A headline I saw today claiming Barbra Streisand was coming out of ‘retirement’ to do some fundraisers got me thinking…has any music star ever retired for good? Or quit the business when they were still viable and not washed up. The closest example I can think of is Syd Barrett, but he was suffering a breakdown and didn’t simply decide to bow out.
And I say “star” to distinguish from someone once famous who no longer performs because their career is out of gas. Vanilla Ice or Dexy’s Midnight Runners cannot claim to be retired!
I was going through some old magazines once, and one mentioned a “retirement” tour that Frank Sinatra held in the early 1970’s…obviously he didn’t stay retired since I remember him duetting with Bono in the early 1990s.
Also there was John Lennon’s famous retirement, which lasted about 5 years…and I even remember Ozzy Ozbourne’s “retirement tour”. And there is Celine Dion’s ‘retirement’, and so on. No one really seems to stay gone if they can still sell records though.
I’m not as cynical as you; I think that making music, good music, and performing it for a large group of people, is one of the coolest things a person can do. I believe that it’s for that reason, rather than financial, that musicians keep coming back to the stage/studio.
You’re right, they “retire” until they run out of money and then try to sneak back into the game while no one is looking. Rapper Too Short made an album in like 1995 and said all over it how it was his “last album.” It didn’t take him long to run out of money and come crawling back. Last I heard (and this might’ve been anecdotal, can anyone confirm it?) KISS was going to get sued if they did one more “farewell” tour.
I don’t mean to sound cynical, I really wonder if anyone has been able to quit at the top of their game in music- Cary Grant style. It seems like no one can.
I don’t know if Captain Beefheart is famous enough to qualify, but he and his Magic Band called it a day in 1982 with Ice Cream For Crow, an album that gets four stars from “The Rolling Stone Album Guide.”
No, Cat Stevens is still making albums. I saw a story on VH1 (or somewhere) on him. He talked to some religious leaders (if my memory serves) and they encouraged him to start creating music again, as long as it adhered to the Koran, and praised Allah. You can see some of his new CDs listed on Amazon. I believe that his new CDs have few instrumentals, if any.
The only person I can think of is Deanna Durbin. My dad was a big fan of her’s. She did movies (and sang beautifully) back in the…what was it? 1940s I guess. Then she retired. My dad spoke fondly of the time he got some mail addressed to her, from some Classical music mailing list (maybe it was the local Classical station?). Our last names are close alphabetically, and somehow her mailing stuck to ours. Yeah, yeah, brush with greatness.
I guess the thing was, she quit before she was washed up, and she stayed out of the limelight. As far as I know anyway. Maybe Eve or someone else can elaborate on her story.
I can’t remember his name, but whoever it was that did “Everybody’s Talkin’” from the Midnight Cowboy soundtrack. He had the talent, had the breakthrough hit, and then decided to walk away from it. As far as I know, nobody even knows where he is or what he’s doing.
That would be Norman Greenbaum. His website seems to support the theory that he isn’t toiling away in the bowels of any corporate music behemoths these days.
I understand Antoine “Fats” Domino walked away from that world voluntarily.
Thanks for the Rick Astley link, Coldie. My girly crush on him grows. As everyone else runs in horror. Morrissey’s apparently on tour at the moment, but appears to have no new material in the works for album release.
Phillip Taylor Kramer, the guy from Iron Butterfly who became a scientist working on faster-than-light communications, who mysteriously disappeared. Ah, but that’s another story.
The entire original lineup of A Flock of Seagulls, except for the lead singer. One guy is a computer repairman, one guy is a hair dresser, one guy is… Ah, who cares.
Danny Elfman left Oingo Boingo to become an A-list movie score composer. Does that count?
Terry Jacks quit the music biz and became a liberal activist.
The Dancing On The Ceiling guy. What’s his name?
Peter Gabriel…Just kidding, but Peter if don’t put out your 10-years-in-the-making next album, I will put you on this list.
