One wouldn't rock from her rocker, another couldn't stand the sound of music. These were some of the biggest names in rock music, so why'd they leave the limelight?
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00:00One wouldn't rock from her rocker. Another couldn't stand the sound of music.
00:04These were some of the biggest names in rock music, so why did they leave the limelight?
00:09The White Stripes rose to prominence in the early 2000s with an unlikely strategy,
00:13playing loud, trashy, straightforward garage rock, but doing it really,
00:17really well. The duo combined minimal elements to create their special formula — the bluesy,
00:21flamboyant vocals and guitar work of frontman Jack and the steadfastly simple drumming of Meg.
00:27The pair were married until 2000, but even after their divorce, they kept turning out
00:31smash albums. Shortly after the release of 2007's Icky Thump, it was reported that Meg was dealing
00:37with anxiety, which had begun to affect her ability to perform. As an official statement
00:41from the band put it, Meg White is suffering from acute anxiety and is unable to travel at this
00:45time. The demands of being an international rock star may have been a factor, as well as Meg's
00:50natural tendency to introversion. Either way, Icky Thump ended up being the White Stripes'
00:54swan song. While Jack has continued to record and perform, Meg simply fell out of the spotlight
00:59and never really resurfaced. In 2014, Jack told Rolling Stone that he practically never
01:04talked to his former bandmate, and neither did anyone else so far as he knew.
01:08Depending on your age, you probably know Grace Slick as either the vocalist for Jefferson
01:12Airplane or its revamped version Jefferson Starship, or the further revamped version
01:16known simply as Starship. Slick's distinctly recognizable voice was a fixture of popular
01:21music for the better part of two decades, but around 1989, she pretty much disappeared.
01:26And the reason is about as rock and roll as it gets. According to Slick herself,
01:29she retired at the age of 50, because you just shouldn't rock anymore at a certain age.
01:34As she explained in a 2015 interview with WENN,
01:37There's something about old people singing rock and roll lyrics that bothers me.
01:40It just doesn't match.
01:41She also expressed a distaste for her work from the 80s. As she admitted,
01:45I'm lying if I say nothing's gonna stop us now. A truck will stop you instantly.
01:49And 52% of people who get together get a divorce. What do you mean nothing's gonna
01:53stop us now? It's bulls**t. And there's no city built on rock and roll.
01:57But Slick is still doing pretty well for herself. She's now a painter who has a special affinity
02:02for scenes from Alice in Wonderland, and her works have sold for up to $30,000.
02:06Queen was a band full of interesting characters. There was, of course,
02:10lead singer Freddie Mercury, as well as guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor.
02:15And then there was John Deacon, who played the bass. As was somewhat typical of rock bassists,
02:20Deacon was the quiet one, the guy who stood there and simply laid down a solid rhythm section.
02:24But behind the scenes, he contributed in other important ways,
02:27co-writing such hits as Stone Cold Crazy, You're My Best Friend, and Another One Bites the Dust.
02:32Mercury passed away in 1991, which hit Deacon particularly hard. As May revealed in a 2017
02:38interview with The Times, Deacon began to fade away from Queen pretty much immediately afterward.
02:42As May put it, he found Mercury's death incredibly hard to process,
02:46to the point where actually playing with us made it more difficult.
02:49Deacon had also been handling the band's finances since the mid-'70s,
02:52and although he now shuns the limelight, he continues to fill that role for his old friends.
02:56In a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone, May noted,
03:00"[John Deacon is still John Deacon. We don't undertake anything financial without talking to him."
03:05Of all the iconic bands of the 60s, Sly and the Family Stone is perhaps the most difficult
03:10to classify. They played a blend of pretty much every form of popular music that had
03:14existed to that point, from rock to R&B to jazz. But the strongest flavor in their brew
03:18was probably funk, which they're often credited with bringing to the mainstream.
