Mojo - The Music Magazine

A contagion that began as an isolated, early '90s outbreak now threatens pandemic proportions. From My Bloody Valentine to Magazine, The Slits to The Specials, Devo to Dinosaur Jr, defunct bands simply can't stop reforming. Everywhere ageing rockers are putting solo careers, however gilded or impecunious, on hold, blithely disregarding ineluctable artistic differences and legal impasses and cosying up to once despised bandmates (hello Blur, The Police, Spandau Ballet et al) while trousering the lucrative reformation shilling.

It might seem churlish to piss on the reunion parade when so many fans would happily sell their grandmothers just to touch the hem of revivified rock Messiahs like Led Zeppelin or Mott The Hoople, but for every renovated godhead there's a shedload of Shed Sevens, Limp Bizkits, Blink 182s and That Petrol Emotions wringing whatever last drops remain from questionable former 'glories'. The implications for new groups are stark; what does it say about audience appetite to have the gig circuit arteries so clogged with the journeyman mediocrity of yesteryear?

Even apparently cockle-warming reunions should invite caution. Take the Pixies, for example, a group whose restoration has been greeted with universally lofted thumbs. Like The Velvet Underground and Television before them, they are a group whose fame, myth and influence have only burgeoned since their acrimonious split, so it's hard to blame younger converts for wanting to hear the anthems they've loved on record essayed in the flesh.

But it is the anti-Midas touch of the reformation shuffle that reduces even the most vital rock'n'roll to the sentimental banality of Friends Reunited. So Pavlovian is the audience response to most reformed groups, and so predicated upon a kind of communal retro-hysteria, that for the bands it's become artistically worthless - effectively just the thickness of a cigarette paper from the gratuitous battlefield re-enactments of the tribute group.

The reformation is often hailed as a celebration, but isn't it really an admission of defeat? What is stopping these same artists - in their latest guises, solo, whatever - pulling their fingers out and delivering us new musical thrills to challenge the superannuated repertoire? They clearly weren't trying hard enough at their post-split careers or have perhaps given up on them completely, preferring the comfy slippers of predictability to the calf-tightening stilettos of creative ambition.

Thankfully, there are some who steadfastly resist the re-formation dollar. Whether motivated by the precious abstract concept of 'legacy', unhealed internecine spats or the insurmountable edicts of M'lud, these groups have declined to muddy our memories by stepping out of the archive to ramble through the hits, unveiling crow's feet, stiff backs, a missing half octave from the vocal range and a dead-eyed look that speaks of a soul being ever-so slightly destroyed (this means you, Simple Minds).

So, a deserved shout-out to The Smiths, Abba, Talking Heads, The Cocteau Twins, Eurythmics, Stone Roses, XTC and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Kudos also to The Flamin' Groovies, Elastica, 10,000 Maniacs, Pylon, The Blue Orchids, Kitchens Of Distinction, Josef K, Soundgarden, Death From Above 1979, and, er, Tools You Can Trust (insert own beloved, valiantly un-reconstituted combo of yesterday) and their ilk for showing such restraint, even as the reformation carrots are dangled, which surely they must continually be (Tools You Can Trust accepted, perhaps...).

Meanwhile, reformation fever shows no sign of abating. "A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I'm still doing it," the mature Miles Davis once chided an interviewer, livid with the implication that his best work was behind him. How sad that so many rock luminaries eschew that indefatigable spirit, apparently more concerned with their pensions than with their artistic legacies.

I'm reminded of the Sex Pistols' first reunion, back in 1996 - the knowingly titled 'Filthy Lucre' tour. It was an inglorious moment - the sound of a legend being defiled and of forty years of heroically questing rock'n'roll momentum being traded in for the gaudy diktats of the circus. Not for the first time the Pistols had anticipated the musical zeitgeist - one that we are now 'enjoying' to the full.

It wasn't always thus. 'Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?' Johnny Rotten had famously asked a 1978 San Francisco audience before swapping the Pistols' garish showbiz bandwagon for the ground-breaking post-punk explorations of Public Image Ltd. It's a question we might all now be asking.

David Sheppard

David Sheppard is the author of On Some Faraway Beach: The Life & Times of Brian Eno. His '90s rock band Balloon have never re-formed.