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An artist’s “game over”.

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I find it interesting as to when a band loses it, or if they ever do; has anyone ever not been crap eventually? This is an inherently subjective position, of course. Some think Zappa lost it after he broke up the Mothers, or Status Quo after “Whatever You Want”. Definitely UB40 once they started doing covers. Personally, I felt Siouxie and the Banshees lost it after “Cities in Dust”, and The Clash when they had children on piano doing “The Guns of Brixton”. If “The Who” didn’t release another track after “Love, Reign over me”, I would not care. But they did, and have gone on for another 50 years. Genesis lost it before the end of “Wind and Wuthering” with the last track i now willingly listen to by them being “Unquiet Slumbers for the Sleepers…/…In That Quiet Earth”, the following “Afterglow” being a pile of limp overblown toss. Over to you. When do you book out of a band you once followed?

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Comments

  1. A good question and very hard to answer succinctly.

    The Church released their 326th album this year. I don’t think it’s their best by any stretch of the imagination but I know I’ll buy the next one (if there is a next one) or seek out the limited edition extra cd which is only available at gigs in the USA and is likely on a par with the 326th.

    Brand loyalty I guess.

  2. Re: examples given in the OP –

    Status Quo lost it when Lancaster and Coghlan left…

    Arguably, Genesis lost it when Hackett left.

    There’s a view that Yes lost it when Anderson and Wakeman left and The Buggles joined. However, I disagree: Drama was fine and the tour was also fine. I think they actually lost it when Rabin joined and they decided that they wanted to be a commercial pop band and have danceable hits…

  3. Obligatory New Order gripe.

    ‘Regret’ came out 30 years ago. I’ve acquired everything since, most of it played only once (some not at all). Yes, I am hopelessly optomistic / just plain daft.

    • Can’t deny it, Hubes…I guess it all depends on how you define “it”.

      And on that note: I imagine that Francis Rossi could find a punter who preferred the cabaret/pantomime version of the band that they became – but I don’t think it would alter my (admittedly) subjective view.

      • I suppose it’s a case of ‘Hope you like our new direction’ you may not but others will. I’d not really listened to Genesis from when Gabriel left. Certainly the bits I saw of them in the eighties didn’t make me want to explore further.
        Hearing Quo’s ‘In the Army Now’ was off-putting to say the least and again I didn’t feel the need to explore further.

  5. There’s a lot of revisionism over when/where a band or singer ‘lost it’. When I was at university in 2003, the general critical consensus was that David Bowie had been crap for about 20 years. Impossible to prove on a factual basis, and I’m sure there are many Bowie fans who’d point to highlights in the late 80s/90s.

    I thought Oasis lost it after one album, but their next LP was one of the best-selling UK albums ever. As I type this in a pub, She’s Electric is playing: I find it as alluring as an autumnal bin collection.

    • Totally agree re Julian Cope. There is the odd, very occasional half decent tune after that but the albums can be a hard slog. Bill Drummond Said (see what I did there) that he needed a producer who was able to say “No Julian it’s not good enough. Go and do it again.”

  7. Very interesting question. Isley Brothers after the three younger ones left. Some say Tamla Motown after they moved to LA. Duck Dunn says Stax lost it when they signed Lena Zavaroni, but I think they lost a little of their oomph when they were sold to Warner Brothers in 1968.

    My very personal opinion is many bands and artists lost it artistically and lost their oomph when they signed up with Arista under Clive Davis – Aretha, Kinks, Lou Reed,, Dionne Warwick.

  8. I’ll be interested to see when folks think the Rolling Stones lost it. After Brian left? After Ronnie joined? For me it’s when they put all the dulcimers, recorders and sitars away and started strutting.

        • A few years ago in a documentary, Mick said something along the lines of “… yeah, Brian, all he kinda did was add a bit of colour to our sound.”

          It was meant to be a slight put-down, he wasn’t being totally horrible about it, but I think it’s the most insightful thing he’s said about his act for years.
          They’ve been grey ever since Brian left, far more Ten Years After than John Coltrane.

    • I remember on the original Word blog that someone posted a clip of the band in a stadium in the states performing Under My Thumb. Possibly it was 1981 or around then. The poster said it was the moment they lost it which you could clearly identify. Starts OK then something changes. Maybe it was the time of the 99 red balloons. I would go along with this more or less. When Jagger has his dreadful colourful leggings and knee-pads. It all sounds rushed and the singing is more like yelling without proper enunciation. Keith strikes curious poses and it’s all a bit sloppy. They dipped in the 70s but that was part of the way. This was pretty much all the way.

