Over the years, I was involved in three situations where we had to fire band members, Once because of physical ailments that affected her singing voice long after she joined the group, another time because of mental illness which we knew about before hand but were assured was in the past, and the third time because the guy would repeatedly get too drunk to play.

The first two firings were disasters. I explained to the singer that we were replacing her and that she was fantastic when she was well but that we had limped through three month of her trying to get well and that her reduced singing ability was costing us jobs. She spent the next several weeks calling my house and hanging up several times a day.

The second guy, I sat down with and explained the issues which all had to do with him not being able to put a filter on any of his behavior. It was no big surprise because we had been talking constantly about inappropriate things he was doing all of the time but he was one of these guys that had spent months in a mental hospital getting electo-shock therapy and was about as burned out as Cheech and Chong. He was fully aware of the problems he was creating and didn’t give me the least bit of grief. His mother on the other hand hit the ceiling. She called me up wanting to know why we had fired her son, which I patiently explained, but then I got a long lecture on being insensitive to the needs of the mentally ill, and how her son had a PhD in music and the whole band put together couldn’t match either his talent or musical knowledge, which was probably true.

I finally got smart with number 3. We all handed in our 2 week notice and quit, leaving him as the sole member of the band. Never heard a word from him again.

Keith
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