...at work when Manfred Mann's Eartband came on. Huge clutch of poppy singles and then into a cul de sac. Same goes for Roy Wood, ELO and so many more that just fizzled away into what - touring America and being too busy or needing artistic merit??

( I really like it, reminds me of the Chieftains' 'Give The Fiddler A Dram'.)

re People having ginormous hit albums with lesser material - so what?! Now the fuss has died down - 25 odd years later... - just play their other stuff you DO like.

1. Rattle and Hum (perhaps, the most crushingly disappointingly rubbish follow-up to brilliant LP, ever.

Despite exonerating themselves with the decent Achtung and Zooropa, they did it again with the bloody terrible

2. Pop

Lost interest in them after that.

Not a fall from grace, more running out of ideas (or can no longer flog the original idea)
First two albums were exccedingly good - still listen to them
Just Enough Education to Perform - OK
You Gotta Go There To Come Back - what is this?
Language. Sex. Violence. Other? - its not getting any better
Pull The Pin - has its moments, but still a case of Hmmm

Tusk saw off Fleetwood Mac, by the time of Physical Graffiti Led Zeppelin were seen as pretty much a spent force, most people abandoned Elvis Costello after his incursion into George & Tammy country, and even ABBA might as well have departed the scene after Arrival instead of soldiering on, for all most people cared.

It's just the Hepworth Constraint at work again: even highly successful acts have a period of three years in which to do all their best work, plus a year on either side for their rise and fall from grace. It's quite easy to identify which segment of an artist's career this applies to - it's the ones that all the songs that people shout out for at gigs come from.

A couple of years ago he made an excellent record with Emmylou Harris. It has a song on it called "This Is Us", which is one of my favourite records of the century.

Life in a Day
Real to Real Cacophony
Empires and Dance
Sons and Fascination/Sister Feelings Call
New Gold Dream

and then....

Sparkle in the Rain
...and onwards and downwards at a rate of knots.

Said many times before I'm sure. In love with the Gabriel incarnation. Rated very highly 'Trick of the Tail' but they had lost some magic. With 'Wind and Wuthering', Hackett's involvement was noticeably reduced but there was still hope. With Hackett's leaving, 'And Then There Were Three' and 'Duke' there were serious doubts but still some wonderful moments. With 'Abacab' they lost me and Genesis became 'The incredible shrinking Phil Collins Band'.

From Eldorado to Out Of The Blue, although Discovery through to Balance Of Power still had some good tracks on them

XTC bucked the trend they came back after their seven year strike with perhaps their best album Apple Venus Vol 1

As for Billy Joel I think Innocent Man is one of his best albums,it is after it when he came unstuck.

They lost me at Kid A and never regained the initiative. For a few years I thought, hey, maybe this is all my fault not them. Maybe I need to open my mind and my ears. But now I'm over it. Can't listen to their stuff anymore apart from the seminal OK Computer and the Bends.

A trend is a trend is a trend,
But the question is: will it bend?
Will it alter its course,
Through some unforeseen force,
Or carry along to its end?

Few people in 1990 would have predicted Weller would have come back with the fantastically invigorating Into Tomorrow, let alone create the brilliant Wildwood album within another couple of years (much better than its far bigger selling successor Stanley Road, I feel). One of the most impressive comebacks ever.

giving the Knop's new one a go. I like it a lot. A hint of Richard Hawley on some of them.

Surely Oasis are a cardinal example of the heroes to zeros. One superb (debut) album, massive selling follow-up which isn't as good and then a very slow and often undignified slide into being their own tribute act.

The first four albums were great but then came a steady slide.

Archie applied malleus squarely to the nailular cephalic region with his point about songs shouted for at gigs.

Took a precipitous plunge down the bowl after 1982's mighty That Girl. His last album was a particularly sorry listen.

Jefferson Airplane..................Jefferson Starship.
Wow.
Politically, Jerry Rubin's Yippie/Hippie/Left Wing credentials were 'slightly' compromised by his slavish devotion to the 'free' market of the Reagan era.
Watch this space for Redknapp's fall at Tottenham.

Opinions will vary as to when the slide began, but surely all wil agree - slid they did.