      • I seem to recall a live version of Satisfaction that used to get played – in the absence of a music video – on a VH1 show. The name of the show escapes me, but it featured singers/ bands choosing their favourite songs, and the exact mess you describe – balloons, crap singing, leggings and knee pads – are all present in this vid.

        It’s staggeringly awful. Watch through your fingers, folks…

  9. Adrian Smith leaving Iron Maiden in 1989 started the end game. No Prayer For The Dying with Janick Gers (Smith’s replacement) was patchy, and 1992s Fear Of The Dark slightly better (but still patchy).
    Bruce Dickinson left in 1993 – Blaze Bayley had a decent set of pipes, but not quite right for ver Maiden.
    Game Over? It looked like it until Smith & Dickinson returned in 1999 – Janick Gers kept his job giving Iron Maiden a triple-guitar attack (one guitar better than Wishbone Ask and/or Thin Lizzy)

    • It won’t be a popular view: but I think that Thin Lizzy lost it when Brian Robertson was fired. Some good songs after that – but uniformly hard rock/metal – never the same mix of rock, soul, funk, etc that started with Nightlife and continued until Brian left.

          • It’s a fair comment – although Gary Moore might have led them in a more blues-based direction. As you say, who knows? But there’s a lightness of touch, a soulfulness and a variety of approach in the Robbo era which was definitely lost on the “heavier” albums which followed – obviously not all down to Robbo, I assume that Lynott wrote to his band’s strengths at the time.

    • Maiden just seem to get stronger as the years pass although you can’t help feeling Bayley got a raw deal but the record sales and concert attendances told their own story as with Ray Wilson and his even shorter tenure with Genesis.

  11. I knew I’d launched a thread on this subject once upon a time (2015).

    https://theafterword.co.uk/search/When+they+lost+it+/

    Here’s an excerpt…

    Over the years I have given more thought to exactly when Simple Minds lost it than any other band. They’re not my favourite band by any stretch and for years, like a poster on the other thread, I thought it was as simple as getting rid of the genius-of-bass Derek Forbes. I felt this was compounded by the pursuit of the American market through the awful likes of Don’t You Forget About Me and allowing producers/writers to influence their vision (Keith Forsey, I think…) Key to this was the inclusion of actual piano sounds as opposed to the wonderfully abstract keyboard sounds of their previous albums…

    Anyway, having dwelt on this matter too long and too often, I have come up with the notion that it was on the track Up On the Catwalk at the precise moment that Jim mentions Nastassja Kinski, presumably in an understandable attempt to register on her radar, that Simple Minds lost it, for it never to return again. Until that point, they operated in the abstract – Theme for Great Cities was exactly that, not London Calling. Nothing they did really referred to the real world (ignoring Konstantinople and Chelsea Girl…okay) that the rest of us occupied and that was the appeal. As soon as a real life person was referenced, the bubble had burst…never to be unburst. I rest my case.

    • There’s common consensus that the stepping off point was bassist Derek Forbes leaving after Sparkle In The Rain, and that everything after was unlistenable. He was back for Néapolis, the only worthwhile later album (now 25 years old), which supports that theory.

      But I think drummer Brian McGee, who left due to exhaustion before the New Gold Dream sessions, was as crucial as Forbes. Mel Gaynor just hits too hard, all rock and no roll.

      I’ve been listening to ver Minds a lot recently as I bought a job lot of 12″ singles*. I played Sparkle In The Rain a lot at the time, but I find it unlistenable now, due to the drumming more than the production.

      (*) I went back to that shop six months later and the post-Sparkle 12″ are still welded to the shelves.

              • No, that was on Real Life, though they’re very much of a piece to my ears. Though SFY still has Mick MacNeil on board. By Real Life they were down to Kerr and Burchill, with Gaynor as kinda in the band but kinda a sessioneer.

                Steven Lipson produced both so would have been the major sonic architect after MacNeil’s departure. he made his bones alongside Trevor Horn, so knows his way round a studio.

                Anyway, an unpopular opinion, and copies of SFY line the charity shops, but it’s always sounded less bombastic and overdone than accusations suggest it is. Certainly more light and shade than Once Upon a Time.

                (Actually, Once Upon a Time album has dated reasonably well on a sonic level. Bombastic yes, but with Iovine and Clearmountain producing, it actually sounds far spacious than contemporary albums that use brick-walling to suggest size.)

                Anyway, I don’t expect agreement, but I’d say the Minds fall-off period was a little later than those above suggest. But not by much.

                Looks like I’m the site’s Minds apologist as well as U2! I’ll be off, standing in a long coat, upon on a cliff wall in the mist, looking ‘out there’ into the sea.

                • Don’t forget that you have to release a dove at a key moment.

