By prog-rock standards, Peter Gabriel really deserves a place in the rock and roll heavens for showmanship alone. The whole concept of him throwing on different costumes for every one of the band’s songs was unheard-of, and no matter how many capes Rick Wakeman put on, he wasn’t dressing up as a flower or some STD when he was performing. But it turned out that the costumes were also what broke the camel’s back in lots of ways when working with the other members of Genesis.
For a band that wasn’t used to being entertainers, putting Gabriel on the front of a magazine may have done the trick, but it had started to become ridiculous when The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway began. The album itself was already a warped version of Alice in Wonderland in many respects, but since Gabriel had welcomed his daughter into the world, he wasn’t about to roll over for a whole tour, despite the rest of the band wanting him to choose between them and his family.
While everyone in the band looked back at the moment with a bit of regret, Gabriel did admit that it was never going to be an easy decision to walk away, even equating it to telling the band that he wanted to kill their children. But even if he got to work on his own terms in his solo career didn’t mean that he couldn’t churn out the best music that he could once he brought on records like So.
There’s a certain sense of perfection that will always elude musicians once they hit the road. The studio is usually everyone’s comfort zone where they can tweak something until it sounds great, but when you have to rely on doing that every single night, it’s no wonder why so many people bow out when they realise that they can’t do it anymore. But before Steely Dan were out of their prime, they already figured that they had had enough of performing if they couldn’t get the right players behind them.
The early versions of the group were interesting live, but since Donald Fagen and Walter Becker wanted to expand their sound in the studio, it got to the point where they didn’t have enough players to work with. The Royal Scam and Aja are among the most pristine recordings that the 1970s ever spat out, but why would anyone want to go through an entire concert and not get to hear the subtle pieces of the mix that the band spent so much time trying to preserve in the studio.
While Becker has long since passed on, the band did eventually tour intermittently throughout the 2000s thanks to the countless session players that they could now replace with seasoned pros whenever they performed tracks like ‘Peg’ and ‘Do It Again’. The touring lifestyle is already a big chunk of change for anyone to shill out for months on end, but Becker and Fagen knew that their role was best served putting that money into their records than some lighting setup.
Kate Bush’s music almost feels like it’s designed from a massive theatrical production. ‘Wuthering Heights’ was already a cinematic masterpiece before it was even months old, and Hounds of Love was practically a movie playing out in the listener’s mind whenever it came on. But for someone that was as connected to her music as Bush was, the fact that she left touring behind was understandably tragic.
Because it’s not like Bush refused to go on tour outright. She knew that there was potential for her songs to work in that context, but after her first official tour ended in tragedy when a member of the crew was killed, something needed to change. She wasn’t going to live a life where people risked their lives for her art, and the rest of her career would be spent in the studio or playing the odd one-off show.
What makes it even more tragic is how great she sounds in the right context. In the various performances that she played with people like David Gilmour, it’s shocking to think that she has that much power in her voice outside the studio. But despite not having that much to work with, Bush’s live performances are on the same schedule as her album releases. She will decide to do them whenever the inspiration strikes her, and when the day comes, we will all probably be as awestruck as we were when hearing her for the first time.
Every single performer in the world has had to deal with bouts of stage fright now and again. Even if you’ve played countless shows around the world, there’s going to be those few times where people start to get jitters right before they go on or think that they are going to fumble a solo that they’ve played countless times. And as much as Steve Clark thrived on that audience interaction, that kind of fear became his own worst enemy when he started off on Def Leppard’s Hysteria tour.
Clark was already having issues with alcoholism during this time, but Joe Elliott remembered times when he would catch the guitarist trying to break his fingers so he wouldn’t have to go on. But when all that nervous energy was released, we were treated to some of the best guitar hero moments that the 1980s ever spat out, with Clark acting as the punky counterpart to anything that Phil Collins was spitting out on the other side of the stage.
No matter how much the drinking eased the pain back in the day, Clark’s fatal struggles with the bottle is one of the great tragedies in hard rock music. He had the potential to come up with parts that no one else would have imagined, and yet one of the people that he was never able to convince was himself half the time.
All of My Chemical Romance knew how important it was to give the people what they wanted every single night. All of them were massive Queen fans, so they knew that it was better to leave their best work out onstage and leave their own hang-ups at the door. But Gerard Way knew that if he didn’t find a way to pump the brakes after a while, he was going to be coming home in a body bag before long.
The frontman already had struggles with substances, but during the Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge tour, he said that he was dangerously close to taking his own life after one too many drunken nights in a hotel room. While all those feelings were eventually channelled into making The Black Parade, something felt different when he started off the tour for Danger Days and had a kid on the way.
Playing at the Reading Festival was bound to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but Way wasn’t going to put his own physical health in jeopardy for the sake of his children, which eventually led to him folding the last My Chemical Romance project and splitting the band up for a while. But with the band having since reunited, there’s no telling where Way’s muse will lead him should they have anything new in the future.
