released 12 albums in seven years and changed music forever, while released three of their greatest albums in 1969 alone. If rock’s taught us anything, it’s that momentum is king. Pause, and the creative juices evaporate.
Break up, you might recover. To celebrate the MC5 releasing fourth album 53 years after their third, 1971's – all the original members were gone by the time it saw the light of day – here are ten more acts who ignored such wisdom and took their own sweet goddamn time. More power to them.
English rock legends had been inactive in the studio since 1982’s and lost bassist to a cocaine-induced heart attack in 2002. But by 2006 band mainstays guitarist Pete Townshend and vocalist Roger Daltrey were back in action with an eleventh studio album, . It featured nine standalone songs, together with 10 pieces that formed a “mini-opera” titled , and ably showed that — despite just 11 studio albums in 50 years — there’s still life in the old dog yet.
Lumped in with new wave when they first appeared in 1978, Boston outfit were much more of a quirky pop/rock band at heart. Hits like and made the group a fortune, but 1987’s album saw their commercial popularity nosedive. Time for a break.
Bassist Ben Orr sadly died in 2000, but the four remaining band members reunited for a seventh album, , in 2011. There’s been no further material released since, and Rik Ocasek's death in 2019 means there almost certainly won't be. lived the ‘70s West Coast dream .