                  I’m happy to join you as an SM apologist. I think they’re great – they went from scratchy bit-punky-bit-new-wavey noise to stadium rock and big hits, have seen members come and go, yet Jim and Charlie are still working away and still creating interesting music. No, they haven’t come up with a NGD or SITR lately, but their latter albums all contain some good stuff, and from what clips I’ve seen, they still put on a good show.

                  Long may they continue.

    • Great theory @bamber!

      And interesting (not dull) comments below re drums @fentonsteve which I would agree with. The drums clatter.

      FWIW, I’m a traditionalist and think Sparkle is their last decent album. I really love Up on the catwalk but might have to ruminate about your theory and especially Natassja a bit more.

      I remember Neapolis being held up as a return to form and gave it a go. Can’t remember a thing about it and don’t think I knew Derek Forbes (who was utterly perfect for them) was back. Is it worth another go?

      • Néapolis was released on vinyl for a recent RSD, although I haven’t bought it yet. It sounded like the pre-NGD stuff, all icy synths and European coldness (if that doesn’t sound too much like a candidate for Pseuds Corner). Tell you what, I’m going to play it again later.

        While I’m here, can I squeeze in a recommendation for Graeme Thomson’s excellent Minds book, Themes for Great Cities?

        • @fentonsteve
          I made a comment above about them losing it after R to R, slightly tongue in cheek, but not really. The “icy synths and European coldness” was what I liked about them. I was dragged to see them, somewhat against my will, playing in a small club in Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow, around the time of R to R – I was prepared to hate them and they blew me away! Maybe because I’d already heard Unknown Pleasures? Anyway, I’ve had a huge bias in favour of that era ever since.

          • I’ve just listened to it . Erm. It’s very dull and a bit full of bluster. I’m not getting icy synths alas. The last track is the best…an instrumental! Shades of the glory days on that track only

              • Just the three bins, currently, but we’re getting a fourth* soon – kitchen waste is going to get collected weekly. The green bin (garden & kitchen waste) is currenly emptied fortnightly. The bins live under my WFH office window, and they’re minging in the summer.

                I didn’t play Real Life, either.

                (*) and a fifth, sixth and seventh if Labour get in, according to the PM.

                • Slightly off tangent to ver Minds but still harping on about bins – I wish we had the same amount of bins, bin collections and recycling processes nationwide wide. Seems made it’s different everywhere.

                  That’s real life I guess.

            • There was a letter to Viz once in which the writer said that they always replaced the words “you were always on my mind”, by the HHH with the lyrics “but I always did the bins”. To this day that’s been the proper version and it goes through my head every time I wheel the bins around to the front of the house. I think it lends the song more kitchen sink poignancy than the original which I regard as an arsehole’s apology

          • Fred, I’m here to report that I’ve given Néapolis a spin and I quite like it. I’d forgotten that NGD producer Pete Walsh was also back on board. Definitely fewer icy synths than I remember, though.

            But… all of the tracks have programmed drum loops, there are too many sequenced keyboard parts, and they all go on too long. I note also in the credits my chum Hamilton Lee, ex-of Furniture and Transglobal Underground. I quite like drum loops and sequenced keyboards when TU do it, but not so much when they’re grafted onto Simple Minds.

            Still, better than the bombastic stadium rawk of the previous Minds albums.

            PS I also have Street Fighting Years, which I bought during my Fresher year at uni and haven’t played since. I might give it a go next.

            PPS Néaplois reminds me of another mid-90s album, Mara by The Scottish Band.

  12. Some bemoan the split of pop music into chart singles and album-based rock. Two worlds. Sometime around 1968 maybe. Bob Stanley has something to say about this in Yeah Yeah Yeah. In other words, pop music lost it.

  13. Marillion were never really Marillion again without Fish.
    There is much good stuff with Steve Hogarth (last years An Hour Before It’s Dark being a particular delight), but the Fishy years are the best

    • I largely agree, but I when it comes to the bigger, more epic tracks (e.g. Neverland) I prefer Hogarth’s voice to Fish’s as I think he has more warmth. That said, Fish’s lyrics are more interesting. If only they could combine the two in one person.

  14. By any objective measure, Beautiful Day is a cracker, but All That You Can’t Leave Behind, and most of U2’s output since the ‘failure” of the Popmart era has had the air of contrition about, crafted by committee, second guessed to the extent that very little spontaneity remains. And I speak as the site’s resident apologist for the TM(OJR) hitmakers.
    Live they remain peerless in arena sized rock theatricality, and there have been some very good songs since then, but it’s been a long time since an album of such cohesion and artistry as Unforgettable Fire, Joshua Tree or Achtung Baby.

