Although they left behing a pretty much perfect body of work, they could've gone on and done so much more I think.

Mind you, Warehouse Songs And Stories was a blinder to finish up with.

Also, The Triffids should've and could've been contenders in the big league.

More Raconteurs and Dead Weather? The world doesn't deserve this...

... I couldn't think of many examples.

Cream, The Jam, The Replacements, At The Drive In.

Even The Primevals are doing it.

then it probably does matter. If you're a middle aged bloke whose seen it 100 times before and also knows that the band members will produce solo work and in all likelihood reform at some point, it probably doesn't matter.

Oh David! Can it be true that Pinkerton's Assorted Colours (the Mirror Mirror hitmakers) are splitting up? They were all there last time I saw them at a school dance in the 1960s. Bring on the autoharp.

Two very good records (OK, one with "Y") and then they went their separate ways when they were all at the top of their game as musicians. They did good stuff on their own but nothing quite as wonderful as "Guinevere" or "Wooden Ships".

Only to their accountants, I expect. But if they are doing well enough for their accountants to care, they probably don't split.

I always thought they were moving into a different league, before they split.

It might not matter to the world at large that there's not going to be another Lush, Genesis, All About Eve etc etc etc record, but I'd have liked to have heard one.

in most cases they seem to be on hiatus before the inevitable reunion.

In the old days, of course, groups split up properly :-)

I'm use to gaps so long between lps that they may as well have broken up, so basically no. It's sad obviously but most bands don't break up at the top of their form so often it's a blessing.

* see also Gillian Welch

if as a listener/fan you believe they had more to give.

For me the acts I miss that ended careers prematurely and which I believe had so much more to give are:

Talk Talk
It's Immaterial
Lewis Taylor
The Chameleons
Chungking

Seriously

when a group like the Sex Pistols split it up it mattered a great deal and felt like a huge loss, in retrospect it was always heading for a car crash. Until you know the full story it's hard to judge whether a group splitting up is a terrible shame or a blessed relief for all concerned.

However, it depends on how much any group that splits means to you personally. It also depends on the body of work that the group has behind it and the potential for more. Many groups simply fizzle out rather than splitting at the height of their fame they go out with a whimper, rather than a bang. The White Stripes have been on hold for 4 years and Jack White has had plenty of other projects on the go, so it is no surprise to me.

If the death of a key band member, causes the split (e.g. John Bonham) there is finality (except the O2 gig!) and an element of tragedy that makes it worse. The one that upset me a couple of years ago was the death of jazz pianist Esbjorn Svensson, who was killed in a scuba diving accident. That put paid to one of the most dynamic live bands I've ever seen - the interplay between the three members of the Esbjorn Svensson Trio (EST) was something to behold. I really miss that and it can never come back.

their splitting mattered, Sheev. Allow me to second guess you:

Lennon and McCartney never managed to top their work in the aforementioned combo.

Furthermore, their quality control suffered terribly in the absence of each other.

Absolutely agree Sheev, spot on.

was still excellent

that was a band still pushing the boundaries that saddened me considerably when they broke up

only the other day I nthought they'd be ripe for a reformation

after all return to forever are touring australia soon

And then of course there are bands who hang around far too long.

I wish REM had split about a decade ago, maybe after Reveal, which would have been going out on a high. It's a bit sad that their imminent album will probably be greeted by a collective shrug and even lower sales than the last couple.

Maybe they weren't ever going to change the musical landscape but they were a great live band and they knocked it on the head at just about the peak of their popularity apparently because CBS thought Paul Young on his own (and maybe with the Wealthy Tarts alongside) was more marketable and they were right.

it's the same sort of thing as a relationship.

The first time you get dumped, it's more than sad, it's tragic. It's poetically morbid in terms of how it affects you. The first real girlfriend who naffs off with some kid with a moped and a bumfluff 'tache seems like a big deal, because you're young and you're learning.

I'm not saying that it gets a lot more pleasant after you've been chucked a couple of times, but at least you recognise what's coming and you're prepared for it.

Here, it's a relatively mature crowd. Everybody's been chucked a few times, I imagine. Everybody's had a favourite band who split up - even if it was only for a bit. If you were in your teens, or maybe even early 20s when they split up, it seems terrible.

A few years down the line, almost all of the bands I like have long since split up and these days, many of them are dead. I have no desire to see any reformations of any band I like who have split up.

Ideally, some of them would have split up sooner than they actually did.

