The Real Reason These Bands Reunited After A Big Break Up

After dominating the 1970s with multi-platinum albums and classic rock staples like "Stairway to Heaven," "Kashmir," and "Black Dog," Led Zeppelin broke up in 1980, according to the Associated Press, following the death of drummer John Bonham. The surviving members — Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, and John Paul Jones — would reunite less than five years later, performing on the Philadelphia stage at Live Aid in 1985, staged to raise money for African famine relief, according to Far Out.

To fill in for Bonham, Zeppelin recruited Chic's Tony Thompson and Genesis's Phil Collins. Nevertheless, the show was a mess. Neither Thompson nor Collins had been given much rehearsal time, while Plant had rehearsed so thoroughly that he'd lost his voice (according to Rolling Stone, via Blabbermouth). Meanwhile, Jimmy Page didn't get a chance to warm up and played the gig on an out-of-tune guitar. In 2004, Led Zeppelin refused to allow their "sub-standard" performance to be included on a Live Aid DVD (per the BBC).

Nevertheless, and after two of its members recorded and toured together in the '90s as Page and Plant, Led Zeppelin, with Bonham's son, Jason Bonham, behind the kit, reunited once more. In 2007, the mostly reformed Led Zeppelin played London's O2 Arena, part of a large bill of acts to pay tribute to Ahmet Ertegun, the deceased head of the band's label, Atlantic Records. The show raised money for Ertegun's educational foundation.

The Jackson 5's catchy, bubblegum pop-meets-Motown proved irresistible to record buyers, and within a year, they'd scored four #1 hits — "I Want You Back," "ABC," "The Love You Save," and "I'll Be There." The undisputed breakout star of the Jackson 5: a young Michael Jackson, who sang, danced, and commanded the stage like a seasoned professional. In 1976, the Jackson 5 departed Motown for Epic Records and brought in Randy Jackson to replace the exiting Jermaine Jackson, who went on to have a successful solo career throughout the '70s and '80s with hits like "Daddy's Home" and "Let's Get Serious."

But Michael Jackson's solo work almost completely overshadowed Jermaine's efforts. In 1979, Michael Jackson's "Off the Wall" was released and went platinum nine times over and spawned the #1 hits "Rock With You" and "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough." As big as that was, his follow-up, "Thriller" was even bigger. It won the Album of the Year Grammy, would herald the peak of the music video age, and sell a world record 66 million copies. 

By 1984, Michael Jackson, the "King of Pop," was the most famous and celebrated entertainer on Earth, and his family (and Epic Records) cashed in by getting the old band back together. In 1984, the Jacksons recorded its first album in four years, "Victory," featuring all six brothers, including Michael and the departed Jermaine. According to the Los Angeles Times, the tour in support of "Victory" was plagued with financial and technical problems.

Fleetwood Mac's history is marked by several distinct eras. Starting off as a hard-charging blues-rock band in the 1960s, they adopted a California-style soft rock sound in the mid-1970s with the addition of singer-songwriters Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. The second Mac album with those two on board, 1977's "Rumors," would become one of the best-selling albums ever, moving 20 million units. That formation of the group stayed intact part-time in the '80s while members pursued solo success, with Buckingham leaving the band entirely in 1987 and Nicks and Christine McVie bowing out of touring duties. Fleetwood Mac was all but over by 1991, the year the band released a career-capping box set and lost replacement guitarist Rick Vito.

That classic Mac lineup — Buckingham, Nicks, McVie, and founding members John McVie and Mick Fleetwood — reconvened for the first time in more than a half-decade at the behest of a president. According to Far Out, Bill Clinton campaigned across the United States in 1992, using Fleetwood Mac's 1977 inspiring singalong "Don't Stop" as this theme song at rallies and events. Clinton won the presidential election, and when planning his inauguration festivities for January 1993, he had his people reach out to the core five of Fleetwood Mac to see if they'd reunite to play "Don't Stop" at the Inaugural Gala. Most of the band approached it as a special one-off, but then got back together once more in 1997 for "The Dance," an MTV concert special and companion record.

