Enemies reunited: the bands who patched it up

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/jun/09/band-reunions-kinks-oasis-libertines

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'You've heard of vampires. Well, Ray sucks me dry of ideas, emotion and creativity. It's toxic for me to be with him." Over the years, there have been few surer ways of extracting an unforgettable quote from Dave Davies than to ask him whether he might assent to a Kinks reunion. Never content to answer with a tactful "No comment", Ray's younger brother has always been ready to hold forth concerning the reasons for their irreconcilability. "I think Ray has been happy for only three years in his life. And those were the three years before I was born," he said.

More often than not, it's been hard not to sympathise. It can't have been easy discovering, as Dave did some time in the 1980s, that Ray's contract had specified that the first three singles taken from any Kinks album must be his compositions. The first Christmas after that discovery must have been quite awkward. One imagines many polite requests to pass the gravy boat down to Ray's end of the table being ignored.

All of which accounts for the surprise that greeted Ray's news this weekend that the pair had met with a view to reforming. Not just a tour, mind, but a proper reunion, with an eye to recording a studio album, something Dave had vowed he'd never do, because "[Ray is] off his head, man. He's, like, spoiled. He doesn't even know what an asshole he is." Unless, of course, he reads that quote. If there's anything truly surprising about the news that Ray and Dave are going to have another crack at being Kinks together, it's the fact that we still allow ourselves to be surprised.

Surely it's just a matter of time before the Gallaghers follow suit? So it seemed last month, when when Liam tweeted "OASIS" in a series of five separate tweets; although that could, of course, have been a hapless attempt to enter his password on his account. Five years previously, Noel infamously quit the band after a punch-up in Paris, in which Liam broke his favourite guitar, and there have been various attempts at rapprochements ever since – most recently, when Noel joked that he would "do anything for half a billion quid. Oasis. Pot Noodle advert. Condoms." But no dates are as yet forthcoming.

The Gallaghers' mother, Peggy, seems to think Oasis will eventually reunite: "They love each other," she said, just as she might have done 35 years ago, when Liam threw Noel's clackers over the garden fence. "They've had fights before and got over it." In the case of the Davies brothers, it took 18 years. By that reckoning, Noel has another 16 years to Sellotape his guitar back together, and carefully Tippex "Noel's Guitar - No Liams Allowed" on it, before booking the O2.

The heady power of being in a band is the invisible elastic that will, almost always, eventually prompt one musician to pick up the phone to their estranged colleague and ask them if, hey, they fancy getting back together. Because however agonising it was back then, (a) you're still the only people with that shared experience (no one else quite understands you like an old bandmate); (b) a reunion makes your audience happy in a way your solo stuff rarely does; and, most compellingly, (c) bitch gotta make rent.

It seems there is no inter-band bust-up so awful that cannot be mended by the judicious bringing to bear of (a), (b) and (c). After a decade of substance abuse and serial infidelity, the Eagles had descended into a complex but bitter intra-band rivalry measured out in the amount of drugs ingested and groupies procured, and brought to a head by niggling personal habits. "No one else can suck the fun out of a room," said Glenn Frey about Don Henley – possibly referring to the drummer's habit of penning letters to the studio's maid with specific instructions on how the toilet paper should be folded(the little pink flowers needed to be folded on the undersides of the sheets, this being how they did it in Hotel California presumably). As the 70s drew to a close, the rivalries intensified. Don Felder: "I bought my wife Susan a beautiful kimono, hand-embroidered, in heavy material. Don Henley bought 20."

Before a concert in Long Beach, California, tensions between Felder and Frey came to a head when Felder took umbrage at the backstage presence of Frey's politician friends. The pair exchanged insults on stage ("I'm gonna kill you", "Bring it on, asshole!"). After the gig, Felder vented his rage on his guitar – only for Frey to issue the fabulously catty riposte: "Typical of you to break your cheapest guitar." A week later, inevitably, the Eagles were no more. The band, of course, would drily name their reunion tour Hell Freezes Over – an allusion to Henley's stock answer when asked if there was any likelihood of the band reforming. No one was pretending the Eagles were best buddies once again. We're all a little older and more pragmatic. At the beginning, bands grow out of friendship; and at the end, well, bands grow out of those friendships.

With their gor-blimey brand of sybaritic smack skiffle, the Libertines built an entire myth out of the camaraderie between Pete Doherty and Carl Barât. Songs like What Became of the Likely Lads? were predicated on it. Sadly, so was Doherty's addiction to class A drugs – apparently a contributory factor in his decision to burgle Barât's flat in 2003, making off with Barât's guitar, laptop and harmonica. Doherty's need for drugs and the money to buy drugs appears to be the one thing that has kept him going long enough to head the Libertines' reunion alongside Spiritualized ("affectionately billed as Smackstock") in Hyde Park next month.

Some reunions are delayed by band members' solo careers. On the one hand, they might be experiencing more success than they did in their original bands. On the other, they might – like Ian Brown of the Stone Roses – use their solo careers to write songs castigating the very idea of a reunion. "Everything is in its place and all is of its time," sang the sometime Stone Roses frontman on 2009 solo effort How High. "I think it's so funny I left you so far behind/ You might have another story but I can see your smile/ Money it don't buy you love, redemption, hope or style." Two years later, with an unforeseeably large divorce settlement hanging over him, Brown capitulated to the very Stone Roses reunion he had refused to consider for the previous 15 years, and got back on stage with a forgiving John Squire.

The sobering reality that underpins most high-profile band rapprochements is that time alone cannot heal all wounds. When the five members of Spandau Ballet put their lawsuits behind them and reunited, sure, they remembered how much they loved each other, but it took the incentive of a lucrative tour to get them into that room. Money, in a way, is also at the heart of Pink Floyd's continuing limbo. Roger Waters has indicated on several occasions that he would like to reform the band – but, of course, back in the 80s when Roger Waters felt he was the brand, that was a privilege he signed away to David Gilmour. If Gilmour needed the money, perhaps he might negotiate, but of course the group's guitarist never needs to work again.

And money, of course, probably has everything to do with the reason that U2, Coldplay, Radiohead and Elbow – some of our most harmoniously non-feuding bands – have been together for a combined total of over 100 years. With the profits split equal ways, irrespective of who does what, the rough is considerably easier to take with the smooth. In other words, when a member of Radiohead gets the email from Thom Yorke saying the next album will be made exclusively with Auto-Tuned whale sonar samples, well, at least the next Ocado order is covered.