Downhill all the way after Sign of the Times.

bands don't channel creativity from the great beyond, it's more like they embody a certain number of influences and ideas at large in the (global) culture, recombining them into tunes ... for a brief period (3 years?) maybe they embody something quite resonant for many people but then a new generation comes along (the ones who were only going through puberty when you were selecting your university of choice/looking for a job) ... and so the circle turns ... if a band stays 'hip' after three years then they've pulled of something rather incredible, almost like feeding off their own kinetic energy to keep going...

I have always credited it to Louis Menand who coined it in an article in The New Yorker. I think it's a very useful lens to look at people's careers through. I think it was Archie who said on this very thread that your three year period produces all the songs that the majority of the crowd call for at concerts.

After Wish (1992) they produced Wild Mood Swings, Bloodflowers, The Cure and 4:13 dream, four horribly average albums. There are a few highlights contained on each (Jupiter Crash, Anniversary) but compared to their previous efforts these albums are almost inlistenably unoriginal and tired sounding.

His solo work is excellent without exception. His fanbase is still immense. I tried to get tickets for one of his 5 nights at the Albert Hall - sold out. His stadium gigs have been on sale a week and are nearly sold out. New CD is excellent. He is a perfectionist in his stage performances and a much underrated songwriter.

Regarding Costello I have a theory that the reasons for the preference for his earlier songs is that they were all singles - a format that is no longer popular. Same thing applies to David Bowie, Elton John, Rod Stewart etc etc. Singles put artists into the homes of a wider audience - we dont listen to this music in the same way these days but certainly with Costello he has written songs in the latter part of his career that are the equal of his earlier catalogue and in some instances better. His last album sold 80,000 in the first six weeks of release - certainly not a 'Thriller' scale release but respectable in this time when people illegally download.I think we have selected memories and rose tinted glasses when we compare the past to the present. Live for today I say.

..between the slow decline in the quality of material and the assertion in interviews that said album is 'the best thing we've ever done'/'back to basics'/'it's our best since....'?

REM, The Stones and The Cure all serial offenders on all three counts of the above

As per my earlier comments, I agree (with Steve T) about Knopfler and as intimated, think that his popularity in an earlier ( 25-30 yrs!!) ago has prevented an appreciation of his solo work which in some ways resembles the much more lauded Richard Thompson. But Archie's point was and David's and Menand's (as it turns out) is that there is a focal point, an intensity which produces a receptiveness in the audience which the artist simply does not recapture. That is, of course, the nature of pop music and it is independent of the quality of the work. It's partly why The Beatles run is amazing still though such a different era, much less competition in terms of pop culture as a whole and their career was so extraordinarily compressed. The Stones really had a five year run with a brief flirtation in 81 with Start Me Up as a single. I wonder if there is a sense in which by the time Start Me Up hit the charts they were actually able to break through to a newish audience and hence, in a way were a new band for that moment.

In Paul Williams work on Dylan he refers to the relationship an audience has with the artist and talks about the whole process of initial romance with the audience, the difficulty in sustaining long terma and wide spread connection with that audience. I think that is a rich source for consideration.

Another group that lost it....as Hucknall's waist line increased, their creativity diminished.....

Sick Boy: It's certainly a phenomenon in all walks of life.

Renton: What do you mean?

Sick Boy: Well, at one time, you've got it... and then you lose it... and it's gone forever. All walks of life: George Best, for example.
Had it, lost it. Or David Bowie, or Lou Reed...

Renton: Some of his solo stuff's not bad.

Sick Boy: No, it's not bad, but it's not great either. And in your heart you kind of know that although it sounds all right, it's actually just... shite.

Renton: So who else?

Sick Boy: Charlie Nicholas, David Niven, Malcolm McLaren, Elvis Presley...

Renton: OK, OK, so what's the point you're trying to make?

Sick Boy: All I'm trying to do is help you understand that The Name of The Rose is merely a blip on an otherwise uninterrupted downward trajectory.

Renton: What about The Untouchables?

Sick Boy: I don't rate that at all.

Renton: Despite the Academy Award?

Sick Boy: That means fuck all. It's a sympathy vote.

Renton: Right. So we all get old and then we can't hack it anymore. Is that it?

Sick Boy: Yeah.

Renton: That's your theory?

Sick Boy: Yeah. Beautifully fucking illustrated.