The Monkees, per AllMusic, weren't originally a real band — they were assembled, picked more for their acting abilities to play a rock band on a sitcom also called "The Monkees." The band lobbied to play its own instruments and songs of their own creation, but those proved unpopular, and the foursome split up shortly after Peter Tork left in 1969.

In 1975, according to Monkees Live Almanac, all four members — Michael Nesmith, Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, and Tork — discussed a reunion, suggested by a Hollywood talent agency. Tork and Nesmith passed, so Dolenz and Jones teamed up with the songwriters behind many Monkees hits, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, and toured as The Great Golden Hits of the Monkees. About a decade later, nostalgia package tour promoter David Fishof approached Tork about a 20th anniversary Monkees reunion tour. This time, he was in, and eventually Jones, Dolenz, and Nesmith signed up, although the latter thought the tour would consist of a handful of concerts (via Goldmine, per Monkees Live Almanac), which he felt wouldn't conflict with his TV production duties. "It went from 20 dates to 200 in a matter of weeks," Nesmith explained as to why he eventually backed out. 

What blew up the Monkees: In early 1986, MTV aired a weekend marathon of every episode of "The Monkees." "We've never received such a volume of mail," MTV executive Tom Freston told Rolling Stone. Almost every date on the tour sold out, necessitating the expansion.

After years of angrily speaking truth to power and calling out injustice through its rap-rock tunes like "Freedom," "Bulls on Parade," and "Guerrilla Radio," Rage Against the Machine split up following the release of "Renegades" in 2000, a collection of covers. Frontman Zack de la Rocha had told the rest of the band that he planned on a 2-year break, but instead released a statement without their foreknowledge announcing that the split was more of a permanent nature, according to Far Out. The reason, according to de la Rocha: creative differences. "It's not unique among rock bands to find the occasional dissension," de la Rocha said. Remaining Ragers Tom Morello, Tim Commerford, and Brad Wilk formed the mostly apolitical radio-friendly rock band Audioslave, with Soundgarden's Chris Cornell replacing de la Rocha on the microphone.

De La Rocha's hiatus was temporary after all. In 2008, per the Los Angeles Times, Rage reunited to play an anti-Iraq War protest show outside the Democratic National Convention. Two weeks later, according to the Star Tribune, the reformed Rage Against the Machine played a show near the Republican National Convention, taking the stage in black hoods and prisoner jumpsuits like the ones worn by inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison facility. 

A 2020 Rage Against the Machine tour was delayed to 2022 and 2023 because of COVID-19 restrictions, per Rolling Stone.

The Jonas Brothers could have gone down as a bubblegum pop act, three teen idol siblings who burst on the scene and disappeared when the next thing came along. According to AllMusic, the Jonas Brothers signed their first deal with Disney's Hollywood Records in 2007, churned out a couple of albums, a concert film, the sitcom "JONAS," and the TV movie "Camp Rock" all over the course of two years. Largely inactive for a while, Nick, Joe, and Kevin Jonas officially disbanded the band in 2013.

The Jonas Brothers reconvened in 2019. During a concert at Los Angeles' Grammy Museum, Nick Jonas credited the revival to "a group of college-aged guys who probably at the time the song first came out were young enough to love it without any inhibitions or insecurities about loving the song," Jonas said (via EW). The tweets professed a desire to see the Jonas Brothers play "Year 3000" live. "I started to think about that quite a bit that maybe there's a whole new group of fans who actually were embarrassed to like the Brothers at a certain point in their life and now can actually just enjoy it because as it happens for all of us, the things we were embarrassed about when we were younger become the things we love about ourselves when we're older." Nick asked Kevin about a reunion, and he was in right away, while Joe took some more convincing.