It happens all too often; our favorite band comes apart at the seams due to tension, creative differences, or one of many other reasons. It's always disappointing to think that you may never be able to see these groups perform together again, however, these situations are not always hopeless. Just as often, bands will reunite and continue to play together, much to the delight of fans. But what is it that causes them to split in the first place? This is the real reason these bands reunited after a big break up.
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00:00For some bands, all it takes is a few tweets to lead to a reunion.
00:04For others, it takes presidential intervention.
00:07Stay tuned to find out what brought these groups back together after a big breakup.
00:12After dominating the 1970s with multi-platinum albums and classic rock staples like Stairway
00:18to Heaven and Black Dog, Led Zeppelin broke up in 1980 following the death of drummer
00:22John Bonham.
00:23The surviving members, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, and John Paul Jones, would reunite less
00:28than five years later to perform on the Philadelphia stage at Live Aid in 1985, which was staged
00:34to raise money for African famine relief.
00:37To fill in for Bonham, Zeppelin recruited Sheik's Tony Thompson and Genesis' Phil Collins.
00:42Even so, the show was a mess.
00:44Neither Thompson nor Collins had been given much rehearsal time, while Plant had rehearsed
00:48so thoroughly that he'd lost his voice.
00:51Meanwhile, Jimmy Page didn't get a chance to warm up and played the gig on an out-of-tune
00:55guitar.
00:57In 2004, Led Zeppelin refused to allow their substandard performance to be included on
01:02a Live Aid DVD.
01:03Regardless, after two of its members recorded and toured together in the 90s as Page and
01:08Plant, Led Zeppelin reunited once more with Bonham's son, Jason Bonham, behind the kit.
01:13In 2007, the mostly reformed Led Zeppelin played London's O2 Arena as part of a large
01:19bill of acts to pay tribute to Ahmet Erdogan, the deceased head of the band's label Atlantic
01:24Records.
01:25The show raised money for Erdogan's educational foundation.
01:29A great number of Eagles songs are about chillin' out, but life in the fast lane meant the band
01:34didn't enjoy a peaceful, easy feeling with one another.
01:37Tensions in the band were so severe that by the time the group split in 1980, Glenn Frey
01:42and Don Felder had threatened to beat up one another during a concert.
01:46When Don Henley was asked when he'd get back with his fellow Eagles, his usual reply was,
01:52When hell freezes over.
01:53Well, in 1993, their former manager Irving Azoff assembled musicians for an Eagles tribute
01:58album called Common Thread, The Songs of the Eagles, for his label Giant Records.
02:03With an aggressive nod toward the band's influence over modern country music, he recruited major
02:08artists in the genre to cover well-known Eagles songs, including Travis Tritt, who took on
02:13Take It Easy.
02:14That became the lead-off single, necessitating a music video.
02:17Amazingly, five former Eagles showed up for the shoot and spent the day hanging out and
02:22shooting pool on camera.
02:23They didn't actually play any music that day, but they had such a good time that the Eagles
02:28kept the reunion going.
02:29They recorded a live concert special for MTV with an accompanying album amusingly titled
02:34Hell Freezes Over.
02:36And we've had an incredible second act that's actually been going on longer than the first
02:40act.
02:42The Jackson 5's catchy bubblegum pop meets Motown sound proved irresistible to record
02:48buyers, and within a year, they'd scored four No. 1 hits, I Want You Back, ABC, The Love
02:53You Save, and I'll Be There.
02:55The undisputed breakout star of the Jackson 5 was a young Michael Jackson who sang, danced,
03:01and commanded the stage like a seasoned professional.
03:03In 1976, the Jackson 5 departed Motown for Epic Records and brought in Randy Jackson
03:09to replace the exiting Jermaine Jackson, who went on to have a successful solo career throughout
03:13the 70s and 80s with hits like Daddy's Home and Let's Get Serious.
03:18But Michael Jackson's solo work almost completely overshadowed Jermaine's efforts.
03:22In 1979, Michael's Off the Wall was released and went platinum nine times over, spawning
03:28the No. 1 hit to Rock With You and Don't Stop Till You Get Enough.
03:32As big as that was, his follow-up, Thriller, was even bigger.
03:36It won the Album of the Year Grammy, would herald the peak of the music video age, and
03:40would sell a world record 66 million copies.
