After weeks of speculation, it was confirmed that the founding member, main songwriter and lead singer, Ely Buendia, had
left the band in mid-March 2002 for "reasons unknown". However, in subsequent interviews, Buendia pointed to business matters as the cause of the band's
break-up.
In a PULP Magazine interview, Buendia's wife and manager, Diane Ventura, claimed that the breakup started with a miscommunication between Buendia
and the band's roadie. The result was that Buendia and Ventura turned up late at a mall gig. This angered the roadie and called them "unprofessional".
Everybody else on the gig gave Buendia "a cold shoulder", said Ventura, thinking that he deliberately came late. The next
day, Buendia brought up the incident to the attention of the band's then manager Butch Dans. Buendia allegedly blamed the
incident to the management's "unprofessionalism". Dans, however, allegedly chose to believe the roadie's account over Buendia's,
without delving further into the matter. Dans even allegedly insinuated that Buendia and Ventura were "probably too high on
drugs" the other night to remember the gig's schedule. Ventura vehemently denied the allegation and denied further that she
and Buendia were even told of the schedule. She added that the three other band members also believed the roadie's account,
which deeply disgusted Buendia because he felt they betrayed their longstanding friendship. Buendia later announced to his
bandmates through SMS that he was quitting the band.
In another interview, Marasigan said he was eating in SM Megamall, a local shopping mall, when he heard of the news (how he heard of it, was not clear). He said he was "semi-surprised" and
wondered if Zabala already knew about it. Adoro told of the story now famous among Eraserheads
fans about Buendia's cryptic text message. He said Buendia stated in the text message that he had already "graduated." Adoro
quipped in the same interview that it was natural for Buendia to graduate first, since he was in batch '87 of their college
, while the rest were in batch '88.
Zabala confessed in an interview that disbanding had not been that far away from the members' minds. He said that there
were so many occasions wherein they could have disbanded but did not.
Adoro expressed the belief of some people that the band was getting too old, and that it was "selfish" for the band to
continue, likely referring to comments about how it's time for other bands, besides the Eraserheads, to shine.
The band made it clear, though, that Buendia's departure from the band wasn't in any way violent and that there
was no shouting (sigawan) or any confrontation involved.
Without giving up, the three remaining original Eraserheads decided to continue. Within just a few weeks, the "new" Eraserheads
debuted at Hard Rock Cafe in Makati City on April 19 featuring a female lead singer, Kris Gorra-Dancel from the band, Fatal Posporos. However after a few months, Adoro finally quit the band. The remaining members of the Eraserheads added Diego Mapa and Ebe Dancel to their lineup and renamed their band, "Cambio."