During the early 1960s, there was no question that every band member needed to tour every record they made. The royalty checks from singles were never going to be enough, and getting your name out to the people only comes from playing shows night after night. That’s bound to take its toll on even the strongest musicians, but for a fragile soul like Brian Wilson, he eventually wanted to hide in the studio and never come out.
He already had to deal with the hell of working around the band’s surf-rock style, but following a nervous breakdown that he had on a plane in between gigs, the band finally found a solution: leave Wilson at home to work on the record. And now with no forced smiles to fake, Wilson was like a kid in a candystore, eventually crafting the greatest records of his career before withdrawing into himself for a few years.
Brian eventually made his way back to the stage when he was on firmer ground, but judging by the shows that he had done for Smile, he finally seemed content with performing his tunes again. He had written a countless number of love songs throughout his career, and those last shows were a chance for him to receive only a fraction of the love that he had given to so many people.
Billy Joel never seemed to know anything else other than touring in his prime. As much as rock and roll can feel like an occupation reserved for the outlaws of the world, Joel always treated his gig like a nine-to-five job, usually making sure that everything went off perfectly whenever he played. But as the clocks kept ticking, priorities started moving around, and Joel knew he would need to take a break from the touring lifestyle after too long.
Despite still going on the road every now and again, Joel said that he severely cut back on the amount of tours that he likes to do. There’s no doubt that he loves singing the songs that will make his fans go wild, but after some tours that involved him playing anywhere between five to six nights in a row, he decided to downsize a handful of his touring practices so that he could spend more time with his family.
And, really, who are we to judge at this point? Joel’s colleague, Elton John, has officially retired from any major tour and has earned every right to live his life happily at home with his husband and children, so we should all be considered lucky that there are people like Joel that are going back up there purely because they love to do it.
Any member of Fleetwood Mac could tell you at least five different stories about why their touring lifestyle was absolute hell back in the day. None of them were exactly getting along when they finished up Rumours, so how would you react if you had to see your former ex every morning in a random hotel before spending two hours with them onstage? Even with those raw wounds, though, Christine McVie decided to quit the road for a much more practical reason than anyone else.
Despite being the rock of the group for so many years, Christine suffered from a crippling fear of flying, which forced her to leave Fleetwood Mac after her work on The Dance. While the rest of the band kept memories of her in spirit whenever they played tracks like ‘Don’t Stop’, there was always going to be a slight asterisk next to some of the material that they played. Everyone knew that they could fill a concert setlist with classics, but the thought of them playing ‘Little Lies’ without Christine would have been unthinkable.
Which made it all the more sweeter when Christine came back towards the end of her life. She had spent years in retirement, but following a few pop-up shows in 2014, the announcement of her reunion with the group was the perfect way to see her close the chapter on her career. She would stay with the band until she eventually passed away in 2022, but it’s nice to know that all of those Mac fans got to hear the soothing sounds of ‘Songbird’ one last time.
George Harrison never lost the love of being in a band. He was always at his best when working off of other people, and even when working with the Traveling Wilburys, Tom Petty remembered ‘The Quiet Beatle’ saying that he never really wanted to be a solo star. He was simply a musician that wanted other like-minded people to play with, but that didn’t always translate to going on tour that often.
While the beginning of Harrison’s career saw him putting on many fabulous concerts, things took a turn after the Dark Horse tour. Despite having the time of his life with people like Billy Preston helping him out, the negative press surrounding his voice gave him a good enough reason to never go out on tour again, eventually quitting the road for decades at a time before finally being coaxed into going back out with Eric Clapton in the 1990s.
But the beauty of that was that every single one of his shows felt like a massive musical event that only few people had the privilege to see. Harrison may have only lived the touring lifestyle for a few years before realising it wasn’t for him, but from the Concert for Bangladesh to working with Carl Perkins in the 1980s, there isn’t one performance where he doesn’t look like he’s having the time of his life.
The entire rise of Nirvana was a lot different than what anyone might have expected. Any band that reaches the big time usually has that moment where they go ‘YIPEE’ and celebrate the fact that they are The Beatles for one brief moment in time. But for Kurt Cobain, that kind of whirlwind was everything that he didn’t want, and he spent most of the In Utero tour paying for it.
Even though Nirvana had one of the biggest albums of the 1990s on their hands with Nevermind, their gigs were selling out quicker than they anticipated, to the point where they were forced off the road because they couldn’t play at their favourite spots. Once they started to hit the stadium circuit for their second record, a lot of the passion that Cobain had for performing was suddenly gone, with the band’s massive choruses not working when put into hockey arenas.
But whereas most artists would quit in the middle of touring and get slapped with legal fees, the real tragedy here is Cobain not being able to find a moment of peace during this tour, delving further into drug abuse before finally entering rehab for his heroin addiction. While his eventual passing wasn’t prompted by the tour by any stretch, it does stand as a sad farewell for a musician that didn’t expect his music to become so big so fast.
