Groups that had a comeback (reunited)

[Mister Triscuits]

Phil Collins even acknowledged this about 15 years ago, when he facetiously billed his retirement tour as the "First Farwell Tour", perhaps knowing that he'd eventually get bored staying at home, or get made an offer he couldn't refuse.

In an episode of Babylon 5, taking place in the year 2257, there is a poster in the background announcing "ROLLING STONES FAREWELL TOUR."

[Splicer]

In an episode of Babylon 5, taking place in the year 2257, there is a poster in the background announcing "ROLLING STONES FAREWELL TOUR."

Good gag.

[SteveSly]

Squeeze and Wire have both broken up and reunited twice. Both still together and doing fine.

The Pixies reunion made all the money they should've got first time around.

I have tickets to see Squeeze in a few weeks.

[mozo-pg]

The Canadian prog rockers, FM, reformed for a performance at Nearfest one year.

[moecurlythanu]

I'm surprised no one's mentioned the granddaddy of all reunions: Peaches & Herb.

[progmatist]

You mean bad blood between Croz and Stills, Nash, AND Young. Well, I'm not sure about Stills, but I know Neil Young was miffed by some comment Croz made about Neil's girlfriend or whatever, and I guess Nash just feels like Croz is just such a pain in the ass to be around, he even wrote a song about it. And Croz has admitted that Roger McGuinn apparently doesn't want to work with him either (and I imagine, neither does Chris Hillman). So he's managed to alienate virtually everyone he's kind of famous for working with.

In the beginning, the original 3 were reluctant to work with Neil at all. Stephen found him to be a pain in the ass in Buffalo Springfield. To this day, there are far more albums and live recordings with just CSN than CSNY.

[Yodelgoat]

Dont forget Spinal Tap

[Monet]

A partial reunion of the first ever Psychedelic rock band, 13th Floor Elevators, took place at Liberty Lunch in Austin at August 11, 1984, with Roky Erickson alongside Ronnie Leatherman on bass and John Ike Walton on drums, with Sutherland's place taken by Greg Forest; Tommy Hall didn't participate. The concert was recorded, and live material has been released as "The Reunion Concert" CD on the UK label Thunderbolt, in 1995.
On May 10, 2015, Erickson, Hall, Leatherman, and Walton joined for a 50th anniversary reunion show at the Levitation festival in Austin. Stacy Sutherland's guitar duties were covered by Eli Southard and Fred Mitchim.

[jefftiger]

Dont forget Spinal Tap

Even The Rutles got back together. I liked their "Shangri La" video.

[Yestronomy]

How about The Syn and Mabel Greer's Toyshop?

[Monet]

In 1982, the Return to Forever line-up of Corea / Clarke / White / Di Meola reunited to record an eleven-minute track, "Compadres", which has been released on Chick Corea's Touchstone the album from the same year. In 1983, the same line-up played a short reunion tour of the U.S. and Japan, but sadly didn't record a new album. They had reunited for the second time in 2008, due to the U.S. and European tour.

[Trane]

Bread and Circuses (1997) and Tomorrow's Blues (2003) have the classic lineup of Hiseman, Greenslade, Clemson, Clarke, Heckstall-Smith and Farlowe. The later Time On Our Side (2014) has Barbara Thompson replacing the late Heckstall-Smith.

saw the band some four or five times during the late 90's & 00's.

I heard the first reunion studio album and was totally unimpressed. I don't think they inserted more than one song from it on their setlists anyways.
Never heard the next ones (if I did, I have no recollections). Are they worth the hunt (meaning sunbstancially better than B&C)?

Comus reunion took place as part of the Melloboat festival in Sweden, in March 2008, and they had released their excellent comeback album "Out of the Coma" in 2012.

OK, not excellent

Didn't Jaxon get involved with one of those unauthorised Classic Rock DVDs and the rest of the band took exception?

I think there is more to it than that (you'd think by now they would've forgiven him and meshed back together)
Jaxon was always more financially fragile than the other three (he even resorted to driving a cab for a living a few years)
Hammill being so prolific never had to worry about dough (as long as he remained reasonable), Banton builds church organs, Evans has his own plans.

By the time Jaxon finally found his ways outside the band, he couldn't be mobile as the rest of the band was. his teaching heavily-disabled kids and building the Tonewall project makes it that he probably couldn't have followed the band across the planet.