I never felt suicidal, but being into a band that goes from being underground, to getting a bit more popular is a great thing to happen, when you're in your late teens. It's as if nobody understood what you were all about, then this band seemed to press all the right buttons - as if they had formed to soundtrack your life. And nobody liked it, and that made it even better - you've strayed from the things your parents liked and they think it's crap. And when your band gets popular, you can whine a bit about how you were into them before everyone else, whilst being secretly delighted that their popularity has, in some way validated your life, choices and independence from your parents and all the people that didn't understand you before 'your band' (and by association, you too) gained acceptance.

Perhaps I was just more gullible than other teenagers - and I wouldn't be surprised - but I saw it with other kids of different generations to mine.

It's a big deal when you're a kid, when you're older you've seen it all before and you realise that, like most things, it doesn't make that much difference.

...yes, I'm sure lots of us (especially when young) are wracked with woe when our fave rave's call it a day. But by and large they 'get it right' or it's 'got right' by the muses on their behalf. Most acts do indeed deliver the best of what they've got to say before things ebb away or fall apart.

But I do agree with Junior W, above. The 'mark 1' Mahavishno Orchestra were very, very special indeed. They lasted from July 1971 - December 30 1973, and there have been no reunions. Nor, alas, is one likely. It was rent asunder by the kind of egos inevitable when musicianship of that level is involved, plus far too intensive touring. The legacy: on the surface, three albums (the best, 'Birds of Fire, produced by Beatles engineer Ken Scott)plus a posthumously released album, in 1999, also recorded by Scott during aborted sessions towards a BOF follow-up.

Below the surface, though, there are 32 1972-73 live concerts available at wolfgangsvault (with more - all recorded splendidly by their sound guy Dinky Dawson - in the vault), together with sundry other bootlegs of which 'Wild Strings' - recorded by Columbia in Cleveland in April '72 - is outstanding, having been prepared for official release in recent years but scuppered by one or two members flexing old wounds, alas.

There's also a relatively rich tranche of video available unofficially - on youtube and in hard format, much of it lovingly repaired (syncing up 40 year old betamax recordings with stereo FM simulcasts etc) by MO fans.

More than a possibly too-late reunion, I would LOVE the legacy of the MO mark 1 to be secured by an official 2DVD set a la Zeppelin, accessing the TV masters and working the sound to the max. This is ASTOUNDING music and musical interaction that deserves preservation and easy accessibility in the best quality.

If anyone else is interested, here's a list of the MO mark 1 visual legacy, and a clip from the recently unearthed French TV broadcast from August 1972. Yes, it's in 4/4 - but it involves counting in 12s. They don't make it easy on themselves, but isn't it sublime...?

Syracuse University, New York
Recorded: 29 April 1972
Duration: 55 minutes
Meeting Of The Spirits / You Know, You Know / Dance Of Maya / Dawn [edit] + 2 brief interview spots with McLaughlin
Notes: A 3 camera B&W film shot on video by students at an open air gig on a sunny day, where the MO was supported by Ravi Shankar. Seemingly, to judge by the retrospectively tinged narration, the film was edited a year or two later. An audio bootleg of the gig, The Inner Flaming Axe, includes the full version of Dawn and adds Awakening, Noonward Race and A Lotus On Irish Streams.

Columbia Promo Film
Recorded: 15 May 1972, Hunter College, New York
Duration: 3 minutes
Dance Of Maya [edit]
Note: A multi-camera professional film, this was possibly prepared for TV use but may never have been used. The film has recently been synchronised, by an MO fan, with a section of Dance Of Maya from a local radio broadcast of the gig. The full set was: Meeting Of The Spirits / You Know, You Know / Dance Of Maya / Sanctuary / Noonward Race / One Word.

German TV
Recorded: 17 August 1972, Kongress Saal, Munich
Duration: 28 minutes
Meeting Of The Spirits[edit] / You Know, You Know / Dance Of Maya / A Lotus On Irish Streams
Note: Rebroadcast in recent years by a satellite channel, the latter two pieces only currently circulate in poor quality. Further pieces from the set, broadcast on German radio, were One Word and The Noonward Race.

French TV
Recorded: 23 August 1972, Amphitheatre, Chateauvallon
Duration: 74 minutes
Meeting Of The Spirits / You Know, You Know / Dance Of Maya / One Word / Resolution / Awakening
Note: This appears to have been the only full MO ‘Mark 1’ concert to have been tele-recorded. The lesser ‘Mark 2’ MO would have two concerts fully or almost fully recorded in 1974, by French TV at the Festival D’Antibes and Swiss TV at the Montreux Jazz Festival.

BBC TV (UK)
Recorded: 25 August 1972, BBC Studios, London
Duration: 30 minutes
Meeting Of The Spirits / You Know, You Know / A Lotus On Irish Streams / The Noonward Race
Note: This was a specially tailored set for TV. It was rebroadcast several times in 2009 by BBC4.

