Bands in their prime who kicked out an important member

Gin Blossoms?

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What y'all got?

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AIC - Mike Starr

Def Leppard - Pete Willis

(ETA: Metallica - Dave Mustaine)

Most obviously, The Stones w/Brian

Velvet Underground - John Cale

The Byrds - David Crosby

Michael Clarke apparently quit, came back for a few gigs, then was fired.

I don't know if he was an "important member", but guitarist Drake Levin was fired by Paul Revere just a few minutes before The Raiders were to perform on The Ed Sullivan Show, leaving Levin to watch from the wings as a spectator.

Cold-blooded move, Paul

Smashing Pumpkins - Jimmy Chamberlain (heroin overdose)

didn't Motley Crue vote out Vince Neil?

It all fell apart in February 1992, just as the band was starting to work out songs for their Feelgood follow-up. In theory, they should have been refreshed after taking some time off to recharge from the grueling Dr. Feelgood tour, but it didn't work out that way; from the beginning, it was apparent that singer Vince Neil wasn't on the same page as the rest of the group, and on Feb. 10, they called a meeting that ended in his ouster. On Feb. 14, they released a statement saying he'd left because his longtime hobby, car racing, had "become a priority" in his life.

Replacements kicked out Bob Stinson their guitarist.

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In mid-January 1986 the Replacements received a last-minute request to appear as the musical guests on the edition of January 18 of Saturday Night Live, replacing the scheduled act, the Pointer Sisters, who had been forced to cancel only days before the show. The invitation was partly thanks to the show's musical director of the time, G.E. Smith, who was a Replacements fan but, as a result of their shambolic and profanity-laced performance during the late-night live broadcast, SNL producer Lorne Michaels banned them from ever returning to the show (although Westerberg returned as a solo artist in 1993.) They performed "Kiss Me on the Bus" while completely intoxicated, and after playing an out-of-tune "Bastards of Young" (during which Westerberg audibly called out "Come on fricker" just off-mic) they returned to stage wearing mismatched iterations of each other's clothing. In a 2015 interview recorded for the Archive of American Television, G. E. Smith recalled that although the band had performed well for the early evening pre-taped dress rehearsal performance, one of the band's crew then smuggled alcohol into their dressing room and they spent the next few hours drinking (with the guest host, Harry Dean Stanton) and taking drugs. According to Smith, by the time of the late-night live broadcast they were so intoxicated that

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on their way to the stage to perform, Bob Stinson tripped in the corridor, fell over onto his guitar and broke it,

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and Smith had to hurriedly loan him one of the SNL house band's spare instruments.[51]

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Peter Green started Fleetwood Mac and eventually quit the band. Some say a nervous breakdown, some say freaked out on LSD. In any event, drugs were certainly involved. Same with Syd Barrett, original founding member of Pink Floyd