I know a lot of people love them but the move from a really quirky group in the late 60's with some wonderful non hits and 'b' sides to plodding rock (from 'Down The Dustpipe' onwards) has always been a mystery to me.
One 'hero', one 'zero' in my book.

I did get a ticket for one of his enormodome gigs but would like to see him at RAH so if your GLW decides to give it a miss let me know. By the way no aversion to meeting complete strangers - I do it as part of my job. Even met someone off this site already - we went to a gig together and the night has historic resonance now as it was the night that Michael Jackson snuffed it!!

All this talk of Heroes to Zeros puts me in mind of the album of the same name by the late lamented Beta Band. The cover is at the start of this rather fab video of my favourite track from that album:

The Beta band actually were, may well stick on the DVD later of High Fidelity at some point of the weekend as well.

Briefly fell in love them after discovering Moon Safari and Premiers Symptomes at the turn of the millennium, but then fell instantly out of love after witnessing a truly awful gig at Shepherds Bush Empire, when they were promoting 10,000 Hz Legend.

They seem to have regained their credibility, but are forever tainted to me.

all went down hill after Achtung Baby if you ask me.

feted as the THE NEXT BIG THING in the early 90's, big-upped in all the music press weeklies, even the Grauniad lauded them as the saviours of moderm music, Select magazine putting them forward as the hip sound of young London, and so on...

then they cocked it all up by going on tour, and making the mistake of actually letting people hear their songs(which were mostly thinly disguised wire cover-versions), and getting chased by outraged mods in the streets.

the album came out to the sound of a bubble bursting, and a stable door being bolted too late.
i hear the singer was last spotted working in carphone warehouse.

the notion of 'heroes' unfeasibly long.....:-)

I've always thought that Stevie Wonder was a great singles act and that his albums contain a lot of self indulgent rambling filler. I respect the fact that he took on complete control of his material at a ridiculously early age and appreciate that the musicianship is superb, I just don't think the songs are very good.

I must admit I am tempted to riposte with an unkind remark. But, could you give an example of these 'not very good' songs on the albums between Music of My Mind and Songs in the Key of Life?

I managed to miss OK Computer somehow for years - don't know how - and Kid A took a huge hold on me via long car journeys and listening at work - it is a very beautiful and sad record. The lyrics seem to be stronger too. Its certainly a grower and a stayer, an 'album', the songs work best all listened to together, 'The National Anthem' is a magnificent dance track by the way. Amnesiac has some fabulous songs but doesn't hang together.

I only came to listen to OK Computer later and it has a brilliance but seems shallow, heartless by comparison. I have shared this thought with friends and have all sorts of dents in my head as a result.

I think the old duck is the classic example. The run he had in the early 70s is matchless. Since then, apart from the albums that specifically imitated these, all downhill:
1970 Elton John and Tumbleweed Connection
1971 Madman Across the Water
1972 Honky Château
1973 Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player (bit dodgy) and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
1974 Caribou
1975 Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy

from Felt?
went from making shimmering indie guitar songs to very lo-key indie midi-pastiche with Go Kart Mozart(note the Manfred/Springsteen reference) and Denim...
his music is still very much worth hearing(i play his stuff a lot when i need to), but i doubt he'll ever write another "primitive painters"...

I came onboard in the mid-80s, so I'm not the full Fairport crowd,
but surely his run extends way beyond the 5 years.
Tom Waits too? Or is that 2 5 year runs?

Haven't played it since 1986.
The likes of Walk of Life and Money For Nothing still make you die a little bit (slowly) when you hear em on the radio / in the supermarket.

...to be fair, some of the tracks were fair enough, no?
I'm thinking back of So Far Away, Latest Trick and the title track. They had a bit of depth to these ears, great tunes and the arrangements were impressive.

I also must declare my interest in Knopfler's wonderful Auf Wiedershen, Pet title tune.

Reissues may not be as great as the hype but well over the 3 year watershed at least from Autobahn to Computer World.

And then frankly it goes wrong...Electric cafe and Tour de France soundtracks are very poor.

Marvin Gaye - from Lets get it on to Hear my Dear and then he falls off a cliff only clawing his way back up with Midnight Love.

Have to agree with one or two other entries though - Stevie Wonder living proof that you can borrow genius but never keep it. (and yes Mr McCartney that means you and Van Morrison as well)