Chevelle’s Pete and Sam Loeffler have revealed that they haven’t spoken to their brother and former bandmate Joe Loeffler in 20 years.
Chevelle was formed as a family band by brother Pete, Sam, and Joe Loeffler in the Chicago suburb of Grayslake in 1995. The Loefflers remained together as a trio for three major-label album cycles, until Joe exited the band in 2005, giving way to longtime bassist and brother-in-law Dean Bernardini, who remained with the band until his exit in 2019.
It was a messy split with Joe, both as a band and as a family, and Pete and Sam opened up about their continued estrangement from their younger brother in a new interview on “The Garza Podcast,” hosted by Suicide Silence guitarist Chris Garza.
Related Video
“There’s a certain amount of turmoil and a certain amount of poking you can do at each other,” said Pete of brotherly dynamic latent to the band (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). “And if you can’t work through those times and become closer, you’re not gonna last. And that’s something that’s rare for us, is that we’ve been in it together. And it didn’t work with our other brother [Joe]. It couldn’t get very far.”
Added Sam: “He was not open to anything, any bit of criticism, even just development. It was, ‘Hey, man, that’s a little flat. We’ve gotta do that again.’ ‘No, I’m not.’ This doesn’t have to be an argument. Let’s just do it till it’s right. And then the fucking shit hits the fan, and then it’s, like, ‘Oh my God, what’s happening? The world is ending.’”
Pete said that Joe would threaten to quit the band “every other week,” and eventually they got fed up with it.
“The fourth time we just said, ‘No, it’s done.’ And those were the big ones,” Pete continued. “‘Cause he would complain about starting every tour. It was, like, ‘I don’t wanna fly. I’ll take a train there.’ So it was a battle every time we started a tour. But it was not sustainable. We started out as three brothers, but we couldn’t do it for very long.”
Sam agreed: “It was never going to work. And who he is today, we don’t know. We have no idea.” Pete then said that he and Sam haven’t spoken to Joe since 2005, adding “We should have a cake tonight and celebrate because our lives have been that much better.”
Here, Garza noted that the Loeffler’s family situation is more “complicated” in that it includes seven siblings, to which Sam replied: “But we get along with everybody for the most part.”
“Other than one,” Pete chimed in. “That’s not bad, right? Six of us get along out of seven.”
Sam then said that he has “no ties or interaction” with Joe, who claimed he was fired from the band without discussion in July 2005. A week later, Sam and Pete posted on the band’s website that Joe had decided to “take a break to be home with family” while they went on tour with 30 Seconds to Mars, but later clarified that “irreconcilable differences” led to his removal from the group.
Chevelle have released seven studio albums since the lineup change, the most recent, Bright as Blasphemy, dropping in August of this year.
Watch Pete and Sam Loeffler’s appearance on “The Garza Podcast” below.