When "departing" bandmates just don't get it.

[Strat God]

Your band is a business, so you have to make buisness decisions.
Trying to mend fences is a noble gesture, but it almost never works out.
Cut 'em and move on and forget about friendship. If they were REAL friends this would never have happened.

If they need a friend tell 'em to go buy a dog.

[lerxstcat]

Did you try telling him what you've told us? In effect, "Hey man, I appreciate your work ethic and your stage prescence, but you rub people the wrong way by being obnoxious."

"You nearly got into a fistfight with the drummer at the last show, and I think starting brawls in the clubs we play isn't going to get us asked back".

Do him a favor and let him know exactly WHY you won't consider patching it up - that his behavior is the root cause. It will probably piss him off really badly at first, but he may then start noticing a pattern in his future dealings with everybody. Eventually he may learn something about himself and change his behavior.

Not that this will happen soon, but you apparently put up with this for three years, which makes me think that a replacement won't be that easy to find. So maybe if he's got his head out of his ass in a year or two, you might still be looking for a bass player then. Either way you'll be doing him a favor as your parting gift to him.

[Inazone]

Did you try telling him what you've told us? In effect, "Hey man, I appreciate your work ethic and your stage prescence, but you rub people the wrong way by being obnoxious."

"You nearly got into a fistfight with the drummer at the last show, and I think starting brawls in the clubs we play isn't going to get us asked back".

Do him a favor and let him know exactly WHY you won't consider patching it up - that his behavior is the root cause. It will probably piss him off really badly at first, but he may then start noticing a pattern in his future dealings with everybody. Eventually he may learn something about himself and change his behavior.

The frustrating thing is that he has been told, more than once. First, there was his sense of humor, which went beyond the typical funny-but-crude stuff and just got really inappropriate and out of line. This was brought up, and he acted like a martyr, not to mention was quick to point out anything "off color" that anyone else said. Another time, our drummer yelled at him in the car while headed home for practice because he was always pushing people's buttons, criticizing them for their career choices and talking a lot of shit, despite the fact that he was barely scraping by. He didn't take it seriously then either. So the post-gig incident was the inevitable icing on the cake. He told me that he could stick to business, and I told him that if that meant the same as the last time this happened, it wouldn't work. None of the other band members were pointing fingers at each other, so the source of the problem was immediately evident.

Not that this will happen soon, but you apparently put up with this for three years, which makes me think that a replacement won't be that easy to find. So maybe if he's got his head out of his ass in a year or two, you might still be looking for a bass player then. Either way you'll be doing him a favor as your parting gift to him.

At various times, he said that he wouldn't mind if this was a studio-only project. When he did finally get to record with us on our EP earlier this year, he started complaining that the bass tones only sounded good on one of the three tracks, and hinted that our vocalist (also our studio engineer) deliberately lowered him in the mix. I told him that I was there and know exactly what went on in mixing, which apparently convinced him, but I even question the wisdom in agreeing to let him stay on for recording the rest of the album tracks. He was the only person capable of playing our material properly when we were "in the market" the first time, but sometimes I'd rather just go without a bassist than tolerate this relentless headache.

[lerxstcat]

Sounds like you've done all you can do then. Too bad the guy has to be a tool, especially since he can do the job musically, but it sounds like you've bent over backwards to try and deal with him already.