03:22After a successful run in the late 60s and early 70s, the band's fortunes began to wane,
03:27and their final album was released in 1982. Like many of his contemporaries,
03:31frontman Sly Stone was a titanic consumer of drugs. He was essentially forced into retirement
03:37by his habits after his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.
03:41He then made only sporadic public appearances in the following years. In 2011, he was back in the
03:46spotlight for an unfortunate reason, as he was reportedly living out of a van in Los Angeles.
03:51He appears to have eventually gotten back on track, as it was reported in 2023 that he was
03:55clean, working on a memoir and participating in a documentary about his life to be directed
04:00by Questlove. There was a time in the late 60s when pretty much every singer-songwriter
04:05wanted to be Bob Dylan. That is, everyone except Joni Mitchell, who was intent on blazing her own
04:10trail in a male-dominated field. Her deeply personal brand of songwriting resonated with
04:14fans and peers alike, and while she only ever scored one top-ten hit, her influence is
04:19incalculable. In addition to her own songs, she's also penned hits for the likes of Crosby,
04:23Stills, Nash & Young, as well as Judy Collins.
04:26"...and she sang me Both Sides Now."
04:29Wow.
04:30"...and I said, Oh my God, I'll be right over."
04:34Mitchell walked away from music in the late 90s, for a reason that should surprise no one.
04:39She'd grown sick and tired of the music industry and its treatment of genuine artists,
04:43especially women. As she told The Guardian in 2007,
04:46"...I came to hate music. I listened only to talk shows for 10 years."
04:51Complicating any hope of a comeback was a brain aneurysm that Mitchell suffered in 2015.
04:56After which, she lost the ability to play guitar. Fortunately,
04:59she re-learned that skill by watching old videos of herself. And in 2022,
05:03she delighted fans with a surprise performance at the Newport Folk Festival.
05:08Few debut albums have made a bigger impact in music history than Guns N' Roses' 1987 release
05:13Appetite for Destruction. Their scruffy look and aggressive sound were completely different
05:17from their hair-metal peers. Appetite would ultimately become one of the biggest albums
05:21of the decade, with more than 18 million copies sold in the U.S. alone as of 2023.
05:26The band's 1991 follow-ups Use Your Illusion 1 and Use Your Illusion 2
05:31likewise sold like hotcakes, which was a bit of an issue for guitarist Izzy Stradlin.
05:35Stradlin was becoming increasingly disillusioned by frontman Axl Rose's ego and his bandmates'
05:40voracious drug consumption. So in the middle of a tour in 1991, he up and quit and then never
05:45looked back. In 2016, LA Weekly attempted to catch up with Stradlin at his home in Ojai County,
05:51California, but they literally couldn't find him. His last public performance to date was as a guest
05:56at an Aerosmith concert in 2012, and at least for now, he seems perfectly content to remain
06:00completely out of the spotlight. The Smashing Pumpkins were something of a rarity in the early
06:0590s as a non-grunge rock band that were actually quite successful. Their 1993 album Siamese Dream
06:11went platinum four times over, and 1995's Melancholy and the Infinite Sadness more than
06:16doubled that feat. Songwriter and vocalist Billy Corgan anchored the band, along with guitarist
06:20James Ehaw and bassist Darcy Retzke. But then in 1999, Retzke was either fired or she quit,
06:26depending upon whom you ask. In a 2004 post on his LiveJournal blog, Corgan claimed that
06:31Retzke was a drug addict who refused to get help. Retzke left the world of music to live on a farm
06:36with her horses, and she declined to fire back at Corgan's claims until 2018, when her former
06:41bandmates declared that they'd been trying to get her to reunite with them for years.
06:45In an interview with Alternative Nation, she insisted that this was a bald-faced lie,
06:49that she and Corgan never got along, and that her entire time in the band was nightmarish.
06:53She also noted that Corgan had a habit of throwing tantrums, and that she would just
06:57laugh at him while adding,
06:58"'When Billy fired me, James went along with him,
07:00because he said he thought that's what I wanted. James just needs to grow a spine. Jesus.'"
