Better to Reunite Than to Fade Away Baby Boomer Rock Bands
And Gen-X Groups Reform
Lured by Web, Big Paydays
By ETHAN SMITH
February 6, 2007; Page B1
Rock guitar icon Eddie Van Halen and his band's original lead singer, David Lee Roth, have spent the better part of 20 years bad mouthing each other over their bitter split in the mid-1980s. Yet last Friday, the band Van Halen posted a message on its Web site indicating that it would reunite with the flamboyant Mr. Roth this year for a 40-city tour.
The reason for letting bygones be bygones is simple: economically, many music acts are worth a lot more together than apart. The bad blood between Messrs. Van Halen and Roth will almost certainly stoke interest -- and that doesn't count the additional curiosity that will result from the fact that Mr. Van Halen has installed his 15-year-old son, Wolfgang, as his new bass player. Executives estimate the tour, based on a guaranteed fee of $850,000 per show, would likely generate sales of at least $34 million. That would make it a blockbuster.
As the concert industry revs up for the 2007 touring season, some of the greatest passion, among both fans and concert promoters, is reserved for bands that haven't been heard in live performance in years, if not decades. Comebacks or reunions have been announced by acts as disparate as Van Halen, Rage Against the Machine and a slew of smaller names.
The Police and Genesis are expected to mount tours, but have not yet made official announcements. The hints are coming fast and furious, however. This weekend the Police -- who released their last studio album in 1983 -- are set to perform together at the Grammy Awards. The band is likely to tour, although people close the situation said significant details have yet to be finalized. A few years ago, Prince used the Grammys to similarly preview what became a massively successful comeback tour.
The resurgence in old-timer tours is partly a byproduct of the ongoing decline of the recorded-music business. As the record industry has failed to launch many big new names in recent years, the concert industry has come to look to acts that are proven draws to keep their venues full. With rare exceptions -- like the Police's singer and bass player, Sting -- most members of these acts have not been as successful as solo performers as they were as part of a unit.
"There's a need for headliners throughout our business in a major way," says Randy Phillips, chief executive of Anschutz Corp.'s AEG Live, the country's No. 2 concert promoter. "On the bands' part there's a need for cash. When those needs merge it's a wonderful thing."
In 2005, a reunion tour by '80s metal band Motley Crue took the industry by surprise and became the No. 11 grossing tour of the year, taking in close to $40 million in 22 cities, according Pollstar, which tracks concert-industry data. A three-night stand by the blues rock band Cream at Madison Square Garden was the fourth-highest-grossing show the same year, taking in $10.6 million; it also helped to further propel the reunion phenomenon. A spokeswoman for Cream frontman Eric Clapton says the trio has no plans for further concert or recording activity.
Cream's box office performance notwithstanding, reunion shows are no longer reserved for grizzled boomer favorites. The window between a band's heyday and the time a reunion becomes feasible has narrowed so much that this year bands that were together as recently as a few years ago are mounting comeback concerts and tours.
Six years after breaking up, Smashing Pumpkins is planning what the band's Web site calls "a world tour of tears." Further details weren't available, but two of the original members of the alternative-rock quartet will not be on hand. The impact of such personnel changes can be hard to gauge, but a recent series of concerts by Guns N' Roses has had mixed box office performance, thanks largely to the absence of integral involvement from any original members beside lead singer Axl Rose.
Unofficially kicking off this year's touring season is Southern California's Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, which in late April will feature a performance by '90s alternative-rock icons Rage Against the Machine. Thanks largely to the Rage reunion, festival organizers say ticket sales are at triple the level they were at this time last year, with 100,000 sold so far. The festival is on track to sell out for the first time in its nine-year history. For now, Rage Against the Machine has given no indication that it will tour after Coachella, making the gig that much more attractive to fans.
Coachella has in recent years served as something of a launchpad for comeback tours, ever since a reunion there of the Pixies, a favorite of critics in the 1990s, created a strong buzz. That laid the groundwork for a tour that became No. 70 in ticket sales in 2004 -- a major feat for a band with the Pixies' limited mainstream appeal.
The Pixies tour, which continued through 2005, is an object lesson in the lucrative economics of reunions. The Pixies tour grossed an average $180,000 a show, according Pollstar. The band played bigger venues, to bigger audiences, than it ever did during its original career as influential alternative-rock pioneers in the late 1980s. By contrast, in the same period a solo tour by Pixies leader Frank Black took in just an average of $8,800 a show.
The Pixies' success has, in turn, inspired a slew of much smaller names to give it another whirl. This year alone marginal 1990s acts such as Chavez, Sebadoh and Bis have either announced or staged reunions.
Kevin French, booking agent for Sebadoh, says that the Internet has extended the shelf-life of otherwise obscure bands, thanks to Web sites where fans too young to have seen a band the first time around can find their music and videos. The fresh online attention helps spur bands to reform. Musicians who were in multiple bands may find themselves involved in more than one reunion.
Sebadoh, for example, is an offshoot of cult favorite band Dinosaur Jr., which had its own reunion tour last year.
"Eventually they all do it," says Mr. French.
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