One wouldn’t rock from her rocker, another couldn’t stand the sound of music. These
were some of the biggest names in rock music, so why did they leave the limelight?
The White Stripes rose to prominence in the early 2000s with an unlikely strategy:
playing loud, trashy, straightforward garage rock, but doing it really,
really well. The duo combined minimal elements to create their special formula: the bluesy,
flamboyant vocals and guitar work of frontman Jack, and the steadfastly simple drumming of Meg.
The pair were married until 2000, but even after their divorce, they kept turning out smash albums.
Shortly after the release of 2007's Icky Thump, it was reported that Meg was dealing with anxiety,
which had begun to affect her ability to perform. As an official statement from the band put it,
"Meg White is suffering from acute anxiety and is unable to travel at this time."
The demands of being an international rock star may have been a factor,
as well as Meg's natural tendency to introversion. Either way, Icky Thump ended up being the White
Stripes' swan song. While Jack has continued to record and perform, Meg simply fell out of
the spotlight and never really resurfaced. In 2014, Jack told Rolling Stone that he
practically never talked to his former bandmate, and neither did anyone else, so far as he knew.
Depending upon your age, you probably know Grace Slick as
either the vocalist for Jefferson Airplane, or its revamped version Jefferson Starship,
or the further revamped version known simply as Starship. Slick's distinctly recognizable
voice was a fixture of popular music for the better part of two decades, but around 1989,
she pretty much disappeared, and the reason is about as rock 'n' roll as it gets.
According to Slick herself, she retired at the age of 50 because you just shouldn't
rock anymore at a certain age. As she explained in a 2015 interview with WENN,
"There's something about old people singing rock
'n roll lyrics that bothers me — it just doesn't match."
She also expressed a distaste for her work from the 80s, as she admitted,
"I'm lying if I say 'Nothing's gonna stop us now' – a truck will stop you instantly,
and 52 percent of people who get together get a divorce. What do you mean,
‘Nothing’s gonna stop us now’? It’s bulls---. And there’s no city built on rock 'n' roll."
But Slick is still doing pretty well for herself. She's now a painter who has a special affinity
for scenes from Alice in Wonderland, and her works have sold for up to $30,000.
Queen was a band full of interesting characters. There was of course lead singer Freddie Mercury,
as well as guitarist Brian May, and drummer Roger Taylor. And then there was John Deacon,
who played the bass. As was somewhat typical of rock bassists, Deacon was the quiet one,
the guy who stood there and simply laid down a solid rhythm section. But behind the scenes,
he contributed in other important ways, co-writing such hits as "Stone Cold
Crazy," "You're My Best Friend," and "Another One Bites the Dust."
Mercury passed away in 1991, which hit Deacon particularly hard. As
May revealed in a 2017 interview with The Times,
Deacon began to fade away from Queen pretty much immediately afterward. As May put it,
"He found [Mercury's death] incredibly hard to process to
the point where actually playing with us made it more difficult."
Deacon had also been handling the band's finances since the mid-70s,
and although he now shuns the limelight, he continues to fill
that role for his old friends. In a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone, May noted,
"John Deacon is still John Deacon. We don't undertake
anything financial without talking to him."
Of all the iconic bands of the 60s, Sly and the Family Stone is perhaps the most difficult to
classify. They played a blend of pretty much every form of popular music that had existed
to that point, from rock to R&B to jazz. But the strongest flavor in their brew was probably funk,
which they're often credited with bringing to the mainstream. After a successful run in the late
60s and early 70s, the band's fortunes began to wane, and their final album was released in 1982.
Like many of his contemporaries, frontman Sly Stone was a titanic consumer of drugs.
He was essentially forced into retirement by his habits after his induction into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. He then made only sporadic public appearances in the
following years. In 2011, he was back in the spotlight for an unfortunate reason,
as he was reportedly living out of a van in Los Angeles. He appears to have eventually
gotten back on track, as it was reported in 2023 that he was clean, working on a memoir,
and participating in a documentary about his life to be directed by Questlove.
There was a time in the late 60s when pretty much every singer-songwriter
wanted to be Bob Dylan. That is, everyone except Joni Mitchell,
who was intent on blazing her own trail in a male-dominated field. Her deeply personal
brand of songwriting resonated with fans and peers alike, and while she only ever
scored one top ten hit, her influence is incalculable. In addition to her own songs,
she's also penned hits for the likes of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, as well as Judy Collins.
"She sang me 'Both Sides Now.'" "Wow."
"And I said, 'Oh my god, I'll be right over.'"
Mitchell walked away from music in the late 90s, for a reason that should surprise no one:
she'd grown sick and tired of the music industry and its treatment of
genuine artists, especially women. As she told The Guardian in 2007,
"I came to hate music. I listened only to talk shows for 10 years."
Complicating any hope of a comeback was a brain aneurysm that Mitchell suffered in 2015,
after which she lost the ability to play guitar. Fortunately,
she relearned that skill by watching old videos of herself, and in 2022,
she delighted fans with a surprise performance at the Newport Folk Festival.
Few debut albums have made a bigger impact in music history than Guns N' Roses' 1987 release
Appetite for Destruction. Their scruffy look and aggressive sound were completely different from
their hair metal peers. Appetite would ultimately become one of the biggest albums of the decade,
with more than 18 million copies sold in the US alone as of 2023.