    • Quite right. I like everything up to Zooropa, but after that their albums are pretty meh for me. I have them all, but off-hand I can’t recall much of, say, ATYCLB, and nothing at all of the Songs of… albums. I’d like to see them live one day, because, y’know, it’s U2, but I’d want somebody else to pay for the ticket.

      • Sadly, they only come to Australia every third or fourth tour. It used to be every tour up until Joshua Tree – Australia was one of its earliest hit markets – but then it became prohibitive once the production values ramped up.

        One positive of the “failure” of Popmart (which I really liked; inverted commas intentional) is that, in the US and Europe, they went back to arenas, which is such a great stage for them. Any of their live blurays – Elevation and Vertigo particularly – are excellent and get repeated viewings here.

        They only bring their stadium shows to Australia. Zoo TV and Popmart were excellent. 360 was ok but underwhelming. Sadly I missed Joshua Tree 2017 – reports were very good.

        All of which to say, no matter the shark jump of the records, live they are very very good.

    • Good post, Dan. I’d be more generous to Pop and the subsequent tour – a continuation of their imperial phase imho. But you make a good point about contrition – they seemed to feel the need to revert to convention for ATYCLB and haven’t broken far from it since. Some great individual songs but no great innovation. I was hoping for something radical from Songs of Surrender this year, maybe a ‘Passengers’ type approach but apart from one or two exceptions it was disappointingly conventional and dare I say, insipid.

      *Edit: Having said that I still think they might have something in the tank – not ‘game over’ just yet.

  16. Purple, Come Taste The Band was just so far from their roots as to be indistinguishable from any of the other hair metal type tosh springing up around the same time.

    Subsequent Mk2+ reincarnations struggled to recapture their former glory. They really should have recognised that there is a time to call it quits.

    • DP 3 & 4 were a different band with the soul and funk influences. Actually I prefer those albums to the earlier ones. Both bands excellent though. CTTB is nothing like hair metal.

      • I’m much the same. My favourite Purple albums are ‘Burn’ and ‘Stormbringer’. Coverdale and Hughes brought, dare I say, funk to the riffing hairy-flareys.

        Blackmore is said to have hated both albums but I personally doubt that. His playing on both gives the lie. It’s aces. I think he just wanted to lead his own band and call all the shots. Which he subsequently did.

        • Actually I went to see Glenn Hughes on Wednesday night and he was bloody fantastic. Looks and sounds amazing even now. The guitarist, one Soren Andersen, is clearly having a ball playing the key Ritchie melodies and licks and adding a bunch of his own flash too. Keys and drums have clearly done their homework too. Obviously you miss the GH/DC interplay but you can’t have everything. Anyone who likes those albums should go because he said it’s the last Purple era tour he’s doing.

          • Apropos of absolutely nothing, Deep Purple rehearsed in a space before they were Deep Purple, a Working Men’s Club, that used to be the home of the local Rugby Club in the 1920s, who play in Lavender, which is always referred to, incorrectly, as Purple.

            This Working Men’s Club was near the Golf Club where Mrs. Mills was discovered.

            We, here, are the only people in the whole world who know this. Scary.

    • I lost interest in Purple after Made in Japan but not sure it was them or a change in my musical taste.

      Some would suggest that Costello lost it after Bruce Thomas left the Attractions but I have seen replacement bassist Davey Farragher several times and he is a more than able replacement.
      For me he lost it with The Juliet Letters which is a self indulgent piece of boring nonsense
      with one good song.
      He did regain it again afterwards but that is most definitely a dip.

      Nanci Griffith lost it after Late Night Grande Hotel which was a very good album.
      Her muse seemed to leave her after that.
      Joni Mitchell after Don Juan’s reckless daughter.

  17. (I’ll do Depeche Mode!) 😉

    Depeche Mode suffered greatly when Alan Wilder left.
    Alan was clearly an extremely important piece of the DM-greatness puzzle.

    Though, side note: after having just said that, the next album (Ultra) is one of my favourites.

    Post Ultra, things went downhill fast.
    Martins songwriting mojo deserted him.
    Exciter was weak, but it actually now stands up a bit better when compared with more recent dross such as Sounds of the Universe and Spirit (the worst album they have ever put out).
    The songs were mostly uninteresting and often sounded like demos.
    The band took on this weird general sound palette for four albums. It featured a lack of layers (a previous strong point), forced-sounding song endings, lots of annoying screeches and sirens and….. almost always weak drum sounds. A lack of decent choruses and breaks/middle 8s/whatever they’re called has also been a feature.

