Civil Wars on Hiatus, Release Album Anyway

Written by Jon Williams

On Tuesday, the Civil Wars released their sophomore album, the self-titled The Civil Wars, despite the duo being on indefinite hiatus.

Singer-songwriters Joy Williams and John Paul White were both working on solo careers when they met at a writing session in 2008 and decided to pair up. After two digital EPs were released online, their full-length album debut Barton Hollow came out in February of 2011. The album was given a boost by the single “Poison and Wine,” which appeared on the hit TV show Grey’s Anatomy, and yet another boost when country superstar Taylor Swift announced her love for their music. Riding this wave of support, the album won two Grammy Awards, for Best Folk Album and Best Performance by a Country Duo/Group.

Williams and White struck up a friendship with Swift, and the three of them recorded a single, “Safe and Sound,” that appeared on the soundtrack for The Hunger Games, along with another Civil Wars tune. With a great deal of critical and commercial success, the duo seemed to be on top of the music world. In November of 2012, though, they announced their hiatus. It was during the period leading up to this announcement that they recorded their second album.

While undoubtedly difficult, it’s not exactly uncommon for bands to record together during times of internal turmoil. The stories are legendary, for instance, of the discord among the members of the Beatles as they recorded such work as the White Album and Abbey Road, some of their finest work. Here are a few other bands nearly as famous for their internal strife as they are for their music.

The Beach Boys: Primary members Brian Wilson, Mike Love, and Al Jardine have been feuding off and on (mostly on) for decades. In 2012 they got together for a reunion tour and a new album, That’s Why God Made the Radio; the future of the legendary band is up in the air.

Guns N’ Roses: To an outsider, it would appear as though lead singer Axl Rose isn’t exactly the easiest guy in the world to get along with. After the tension between Rose and guitarist Slash finally dissolved the band’s most well-known version, it would take fifteen years and a number of lineup changes before Chinese Democracy was finally unleashed on the world in 2008.

Van Halen: The band was named after brothers Eddie and Alex Van Halen, the band’s guitarist and drummer, but in the beginning most of the attention was focused on flashy frontman David Lee Roth. This caused friction that led to Roth being replaced with Sammy Hagar in 1985. After Hagar quit/was fired in 1996, the band went through singer turmoil for years before eventually reuniting with Roth for A Different Kind of Truth in 2012. In the meantime, they also picked up another Van Halen, firing original bassist Michael Anthony and replacing him with Eddie’s son Wolfgang.

Oasis: Unlike Van Halen, in which a pair of brothers stood united as they formed and reformed the rest of the band around them, the conflict in Oasis was between a pair of brothers. Singer Liam Gallagher and guitarist Noel Gallagher had a history of being unable to get along, sometimes to the point of violence. It reached a head in 2009, when Noel left the band and formed Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, while Liam and the rest of the band stayed together under the moniker Beady Eye.

Appetite for Destruction Turns 25

July 21 marked the 25th anniversary of the release of Guns N’ Roses’ debut album, Appetite for Destruction.

GNR came from the same mid-‘80s Sunset Strip scene that produced the likes of Poison and Motley Crue, and thus their music is sometimes lumped in with the pop-metal acts of the day. The truth, though, is that Appetite was edgier and far more serious than anything those bands did. In fact, Nicholas Pell at LA Weekly considers Appetite to be the most important album of the past 25 years, edging Nirvana’s Nevermind, a seminal album in its own right.

Personally, I’d agree with that assessment; I’d even argue that GNR set the stage for the success of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and the grunge scene to come. Can you imagine going from the popularity of “Unskinny Bop” (Poison) and “More Than Words” (Extreme) to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” without the heavier tones of GNR to act as a bridge?

Appetite eased its way into the mainstream when the first single, “Welcome to the Jungle,” gained popularity on MTV after the album had been out for more than a year. The second single, “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” built on that success, and the third, “Paradise City,” cemented it.

Since then, it’s been a long, strange trip for Guns N’ Roses. They followed up Appetite with GNR Lies in November of 1988. It contained four live tracks and four acoustic songs, including the megahit “Patience.” That held fans over until the dual albums Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II released in 1991 (debuting at #1 and #2 on the Billboard charts). While those albums contain many of the band’s best-known songs, they were also largely uneven. Then, in 1993, came the ill-fated The Spaghetti Incident?, an album of covers that would be the last recorded with GNR’s “classic” lineup (featuring Slash on guitar and Duff McKagan on bass in addition to Axl Rose on vocals).

That was it from Guns N’ Roses until Chinese Democracy finally surfaced in November of 2008 after being rumored since 1999, with Axl Rose being the only original member of the band remaining. Despite a completely different sound than any previous GNR material, it went platinum and was generally well received by critics.

The original lineup of Guns N’ Roses (Axl Rose, Slash, Duff McKagan, Izzy Stradlin, and Steven Adler) was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame earlier this year. Axl and Izzy did not attend, but the others reunited (along with “auxiliary” members Gilby Clarke and Matt Sorum) to perform three songs from Appetite for Destruction with Myles Kennedy on vocals.

As for the future, it’s very much up in the air. Rumors swirl that the new GNR lineup is preparing to begin recording a new album, while some longtime fans continue to hold out hope that Axl and Slash will try to put their differences behind them for a reunion of some sort.

Whatever happens going forward, there’s no denying the impact that Appetite for Destruction has had and continues to have on the music world. Make sure you have this classic album, as well as GNR’s other work, on your library’s shelves.