One Decade to Rock, No Matter the Roll
The relatively short shelf life of a rock band’s relevance
Obvious statement alert: The Beatles were an incredible band. But to me, the most incredible thing about them was that they released all of their albums — all the songs we all know and love — over an eight year span (from 1963’s Please Please Me to 1970’s Let It Be). Eight years!¹
I find myself thinking back to this incredible fact quite often. Now, obviously The Beatles were around before this recording span — as everyone knows, they cut their teeth/got their 10,000 hours of “practice” in Hamburg before releasing an album — but this condensed output is no less incredible. Even more so in today’s day and age where we often wait two, three, four — or more! — years between a single album from our favorite bands.
Thinking about this reality always then leads me to think about the true impact that bands have in terms of time of relevance. And it feels like most bands — big bands — tend to peter out after a decade of relevance. Sure, the very biggest (and in some cases “best” though this is of course subjective) bands sometimes last two decades. The biggest of all, maybe three — or, insanely, four/five. But if we’re being honest, how many of them are actually relevant — really relevant — after that initial decade of power? There might be a handful. And that’s if we’re being generous.
Before everyone gets up in arms and screams about their counter examples, for the purposes of this post, let’s just focus on rock bands. In other words, not singers/songwriters, pop stars, hip hop stars, etc — though I might argue that the same basic principle applies to the majority of those as well.
In rock, the first counter that probably jumps to mind is The Rolling Stones, who have been releasing albums together since 1964 — over 50 years! But again, what was their real period of relevance? Certainly the 1960s and 1970s. We’ll even give them the early 1980s. And this is the most famous and extreme counterexample.
A more contemporary one is U2. Their first album was in 1980 and they’re still going. So it has been almost 40 years! But again, we’ll give them the 1980s and 1990s here. So two decades for one of the world’s biggest bands.
Again, I know everyone is going to scream with counter examples, or how great All That You Can’t Leave Behind (released in 2000) was! So I’ll take my own favorite band in an effort to show some objectivity: Pearl Jam.
They’ve been releasing albums since 1991. I have owned and have loved all ten albums they’ve pushed out over the past 27 years. But if I’m being honest, the only truly relevant ones (to culture) were Ten, Vs., and Vitalogy. Those albums were released in a span from 1991 to 1994. Four years!
Even if you want to include Yield (we all love No Code but we all must admit that it was… weird), we’re still only up to 1998 — well under a decade.
It’s fascinating. Why do bands seem to have a maximum shelf life of relevance of a decade? Does it have to do with an ever-changing culture?² Inner-band turmoil? The band losing its “edge” when it gains popularity? Some combination of all these? Something else?
Or is it even bigger than all of that? Does everyone have a window of peak creativity? Or peak professional output? Is that true more for creative professions? Is there a way to combat this degradation? Is it just a fact of life?
If John Lennon hadn’t been tragically killed, would The Beatles have reunited and bucked the 10 year trend? Certainly, if any band could… But was a large part of their greatness tied to the fact that they had such a relatively short, intense period of time together? Was there a sense of urgency, even if only subconscious, that made The Beatles, The Beatles?
It’s all enough to make anyone want to work harder, right now.
¹ To make things even more crazy: Let It Be was actually recorded before Abbey Road, it was just released later, so the recording span was actually 1963–1969. Seven years!
² Certainly, kids don’t want to listen to their parents music. But it would seem rare that one generation of kids even wants to listen to the music of their contemporaries just ten years older. We all just want to listen to the music that was popular when we were 13 or 14 years old. And time passes fast.