Univers Zero had a 12–13 year break, from around 1986, until they returned in 1999 w/ “The Hard Quest.” The band then performed and continued/continues to put out new music and play.

Yup, though Aymeric might dispute me with details, the spin-off Present also reformed but had a longer second life - since their latest album will probably come out soon.
(thx for the 97 UZ gig with Segers info, which I'd never heard of before)
It might explain the bad blood between him and DD

Kind of surprised Talking Heads have never jumped on the reformation bandwagon. I guess because Byrne’s been busy with his stuff.

Actually, Chris Franz, Tina Weymouth, and Jerry Harrison did record adn tour as The Heads in the mid 90's. I saw them open for The Who in 1996. As far as a full reunion with all four band members, judging from the excerpts I've read from Chris Franz's book, I suspect the other probably don't want to be in a band with David Byrne again.

Yup, too much bad blood between Byrne and the rest if the band to actually do a tour and album, IMHO.
Maybe a one-off charity gig some day, but no more, IMHO.

^ I love the Who to death but they sort of became the little band that cried wolf with all their farewell tours. At some point I suppose they became more like reunion tours.

The 82 tour was the only one, I believe, that was actually billed as a "Farewell Tour". I remember Townshend admitted in 1989, when they did the first reunion tour, he "was only doing it for the money" because he "realized that America was intent on making him rich all over again". Of course, what he didn't tell us is the real reason was Entwistle was in danger of losing his house (apparently, he continued to live like a rock star, even when that part of his career was kind of over). I'm not sure about the mid 90's Quadrophenia touring cycle, but I think that might have contributed to that one too.

Yup, not aware they billed the later tours "Farewell".

I saw the band for their three Toronto gigs (the CNE grandstand in October (freezing and windy) and the two much-warmer Maple Leaf Gardens closing off the tour... Those two were supposed to be the final Who concerts ever. They were miner anyways, since I've not seen them (well televised broadcasts excepted) since.

[Monet]

OK, not excellent

"Out of the Coma" is a very successful comeback album which of course suffers a little from the brevity of the studio material. But the title track, "The Sacrifice" and "The Return" offer first-class and perfectly presented music that should inspire every fan of Comus from their "First Utterance" phase.
The archival live material from the album is certainly interesting, in places also impressively oblique, and only remark about that live track can be the fact that the sound quality isn't top notch.

[Monet]

Many of the classic Italian bands re-emerged. Some even re-re-emerged!

Not only Italian but a number of European bands, of which some were / are well-know in their countries but lesser known abroad, had reunited. For instance, Swiss Neo-Prog band Galaad, which released a magnificent debut album "Premier Février" in 1992, had disbanded after the second album in 1996 and reunited in 2019; since then, Galaad have released two albums, of which the recent "Paradis posthumes" is released this year and represents a top achievement of the contemporary Neo-Prog.

[arturs]

The Canadian prog rockers, FM, reformed for a performance at Nearfest one year.

And then once again to headline Progtoberfest in 2018! But I think that's it...

[GuitarGeek]

In the beginning, the original 3 were reluctant to work with Neil at all. Stephen found him to be a pain in the ass in Buffalo Springfield. To this day, there are far more albums and live recordings with just CSN than CSNY.

Yeah, Neil strikes as being a difficult to work with. You ever seen The Year Of The Horse documentary? There's a bunch of clips of him getting into arguments during rehearsals and whatever with the Crazy Horse guys (though I imagine any band is like that).

But my impression that both Neil and Graham, at the very least, got to the point where they just didn't ever want to work David ever again, and as I said, Graham even wrote a song about David.

[mnprogger]

Reunion/Reunion Albums:

The Tea Party
SikTh
Godspeed You Black Emperor
Galactic Cowboys
Kaddisfly
Faith No More
Refused
John Arch + Jim Matheos
I Mother Earth
Big Wreck

[GuitarGeek]

Then there's bands who didn't really break up, but too long sabbaticals from recording (i.e. they got dropped from their label and had trouble signing with a new one).

One of my favorite examples is The Searchers. They apparently never stopped playing live in the 70's, but they went quite a few years without a contract. Then in 1980, probably due to the success of bands who were influenced by them (paging Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers, Dwight Twilley, etc), they were signed by Sire and recorded two new albums, The Searchers and Love's Melodies. Unfortunately, the albums didn't really do well, chartwise, and thus were dropped again, but they're both very fine albums. They sound exactly what you want an early 80's Searchers album to sound like, it's the classic sound but let's say with a more modern drum sound or some stereo chorus on the guitars. But it still sounds like the same band that recorded Needles And Pins and Love Potion No. 9.

