We Can't Work It Out: Famous Feuds & Fallouts in Rock Music
Sep 25, 2026 · 32 min · 10 segments
By 1978, the Carpenters faced another crisis, but this time Richard Carpenter was falling apart. What began years earlier as a prescription to help him sleep had developed into a serious Quaalude…
Last time, we followed Karen Carpenter from an ordinary teenage diet into an eating disorder that nearly stopped the Carpenters in 1975.
While everyone focused on getting Karen healthy enough to work again, Richard carried a completely different problem.
It was hardly surprising.
For years, the Carpenters had finished concerts late at night, returned to hotels wired from performing, traveled the next morning, and then done it all again.
Richard's mind had never been particularly good at switching off, especially when another arrangement needed rethinking, another recording needed finishing, or another mistake from the evening's performance still bothered him.
The problem got worse after the Carpenters returned from Europe in 1971.
Richard remembered arriving home looking terrible from lack of sleep, and Agnes Carpenter happened to have recently been prescribed a sleeping medication by the family doctor.
Richard tried it.
Later, he remembered going downstairs afterward and watching an old science fiction B-movie on television.
Something seemed different about it because a movie that normally would have seemed ridiculous suddenly struck him as unusually entertaining.
That was Richard's first indication that the pill was doing something beyond simply making him tired.
But for several years, that distinction didn't seem especially important.
Richard used the medication primarily at bedtime, and nothing about it looked remotely like the stereotypical rock and roll drug story that might have horrified the Carpenter family.
That irony is worth remembering.
Richard had passed through the 1960s largely avoiding recreational drugs.
The Carpenters had spent years being mocked as the clean-cut alternative to rock stars who drank heavily, smoked marijuana, or experimented with whatever happened to be passed around backstage.
Richard's problem began with a doctor's prescription in his mother's medicine cabinet.
For roughly four years, he later said, he used the medication without serious difficulty.
Then at some point, he discovered that staying awake after taking it produced a feeling he enjoyed, and gradually the purpose of taking the pill changed.
The medication had once been a way to fall asleep.
Now the experience before sleep became part of the attraction.
As Richard's body adapted, the amount that once worked stopped working as effectively.
He began relying on the medication more heavily, and because the effects increasingly lingered into the following day, the solution to his insomnia started creating a new problem during the hours when Richard actually needed to function.
Last time, we followed Karen Carpenter from an ordinary teenage diet into an eating disorder that nearly stopped the Carpenters in 1975.
While everyone focused on getting Karen healthy enough to work again, Richard carried a completely different problem.
It was hardly surprising.
For years, the Carpenters had finished concerts late at night, returned to hotels wired from performing, traveled the next morning, and then done it all again.
Richard's mind had never been particularly good at switching off, especially when another arrangement needed rethinking, another recording needed finishing, or another mistake from the evening's performance still bothered him.
The problem got worse after the Carpenters returned from Europe in 1971.
Richard remembered arriving home looking terrible from lack of sleep, and Agnes Carpenter happened to have recently been prescribed a sleeping medication by the family doctor.
Richard tried it.
Later, he remembered going downstairs afterward and watching an old science fiction B-movie on television.
Something seemed different about it because a movie that normally would have seemed ridiculous suddenly struck him as unusually entertaining.
That was Richard's first indication that the pill was doing something beyond simply making him tired.
But for several years, that distinction didn't seem especially important.
Richard used the medication primarily at bedtime, and nothing about it looked remotely like the stereotypical rock and roll drug story that might have horrified the Carpenter family.
That irony is worth remembering.
Richard had passed through the 1960s largely avoiding recreational drugs.
The Carpenters had spent years being mocked as the clean-cut alternative to rock stars who drank heavily, smoked marijuana, or experimented with whatever happened to be passed around backstage.
Richard's problem began with a doctor's prescription in his mother's medicine cabinet.
For roughly four years, he later said, he used the medication without serious difficulty.
Then at some point, he discovered that staying awake after taking it produced a feeling he enjoyed, and gradually the purpose of taking the pill changed.
The medication had once been a way to fall asleep.
Now the experience before sleep became part of the attraction.
As Richard's body adapted, the amount that once worked stopped working as effectively.
He began relying on the medication more heavily, and because the effects increasingly lingered into the following day, the solution to his insomnia started creating a new problem during the hours when Richard actually needed to function.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
