9 Bands That Broke Up Onstage (or Right After)

Band breakups can be quite dramatic, but there are actually quite a few rock and metal bands that have broken up onstage — or right after a show.

Growing tensions within a band can snowball and weaken the dynamic overtime. Many times, musicians have tried to withstand the conflicts and carry on with the show. And some of those times, that show was the last time those musicians share a stage together.

These problems weren’t always obvious to the bands’ fans and typically didn’t lead to a complete blowout onstage. With some of these artists, they simply broke up after the last show. This was the case with Soundgarden, though they ultimately reunited a little over a decade later.

“I just went into work mode, when we got off the road [in ’97] I started writing demos and I was like, ‘Let’s do our next record.’ And then Chris [Cornell] came over one day and quit the band,” Matt Cameron told us in an interview. “So that’s how it ended.”

We gathered instances where bands broke up onstage or right after, so scroll through the images below to read their stories. Some of them have gotten back together since, and others haven’t.