10 Hard Rock Bands That Destroyed Their Own Career

It's not shocking for your average band to have a small life expectancy. Even if you have some great tunes to back up your material, the life of fame and fortune just isn't for everyone. While some may credit their downfall to being at the wrong place at the wrong time, these artists can only point the finger at themselves.

That's not to say that each of these bands don't have talent though. In fact, most of these musicians had so much potential at the very start of their career. Even though there were some epic flameouts here, no band has the same fall from grace. Most of the time it comes down to the band selling out and losing all the goodwill of their fanbase. Other times the band is just so reprehensible that the fans seem to dry up overnight. Then again, the biggest career destroyers is when you find out that you just can't work together anymore.

It's never an easy decision to call it a day, but it's even worse when you know you're responsible for everything going to Hell. Though they may try to blame it on everything else, when it comes to these artists' waning spotlight, it's all comes back to the same place.

With the passage of time, it feels like The Sex Pistols are known much more for what they stood for than the actual music they made. When put up against other punk bands of their ilk like the Ramones or the Damned, these guys were more considered with carrying out the anarchic spirit as their mission statement than the actual chords of the songs. It's a novel way to try and gain notoriety, but you can't blame anyone when something like that ends poorly.

Going out on the road after replacing Glen Matlock for presumably not being punk enough, the drafting of Sid Vicious proved to be a bit of a disaster from day one. For one thing, Sid's lack of performance on their first album Nevermind the !*$% already triggered alarm bells, which were confirmed once they took to the road going into America. Even though there were some classic punk moments like Vicious etching "Gimme a fix" into his skin, the tension between Johnny Rotten and the rest of the band turned sour really quick.

Concluding with a performance in San Francisco that consisted of only one song, Rotten left the band shortly afterward, with each member making their way back to Britain independently. Though anarchy may have seemed like a good idea at the time, you can't really build off of it when your foundation is...well...nothing.