03:43By 1984, Michael Jackson, known as the King of Pop, was the most famous and celebrated
03:48entertainer on Earth, and his family cashed in by getting the old band back together.
03:52That year, the Jacksons recorded Victory, their first album in four years, and it featured
03:57all six brothers, including Michael and the departed Jermaine.
04:01According to the Los Angeles Times, the tour, in support of Victory, was plagued by financial
04:05and technical problems.
04:08Officially the best-selling rock band ever, the Beatles burst out of Liverpool and captivated
04:12the world between 1962 and 1970, topping the American pop chart a record 20 times.
04:19Creative tensions among the Fab Four led to the band's split in 1970.
04:23All four would enjoy solo careers of varying levels of success, but the world clamored
04:28for a reunion.
04:29It would never come to pass following the December 1980 assassination of John Lennon
04:33at the age of 40 outside of his apartment in New York City.
04:37John Lennon, who was 40, was shot and killed last night outside his luxury apartment in
04:41New York.
04:42Regardless, the remaining Beatles did reunite briefly — and imperfectly — in the mid-90s.
04:47In 1995, the U.K.'s ITV and the U.S.'s ABC aired The Beatles Anthology, a multi-part,
04:55multi-night documentary purporting to tell the complete history of the band.
04:59Three double-disc companion albums hit shelves in 1995 and 1996, and two of them included
05:05what was previously thought impossible — new songs featuring all four Beatles.
05:10Early in the project's development, Yoko Ono gave McCartney demos her late husband recorded
05:15some 15 years earlier.
05:17He liked Free as a Bird and Real Love and convinced Harrison and Starr to record new
05:21vocal and instrumental parts to flesh out the skeletal, muffled songs that Lennon left
05:26behind.
05:27The new tunes helped propel sales of the anthology compilations and were reasonable pop hits,
05:32too.
05:33Free as a Bird hit No. 6 on the Hot 100 and Real Love stalled at No. 11.
05:38Fleetwood Mac's history is marked by several distinct eras.
05:42Starting off as a hard-charging blues rock band in the 1960s, they adopted a California-style
05:47soft rock sound in the mid-1970s with the addition of singer-songwriters Lindsey Buckingham
05:52and Stevie Nicks.
05:54The second Mac album with those two on board, 1977's Rumors, would become one of the best-selling
05:59albums ever, moving 20 million units.
06:02That formation of the group stayed intact part-time in the 80s while members pursued
06:07solo success.
06:09Buckingham left the band entirely in 1987, and a few years later, Nicks and Christine
06:13McVie bowed out of touring duties.
06:16Fleetwood Mac was all but over by 1991.
06:18The classic Mac lineup — Buckingham, Nicks, McVie, and founding members John McVie and
06:23Mick Fleetwood — reconvened for the first time in more than half a decade at the behest
06:28of a president.
06:29Bill Clinton campaigned across the United States in 1992 using Fleetwood Mac's inspiring
06:351977 sing-along, Don't Stop, as his theme song at rallies and events.
06:40Clinton won the presidential election, and when planning his inauguration festivities
06:44for January 1993, he had his people reach out to the core five of Fleetwood Mac to see
06:49if they'd reunite to play Don't Stop at the inaugural gala.
06:53Most of the band approached it as a special one-off, but then got back together in 1997
06:58for The Dance, an MTV concert special and companion record.
07:02By the early 1980s, charismatic, telegenic frontwoman Deborah Harry was so famous that
07:08the band launched a marketing campaign to proclaim that Blondie is a group and not just
07:12a singer with some anonymous backing musicians.
07:15Blondie was indeed a group, and one of the most versatile ever.
07:18Coming out of New York's underground scene, the band scored hits with rap, reggae, disco,
07:23punk, dance, and new wave tunes.
07:26After helping set the tone and course of pop and rock in the 1980s, Blondie disbanded in
07:301982 following a lackluster reception to their sixth album, The Hunter.
07:35That was one problem too many for a band also experiencing creative tensions, money issues,
07:40and guitarist Chris Stein's diagnosis of pymphagus, a rare and serious genetic disease.
07:46After 17 years apart professionally, Blondie reunited in 1999.
07:51The reason?
07:52Money.
07:53But also out of a sense that it's what the world wanted.
07:56Drummer Clem Burke told the Orlando Sentinel,
07:58There was an interest in the band that never really waned.
08:01You'd keep hearing our songs in movies and on the radio.
