10 Rock Band Reunions That REALLY Didn't Work

Time is not always kind to some of our favorite artists. Even though you might exist like a band of brothers every time you take to the stage, it’s hard being with the same people over and over again and hoping to strike the same magic that you had at the beginning of your career. It’s the nature of the beast for bands to grow apart, but it’s also a little bit worse to see them try to put things back together.

As much as all of us may have gotten a nostalgia buzz from every one of these albums when they came out, they have not really held up to the standards that each of these acts had set up for themselves. In between trying to get every band member on the same page or making sure that everyone was still on speaking terms, each of these albums feels like trying to make lightning strike twice in the exact same location and coming up short.

That’s not to say that every one of these albums are absolute trash or anything. Across all of these records, there are at least a handful of songs that come close to capturing what they were capable of in their heyday, but more often than not the whole thing ends up looking way too shallow for anyone to really take seriously. Rock and roll is supposed to be all about passion, but most of these records felt like they were just forced into existence half the time.

The entire appeal of the Eagles when they were first starting out was just how laid back they were from their contemporaries. At the height of the political unrest of the '70s and people still up in arms about the Vietnam War, songs like Take It Easy and Peaceful Easy Feeling gave us the confidence that everything was going to work out. While it eventually did, we had to continue on without the Eagles coming with us.

Or did we? During the '80s, the band originally fell out pretty hard because of a sparring session that happened onstage between Don Felder and Glenn Frey, where Felder was getting frustrated about not getting paid. Things had seemed to smooth over around the '90s though, with the arrival of classic rock radio playing the band's music 24/7 and exposing a whole new generation to Hotel California.

As if the title wasn't a dead giveaway, Hell Freezes Over just points to how unlikely this was to happen, but it wasn't going to stay happy for long. In between a handful of decent tracks added to what is essentially a live album, the old habits came creeping back in again, as Felder got more frustrated about not getting an equal share of the royalties from every show and quitting the band again before they could reach a proper agreement. You can call it unfair if you wanted to, but when you have as many classics as Don Henley and Glenn Frey have under their belt, you can definitely tell who's really steering the ship.