For some bands, all it takes is a few tweets to lead to a reunion.
For others, it takes presidential intervention.
Stay tuned to find out what brought these groups back together after a big break up!
After dominating the 1970s with multi-platinum albums and classic rock staples like "Stairway
to Heaven" and "Black Dog," Led Zeppelin broke up in 1980 following the death of drummer
John Bonham.
The surviving members — Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, and John Paul Jones — would reunite
less than five years later to perform on the Philadelphia stage at Live Aid in 1985, which
was staged to raise money for African famine relief.
To fill in for Bonham, Zeppelin recruited Chic's Tony Thompson and Genesis's Phil Collins.
Even so, the show was a mess.
Neither Thompson nor Collins had been given much rehearsal time, while Plant had rehearsed
so thoroughly that he'd lost his voice.
Meanwhile, Jimmy Page didn't get a chance to warm up and played the gig on an out-of-tune
guitar.
In 2004, Led Zeppelin refused to allow their "sub-standard" performance to be included
on a Live Aid DVD.
Regardless, after two of its members recorded and toured together in the '90s as Page and
Plant, Led Zeppelin reunited once more with Bonham's son, Jason Bonham, behind the kit.
In 2007, the mostly reformed Led Zeppelin played London's O2 Arena as part of a large
bill of acts to pay tribute to Ahmet Ertegun — the deceased head of the band's label,
Atlantic Records.
The show raised money for Ertegun's educational foundation.
A great number of Eagles songs are about chilling out.
But life in the fast lane meant the band didn't enjoy a "Peaceful Easy Feeling" with one another.
Tensions in the band were so severe that by the time the group split in 1980, Glenn Frey
and Don Felder had threatened to beat up one another during a concert.
When Don Henley was asked when he'd get back with his fellow Eagles, his usual reply was:
"When hell freezes over."
Well, in 1993, their former manager, Irving Azoff, assembled musicians for an Eagles tribute
album called "Common Thread: The Songs of the Eagles" for his label, Giant Records.
With an aggressive nod toward the band's influence over modern country music, he recruited major
artists in that genre to cover well-known Eagles songs, including Travis Tritt, who
took on "Take it Easy."
That became the leadoff single, necessitating a music video.
Amazingly, five former Eagles showed up for the shoot and spent the day hanging out and
shooting pool on camera.
They didn't actually play any music that day, but they had such a good time that the Eagles
kept the reunion going.
They recorded a live concert special for MTV with an accompanying album amusingly titled
Hell Freezes Over.
"And we've had an incredible second act.
It's actually been going on longer than the first act."
The Jackson 5's catchy, bubblegum pop-meets-Motown sound proved irresistible to record buyers,
and within a year, they'd scored four #1 hits: "I Want You Back," "ABC," "The Love You Save,"
and "I'll Be There."
The undisputed breakout star of the Jackson 5 was a young Michael Jackson, who sang, danced,
and commanded the stage like a seasoned professional.
In 1976, the Jackson 5 departed Motown for Epic Records and brought in Randy Jackson
to replace the exiting Jermaine Jackson, who went on to have a successful solo career throughout
the '70s and '80s with hits like "Daddy's Home" and "Let's Get Serious."
But Michael Jackson's solo work almost completely overshadowed Jermaine's efforts.
In 1979, Michael's Off the Wall was released and went platinum nine times over, spawning
the #1 hits "Rock With You" and "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough."
As big as that was, his follow-up, Thriller, was even bigger.
It won the Album of the Year Grammy, would herald the peak of the music video age, and
would sell a world record 66 million copies.
By 1984, Michael Jackson, known as the "King of Pop," was the most famous and celebrated
entertainer on Earth, and his family cashed in by getting the old band back together.
That year, the Jacksons recorded Victory — their first album in four years — and it featured
all six brothers, including Michael and the departed Jermaine.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the tour in support of Victory was plagued by financial
and technical problems.
Officially the best-selling rock band ever, the Beatles burst out of Liverpool and captivated
the world between 1962 and 1970, topping the American pop chart a record 20 times.
Creative tensions among the Fab Four led to the band's split in 1970.
All four would enjoy solo careers of varying levels of success, but the world clamored
for a reunion.
It would never come to pass following the December 1980 assassination of John Lennon
at the age of 40 outside of his apartment in New York City.
"John Lennon, who was 40, was shot and killed last night outside of his luxury apartment
in New York."
Regardless, the remaining Beatles did reunite briefly — and imperfectly — in the mid-'90s.
In 1995, the U.K.'s ITV and the U.S.'s ABC aired The Beatles Anthology: a multi-part,
multi-night documentary purporting to tell the complete history of the band.
Three double-disc companion albums hit shelves in 1995 and 1996, and two of them included
what was previously thought impossible: new songs featuring all four Beatles.
Early in the project's development, Yoko Ono gave McCartney demos her late husband recorded
some 15 years earlier.
He liked "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love" and convinced Harrison and Starr to record
new vocal and instrumental parts to flesh out the skeletal, muffled songs that Lennon
left behind.
The new tunes helped propel sales of the Anthology compilations and were reasonable pop hits,
too — "Free as a Bird" hit #6 on the Hot 100 and "Real Love" stalled at #11.
Fleetwood Mac's history is marked by several distinct eras.
Starting off as a hard-charging blues-rock band in the 1960s, they adopted a California-style
soft rock sound in the mid-1970s with the addition of singer-songwriters Lindsay Buckingham
and Stevie Nicks.
The second Mac album with those two on board — 1977's Rumors — would become one of
the best-selling albums ever, moving 20 million units.
