It’s not me, it’s you: is it ever a good idea to get the band back together?
Janet Weiss left the reunited SleaterKinney a brusque Dear John letter. “The band is heading in a new direction, it’s time for me to move on,” the drummer wrote, announcing she was leaving ahead of their new album The Center Won’t Hold with the ultimate “It’s not me, it’s you”.
“We asked her to stay,” came singerguitarist Carrie Brownstein’s response on Instagram, claiming Weiss loved the new album and describing the aftermath as “women picking up the pieces”.
Traditional courtesy dictates that musicians either hand in their notice ahead of new album sessions, or at the end of a fractious promotional tour. Quitting the minute that album two of a celebrated reunion is complete seems like an odd move. We can only guess at the backstage drama, but if we study music’s rich history of comebacks, can a band ever slot seamlessly back on track? The rock reunion story is as old as time: the wilderness was dark and tangled; the bassist has crippling Foxy Bingo debts and the singer’s facing a ruinous sixth divorce settlement; everyone desperately needs this life-saving second shot to work, but there’s no creative momentum or fresh identity; everyone’s pulling in different directions. Take Kim Deal, who left the re-formed Pixies to avoid tainting the legacy with new material, with subsequent Pixies albums bearing a Kimshaped hole.
Personal differences, too, never completely dissipate at the first whiff of a sizeable Festival Republic cheque. If you have ever got back with an ex you will know the pitfalls. Sure, they respect you now they’ve stopped mainlining tequila and started paying you back that bail money, but they still hum Toploader in their sleep. Likewise, your old bandmates might have quit smack and had their egos punctured by failed solo careers, but once the comeback chips are cashed and the new album slog begins, the tiniest old niggle – the singer’s aloof studio presence, the bus’s rankling odour of 1993 – sets things back again.
Some splits are so acrimonious that no amount of separate dressing rooms, limos or backstage meditation zones can heal the divide. The Verve’s 1997 return was a powder keg of unresolved animosity, finally exploding after a year when Richard Ashcroft lobbed a beer bottle at Nick McCabe’s head; another go in 2007 saw a bust-up between Ashcroft and bassist Simon Jones after the very first gig. The 2006 East 17 reunion barely lasted one gig before it became clear, via a fist-fight, that not everybody involved was still resident at the house of love.
Then there was Flowered Up guitarist Joe Maher who, according to drummer John Tovey, so messed up a major reunion show in 2005 that he was “carted out by St John Ambulance in a straitjacket”. Actually, perhaps Weiss had the right idea after all.