    Memento Mori was a definitely improvement, best since Ultra, but it certainly benefits from coming after Spirit. (Almost anything would sound good after that).

    Obviously it’s not “game over” for their business as they are a huge money-making machine with a cult-like following that will accept anything they do. And the boys seem to love those big wads of cash, sometimes outrageously milking the willing cult members.

    But in terms of quality of output, yep. Alan Wilder leaving was the starting point.

    • Harsh but fair. For me Exciter is their worse (too many plodding songs), and I quite like Spirit, but you’re right about the sound palette.

      Without being there in the studio at the time, we don’t know exactly what Alan brought to the table, but it must have been something important, because their sound definitely worsened after he left. I know he was praised for his arranging and/or musical skills, but maybe he also pushed the tunes into groovier or faster tempos. Too many of their later songs just start, amble on, and then stop, with no unexpected turns and no real oomph.

      As you said, MM is a great improvement (Ghosts Again in particular sounds like an Alan-era song), and I’m happy to still be a member of the DM cult, but there was a long run of albums where I kept thinking “I hope the next one is better.”

      • Obviously, cults are not a good/positive thing.

        It’s really not healthy for a band to have a cult following like DM do.

        They can get away with any old rubbish.
        There’s no need for quality control.
        Complacency sets in.
        A ‘will this do’ attitude becomes the norm.
        They lose touch with the reality, often becoming caricatures (see ‘live Dave’).

        No good comes from it.

        Well, aside from massive wads of cash for the band, of course.

        • Fair enough.

          I’ve never seen them live. And I don’t do vinyl, so I won’t be buying any of the obscenely expensive 12″ box sets. So maybe I’m on the fringes of the cult, and not in the inner sanctum.

          I do wish they had someone to impose some more quality control, or at least somebody who could say, “Let’s add a bit more punch to this track, shall we?”

          • They are a curious band in that regard. At their commercial peak, it seemed that Wilder and producer would be the ones painstakingly spending weeks adding layers to the songs or reinterpreting them entirely.

            Curiously, Gore would not be drawn on whether he liked the results of this work or not. It was presumed he was OK with the records because he didn’t veto them. And yet in interviews he would be asked about how sounds came about and he would say that that side of things was nothing to do with him. Ages later, he would say he didn’t like how certain songs turned out but said nothing at the time. This kind of thing led to Wilder quitting.

            These days Gore seems happier overall and is a better communicator, particularly with Dave Gahan. It has been noted by Gore that his best songs come about when his life is in turmoil e.g. a messy divorce.

            • It is interesting indeed.

              And it makes me wonder just how very ‘lucky’ the b(r)and has been for a handful of very talented people (eg Alan, Flood, other producers) to take the basic raw ingredients and nurture and shape them into the true classics that we know and love. Alan certainly seemed totally fed up with the dynamics and (likely) not happy at the lack of enough credit when it was due.

              Captain Darling. Just check out recent live videos on YouTube. Pretty much any will do.

              Aside from the singing out of tune and a generally much less pleasing voice than recordings…….

              Dave seems to feel the need to constantly act out. It’s a strange mix of preening around (in a weirdly overly-effeminate manner), ‘acting’, gurning, pulling up his kecks to show off his height-enhancing heels. Just weird. I find his persona so difficult to watch that I can hardly keep going for more than one song.

              Still, he gets praised as being this ‘great frontman’. Decades ago, perhaps, yes. Now? Just really embarrassing.

              There are many times when only drummer man – whose hobby seems to be slaughtering classic DM songs – and Dave are actually doing anything. Backing tracks are hardly a new concept with DM, of course, but when there’s only four of them on stage and two of them aren’t doing much, seemingly just chilling out, I don’t understand why that isn’t talked about more.

              To me, so much of DM is riding on the back of their imperial period, which was 30+ years ago.

              See: cult.

                • Devotional is what you want.

                  101 for some more poppy pre-Violator fun.

                  It’s a shame there wasn’t an official video of the Violator tour. I wonder if there might be something one day (yours for 100 quid!)

                  This is also quite interesting. It’s post Ultra and before Exciter:

                  Almost none of the weird gurning play-acting caricature that he has become is on show yet. His singing was still fairly decent (perhaps due to lack of caricature elements). And drummer man is ‘less Animal’.

                  Yes, it seems like the downward spiral (live, as well as studio) started from Exciter.

                  • While I remember, Strange & Strange Too (the Anton Corbijn videos for Music for the Masses and Violator) are coming out on blu-ray in early December.

                    Previously released on VHS and Laserdisc, “newly restored from original Super 8mm sources” – expect some grain.

