3 Rock Reunions that Didn’t Last

It’s hard to keep a band together.

Even as rock musicians age and mellow, sometimes it’s still impossible to keep the tensions at bay. Fans hope for reunions, and when they arrive, spend a lot of money on travel and tickets to revisit their youth.

An Oasis reunion seemed unlikely, but the Gallagher brothers are back together and selling out stadiums in minutes. Also, Morrissey made recent noises about a possible Smiths reunion, but guitarist Johnny Marr publicly shot down the rumors. The singer accused Marr of ignoring reunion offers. But Marr clarified, “I said no.”

So, if your favorite band has reunited, enjoy it before the infighting begins. Here are three rock reunions that didn’t last.

Save the complaint for a party conversation.

Jane’s Addiction

Jane’s Addiction ushered in the alternative rock era with two albums, Nothing’s Shocking (1988) and Ritual de lo Habitual (1990). In 1991, at the height of their success, the original lineup of vocalist Perry Farrell, bassist Eric Avery, guitarist Dave Navarro, and drummer Stephen Perkins imploded.

The band reformed and existed without Avery, including a brief period with Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. But Avery is the band’s musical foundation, and each incarnation existed only as a shadow of the classic lineup. Avery returned in 2009 for a tour with Nine Inch Nails but quit when the tour ended.

When Avery returned in 2023, Navarro was sidelined as he battled long COVID. Navarro explained, too, that he’d stopped playing guitar following the death of his close friend and bandmate Taylor Hawkins. (Hawkins and Navarro had formed NHC, featuring Avery’s replacement in Jane’s Addiction, Chris Chaney.)

Then, in 2024, Navarro returned, and the classic Jane’s Addiction lineup hit the road. Just four months into the reunion tour and with a new album on the way, everything ended in Boston when Farrell attacked Navarro on stage. When a new Jane’s Addiction song landed on streaming platforms on September 18, Navarro posted to his Instagram account, “…here is the new Jane’s song, True Love, in [its] entirety. I am proud of the work we did on this song but I am equally saddened by the fact that you will likely never hear it live.”

Van Halen with Sammy Hagar

The Sammy or Dave debates among Van Halen die-hards is a contentious one. However, following the departure of David Lee Roth, Van Halen continued their extraordinary success with Sammy Hagar. Ten years later, Hagar would leave the band, too.

After completing a world tour in 1995, Van Halen contributed “Humans Being” to the Twister soundtrack. The soundtrack sessions were tense and the exhausted bandmates desperately needed time away from each other. Instead, they kept working until it couldn’t work any longer. According to Hagar, one day Eddie Van Halen called and told the singer to return to being a solo artist. Eddie also mentioned they were getting Roth back in the band. Yet, the brief reunion with Roth ended after the 1996 MTV Video Music Awards. Next came Van Halen III and a short-lived experiment with Gary Cherone from Extreme.

Hagar returned in 2004, but the tour was doomed due to Eddie’s alcohol addiction. The tour lasted only five months, and when it finished, Hagar didn’t speak to Eddie again until years later, toward the end of Eddie’s life. The legendary guitarist died in 2020.

The Verve

The Verve had already broken up once before they released their 1997 masterpiece Urban Hymns. Depending on how you look at it, “Bitter Sweet Symphony” was either the last Britpop anthem or the first post-Britpop anthem. The dividing line doesn’t matter because by 1999, The Verve were finished.

The Wigan, England, band’s original lineup of Richard Ashcroft, Nick McCabe, Simon Jones, and Peter Salisbury had always existed on rocky ground. Their hazy and bombastic jams echoed the tumult of the drugs and ego that defined them.

Rock history is full of conflicts between big-personality singers and introverted guitarists. In Britain, you can find examples of this: The Smiths’ Morrissey and Marr, The Stone Roses’ Ian Brown and John Squire, and Suede’s Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler. Ashcroft began the Urban Hymns sessions as a solo project but quickly realized he needed McCabe. It worked. “Bitter Sweet Symphony” became one of the decade’s biggest hits. Following The Verve’s breakup in 1999, Ashcroft released a series of solo albums but struggled to recapture the magic of his former band.

In 2007, the BBC’s Jo Whiley announced The Verve had reunited. They played major festivals including Coachella and Glastonbury and released a new single, “Love Is Noise,” the next year. The band’s fourth and final studio album, Forth, arrived in 2008 and reached No. 1 in the UK. The next year, The Verve broke up for the third time.

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