That formation of the group stayed intact part-time in the '80s while members pursued
solo success.
Buckingham left the band entirely in 1987, and a few years later, Nicks and Christine
McVie bowed out of touring duties.
Fleetwood Mac was all but over by 1991.
That classic Mac lineup — Buckingham, Nicks, McVie, and founding members John McVie and
Mick Fleetwood — reconvened for the first time in more than a half-decade at the behest
of a president.
Bill Clinton campaigned across the United States in 1992 using Fleetwood Mac's inspiring
1977 singalong "Don't Stop" as his theme song at rallies and events.
Clinton won the presidential election, and when planning his inauguration festivities
for January 1993, he had his people reach out to the core five of Fleetwood Mac to see
if they'd reunite to play "Don't Stop" at the Inaugural Gala.
Most of the band approached it as a special one-off but then got back together in 1997
for The Dance, an MTV concert special and companion record.
By the early 1980s, charismatic, telegenic frontwoman Deborah Harry was so famous that
the band launched a marketing campaign to proclaim that "Blondie is a group" and not
just a singer with some anonymous backing musicians.
Blondie was indeed a group, and one of the most versatile ever.
Coming out of New York's underground scene, the band scored hits with rap, reggae, disco,
punk, dance, and New Wave tunes.
After helping set the tone and course of pop and rock in the 1980s, Blondie disbanded in
1982 following a lackluster reception to their sixth album The Hunter.
That was one problem too many for a band also experiencing creative tensions, money issues,
and guitarist Chris Stein's diagnosis of pemphigus — a rare and serious genetic disease.
After 17 years apart professionally, Blondie reunited in 1999.
The reason: money.
But also out of a sense that it's what the world wanted.
Drummer Clem Burke told the Orlando Sentinel:
"There was an interest in the band that never really waned.
You'd keep hearing our songs in movies and on the radio."
Blondie embarked on a world tour and released a new album called No Exit — named after
the hell-set play by Jean-Paul Sartre.
According to Burke, the album's name was chosen by the band because:
"We felt there was no exit from Blondie."
The Monkees weren't originally a real band.
They were assembled, picked more for their acting abilities to play a rock band on a
sitcom also called The Monkees.
"It was a television show about this band that was not successful, that wanted to be
The Beatles, but never was."
The band lobbied to play its own instruments and songs of their own creation.
But those proved unpopular, and the foursome split up shortly after Peter Tork left in
1969.
In 1975, all four members — Michael Nesmith, Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, and Tork — discussed
a reunion, as suggested by a Hollywood talent agency.
Tork and Nesmith passed, so Dolenz and Jones teamed up with Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart
— the songwriters behind many Monkees hits — and toured as The Great Golden Hits of
the Monkees.
About a decade later, nostalgia package tour promoter David Fishof approached Tork about
a 20th anniversary Monkees reunion tour.
This time, he was in, and eventually Jones, Dolenz, and Nesmith signed up — though the
latter thought the tour would only consist of a handful of concerts that wouldn't conflict
with his TV production duties.
Explaining why he eventually backed out, Nesmith said:
"It went from 20 dates to 200 in a matter of weeks."
So, what blew up the Monkees?
Well, in early 1986, MTV aired a weekend marathon of every episode of the sitcom.
MTV executive Tom Freston told Rolling Stone:
"We've never received such a volume of mail."
Almost every date on the tour sold out, necessitating the expansion.
After years of angrily speaking truth to power and calling out injustice through its rap-rock
tunes like "Bulls on Parade" and "Guerrilla Radio," Rage Against the Machine split up
following the release of Renegades in 2000.
Frontman Zack de la Rocha had told the rest of the band that he planned on a 2-year break,
but instead released a statement without their foreknowledge announcing that the split was
more of a permanent thing.
The reason, according to de la Rocha: creative differences.
He said at the time:
"It's not unique among rock bands to find the occasional dissension."
Remaining Ragers Tom Morello, Tim Commerford, and Brad Wilk formed the mostly apolitical,
radio-friendly rock band Audioslave, with Soundgarden's Chris Cornell replacing de la
Rocha on the microphone.
But De La Rocha's hiatus was temporary after all.
In 2008, Rage reunited to play an anti-Iraq War protest show outside the Democratic National
Convention.
Two weeks later, the reformed Rage Against the Machine played a show near the Republican
National Convention, taking the stage in black hoods and prisoner jumpsuits like the ones
worn by inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison facility.
A 2020 Rage Against the Machine tour was delayed to 2022 and 2023 because of COVID-19 restrictions.
The Jonas Brothers could have gone down as a bubblegum pop act — three teen idol siblings
who burst onto the scene and then disappeared when the next thing came along.
They signed their first deal with Disney's Hollywood Records in 2007, churned out a couple
of albums, a concert film, the sitcom JONAS, and the TV movie Camp Rock all over the course
of two years.
Largely inactive for a while, Nick, Joe, and Kevin Jonas officially disbanded in 2013.
"We feel like it's time that the Jonas Brothers comes to an end."
But the Jonas Brothers reconvened in 2019.
During a concert at Los Angeles' Grammy Museum, Nick Jonas credited the revival to numerous
tweets expressing a desire to see them get back together.
He went on to explain:
"I started to think about that quite a bit that maybe there's a whole new group of fans
who actually were embarrassed to like the Brothers at a certain point in their life
and now can actually just enjoy it because as it happens for all of us, the things we
were embarrassed about when we were younger become the things we love about ourselves
when we're older."
Nick asked Kevin Jonas about a reunion, and he was in right away, while Joe Jonas took
some more convincing.
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