                    • ….and the pricing includes that generous chunk of ‘DM tax’ too. Obviously. Our boys love extracting unreasonable amounts from their cult members.

                      😉

                      (Actually, when it is discounted to a reasonable price, I will buy it).

                      🙂

                    • Somebody right here in the Afterword commented that they were with the film crew when filming the piece for PIMPF (the one where they destroy a shed in the middle of a desert). I asked him to confirm what the lads are saying in the song – I’ve always heard it as “oh dear!” but he didn’t respond.

  18. I may have mentioned my love of the first two Spooky Tooth albums, It’s All About (1968) and Spooky Two (1969), and was looking forward to much more of the same. Along with Family, they were probably my favourite bands of the late 60s.

    So what did they do next? Ceremony: An Electronic Mass, in collaboration with wacky French concrete musician Pierre Henry, at which point their career pretty much went down the toilet, despite Mike Harrison valiantly wailing bluesily over what sounded like dustbins being chucked down a circular staircase. I was hoping it was a career killer for Pierre Henry too, but he kept churning it out for another 30 years.

  19. I love this kind of thing. I’m brutal in my musical tastes, and perfectly happy to draw a big thick line at the point I can sense an artist losing their mojo. Yes, they can have some scattered moments of brilliance afterwards (say, Bowie’s Jump They Say or the Stones’ Miss You) but I always think there’s a distinct point up to which everything they touch seems to be effortless genius, and after which it’s slim pickings.

    Dylan after the ’66 motorbike accident (I said I was brutal).

    Mike Oldfield after he underwent experimental therapy in’ 78.

    Bowie from when he got a tan and got his teeth fixed after Scarey Monsters.

    Van Morrison… Well, I’ve still not heard anything to convince me he didn’t step off an artistic cliff after Astral Weeks, to be honest.

    I think each individual Beatle had maybe an album or two in them after the breakup, following which they never really got the full magic back.

    To be a bit more lenient for a second, there are a handful of artists who seem to retain a good bit of magic into their senior years. Kate Bush, Tom Waits and Johnny Cash all created masterpieces in their mature years. I think Roger Waters’ last proper solo album was one of his best. And jumping to a different genre, Ralph Vaughan Williams was writing startling, vital music into his eighties.

    • I agree with you about RVW, Arthur. Unlike Sibelius – he composed Tapiola in 1926 then just stopped, for the next 30 years until his death. Apparently he composed an 8th symphony and destroyed the manuscript in his kitchen stove!

      (PS: I agree with you about Van Morrison as well – but I’m worried that I might offend Dai!)

          • I posted about it on here when I first listened to it VERY late in my life, only a couple of years or so ago. I still think it’s an astonishing album with a unique feel to it, and couldn’t believe I had never listened to it before.

      • I quite admire Sibelius for ending when he did! Actually I didn’t know Tapiola was 1926 – I thought he did his 7th Symphony for his 50th birthday and that was his closing statement to the world (and what a statement! I love that symphony).

        • I think the 7th was written in 1924? So Tapiola would have been the last major work before the “Great Silence”. His wife reported that he burned a pile of manuscripts and papers in the 1940s – and sketches and first drafts of an 8th symphony are believed to have been amongst the destroyed papers. But yes, an admirable stance – he apparently commented that if he couldn’t improve on the 7th, then it would remain his final symphony.

          Arguably, a few of the artists in this thread might have benefited from adopting such a view…

    • I’m with @dai regarding Van. But the one I really want to pick up is Dylan. Stop in 66 and there’s no Basement Tapes, John Wesley Harding, Blood on the Tracks (arguably his finest hour), Desire, Street Legal, Oh Mercy, Time Out of Mind, etc etc. Less intensely productive, yes. Game over – absolutely not. Like RVW, Dylan remains productive in his70s and 80s, though, also like VW, rather less so than earlier in his life

      • Yeah, I did say I was brutal in my judgements. But to be fair, I have allowed that after the drop-off point artists can still deliver the goods on occasion. For Dylan post ’66 I quite like:
        – Bits of the Basement Tapes (maybe 4 or 5 songs overall?)
        – Most of Blood on the Tracks (but I do feel it sounds like someone trying consciously to re-visit a successful style – it no longer feels quite as vital and innovative as the 60s stuff)
        – About a track or so per album up to the mid 70s
        – And I quite like Must Be Christmas…. cheers me up 🙂

        • OK, I’m bound to say it… but… Nashville Skyline – 1969 – sublime, but…

          I can’t stand Self Portrait (1970) and, even more, New Morning (1970), and no ‘reimagining’ of them via the Bootleg Series will change my mind.

          The only post-60s Dylan I want, and own, is Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid.

