Entertainment For Lively Minds
Splitting up is good for you
So REM return. Leaving aside any artistic considerations, we can safely predict the album will sell fewer than the one before. Should they then, for purely commercial reasons, have split up long ago? After Monster for example. Let’s compare a few British bands that also enjoyed their biggest commercial success in the 90s.
Blur: last album, the lukewarmly received Think Tank in 2003. Went Gold, a far cry from the multi-platinum glory days of Parklife and Great Escape. Never split but shed a guitarist and went away a long time, regrouped, managing to briefly lure back much-loved guitarist. Result – much bigger in 2009 than 2003, just by buggering off for a little while.
Pulp: Famously their best-of reached number 71 with a rocket for one week in 2002. A precipitous descent from Different Class in 95. Split follows. 2011: they reform to huge fanfare and will soon be headlining festivals. Bigger than ever
Suede: Last album, New Morning (2002), limped to number 24. Didn’t even go Silver – sold less than 60,000. They were truly yesterday’s men. Split follows. 2010: reform and are soon headlining O2, headlining festivals, 3 nights at Brixton Academy, etc. Bigger than ever.
Supergrass: Three year gaps between albums, but they never go away, ever diminishing returns results in last album (2008) limping to number 19 to universal indifference and they slink off into the night. How huge could their 2010 comeback have been if they’d split after their self-titled album of 1999?
Teenage Fanclub: Huge gaps between albums, but they never split up or reform, just soldier on manfully. Last album Shadows (2010) affectionately received but only limps to number 30-something. How huge could their 2012 reunion be if they’d split after Songs from Northern Britain?
Charlatans: Wikipedia informs me they’ve released 11 albums and are still going – did anyone know that? If the TOOIK hitmakers had reformed twenty years after the first album even I may have been tempted to go along.
So the question is: how many nights at the O2 would a reformed REM sell out this year if they’d split after Monster when the commercial decline began? And surely any self-respecting manager should be encouraging his declining charges to sod off for a few years (remembering to announce that they’re splitting beforehand) with the promise of riches aplenty when the inevitable reformation rolls around? Maybe that’s just what the White Stripes manager did.
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You have to accept that
A) Most people aren't really very interested in music after they're about 22, 23. One explanation for why a lot of the Britpop acts you've mentioned albums failed to sell isn't because they were bad, it;s that their teen audience had had stopped bothering with music by the time those albums emerged. These people go to see reformed acts out of nostalgia for a period in their lives, rather than the band, I think.
2) There's a whole younger market now who've been so battered around the head by the media about what's 'cool' or not that they've become incredibly insecure about exhibiting any kind of taste whatsoever. (One London advertising agency cals this market 'Jamie Oliver's Army') They like these reformed bands because their credibility has been established and therefore are OK. to brg about seeing. It's the same as when I was younger and people who weren't into music went toee Eric Clapton because he was a kind of marker of what proper rock music was.
Ah yes, but...
... how long does a "split" need to kick in? I love Suede & Pulp, but we're only talking 8-10 years between splits-and-reformations, that's just a normal between-album gap for Kraftwerk or Scott Walker... either way, of course it's all about market forces and (perceived) scarcity of the "product."
I'm actually sad enough to have calculated the time in months between new REM studio albums since "Murmur" in '83:
12 - 14 - 13 - 14 - 14 - 17 - 19 - 24 - 23 - 26 - 30 - 41 - 42 - 35
I think that "stretch" from 1 year to 3+ years between albums pretty much mirrors that of the whole record industry, but it's only a matter of perception... Roxy Music split in the 70's, but it was only 41 months between "Siren" and reformation album "Manifesto", a standard between-albums gap for REM these days...
And can you believe it'll be 5 years in October since the release of "Back To Black"? Of course solo artists don't have the option of splitting up, but supply & demand rules still apply...
But aren't you just assuming
that all these groups (particularly Supergrass!) are just 'in it for the money'? What if they just go onandonandon, or reform, because hey! they enjoy the unique creative chemistry of writing, rehearsing, performing with those other particular individuals above all others?
As we've discussed on here many times, most major artists have an 'imperial' period where their critical acceptance and popularity reach a peak; why should they have to stop working if they don't sustain such levels of success? We don't demand the same of people in other creative arts, do we?
Best albums
The Charlatans' best album (in my & many others' opinion) was Us & Us Only which was their 6th album, 10 years after they formed and after a key member died.
REM's most popular album, and generally regarded as their best, is Automatic For The People which was their 8th and came again 10 years after their first (EP) release. They had gotten cheesed off with touring by then too, so they easily have called it a day before it was made.
I take the point you are making but splitting up too early isn't always a good idea.
Never! EVER!
diss the Teenage Fanclub. Do it again and the boys'll be round for a word. Capiche?
And Think Tank is Blur's best album.
No one, and I mean no one
is a bigger, sadder Fannies fan than me: http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/the-nicest-men-pop. Was just imagining an alternative universe, one which would bring me infinitely less pleasure (no Howdy, no Man-Made, no Shadows), where the so called splitting-up effect made them more popular.
And nowhere do I comment on the quality or lack of it of someone's music, just their popularity. Think Tank may be Blur's best album, don't know, never heard it, don't want to, but it was their lowest selling. And they wouldn't have been headlining Glastonbury after it's release. But they did six years later after doing nothing more than splitting up and reforming.
Doesn't work for everyone
I don't think it's a sure fire thing. I'm sure there's lots of bands whose reformation hardly received the acclaim of the acts you've mentioned.
Television, Big Star, The Velvet Underground, spring to mind I'm sure there's lots more.
The real big cheeses can do what they like and don't need to go for the financial jugular. Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd for example