Everly brother Don closes out the show

Don was the driving force when the Everly Brothers started writing their own hits, but success couldn’t keep them united.

The Everly Brothers with Don, left, and Phil at the time they reunited in 1983.

Brothers Don and Phil Everly only ever had one argument.

But it lasted a quarter of a century. Before setting the gold standard in family feuds, friction between them had long been evident. It bubbled to the surface soon after the dizzying rush of hits they scored from July 1957 when Bye Bye Love was kept at bay in Billboard’s No.2 spot by Elvis Presley’s Teddy Bear.

Don’s enthusiasm for various substances proved troublesome on their first UK tour in 1960. They were often heard shouting at each other in hotel rooms.

Things came to a head on July 14, 1973 at a performance in Buena Park, Los Angeles, at which point their band included Warren Zevon on keyboards. Don was drunk and slurring his words and, when he forgot lyrics to Wake Up Little Suzie, the promoter stopped the show, while Phil smashed his guitar, telling the shocked crowd he was sick of being an Everly Brother. “The Everly Brothers died 10 years ago,” he said into the microphone.

Phil completed the final set alone. He later apologised to the promoter: “I can’t go back on stage with that man again.”

Things worked out for neither as solo artists. Don released three albums and Phil issued five over the next decade. None charted. Don’s best single struggled to No.50 on Billboard; Phil’s to No.37.

On one of Don’s albums, English guitar virtuoso Albert Lee made his mark. He had met up with Don again in Los Angeles while doing studio work, but they had encountered each other in the early 1960s in a London hotel after separate gigs.

Lee joined Don’s touring band. (When he returned to England his place was taken by an unknown Lindsay Buckingham, soon to join Fleetwood Mac.)

Lee also worked with Phil over those years, and remained friendly with the brothers, who at that stage didn’t speak, not even at their father Ike’s 1975 funeral.

Lee was coy about his role in their reunion when I spoke to him in 2013, but while not alone in encouraging the brothers to re-form (and reform), his vital contribution was recognised when he was appointed musical director of 1983’s comeback show at London’s Royal Albert Hall and then joined their band. That led to the recording of an album, EB84, for which Paul McCartney wrote On the Wings of a Nightingale. McCartney had always acknowledged the debt his first band owed the duo. When Phil died in 2014, he said: “(He) was one of my great heroes … they were one of the major influences on the Beatles. When John and I first started to write songs, I was Phil and he was Don.”

McCartney mentioned them in the lyrics to his 1976 hit, Let ’Em In.

“Sister Suzie, brother John

Martin Luther, Phil and Don.”

The brothers had joined The Everly Family act with their parents, touring America’s south when still in high school. Guitarist and producer Chet Atkins saw their potential and directed them towards Nashville, where they started to write songs for the Acuff-Rose hit factory. Also there were Felice and husband Boudleaux Bryant, who would write a string of hits for the Everlys including Bye Bye Love, Wake Up Little Suzie and Bird Dog.

Soon, and driven by Don, the boys wrote their own: When Will I Be Loved, (Till) I Kissed You and Cathy’s Clown.

The Everly Brothers overlaid their detailed and expressive vocal harmonies across a foundation of simple, guitar-based rock and changed popular music. The Beatles matched this with the electric guitar sounds of Buddy Holly and changed the course of popular culture. Acts the brothers influenced include the Hollies, the Byrds and Crosby, Stills and Nash. Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel made their serious debt clear inviting the Everlys to join their 2013 Old Friends tour.

In 1986, Simon had asked them to back him on the title song from an album he was recording but for which his label, Warner Brothers, had little enthusiasm. Graceland won Grammys for album of the year and record of the year.

Don’s death was announced by his daughter, Erin, formerly the wife of Guns N Roses singer Axl Rose who wrote their hit, Sweet Child O’ Mine, about her.

Don is survived by his mother, Margaret, who is 102.