08:04Blondie embarked on a world tour and released a new album called No Exit, named after the
08:08hellsep played by Jean-Paul Sartre.
08:11According to Burke, the album's name was chosen by the band because,
08:14"...we felt there was no exit from Blondie."
08:17The Monkees weren't originally a real band.
08:20They were assembled, picked more for their acting abilities, to play a rock band on a
08:24sitcom also called The Monkees.
08:26It was a television show about this band that was not successful, that wanted to be The
08:30Beatles, but never was.
08:32The band lobbied to play its own instruments and songs of their own creation, but those
08:36proved unpopular, and the foursome split up shortly after Peter Tork left in 1969.
08:41In 1975, all four members — Michael Nesmith, Davy Jones, Mickey Dolenz, and Tork — discussed
08:48a reunion, as suggested by a Hollywood talent agency.
08:51Tork and Nesmith passed, so Dolenz and Jones teamed up with Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart,
08:56the songwriters behind many Monkees hits, and toured as the great golden hits of The
09:00Monkees.
09:01About a decade later, Nostalgia Package tour promoter David Fishoff approached Tork about
09:06a 20th anniversary Monkees reunion tour.
09:09This time, he was in, and eventually Jones, Dolenz, and Nesmith signed up, though the
09:14latter thought the tour would only consist of a handful of concerts that wouldn't conflict
09:18with his TV production duties.
09:20Explaining why he eventually backed out, Nesmith said,
09:23"...it went from 20 dates to 200 in a matter of weeks."
09:27So what blew up The Monkees?
09:28Well, in early 1986, MTV aired a weekend marathon of every episode of the sitcom.
09:34MTV executive Tom Freston told Rolling Stone,
09:37"...we've never received such a volume of mail.
09:40Almost every date on the tour sold out, necessitating the expansion."
09:44The years of angrily speaking truth to power and calling out injustice through its rap-rock
09:49tunes like Bulls on Parade and Guerrilla Radio, Rage Against the Machine split up following
09:54the release of Renegades in 2000.
09:57Frontman Zac De La Rocha had told the rest of the band that he planned on a two-year
10:01break, but instead released a statement without their foreknowledge announcing that the split
10:05was more of a permanent thing.
10:07The reason, according to De La Rocha, creative differences.
10:10He said at the time,
10:11"...it's not unique among rock bands to find the occasional dissension."
10:15Remaining Ragers, Tom Morello, Tim Comerford, and Brad Wilk formed the mostly apolitical
10:21radio-friendly rock band Audioslave, with Soundgarden's Chris Cornell replacing De La
10:26Rocha on the microphone.
10:28But De La Rocha's hiatus was temporary after all.
10:31In 2008, Rage reunited to play an anti-Iraq War protest show outside the Democratic National
10:37Convention.
10:38A few weeks later, the reformed Rage Against the Machine played a show near the Republican
10:42National Convention, taking the stage in black hoods and prisoner jumpsuits like the ones
10:47worn by inmates at the Guantanamo Bay Prison facility.
10:50A 2020 Rage Against the Machine tour was delayed to 2022 and 2023 because of COVID-19 restrictions.
10:57The Jonas Brothers could have gone down as a bubblegum pop act, three teen idol siblings
11:02who burst onto the scene and then disappeared when the next thing came along.
11:06They signed their first deal with Disney's Hollywood Records in 2007, churned out a couple
11:11of albums, a concert film, the sitcom Jonas, and the TV movie Camp Rock all over the course
11:17of two years.
11:18Largely inactive for a while, Nick, Joe, and Kevin Jonas officially disbanded in 2013.
11:24We feel like it's time that the Jonas Brothers comes to an end."
11:27But the Jonas Brothers reconvened in 2019.
11:30During a concert at Los Angeles' Grammy Museum, Nick Jonas credited the revival to numerous
11:35tweets expressing a desire to see them get back together.
11:38He went on to explain,
11:39"...I started to think about that quite a bit that maybe there's a whole new group of
11:44fans who actually were embarrassed to like the brothers at a certain point in their life
11:48and now can actually just enjoy it because as it happens for all of us, the things we
11:53were embarrassed about when we were younger become the things we love about ourselves
11:57when we're older."
11:58Nick asked Kevin Jonas about a reunion, and he was in right away, while Joe Jonas took
12:03some more convincing.