          • Oh I hate Nashville Skyline! I just still can’t believe what he suddenly started doing with his voice, that country crooner thing. I make an exception for Lay Lady Lay, which is sweet and kind of works.

            RE post 60s Dylan, have you tried Blood on the Tracks? I’d recommend listening to even just Tangled Up In Blue, a great story song (even if the story is a bit confused and stream of consciousness). I think it’s the key song he’s done since the 60s that truly touches genius (I can sense all the Dylan fans shaking their heads at me) and many of the lines still float around in my head and reappear at random moments – ‘some are mathematicians, some are carpenter’s wives, don’t know how they all got started, don’t know what they do with their lives’ – one of those songs that live in you.

    • If Lennon and McCartney had produced solo albums at the rate of normal people, they could’ve extended the quality for longer. Eleven albums between them in five years.

      • Yeah, good point actually. If the Beatles had stayed together and pooled their best material, you would maybe have had a decent album annually up to ’74/’75. (It goes without saying that I agree they were right to end when they did, on a supreme high with Abbey Road, and leaving the audience wanting more… that’s ignoring Free As A Bird and this new one that’s coming out….)

  21. I’m always interested in those seismic changes which shift things in a completely different direction.

    The obvious one is the arrival of Elvis in the 50s which utterly changed popular music, similarly the Beatles in 1963 (in the UK) and in 1964 (in the US) which spelt the end, or at least the major decline, of countless acts.

    More subtly, in 1965 bands such as the Stones and the Kinks spelt the end for the Merseybeat era bands that found it hard to write a decent song or to adjust to the rapidly changing times. In parallel, the rise of the stunt guitarist during the blues boom meant bands had to be ‘serious’ musicians and stop grinning.

    Sgt. Pepper announced the start of the album era and there was a schism between bands that had ‘file under progressive’ on their albums and those that made pop singles. Led Zeppelin even refused to issue a single.

    It was so often the rise of one artist or band that caused whole swathes of others to suddenly become passe. Bowie and punk in the 70s are other obvious examples.

    • I’d say that the release of Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings in 1925-1930 caused an undeniable, seismic change in the history of jazz.

  22. The Band, after, well, The Band. I was lucky that this was the first album I heard of theirs about five years after it came out, and it is still one of my favourites by anyone. I then bought Music from Big Pink, and liked it, but it didn’t have the same feeling of cohesion, and then doggedly followed up with the other albums, buying them all. But the songs were pretty weak, and the arrangements nothing special. Robbie Robertson’s songs seemed as they had been written by one of his imitators.

    I wouldn’t have expected them to keep to the same style, but they seemed to have used up all their originality in those two albums. If the first album I’d heard had been Cahoots or Stage Fright, I wouldn’t have explored any further.

  23. Wilco:
    From Being There to A Ghost is Born is a fantastic run of albums. Maybe it’s just me, but everything I’ve heard since just sounds bland, dull, and unengaging (still great live though).

    R.E.M.
    I was OBSESSED with this band during their 80’s heyday, but I could never get along with Out of Time (I’m still convinced it should have been EP). I stayed loyal until the end, but that passion I felt for them slowly, but surely, faded into a lingering affection.

    • REM – when Bill left they were never quite the same. Some good tunes, but not a whole album’s worth. I tried. And then recently I heard the live tracks on the deluxe CD of Reckoning, and realised I was fooling myself. They were so vibrant, so alive, such a band.

      A dog with 3 legs may still be a dog but it’s not what it was.

      (I like Out of Time though)

    • Oh God yes, REM. All the albums up to Out Of Time are brilliant and I was obsessed too. But Out Of Time is just…good. In places. I can’t bear Radio Song or Shiny Happy People, although Belong, Me In Honey and Losing My Religion are all great. Automatic For The People has its moments but Monster is an ill feted attempt at Grunge and after that it’s increasingly slim pickings, although there was usually at least one decent song on each album. For a band who were pretty much perfect for their first decade, that’s not enough. Bill Berry leaving was probably the tipping point but the signs were already there.

    • I’d go a bit further with Wilco, Sky Blue Sky is one of my favourite records and I thought they held up pretty good until the Whole Love, then followed four dull releases but thankfully the new one has some good songs.

      I thought the last great REM release was New Adventures in HiFi which saw me through some very dark times, then Bill Berry left and suddenly they were shite.

