To be fair, the Four Tops don’t write their own material and actually continued to chart until the 80’s.
As for coasting, the first name that comes to my mind is Rod Stewart. Even though he continued placing some big hits on the charts, he really hasn’t done much of note since before he hooked up with Britt Ekland.
But Rod Stewart doesn’t pretend to be a rock/pop musician anymore. He isn’t going out and prancing around in a silver lame jumpsuit and singing “Do You Think I’m Sexy?” at the Emerald Queen Casino this weekend.
To qualify as “coasting” I think a band or artist has to be just repeating the same stuff, doing the same stage show, and playing the same songs that they did back when they were relevant.
It’s not coasting that Rod Stewart’s not relevant anymore, he’s moved on and is doing different stuff.
Heh…1981 was pretty much a blip too, “Start Me Up” and all. That was a comeback. They really stopped being a vital rock band in about '75.
Ah, the ol’ Ship of Theseus dealie.
Whoosh.
I have to agree with the Stones. “Tattoo You” was their last good work; that was in 1980. They have just been releasing an endless stream of albums that sound like they were produced by a bot program since then. Actually, I’m skeptical they even play their own instruments on the albums anymore.
For comparison’s sake, Pearl Jam has been cited, and I’d agree it’s been all downhill since Vitalogy. (Well, No Code wasn’t bad.) But look at it this way; Vitalogy was released in December 1994. By that point, the Stones had released FOUR bad studio albums (Undercover, Dirty Work, Steel Wheels and Flashpoint) since Tattoo You. When “Tattoo You” was released, Eddie Vedder was still in high school and was a decade away from even being famous.
I don’t think ABBA is coasting, technically. Collecting royalty checks isn’t “coasting.” Coasting implies working, but only on the basis of previous artistic accomplishment instead of anything new.
Ac/dc?
We can’t really say the Beatles have been coasting. They did great work, and they haven’t done much since to tap the market for money in cheap ways. There have been repackaged albums, but that’s not the band as such, but a response to the demand. We could mention the Anthology albums, but that’s only one point against them.
My entire point is that the Stones tour heavily. Their tours are relatively unjustified from an artistic/cultural standpoint, as no one is going to hear the new material. (“Jumping Jack Flaaaaaash” and wave a lighter.) I think I know one person who might know something from their past two albums, and that’s it.
I think Aerosmith is a good point. Their artistic credibility is fading into the distance as they put out another whiny blues-ish ballad with little substance.
I know a lot of the original rock and soul groups like the Four Tops are still making money off their work from 40 years ago, but at that level, I just view it as their job. Sure, it’s coasting, but if they can make a decent living traveling and singing, it beats becoming a draftsman or something late in life. The amount of money they’ve made doesn’t qualify them for the top of the list.
Bowie is another good suggestion. Also AC/DC, as I don’t remember anything since about the early 90s except for that “I Feel Safe in New York City” (or whatever) song. I see that Wikipedia doesn’t even try to argue that they had any real success since 1992, and that was a live album.
Just for the geekiness of being right, I’ll point out that the formula should probably just be “amount of money made from largely irrelevant tours and albums after an artist has ceased to matter.”
That’d be The Coasters. Bwahahaha!
Of course, we’ve all overlooked the obvious answer: the biggest coasters in rock belong to Samantha Fox, Britain’s greatest natural resource of the 80s. 
To the two of you who mentioned Bowie: no other artist has continually reinvented himself, over as long a period, as David Bowied. Bowie is the quintessential non-coaster. How can anyone who’s ever heard any Bowie suggest that he’s “repeating himself”? Repeating what? He’s never repeated himself from one album to the next, let alone over a long enough stretch to be accused of coasting. Peter Gabriel’s a world-champ coaster compared to Bowie, and Gabriel’s no coaster.
Paul’s last few albums are supposed to be good, actually, but I do think he tends to coast. Even when he’s writing good stuff, a fair amount of it is just going to be fluff.
The rock station in this little town has to be very eclectic to keep an audience, and I’ve heard stuff I’d forgotten about, and old hits I barely knew. Some of the McCartney stuff they dig up is just pap. Pure and Simple.
Gosh, I forgot about AC/DC.
“Back in Black” was before “Tattoo You,” so they win.
Kiss
For one thing, it’s been 24 years. For another, “Endless Wire” is coming out at the end of the month. So far, the early reviews have been pretty good.
They’re just finishing up the first leg of their tour right now, playing a generous helping of the new stuff. As far as “keeping up the nostalgia factor” goes–the same could be said of any musical act that’s been around for 40 years.
While I agree wholeheartedly that the Rolling Stones are the example of a washed up group that should have called it quits decades ago, there is an even worse example, someone who has been leeching off of someone else’s talent for even longer: Yoko!
Well, Led Zep don’t count, since they split after John Bonham’s death a quarter of a century ago, reforming only once with Phil Collins for Live Aid: they lasted a shade over 10 years, which seems to be reasonable creative life expectancy for a band.
Bowie doesn’t count either, since his last two albums, Heathen and Reality were the best he’s done since Scary Monsters and he tours his new stuff rather than just playing “The Jean Genie” on the nostalgia circuit until he’s fat and bald. His latest tour DVD contains such Classic Rock staples as “Cactus”, “Heathen”, “Hallo Spaceboy”, “New Killer Star” and “Bring Me The Disco King” - ie, he’s actually playing his new stuff and not just releasing a token album as product to justify another Greatest Hits tour.
OK?