JULY 14, 1973 – During a concert at the John Wayne Theatre at Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, California, Phil Everly, angry over his brother’s drinking, smashed his guitar and stormed offstage, forcing his sibling Don to finish the set by himself after announcing that The Everly Brothers had split.“I was a half in the bag that evening – the only time I’ve ever been drunk onstage in my life,” Don told Rolling Stone in 1986. “I knew it was the last night, and on the way out I drank some tequila, drank some champagne – started celebrating the demise. It was really a funeral. People thought that night was just some brouhaha between Phil and me. They didn’t realize we had been working our buns off for years. We had never been anywhere without working; had never known any freedom. We were just strapped together like a team of horses. It’s funny, the press hadn’t paid any attention to us in 10 years, but they jumped on that. It was one of the saddest days of my life.”High tensions between the two began to surface in the weeks leading up to the show; in fact, Don told a reporter he was tired of being an Everly Brother. Reportedly, they did not speak to each other for almost a decade, except at their father’s funeral in 1975, but reformed in 1983, released three further records and toured with Simon and Garfunkel. Phil died on January 3, 2014.
