The centuries will pass, civilisations will fall, continents will collide, and still bands will be breaking up because of ‘musical differences’.
The centuries will pass, civilisations will fall, continents will collide, and still bands will be breaking up because of ‘musical differences’. The latest to go is Supergrass, cheeky mop-topped perpetrators of ‘Alright’ all those years ago, who leave us after six albums of increasing maturity and range but gradually decreasing sales. I’m not quite sure why, but I always had the impression that Supergrass were one of those very short bands, brought together not just by musical compatibility but also by the fact that you could fit them all into a decent-sized holdall. (The Small Faces weren’t called that because they were big. The Rolling Stones are even tinier than they used to be. AC/DC could have enjoyed lucrative parallel careers as glove puppets, and the original Oasis were all about the same size as the similarly named soft-drink can.) But I now realise that I have never seen Supergrass live, and they may all dwarf Jarvis Cocker for all I know. It was their youthful demeanour that told against them in the end. You think you can escape your gilded youth, if only by getting older, but it didn’t work for them.
Twenty or thirty years ago, ‘musical differences’ often seemed to be the product of overwhelming success. The better the band did, the more they came to hate each other. The Eagles said they would reform ‘when hell freezes over’. Their comeback album in 1999 was entitled Hell Freezes Over. But later on bands became brands, most of which are far more commercially valuable than the mere individuals who shelter beneath them. For a band-brand to split up now seems bold, even foolhardy, to the extent that you almost admire them for doing so.
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