Then there's Zebra, who went something like 15 years without doing a studio album (and have done kind of the same since the release of Zebra IV), but I understand they still play a few gigs every year, so they've never really broken up, despite all the band members having day jobs now.

[Digital_Man]

^ I always thought of Zebra as a band who just didn't really see the point in making albums because they thought doing live shows was more profitable. I think that could have been the case with Kansas for a while as well. I didn't know the band members have dayjobs but that makes sense. Some bands just don't make music full time. I wonder if the band King's X is sort of like that too. Not sure.

[GuitarGeek]

^ I always thought of Zebra as a band who just didn't really see the point in making albums because they thought doing live shows was more profitable. I think that could have been the case with Kansas for a while as well. I didn't know the band members have dayjobs but that makes sense. Some bands just don't make music full time. I wonder if the band King's X is sort of like that too. Not sure.

At one point, I was on the Zebra mailing list, circa 2000 or so, I'd get their touring schedule. They'd do a few shows here and there, like a week or two of shows in Lousiana and Texas, then maybe a few months later they'd do a few shows in upstate NY (basically their two fanbase strongholds). This one time, Randy Jackson (the band's guitarist, lead singer, and primary songwriter) accidentally sent a link out for his work webpage. He was working in insurance, I forget which company, but I remember he quickly sent out another e-mail apologizing and saying he hadn't intended to spam the mailing list or whatever. lol I have to assume Guy Gelso and Felix Hanneman both also have day jobs too. I don't know if he still does it, but Randy was also doing concerts with "The Orchestral Led Zeppelin" show, which was basically a deal where he'd and a conductor (who did the arrangements) would travel around the country and play concerts with local orchestras, performing Zeppelin songs.

Whether or not they "saw the point" of albums is anyone's guess. I somehow imagine Randy continuing to write songs, even when no album is planned.

[Jerjo]

It would have been best if CSNY never did either of their reunion albums. Neither one deserves to be anywhere near Deja Vu in a record rack.

Actually, though the other three can't stand him, Crosby is the one that has really been on a roll as far as releasing new and acclaimed albums. Nash released his whiny autobiography. Stills has hearing problems. Neil...well, Neil is Neil. He does what the fuck he wants when he wants to do it. I heard an interview on Stern with Crosby and he owns up to the fact that his being a drugged out asshole (and trashing Neil's girlfriend) pretty much destroyed whatever goodwill he had left with the others.

New song Crosby wrote with Donald Fagen. Kinda scratches my Steely Dan itch.



I've heard Roger Daltrey say that many of the Who's tours since the 80s had been "getting John out of debt" tours. I love Entwistle's playing but it does sound like he continued partying, whoring, and drugging right up to the end without saving a dime.

[progmatist]

Yeah, Neil strikes as being a difficult to work with. You ever seen The Year Of The Horse documentary? There's a bunch of clips of him getting into arguments during rehearsals and whatever with the Crazy Horse guys (though I imagine any band is like that).

But my impression that both Neil and Graham, at the very least, got to the point where they just didn't ever want to work David ever again, and as I said, Graham even wrote a song about David.

David couldn't even keep a band with his own son together. A son with whose upbringing, David had little to do.

[Trane]

It would have been best if CSNY never did either of their reunion albums. Neither one deserves to be anywhere near Deja Vu in a record rack.

Actually, though the other three can't stand him, Crosby is the one that has really been on a roll as far as releasing new and acclaimed albums. Nash released his whiny autobiography. Stills has hearing problems. Neil...well, Neil is Neil. He does what the fuck he wants when he wants to do it. I heard an interview on Stern with Crosby and he owns up to the fact that his being a drugged out asshole (and trashing Neil's girlfriend) pretty much destroyed whatever goodwill he had left with the others.

Well in terms of solo albums, outside the odd Neil album (Zuma, Rust), none of the three non-Croz managed something as good as

[veteranof1000psychicwars]

Um .....
Echolyn?

Alphataurus
Cherry Five
Maxophone
Acqua Fragile
Deus Ex Machina (sadly not to last)

[Splicer]

New song Crosby wrote with Donald Fagen. Kinda scratches my Steely Dan itch.

This is really good.