The band's 1991 follow-ups, Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II,
likewise sold like hotcakes, which was a bit of an issue for guitarist Izzy Stradlin. Stradlin was
becoming increasingly disillusioned by frontman Axl Rose's ego and his bandmates' voracious
drug consumption. So in the middle of a tour in 1991, he up and quit and then never looked back.
In 2016, LA Weekly attempted to catch up with Stradlin at his home in Ojai County,
California, but they literally couldn't find him. His last public performance
to date was as a guest at an Aerosmith concert in 2012. And at least for now,
he seems perfectly content to remain completely out of the spotlight.
The Smashing Pumpkins were something of a rarity in the early 90s as a non-grunge rock band that
were actually quite successful. Their 1993 album Siamese Dream went platinum four times over,
and 1995's Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness more than doubled that feat. Songwriter and
vocalist Billy Corgan anchored the band along with guitarist James Iha and bassist D'Arcy
Wretzky. But then in 1999, Wretzky was either fired or she quit, depending upon whom you ask.
In a 2004 post on his LiveJournal blog, Corgan claimed that Wretzky was a drug addict who refused
to get help. Wretzky left the world of music to live on a farm with her horses, and she declined
to fire back at Corgan's claims until 2018, when her former bandmates declared that they'd
been trying to get her to reunite with them for years. In an interview with Alternative Nation,
she insisted that this was a bald-faced lie, that she and Corgan never got along,
and that her entire time in the band was nightmarish. She also noted that Corgan
had a habit of throwing tantrums and that she would just laugh at him, while adding,
"When Billy fired me, James went along with him, because he said he
thought that’s what I wanted. James just needs to grow a spine, Jesus."
"It's like (sighs) I don't know."
In the 80s and 90s, R.E.M. were the pioneers of the burgeoning genre of alternative rock.
With their 1987 release Document and its hit single "The One I Love," the
band would evolve into superstars. Over the ensuing quarter-century,
R.E.M. displayed remarkable resilience, even soldiering on after drummer Bill Berry suffered
a career-ending double aneurysm in 1995. But then in 2011, they decided to call it quits.
In a statement announcing the breakup, bassist Mike Mills said that their final
album, Collapse Into Now, felt like a natural stopping point, while noting,
"There's no disharmony here, no falling-outs,
no lawyers squaring off [...] The time just feels right."
While R.E.M. had always loved writing and recording music, they developed a
burning hatred for the industry. As guitarist Peter Buck explained to Rolling Stone in 2016,
"It was the money, the politics, having to meet new people 24 hours a day, not being in charge
of my own decisions. I hate the business, and I didn't want to have anything to do with it."
"We broke up at the right time for the right seasons."
In the early 80s, Billy Squier was a titan of rock radio. His brand of anthemic arena hits
were tailor-made for the period, and he landed in the top 20 with "The Stroke" and "Rock Me Tonite,"
the latter of whose video got plenty of airtime on MTV. Unfortunately, this was a rare case in which
the heavy MTV exposure was not a boon to a rock star's career, but instead a massive liability.
In the book I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution,
music journalists Rob Tannenbaum and Craig Marks devote an entire chapter to the "Rock Me Tonite"
video. It featured Squier vamping around in a pink tank-top, rolling around in satin sheets,
and generally behaving in a manner that wasn't considered to be befitting of a rock god. Squier
pretty much placed the blame on the video for tanking his career. And while he soldiered on
for close to another decade, the final straw came in 1993, when an incoming executive at his label,
Capitol Records, flatly stated his intention to bury Squier's upcoming record Tell the
Truth. He released one more album in 1998, but no more since then.
Linda Ronstadt is both country music and rock and roll royalty. She had a jaw-dropping run
of five straight platinum albums in the 70s, and she's also won 11 Grammys, both as a solo
artist and for her various collaborations. She could doubtless still bring fans out in
droves to hear her perform even today, but unfortunately, that's no longer an option.
That's because Ronstadt has been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, which has completely robbed
her of her once-powerful singing voice. That diagnosis was later revised to a condition
known as progressive supranuclear palsy, but as far as any chance of performing goes,
the change made no difference. In a 2019 conversation with The New Yorker,
she conceded that while she enjoyed having friends play music in her living room,
she wasn't terribly psyched about no longer being able to sing. As she put it,
"I've just accepted it. There's absolutely nothing I can do."
"Do you have a lot of regrets?" "A few. Not a lot."
When you've been one of the biggest bands in the world for six decades like the Rolling Stones,
every member tends to develop a bit of mythology. That's certainly true
of frontman Mick Jagger and lead guitarist Keith Richards. But as
for original bassist Bill Wyman, well, there's an exception to every rule.
Wyman left the band amicably in 1992 after over 30 years. Then in 2008, he told The Telegraph
that he was simply tired of hauling out the same old songs after all that time, and that
he was enjoying the more low-key nature of his post-Stones band, the Rhythm Kings. In 2019,
he told the Los Angeles Times that he'd remained friends with his Stones bandmates, while adding,
"We still send each other birthday and Christmas presents. We see each other socially when it's
possible. It's a family thing, although it sounds corny. It's not business anymore."