in the area, and really turned it into the country music, Mica, we think it is. But we have to remember that it’s simply wasn’t. And Patsy Cline and Jim reeves fit what Nashville had been doing before the success of the Opry had turned it into hillbilly Heaven.
Grandpa Jones, Loretta Lynn, the Maddox Brothers and Rose And The Carter Family and Hank Williams were all exceedingly popular, especially with the Lehman. But there was a big chunk of upper middle class people in the greater Nashville area, who still thought that was hillbilly music even in the 60s. Patsy Cline and Jim Reeves were the modern sophisticated country music, that some people in the city really wanted country music to be.
And Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, we’re decidedly outside that norm because they weren’t country enough for the hillbillies, and they weren’t stately and professional enough for the upper social lights of the old Nashville order. And a lot of their fans came from outside those two camps initially. Buck Owens, of course, got big with the younger crowd. It wasn’t quite into the music of their parents.
And Chet Atkins had seen it all. He’d been there first hand, and seeing it with his own eyes, while it was happening. And he chose to produce the Nashville sound and focus on the more Patsy Cline and Jim Reeves, side of thing, and part of that might have been the same stigma that country music was a bunch of hayseeds. Roy Clark was rather uncomfortable with he haw at the start because he was working so hard to help sophisticate country music. So we have to remember that for a guy like Chet, Foggy mountain top and turkey in the straw may have been a little too corn pone. The guy was obviously an educated man, he played music from all sorts of styles, in a world where you had to meaningfully research those things you couldn’t just Google bossa nova music or flamenco guitar.
So Chet wanted country music to modernize.
And after becoming part of the Nashville mechanism, he was essentially stuck in the middle of this elitist vision of a sophisticated music that had equal standing with guys like Sinatra, and the roots that still wanted grandpa Jones and string bean.
Remember that outside of the rock ‘n’ roll success of the Beatles, literally all popular music sounded like Jim Reeves. Maybe there were some horns or more or less drums, but if you look at the most successful people in the industry, we’re talking the rat pack, Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Engelbert, Humperdinck, Tom Jones, later, Jim Reeves, and Patsy Cline. All music was still in the grips of the great American songbook craze.
And when you put into context, what music in the greater culture would have sounded like, and rock ‘n’ roll was still the music of the devil, is it really any wonder that Chet Atkins wanted country music to go a little more Tony Bennett and a little less Beverly hillbillies?
July 15, 2023 @ 6:35 pm
Years ago, on Broadway in Nashville, Chet Atkins and a Catholic priest were walking down the street. Just ahead, a young boy had bent over to pick up a quarter he saw on the sidewalk. The priest looked at Chet and said “should we fuck him?” Chet looked back and said “out of what?”
Chet has been dead for a long time, so spare me the histrionics about speaking ill of the dead or talking shit on “legends.” Any person who would take advantage of fellow artists the way Chet took advantage of the artists he owned, deserves to be ridiculed. The idea that you could own a person’s future songwriting is essentially slavery. The Everly Brothers should have shoved a 12-string Gretsch up Chet’s ass. I still listen to Chet, especially the Jerry Reed albums. Ultimately, he was a loathsome, avaricious human being. RIH
July 17, 2023 @ 6:21 am
“Chet was, as we all know, using his fingers on the higher strings”.
I would venture a guess that very few people knew that. Especially me.
July 15, 2023 @ 4:46 pm
On average, what is the distance during the past thousand years between earth at its perigee and Jupiter at its apogee?
July 14, 2023 @ 9:14 pm
Definitely messed up what happened with their songs but you have to read that fine print before you sign. I don’t know though even if they hadn’t had those issues, if they would have stayed as big going forward. I don’t think they would have stayed popular in the pop sense. Maybe they could have crossed over into country and kept their popularity so maybe chet messed them up there. But all that is speculation and my own thoughts. They did do a cover of an old song called Put my shoes away which is very country and very good so who knows.
July 15, 2023 @ 4:48 pm
My great-grandmother was born in 1930, and I remember growing up in the 80s and 90s and constantly hearing The Everly Brothers on the radio.
July 15, 2023 @ 6:53 pm
You must be a young whippersnapper. My great grandmother, who died when I was 4, was born in 1889. I have a couple vague memories of her.
July 15, 2023 @ 9:21 pm
I’m in my mid-to-late 30s. Both my great-grandmother and her daughter (my grandmother) married very young. Probably still younger than most on here, but older than most people with grandparents that young, I would assume.
January 13, 2024 @ 9:10 pm
MY great-grandparents were all born from 1840 to 1875, and I just turned 66.
July 15, 2023 @ 7:37 pm
Thank you to all the writers here for the enlightened and entertaining discourse. Quite the enjoyable few minutes reading some astute observations with actual facts tossed in for levity. In other words…..WTF.
July 15, 2023 @ 10:55 pm
It’s a bird, it’s a plane…no, wait, it’s not a bird. Not quite a dog. It’s a bird dog.
July 16, 2023 @ 5:00 pm
“The music business sucks” – Fred “Sonic” Smith
July 17, 2023 @ 5:16 am
Dayum!!!! Tough audience. Being in my early sixties I had no idea of the drama between Chet Adkins and the Everly Brothers, but some of the comments are downright obnoxious.
July 18, 2023 @ 5:32 pm
My husband and I purchased a guitar from a man who purchased it in California. It was Phil’s guitar 🎸 which was given to him by Chet Atkins. Chet signed it, he also gave one to Don. Don and Phil adored Chet Atkins they called him their second Dad. WE met Don and Phil several times .
July 22, 2023 @ 8:00 pm
“All I Have To Do is Dream” is so good I would listen to it on loop for 10 minutes if the doctor gave me 10 minutes to live…
That is all.