07:05"'It's like...I don't know.'"
07:09In the 80s and 90s, R.E.M. were the pioneers of the burgeoning genre of alternative rock.
07:14With their 1987 release Document and its hit single,
07:17The One I Love, the band would evolve into superstars.
07:20Over the ensuing quarter-century, R.E.M. displayed remarkable resilience,
07:24even soldiering on after drummer Bill Barry suffered a career-ending double aneurysm in 1995.
07:30But then, in 2011, they decided to call it quits. In a statement announcing the breakup,
07:34bassist Mike Mills said that their final album, Collapse Into Now,
07:38felt like a natural stopping point, while noting,
07:40"'There's no disharmony here. No falling outs, no lawyers squaring off. The time just feels right.'"
07:45While R.E.M. had always loved writing and recording music,
07:48they developed a burning hatred for the industry. As guitarist Peter Buck explained to Rolling
07:52Stone in 2016,
07:54"'It was the money, the politics, having to meet new people 24 hours a day,
07:58not being in charge of my own decisions. I hate the business,
08:01and I didn't want to have anything to do with it.'"
08:03"'We broke up at the right time for the right reasons.'"
08:05In the early 80s, Billy Squire was a titan of rock radio. His brand of anthemic arena
08:10hits were tailor-made for the period, and he landed in the top 20 with The Stroke
08:14and Rock Me Tonight, the latter of whose video got plenty of airtime on MTV.
08:18Unfortunately, this was a rare case in which the heavy MTV exposure
08:22was not a boon to a rock star's career, but instead a massive liability.
08:26In the book I Want My MTV, The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution,
08:31music journalists Rob Tannenbaum and Craig Marks devote an entire chapter to the Rock Me Tonight
08:36video. It featured Squire vamping around in a pink tank top, rolling around in satin sheets,
08:40and generally behaving in a manner that wasn't considered to be befitting of a rock god.
08:44Squire pretty much placed the blame on the video for tanking his career,
08:48and while he soldiered on for close to another decade, the final straw came in 1993,
08:52when an incoming executive at his label, Capitol Records,
08:55flatly stated his intention to bury Squire's upcoming record, Tell the Truth.
08:59He released one more album in 1998, but no more since then.
09:04Linda Ronstadt is both country music and rock and roll royalty. She had a jaw-dropping run
09:08of five straight platinum albums in the 70s, and she's also won 11 Grammys, both as a solo artist
09:13and for her various collaborations. She could doubtless still bring fans out in droves to
09:18hear her perform even today, but unfortunately, that's no longer an option. That's because
09:22Ronstadt has been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, which has completely robbed her of her
09:26once-powerful singing voice. That diagnosis was later revised to a condition known as
09:30progressive supernuclear palsy, but as far as any chance of performing goes, the change made
09:35no difference. In a 2019 conversation with The New Yorker, she conceded that while she enjoyed
09:39having friends play music in her living room, she wasn't terribly psyched about no longer being able
09:44to sing. As she put it,
09:45"...I've just accepted it. There's absolutely nothing I can do."
09:48Do you have a lot of regrets?
09:50A few. Not a lot.
09:53When you've been one of the biggest bands in the world for six decades like the Rolling Stones,
09:57every member tends to develop a bit of mythology. That's certainly true of frontman Mick Jagger
10:01and lead guitarist Keith Richards. But as for original bassist Bill Wyman, well, there's an
10:06exception to every rule. Wyman left the band amicably in 1992 after over 30 years. Then in
10:122008, he told The Telegraph that he was simply tired of hauling out the same old songs after all
10:17that time, and that he was enjoying the more low-key nature of his post-Stones band, the Rhythm Kings.
10:22In 2019, he told the Los Angeles Times that he'd remained friends with his Stones bandmates,
10:27while adding,
10:27We still send each other birthday and Christmas presents. We see each other
10:31socially when it's possible. It's a family thing, although it sounds corny. It's not business anymore."