      • I like all Wilco albums to some degree. Love Sky Blue Sky, the next few have their moments. Loved Cruel Country eventually and the new one is growing on me. Perhaps overlooked is the magnificent and only album attributed to “Tweedy”, Sukeriae

        And best live band there is as far as I am concerned (haven’t seen all bands though)

  24. Slightly different take on the OP. Not specific to any band. Streaming has made an artist’s ‘game over’ much easier for the punter and harder/quicker on the artists. Once, not all that long ago, the only way to hear the new album was to buy it, so we did. Even if then we’re weren’t that impressed or massively disapointed. Since streaming it’s been much easier to think ‘that’s kind of OK but actually there’s only a couple of good tracks to add to a playlist.’ Since then I’m afraid that there are far fewer artists left that I’ll buy out of a sense loyalty/they deserve more money than from streaming/that’s really good. There remain a few, but not many. But I’ll try to see the others live to compensate. If they ever play near me which isn’t often.

    • This is how it should be of course, and takes us back to the pre-LP days when Pop became Rock, with all the filler that brought with it.

      I am totally happy to just have the killer couple of songs from each new LP. Or just “the hit singles” as they used to be known.

  26. I have a mate who has a theory that XTC lost their ‘XTC-ness’ after the success of Dukes Of Stratosphere. He claims that from Skylarking onwards they became too enthralled with the past, wore their sixties influences on their sleeves and stopped being completely of themselves from Skylarking onwards. I disagree myself, but think this is an interesting point and once put it to Colin Moulding. He said there was a definite ring of truth about it but felt the band massively improved at that point.

    I know some cloth eared old school Madness fans who think the cut off point is anything recorded after the Complete Madness 1982 compilation. Driving In My Car, at a push. They feel the band became too serious and over produced after that. They are wrong.

    • XTC lost it when Andy Partridge went megalomaniac and pushed the others to the sidelines.
      I agree broadly with your timeline, being after the Dukes and Skylarking.

      Oranges and Lemons is average and Nonsuch pretty good but way too long, so too many average songs

      The 2 last albums have all the ingredients to be good XTC albums but are missing a certain something

  27. As an update to Fairport losing it after Denny/RT/Ashley/Swarbrick, which, to be fair, has not been aired, I would suggest they the biggest drop off came with the loss, 2nd time, of Dave Mattacks. People have struggled to put a finger on it, blaming Chris Leslie and similar, but, however good Gerry Conway might have been for Cat Stevens or, even Fotheringay, he just never had enough welly for Fairport, at least if they ever played any old. This realisation came to fruition as they reprised and released an updated Full House last year.

    • Indeed I even went to see them this year as DM was back in the drum seat and gave them a much needed kick. I’d decided I never needed to see them again after too many dull times. Still don’t like Chris Leslie’s songs however.
      I think they did fine with Bruce Rowland in the late seventies, and it looks like they’re touring again with DM again next year.

      • It would be interesting to chart DM across the trajectory of othe bands he helped prop up along the way, if mainly studio rather than live. I wonder if the XTC album he played on was their last good one, for instance. See also Macca, Elton and others, all employing the fella at some stage along the way. The jury is out for Feast of Fiddles, as he still appears with them.

  28. Slightly different take on whether ‘losing it’ is the right phrase. Simple Minds is still the exemplar but I might characterise it as when a band stopped having 100% confidence that their music would conquer the world, and started to plan what music they could write and perform that would conquer the world. So yes, exactly when they sat down to ‘big up’ their music on SITR. Echo and the Bunnymen are the others I was thinking about here. When they sat down to write a ‘big ballad with strings’ that was it. Can’t believe that Macca didn’t already think they deserved the success of the Simps and U2 and start to wonder how they could get some of that.

    • When the minds changed how they made music they went bad
      Used to jam and they were such good musicians, and Jim would add vocals after

      I think this stopped after Sparkle in the Rain time and they sacked the good musicians eventually too.. hence the songs fell off a cliff

  29. In answer to a slightly different question, there are certain acts who I wish had decided not to bring out that one last album. I am sure we are all used to our favourite acts continuing well past their sweet spot, but these last albums just tarnish the legacy. Genesis, as mentioned above; The Verve; Joni Mitchell.

  30. I knew my love affair with T. Rex was coming to an end when I flipped over Tanx to listen to side two. At that point, i was reasonably impressed with side one and felt confident that any issues I had would smooth out with further listening. But, then, I had to endure the horror of Mad Donna, swiftly followed by Born To Boogie, the B side to the single I’d held off buying for a couple of weeks expecting it to feature on the album. To this day, I still think 21st Century Boy should open a side and, maybe Children Of The Revolution too. Imagine The Slider without Metal Guru and Telegram Sam. One thing I was certain of was that Born To Boogie was out of place on Tanx. This was the moment I realised that Marc was no longer listening to anyone other than himself. I kicked myself for not spotting it as soon as I saw the cover.

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