In Concert
Recorded: 15 March 1973, Bananafish Garden, New York
Duration: 17 minutes
Hope / One Word / Resolution
Note: The MO’s first known US TV exposure, a period video recording has recently been synced by MO fans to stereo sound from an FM simulcast of the show.

Yugoslavian TV
Recorded: June 1973?
Note: There is a suggestion that the MO were tele-recorded in Yugoslavia during their June 1973 European tour, which also took in France, Germany, Switzerland and England. If so, it has yet to circulate.

Don Kirshner Rock Concert
Recorded: 7 November 1973, Palace Theatre, New York
Duration: 13 minutes
Sister Andrea / Hope / Celestial Terrestrial Commuters
Note: Again, MO fans have synced up high quality audio with period video recordings of the broadcast. The audio comes from MO sound engineer Dinky Dawson’s fine recording of the full gig – available for download at wolfgangsvault.com – which was in this case a 30 minute set which opened with an unbroadcast performance of ‘Dream’.

Pretty much the best punk group of the lot, and it was over before it began.

Also

It's Immaterial (again)
Nirvana
Bourgie Bourgie
Josef K
The Fire Engines
Slint
Young Marble Giants
Colourbox

All nipped in the bud after very promising early releases. A couple have reformed, but all without that early momentum.

aka the Bernard Butler edition.

Both Suede & Bernie initially went on to produce great things (Coming Up & McAlmont & Butler respectively), before taking a dive (Head Music, Friends And Lovers), but for someone like me, who has every note of Dog Man Star imprinted on their heart, the lack of any more 90s Anderson/Butler albums is a tragedy on a truly epic scale.

The Tears? Nice idea, but too late, and both were coasting far from their peaks.

Although I'm a big Weller fan, and love The Style Council days, I would have liked to have seen The Jam going down that jazz/soul thing more, even though it would have been as subtle as a brick around the head, I think it would have been interesting. The tension that surrounds some bands creates the excitement and I think once people move on and relax they never get that spark back. The Style Council never had that tension, and they definitely ran their course.

I'd love to have had more Dexys, three albums and some b-sides (lets not really talk about Kevin's solo works) is not enough for me.

My big bugbear is bands changing styles to something I don't like as much though. I sometimes wish bands would freeze in a moment that I loved and just make records that sound like that forever.

who split too soon.

The obvious exception would be if a band member dies, but I'm not counting that.

I love the Beatles (hey, who would have guessed?) but their career trajectory had the perfection of a Shakespeare drama: it ended at exactly the right moment, and you can't imagine it would have been anything but diminishing returns from there.

The White Stripes, as much as I love(d) them, went on just too long. I could have done without that last album with the bagpipes.

....The Small Faces.
Marriott apparently leaving in early '69 because the group weren't 'heavy' enough.
Woah! Steve.....that's the reason for staying with the group.
Look where 'heaviness' has got us!

And you don't care anymore
And you hate all the people that you used to adore
And you despise all the rumors and lies of the life you led before
But look at yourself
You'll see you're still so young
You haven't earned the weariness
That sounds so jaded on your tongue

The Clash before Mick Jones left. Sandinista and Combat Rock showed them to be one of the few bands of that era with the spread of musical knowledge and cojones to become a seriously important band.
But then, they are a seriously important band, so maybe...
What Strummer achieved in a few short years with the Mescaleros, coupled with Mick Jones' versatility, means they may hit even greater heights.

Surely an example of a band (well, duo) splitting after they've just produced their best work.

a measly 2 but simply excellent albums

we'll be saddened by the break up of tribute bands!

Bootleg Beatles?

Oasis (gets coat......)

when bands split up but, "Is it for the best?"

There are very few bands who've been around for 20+ years and managed to maintain a consistently high level of output. In fact, I'm pushed to even think of 1.

But bands that have split up, be it through death or acrimony or just drifting apart, have often left behind a legacy we can now see as finite, even quite small and therefore quite cherished. Perhaps because of the finality of the split, we can more easily give it a perspective that extant bands lack: we can see how it's influenced other bands, how various members have moved on and developed and so forth. It's not like, say, the Stones or R.E.M. where we bemoan the diminishing quality of their records. Or like The Smiths, where a great body of work would probably have been rather diluted if Morrisey's form in later years is any indication.

I think it's far better that bands (or individual members) can say, "We've gone as far as we can and it's all getting a bit stale. The best thing for our legacy and for us as musicians is to knock this band on the head and move on to other things."

