Jani Lane, on Warrant’s “Cherry Pie”: “I could shoot myself in the fuckin’ head for writing that song.”
(interview starts @1:28)
He was very well known and successful as a rock singer long before doing “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” though.
I can’t find a reference to it right now, but maybe someone can help me out.
The Cardigans - Lovefool. This song may have ended up destroying the band. Everyone loved it so much, but it was nothing like most of the other songs they played at concerts, and everyone only wanted to hear that song. I don’t think they particularly disliked the song, but it gave the band a soft-pop image that didn’t fit them, and ended up being their one and only big hit.
An article from Cracked.com about this subject:
Glen Matlock, original bassist of the Sex Pistols, in his book, writes about meeting the bassist for Golden Earring, and saying to him, “I love your bass playing.”
The guy said “Oh, what songs?”
Matlock said, “Well, Radar Love.”
The guy turned his back and walked away.
Sucks to be a one hit wonder 
[QUOTE=Shakester]
{snip} Sucks to be a one hit wonder 
[/QUOTE]
Are you implying that Golden Earring is a one-hit wonder? They’ve had 7 singles chart on the Billboard Hot 100 list. Their two best charting singles were, “Radar Love” (peaked at #13) and “Twilight Zone” (#10). Okay, so they never hit it big in the USA but, they’ve been very successful in Europe. So successful that the band will be celebrating its 50[sup]th[/sup] anniversary next year. FWIW…
Not sure if this entirely fits into the topic, but on one of Lou Reed’s* live albums you can hear fans screaming for him to play ‘Heroin’.
Lou responded by saying, “We don’t play that any more”.
mmm
*(may have been a VU album)
The Grateful Dead disliked “Alabama Getaway,” which was one of their top three greatest “hits,” technically. I think maybe they never played it in concert, which is amazing considering how deep into their catalog they liked to go (as many of you know, pretty much every concert’s setlist was different from the one before).
Lennon (in the 1980 Playboy interview) said he hated the Beatles’ recording of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”.
But Maggie May and We Are Sailing, to pluck two examples out of the ether, are gentle songs. He wasn’t aiming for rock and pop anymore.
I’ll see if I can find a cite. I read an interview where he detailed all this, but it was about 15 years ago, so I may be misremembering key details. I did find this, though:
[QUOTE=Rod Stewart]
I used to be embarrassed to sing “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” but people love it. So it’s in the show.
[/QUOTE]
I can’t find the interview, but Tom Waits released an album to fulfill contractual obligations and hates the songs. IIRC some of my personal favorites were on the list.
Cheap Trick’s song “The Flame” was a number one hit and revitalized their career. However, it was forced down their throats by the record company and the band felt that it wasn’t really their sound or their song. They hated recording it and hated playing it, and hated that it went all the way to number one. I believe they even refuse to play it these days.
The Styx album “Kilroy Was Here” was conceived by singer Dennis DeYoung and was forced upon other members of the band. The change in musical direction for the band led to a lot of internal disagreements, eventually leading to the band’s break-up. The remaining members of Styx have pretty much disowned the album, though Dennis DeYoung still plays songs from it on his solo performances.
Stan Ridgway was frontman with Wall Of Voodoo, and went on to an excellent lengthy solo career. But every time I’ve seem him, he “has” to play Mexican Radio.
You can tell they’re sick to death of it, and they often mutilate the song live.
This may not even count and may not in fact be an instance the OP is asking for but many years ago (about the same time his album was still hot) we went to a local dive to hear Larry Carlton and when he asked for requests I asked for
Larry Carlton - Emotions wound us so (live Last Nite album)he looked at me in a shocked manner and I would have thought he equated my request to an accusation about his mother’s dating practices.
Maybe it was more that his gig was more upbeat or something and the piece is a bit of a downer, or something that would not mean he had any bad feelings toward the music itself.
But it’s all I could think of on this topic.
Quiet Riot originally hated “Cum On Feel the Noize”:
(Link.)
I’m guessing they changed their tune after the checks started rolling in.
The lyrics for “Light My Fire” were written mainly by Krieger though.
I seem to recall reading Paul Simon dislikes “The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)”, and saying he hopes he isn’t remembered for writing it.
I don’t know that he hates it but Joe Walsh has jokingly said of Rocky Mountain Way that if he’d known he’d be singing it for the rest of his life he would have done a better job of writing it.
On top of that, they wrote it as a joke, parodying all the phony “rebel” songs that were around at that time.
Depeche Mode hate “People are People,” because it’s hackneyed and tacky, among other things. They do, however, play “Just Can’t Get Enough” because it’s fun and funny to draw a line back to their earliest, Vince Clarke-penned era.
It was certainly not in their usual repertoire, but I know I’d heard a live version of the song at least once. They actually recorded this song twice - once as a non-album single all the way back in '68, and the better-known version from '79. I think the band disliked the specific recording of the '79 version rather than the song itself. The Dead had a lot of problems in the late 70s with their label Arista who they said demanded ‘more commercial’ material on their albums. The biggest bone of contention is the ‘77 recording of “Terrapin Station” that covered an entire album side. The producer (whom the label foisted upon them) basically did a hatchet job, throwing in ridiculously over the top production flourishes that the band hated.
As for other other old psychedelic rockers, Grace Slick didn’t write much of the material used during the mid-80s Starship era of her band. But she has gone on record as regretting it, being embarrassed by it, and writing it off as "horse shit.’
I saw a TV interview with Tina Turner in which she confessed she hated the song “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” from the moment she heard a demo of it. Her producer and manager loved it and kept urging her to record it, but she resisted from almost a year. She said she wanted to run out of the room whenever her producer brought it up. (I imagine she changed her mind about the song after it hit #1 on the Billboard charts, resurrected her career and launched her into super-stardom)