40 Year Itch: Don and Phil Call It Quits

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By July of 1973, Don and his younger brother Phil Everly were barely talking. They would stay at different hotels, take separate cars to the gigs and even use separate dressing rooms. They'd fight like cats and dogs until the curtains were pulled apart and the show started. They were making good money as the Everly Brothers and, like Siamese Brothers,  seemed to be stuck with each other for life.

Then on July 13, 1973 at Knott's Berry Farm in Buena Park, California,  Don walked on stage after knocking back a few margaritas. He slurred the words. He sang the wrong words. He sang flat. At the end of the show, as Don took his bow, Phil smashed his guitar, walked off the stage and announced "I'll never get on a stage with that man again."

They only met once over the next decade : to bury their father.

40 Year Itch Have Pity on the Stranger in the Cold

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A year before their partnership ended in an onstage explosion at Knott's Berry Farm, the brothers gathered at John Sebastian's house to record an album of dark and gloomy country tunes with a guest list of artists that read's like a who's who of 1960's rock: ex-Byrds, ex-Turtles, Burritos, Lovin's Spoonful and Delaney and Bonnie. The Everly Brothers' bandleader Warren Zevon was there with guitarist Waddy Wachtel and so was Ry Cooder. In a way this was their last opportunity to reinvent themselves. They plucked songs from Rod Stewart ("Mandolin Wind"), Kris Kristofferson ("Breakdown") and four from Dennis Linde whose "Burning Love" had spent most of 1972 in the charts thanks to Elvis Presley . Linde's  "Christmas Eve Can Kill You" is one example of the melancholy that infused the album.

Here's "Mandolin Wind" :



After the release of The Stories We Could Tell, in June of 1972,  the brothers went on tour in Europe with Zevon and Wachtel and found themselves playing all the old hits all over again. There was no re-inventing the Everly Brothers.