Two perfect albums then silence.

that DH mentions in the original post also devoted some of that famous "trembling speculation" to rumoured concerts by second or third string bands.

So, in the early 70s the NME, Sounds, Record Mirror etc could hardly contain themselves at the prospect of:

TED NUGENT TO PLAY UK DATES?

or

BLACK OAK ARKANSAS SET FOR HYDE PARK FREE CONCERT?

or

HUMBLE PIE TO TOUR STATES?

Meanwhile, the world held its breath.

If they'd quit after True Stories it would have seemed like a logical end as the trajectory was going downward. Naked, their swansong, actually point towards what they could have gone on to do for years.

I will await torrent of disagreement or shrugs, but I think most good bands have 4 albums in them and I'd have liked to have heard more from the original foursome.

But I thought The Stone Roses were potentially on a U2 curve. ie Much loved debut album, dodgy follow up, start to go mega third, Eno collaboration forth, cowboy hat fifth etc.

Let me be clear I despise U2. This is me quoting generally held thoughts about them.

... about pop star quality. I wanted to look like Ian Brown so bad in the late eighties that I have suppressed all photographic evidence of my existence during this period. Roundabout 1990 I may well have gone gay for him in the way that people in the early seventies said they would have for Bowie.

You'll get no argument with me about his singing though...

Would they have re-united for Live Aid if Lennon had been still alive? I used to think they would, but I changed my mind after reading "You Never Give Me Your Money" by Pete Doggett. Harrison was still pissed off with McCartney for not getting behind the Bangladesh concert, and there's no reason to think that Lennon would have been able to act as peacemaker.

Obviously we can only speculate if our favourite band hadn't split whether that next album would have been their best to date .... unless of course they reform. So, what about bands that have split, seemingly prematurely, that have then got together again? Have they managed to pick up where they left off or left you wishing they hadn't bothered? I not talking about getting together just to put on live shows e.g. Police, Genesis, Cream etc. but to actually record again.

I was a big Crowded House fan and was disappointed that after only four studio albums they quit. However, they have since got together again, and notably, with the same members - Finn, Seymour, Hart (plus Matt Sherrod on drums)- that were in the band when they quit in 1996. Since reforming in 2007 they have produced two studio albums, and whilst it is fair to say they haven't created any single tracks that have as yet become as anthemic as the likes of Weather With You, Four Seasons, etc. Neil Finn has still come up with some lovely and often melancholic songs that have, I believe, made the exercise worthwhile ... Say That Again, Pour Le Monde, Silent House, Isolation, English Tress, Amsterdam, Elephants, Falling Dove, Saturday Sun ...

Any other examples of bands reforming and was it worth it? And do we need a new Pinkerton's album??

would split up.

Surely they could have continued, had they not fallen out.

Same goes for Richard & Linda Thompson and the Mamas and Papas, had Mama Cass not died, obviously.

In that Mark Olson left after "Tomorrow the Green Grass". I personally loved the next 3 albums when Gary Louris became the sole focal point, but it's great that the "old" Jayhawks are now recording again.

The last band I actually felt a little sad about breaking up was the Beta Band. I love everything they did and their last album found them still bursting with ideas. Still, the various post-band projects have been good.

One of them must be 50 Cent.

I think it's Theresa Bazaar.

Only have 2 good albums in them (ducks for cover) so I am rarely upset when a band splits up.

If I have to choose however then I would go for Animals That Swim.

I agree with the general Talk Talk consensus, but also The La's and i was going to say The Sundays, but i don't actually know if they split or not, does anyone know?

XTC...that's a depressing state of affairs. They don't make an album for 7 years then make two in quick succession and then spend the following ten years not making any music before falling and fizzling out. I love XTC and I can't tell you how excited I would be if they could sort it all out...probably even more excited than I was when Magazine reformed (sans McGeoch) in 2009.

So, yes- it definately matters...XTC have left me in a state of flux for years.

When Fish left Marillion they had done demos for a fifth album. Years later those were released. They sounded awful. Almost like there were 2 camps recording 2 different albums. Funny that. Past of the disappointment of the songs is many bits had been recycled into far better material. From the split the fans got 2 live bands and some 75% as good albums. Win some lose some.

Dave, Jim and Don.

were almost wholly responsible for me getting into music and I was pretty gutted when they split up. Mind you, I was only fourteen at the time.

Fully expecting pelters from everyone else now. ha.

That Oceansize have called it a day. At the ripe old age of 53 I feel like a teenager that has just heard that their current heart throbs have split. For the first time in many, many years I am genuinely gutted that a band have broken up.