Every Moment Has A Song

Break-Up: 1980. The group dissolved immediately after the death of drummer Jon Bonham.

Reunion: The surviving members reformed for the rare special  occasion in the 1980s and 1990s, but in December of 2007 they did their first  full concert since the break-up at London’s 02 Arena.

Duration: One night. Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones were  extremely interested in a reunion, but Robert Plant had absolutely no interest.  In 2008 the group rehearsed with Steven Tyler and Myler Kennedy and even began  putting venues on hold for a tour, but ultimately came to their  senses.

Break-Up: The group dissolved after their tour in support of  1986’s Raised On Radio. Frontman Steve Perry was exhausted and wanted  to take a long break.

Reunion: They played a couple of songs in 1991 at a Bill  Graham memorial show, but Perry shocked the band in 1996 when he agreed to  reform the group. They recorded the new album Trial By Fire and a  reunion tour was in the works. Their single “When You Love A Woman” even became  a big hit.

Duration: One album. Perry injured his hip while hiking  in Hawaii and required hip replacement surgery. He refused to set a date for the  procedure, delaying any shows. This caused tremendous tension within the band,  and in 1998 they hit the road with a replacement singer. Perry hasn’t sung a  note in public with Journey in over twenty years.

Break-Up: The Fugees spent five years struggling to  break big, only to implode almost immediately after becoming superstars. Looking  back, it was pretty inevitable. Wyclef Jean was dating Lauryn Hill, but he was  also seriously involved with another woman while they were together. At the same  time, Hill felt that she wasn’t getting enough credit for her contributions to  the band. Pras felt the same way. They split in 1997, about a year after The  Score hit shelves.

Reunion: Much to the surprise of pretty much everybody,  the group reformed in September 2004 to play Dave Chapelle’s Block Party in  Brooklyn. The following year they launched a European tour, and even released  the new single “Take It Easy.”

Duration: A little over a year, with large gaps of  inactivity within that. Everyone hated the new single, and Lauryn caused  tremendous tension by pulling an Axl on the tour and repeatedly coming out late.  To the surprise of nobody, they pulled the plug in early 2006.

Break-Up: Believe it or not, tension surrounding the  soundtrack to Twister caused Sammy Hagar to leave Van Halen in 1995.  The group had just finished a long world tour, and a worn out Hagar was  unwilling to fly right back to the studio and continue work on a song for the  disaster movie. When all was said and done, Hagar left the band.

Reunion: An ill-fated LP and tour with Gary Cherone  convinced the Van Halen brothers that they needed their old singer back. Both  sides had talked a lot of shit over the years, but they put that aside to record  some new songs for a compilation and launch a tour in 2004.

Duration: A little under a year. The tour coincided  with the peak of Eddie Van Halen’s alcoholism. Hagar and Eddie had  horrific clashes on tour (detailed in Sammy Hagar’s amazing autobiography) and  neither party has spoken with each otter since the final show in November of  2004. That’s also the last time Eddie spoke with original bassist Michael  Anthony.

Break-Up: In the summer of 1986, the group (now reduced to a  trio) toured in support of their new disc Balance of Power, and then  called it a day. Members of the group carried on in ELO Part II, but the group’s  leader Jeff Lynne was done. (Even later, The Orchestra rose from the ashes of  ELO Part II, but they were an offshoot of an offshoot and barely worth  mentioning.)

Reunion: Lynne always saw himself as the Trent Reznor of  ELO, and when he reformed the group in 2000 for the new album Zoom he  didn’t invite any of the original guys back – though keyboardist Richard Tandy  did wind up playing on one song. For some reason, Lynne was under the impression  the group could still fill arenas and a massive tour was announced.

Duration: One album and one TV concert. This was like  one of those 1950s rockets that crashed a few moments after takeoff. The group  did a single show for PBS, but the tour sold horribly and the entire thing was  called off before it even started. Lynne’s done a pretty good job of staying out  of the spotlight ever since, though he remains a busy producer.

Break-Up: Diana Ross left The Supremes in 1970, but  they carried on with new singer Jean Terrell and continued to score hits  and tour for a few years. By 1977 things had slowed down considerably and they  called it quits.

Reunion: Mary Wilson and Cindy Birdsong briefly put  aside their differences with Diana Ross at the 1983 Motown 25th Anniversary  Concert. (Founding member Florence Ballard died in 1976.) They performed  “Someday We’ll Be Together.” Three years later, Wilson released her memoir and  it was sharply critical of Ross, driving the two even further apart. In 1999  Ross reached out to Wilson and Birdsong about a reunion tour for the following  year, exactly 30 years after they had last played a full show together.

Duration: This one went really, really poorly.  According to multiple reports, Ross was offered around $15 million, Wilson was  offered $2 million and Birdsong $1 million. They asked for more, but were  ultimately replaced by two latter-day Supremes who had no history with Ross.  This resulted in a flood of negative press, and ticket buyers seemed to have  little interest in this “reunion.” The tour forged ahead, but was canceled after  less than a month.

Break-Up: Cream crammed a lot of music into their two-year  career. According to legend, Eric Clapton decided to break up in the band in  1968 when he first heard the Band’s debut LP Music From Big Pink, and  when he read a scathing review of the group’s music in Rolling Stone by  Jon Landau. In November of 1968 they played a farewell show at Madison Square  Garden.

Reunion: The group played in 1993 at their induction into  the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but that didn’t lead to any other activity until  2005. At the time Jack Bruce was recovering from liver cancer, and Ginger Baker  was struggling with arthritis.  To Clapton, it seemed like it was  now or never. They played four shows at the Royal Albert Hall in May of 2005,  followed by three shows at Madison Square Garden that October.

Duration: Five months. The reunion fizzled out during  the three-night stand in New York. “In many ways, I wish we had left it at the  Royal Albert Hall,” Clapton wrote in his memoir. “But the offer was too good to  refuse … My heart had gone out of it, and also a certain amount of animosity  had crept back in.” They haven’t played together since.

Break-Up: In 1997 Genesis made the ill-fated decision to  carry on without Phil Collins. Former Stiltskin singer Ray Wilson was brought  into the band, and they released the new LP Calling All Stations. The  disc sold extremely poorly, as did their tour. Ticket sales were so bad in  America that the entire tour was called off. The tour ended in May of 1998 in  Germany, and the group quietly ended afterwards.

Reunion: In November of 2005 Phil Collins came to Glasgow on  his First Final Farewell tour. Backstage he met up with his former bandmates  Peter Gabriel, Steve Hackett, Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford to discuss a  reunion tour. The plan was to perform their 1975 rock opera The Lamb Lies  Down On Broadway straight through. Gabriel only wanted to do a tiny number  of dates, and when he felt pressure to commit to a longer tour he bowed out of  the whole thing. With him out of the picture, the 1980s line-up of Collins,  Banks and Rutherford decided to tour instead. In 2007 they did 47 dates across  Europe and North America.

Duration: Four months. The tour ended at the Hollywood Bowl  in October of 2007. On the tour Collins dislocated some vertebrae  in his  neck. It caused nerve damage in his hands, making it nearly impossible for him  to play drums. Collins is now completely retired from music, and any sort of  Genesis reunion seems incredibly unlikely.