Tired of All the Bogus Comeback Tours?

One more time
Some bands just don't know when to quit. Tired of all the bogus comeback tours, Michael Hann sets down some ground rules for those contemplating a reunion

Michael Hann
Friday December 3, 2004

The Guardian

It used to be called the oldies circuit: troupers your parents, or grandparents, might have known, playing the pubs, clubs and Mecca ballrooms. Walking around provincial towns, one would see posters for groups whose names were half-remembered from brief clips on Pop Quiz, or from the radio stations favoured by bus drivers. Those were the good times, when bands whose time had passed knew that they should aspire to nothing more than comfortable, rent-paying mediocrity.
But old bands are now big business. The growth of heritage rock in the past few years - spurred on by the CD-reissue business, nurtured by magazines such as Mojo, which devote 20 pages to the making of the third Yes album - has created a market for any Tom, Dick and Harry that someone, somewhere has acclaimed as hugely influential. All it needs is some hack to assert that Tom, Dick and Harry's fourth album remains one of the classics of the neo-urban folk-funk genre, the influence of which may be heard in everyone from Dizzee Rascal to the Darkness and - lo! - T, D and H will be embarking on a 10-date tour, with original lineup, of some of our more prestigious venues, finishing with a night at the Royal Festival Hall in London, tickets £30 a pop.

Which is why we need some hard and fast rules to govern this reunion madness:

1. Make sure enough members are still alive

The strength of the brand (and make no mistake, reformed bands are trading as much on their brand as their music) is slashed if the ones who wrote the songs have long since succumbed to drink, drugs or old age. The experience of seeing the elderly New York Dolls tottering around the stage of the Royal Festival Hall in the summer was diminished rather by the absence of the late Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan - himself a replacement for a drummer who had died first time round. If, on the other hand, you can manage to get all the original band members in the same place at the same time without the need for emergency medical assistance, it could work out.

Getting it right: Television's classic lineup reconvened last summer for a handful of small-scale shows running through their late-1970s repertoire. All members were alive, and fully functioning.

Getting it wrong: Thin Lizzy - Touring next spring. Even though Phil Lynott is dead. Imagine Laurel and Hardy, without Laurel. Or Hardy. You get the picture.

2. Don't compromise your politics

If all your band ever stood for was generating enough cash to support the combined rural economies of Colombia, Bolivia and Peru, by all means reunite and renew your audience's acquaintance with £150 tour jackets. But what if you were known for your strident Marxist politics, your bitterness about all-pervasive commerce and your refusal to pander to audience expectations? Best not to sully the purity of the original statement, surely? If you paint yourself into the corner of asceticism at 20, you should expect some dismay if you stride out of it at 40.

Getting it right: Duran Duran never had any principles to compromise. So making a fortune from a reformation world tour offended nobody. And they were surprisingly terrific.

Getting it wrong: Punk-funk pioneers Gang of Four were the most earnest rock band in history. They sang that everything you might enjoy, from falling in love (like anthrax infection, apparently) to going on holiday, was tainted by capitalism. Now punk-funk is back in fashion and you can see their original lineup for the first time in two decades in January - tickets start at £18.50!

3. If it's about the money, admit it

We understand that a lot of great, great bands never get their due at the time. And we understand that after splitting, the members - who may very well have changed the fabric of pop music - will often spend 20 years releasing solo albums no one buys and playing gigs no one bar two fanzine writers attends. So if the drug-addled members step forward and say, "Enough of noble poverty. We want some of the cash that talentless wasters have made by ripping off our sound," it's hard to argue. It's hard to feel quite so sympathetic when the musicians insist that they feel more relevant than ever now and have really got something to communicate to the kids - kids young enough to be their grandchildren.

Getting it right: The Pixies named their reunion the Sell-Out Tour. They've made a bundle, and they've played some blinding rock music. Now they and we can go home happy the job is done.

Getting it wrong: Jane's Addiction's reformation "came just when they're needed most", according to their website. No, no, no. It came when they were at a loose end. They've split again now, thankfully.

4. Don't trample on your legacy

Rock audiences will tolerate an awful lot: sullen, uncommunicative singers; a sound mix that makes the most delicate Bachrach and David number sound like Iron Maiden's Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter; a venue floor so coated in unnamed fluids you need half a gallon of white spirit to free your shoes at the end of the evening. What they won't tolerate is their heroes treating their back catalogue with contempt. Mess with the songs that, as some drunken slob in a curry-stained T-shirt tells you at the show, "were my life when I was 16", and you destroy the pillars on which they have built their subsequent cultural lives. They will never forgive you.

Getting it right: Mission of Burma were pretty well unheard of until they reformed in 2002. Which made it that much easier for fans at their reunion gigs - who had never actually heard the songs before - to hail them as the pioneers of the American alternative scene.

Getting it wrong: The Velvet Underground turned up in the early 1990s to play White Light, White Heat as such a pedestrian pub-rock boogie that one half-expected Lou Reed to announce the results of the raffle at the end of the song.

5. Wait for the cultural tide to flow in your favour

Rock music moves in cycles: what was risible a fortnight ago can be inspirational today, given the right endorsement from a new generation of musicians. But the secret is in the timing. Like playing chicken while driving a car, you need to wait as long as possible before making your move. So reform too early and you risk the world shunning you; choose your moment, after the appropriate number of namechecks from fanboys who have gone on to sell millions of records, and the world, if not Popworld with Simon and Miquita, is your oyster.

Getting it right: Slint, from Kentucky, sold about three records and played a handful of gigs during the first phase of their career. After they split, dozens of other bands forged careers from note-for-note rip- offs of their template. Now they have reformed - with enough cultural cachet to curate a rock festival of their own in February.

Getting it wrong: Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich got back together in the 1990s, yet they have still not secured that season at the Royal Albert Hall or the loving retrospective in Uncut. Why should that be?