5 Has-Been Rockers Who Deserve A Second Chance

While some musicians and bands seem blessed with long careers that defy time, other artists have seen their popularity ebb and flow — mostly ebb. We submit that there are several rockers, branded has-beens by a music business that focuses myopically on the bottom line, who deserve a second chance. Dropping sales, or simply being forgotten by the public, doesn't mean an artist can no longer deliver or shouldn't be heard. Has-beens who have earned a second shot at center stage are, by definition, damn good at what they do.

We've selected five rock artists who are no longer in the spotlight, but should rightly command our attention. Some are so-called one-hit wonders — artists who scored big before slipping into undeserved obscurity, but are still missed by devoted fans. Others may be dipping in and out of retirement. With nothing more to prove, they've stepped away from the music business to pursue other interests. We'd love to coax them back on stage to hit one out of the park once again.

These five artists show there should be nothing wrong with falling out of favor, because fashions come and go. As British playwright John Osborne reportedly said, "It is better to be a has-been than a never-was."

With sweeping symphonic mellotron, polyrhythmic drumming, and Robert Fripp's blistering, coruscating guitar, King Crimson's 1969 debut LP "In The Court of the Crimson King" is arguably the first progressive rock album, as well as a precursor to heavy metal. The band that Fripp founded went through multiple lineups and stylistic changes, including an angular new wave-adjacent 1980s iteration that saw Crimson's greatest commercial success since its debut. By that time, Fripp had already launched a solo career, ranging from pioneering ambient music to quirky dance-rock.

In 2012, after 43 years in the music business, Fripp announced his retirement, citing business disputes with record companies. "My life as a professional musician is a joyless exercise in futility," Fripp told Financial Times. Happily for fans of Fripp's exacting musicianship and commitment to experimentation, the guitarist returned in 2014, fronting yet another lineup of Crimson. The new configuration released no new studio material, playing a mix of new tunes and "reconfigured" classics. The band stopped touring in 2022, and Fripp has denied rumors of a new album.

Instead, Fripp has confined his musical output to the YouTube series "Sunday Lunch," where he performs energetically silly covers of songs like Iggy Pop's "Real Wild Child" with his wife, singer Toyah Wilcox. The videos show that Fripp still has the verve and willingness to try something different that characterized his work with Crimson. We can only hope he decides to take the show on the road, with or without his iconic band.

"You say you stand by your man / So tell me something I don't understand." It's Mick Jones' voice we hear on "Train in Vain," the song that enabled The Clash to crack the American market. Joe Strummer fronted the fiercely political punk band, but Strummer's songwriting partner Jones is just as essential to the group's sound. Jones sings lead on The Clash's highest charting tunes, including "Should I Stay or Should I Go." His guitar riffs power the band's only top 10  hit "Rock the Casbah," and his lead fretwork propels iconic songs like "Clampdown."

With his eclectic post-Clash combo Big Audio Dynamite, Jones combined consummate songwriting, energetic vocals, and socially conscious lyrics to create some of the 1980s most memorable dance music. After turning 70 in June 2025, Jones curated the "Rock & Roll Public Library," a rock-culture, pop-up museum. "It tells a story — my story," Jones says on the library's website. It would be even cooler if he'd play some gigs as well. 

Years after disbanding, the Clash's songs are back in the spotlight, appearing in viral TikToks. Gorillaz, currently on a world tour, recruited Jones and Clash bassist Paul Simonon to play on its "Plastic Beach" album, and Gorillaz frontman Damon Albarn performed "Should I Stay Or Should I Go" live. We maintain that rock fans would stand by Jones and a return to the stage by this punk godfather.

On the cusp of the 1980s, the British music scene was split between punk bands and stylish synth pop new romantics. Shunned by the first, claimed as an influence by the latter, Ultravox wanted nothing to do with either. "We didn't fit in musically," said the band's Scottish guitarist-vocalist Midge Ure in a 2009 interview, via This is Not Retro. " ... We used electronics, but we also used violins, piano, and acoustic drums."

When the band's "Vienna" album dropped in 1980, it reached No. 3 in the British charts. With stately orchestral strings, a pulsing synthesizer heartbeat, and Ure's vertiginous vocals, the title track, released as a single, surged to No 2. Ultravox played at Live Aid in 1985, but after that, the band slowly faded. Succeeding albums were increasingly pallid copies of "Vienna," and in 1987 Ultravox split.

Ure has pursued a solo career and plans to release a new album, "A Man Of Two Worlds," on May 8, 2026, followed by a tour. "I'm looking forward to getting out there and strapping on my guitar and making a racket again," Ure tells Soundsphere. Ure notes that he still plays some Ultravox tunes on tour, so why not regroup with his surviving bandmates to make that racket? With The Human League and Soft Cell, two of the new romantic acts inspired by Ultravox, touring the U.S. in June 2026, what better time is there for Ure and company to show the new romantics how the old pros do it?

With his gravel-bed-ground-glass cocktail of a voice, free jazz stream-of-consciousness lyrics, and louche, spat-out-razorblades delivery, there is no other artist like Tom Waits. With arrhythmic percussion, plinking guitar strings, and a melody line that seems made up on the fly, "Red Shoes by the Drugstore" is one of the top flop songs from 1978 we can't help but love. It's an odd, but not atypical Waits song, because they're all atypical.

It been 53 years since Wait's dropped his debut LP "Closing Time" in 1973. In that offering, Waits affected a garrulous beatnik vocal style. Over time, that voice has gone increasingly craggy, but lately what we've heard primarily from Waits is silence. He dropped his most recent album, "Bad as Me," in 2011. After that, there were no songs from the growling barstool laureate until 2016, when Waits covered two blues tunes for the tribute album "God Don't Never Change: The Songs of Blind Willie Johnson". 

A decade later, we shouldn't be surprised if Waits affects an Irish brogue on his upcoming contribution to "20th Century Paddy: The Songs of Shane MacGowan," a tribute to The Pogues' late singer-songwriter. Waits' last tour was his "Glitter And Doom" outing in 2008, and at 71, he's not likely to hit the road again. While it's heartening to see Waits featured in the trailer for Martin McDonagh's new film "Wild Horse Nine," we'd give anything to hear a new album's worth of material by this alternative American legend.

Rock fans may not immediately recognize Indigenous American singer and artist Debora Iyall's name, but her assured yet ambivalent vocals once dominated dance floors. With scratchy guitar, pinging harmonics, squalling saxophone, and Iyall's taunting chorus of, "I might like you better if we slept together," Romeo Void's 1982 single "Never Say Never" shot to No. 17 on Billboard's Dance and Disco chart. The song's accompanying video, an arty black and white parody of Jen Luc Goddard's "Breathless," allowed fans of the San Francisco new wave band to see its vocalist bop, sway, and drawl on MTV.

A member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe in western Washington State, Iyall co-founded Romeo Void in 1979 while attending the San Francisco Art Institute. Trouser Press praised the band for its "unique blend of jazz, funk, rock, and confrontational poetry." After releasing two albums, Romeo Void dropped the "Never Say Never" EP, which contained the titular single. As San Francisco's punk scene wound down, Romeo Void disbanded, and Iyall turned to making and teaching art. She continued to write songs and released a 10-song CD in 1998 as part of a pop duo, Knife In Water.

"[Romeo Void] fans were multiracial, multi-gender San Francisco punk rock, post-punk kids, and our friends and artists," Iyall told The Bay Area Reporter in 2023. "People who still loved rock 'n' roll, not corporate rock." With a live Romeo Void LP getting a release on Record Store Day in April 2026, now may be an ideal time for Iyall's distinctive, poetic voice to be heard again.