Why do Bands Start to SUCK later in their career

There also is a huge arrogance of I can sing so I can write and unfortunately this only gets reinforced as time goes on.
As we get older and more successful life gets more complicated than love lust and longing, unfortunately the market isn’t that interested in I can’t pay my Mortgage or a Song about Cancer.

I was also reading this buzzfeed list of Celebrities who don’t know how to function in the actual world ( Oprah and ELlen don’t know their debit card PINS, Selena Gomez can’t pump gas and Cathey Griffith can’t order a pizza yeah a B list comic who plays clubs can’t order Dominoes) you reach a level of celebrity you end up living in a bubble where real people can’t relate.

The one thing that seams to break the cycle is crisis, think of all the great stuff that came later because of divorce, getting sober, health crisis or someone dying.

Some very successful long running groups end up becoming a corporation like the major label they signed to originally.
Does the world need another Radiohead,Foo Fighters,U2,Green Day LP ?

I’ve always felt like you had your whole life to write your first album and then only a year or two usually for the second. Add on top of that all the weirdness of fame and money. For better or worse it seems like hardship & heartache leads to better art.

The boxer Marvin Hagler had a famous quote that I think applies too:

“It’s difficult to get up and do roadwork at five in the morning when you’re sleeping in silk sheets.“

I'll throw another Dylan anecdote out that just remembered. I read a quote somewhere where he said that his mid-80's stuff was crap cuz basically everyone would tell him it was great and he couldn't get anyone to give it to him straight.

Enter Daniel Lanois... haha, problem solved. They did not get along at all but they made great music together and it lit his career back on fire.

Mark Howard hung it out for 25 years, his book made it clear a reunion won't be likely.

Was Tool mentioned? Me and my buddies like to poke fun at the songwriting. Which of the 2 riffs will they use, and where, for this 8 minute section? They are always fun to see though

Warren Haynes continues to do excellent work. The new Mule album (recorded concurrently with the blues record released a couple years ago) is one of those that's just gets better with each listen.

As bands "age", the primary duties and obligations take on more nuanced and often sophisticated roles. The sacrifice is often the performance, legacy acts can count on their fans regardless of the performance quality, fans all but expect a decline and the more savvy fans know that the band in it's later years has morphed into a corporation with vested interests having an obligation to multiple members who may or may not rely solely on the earnings from performances, ancillary revenue streams compensatory residual mechanical royalties shared or dispersed in accordance with whatever agreement unique to the band is. Then there is artwork, licensing, contracts, labour and skilled labour wages plus equipmant costs et al. Many legacy acts regardless of notoriety either elect to self manage or do as much of the grunt work as humanly possible to minimise legal fees etc etc.
It's a massive job to be a known entity and still be active and the costs are insane. A day off on a tour belt schedule could mean that touring a particular belt of cities means it will
show a loss even with sold out events. More empowered acts can reduce the promoters cut to 10% over breakeven and have a steady profit margin consistently even factoring in days off and getting people home for those days off, and back again. So many of these "lie awake at night cold sweating issues" largely fall to active band members or nominated spouses/relatives, which is a whole new set of issues because the home life is the road life and vice versa. The fact that many acts even bother to me is worth an atta boy and at very least a back pat or two just for having a go. The scale and proportion of moving a show across a country, city to city can range in size depending on the ambition of the act. But large scale or not, the costing the headaches the attention to detail falls on these acts to self manage more often than not.It would be no wonder that these acts either can't be assed to rehearse or simply find it too difficult/affordable on top of all the other obligations and all the dollars constantly sucked out of their accounts.
Then there is the matter of fronting all these costs up. I have a friend in a pretty successful band from the 90's who tours every summer but works a regular job off season basically to afford his chunk of the upfront costings each member must contribute to offset what the band (now corporation) is lacking in touring seed money.
Less and less known legacy acts receive much in the way of advances anymore, unless there is a profound level of trust between promoters and acts, usually one would need a CMI or a WMA doing all the bookings but then there goes 22-35% right off the bat. Established bands have decades of evidence to support their lack of trust in using these mainstay industry entities that seem to always be flourishing regardless of how music revenue goes up and down.

So in many ways Paul is right, it just happens. Very few legacy acts like U2 or KISS etc have the capital to facilitate staff beyond family/friends so it falls to the more organised members to carry a load that is bound to show it's effect on the performance end where fans are most familiar with what it should all be sounding like, but are way less familiar or aware of the extraordinary tasks these people have to shoulder just to make it on stage. For an indie start up act, take that enormous undertaking and times it by 20 and you'll have an idea of the job these people do just to stay in it.Obviously some have it better and cruisier than others but by and large most are working their asses off just to get out the door. That's no excuse making for less than expected performances, but it something to at least consider when an act has an off night on your dime, it's not personal, it just happens.
It helps to know there is much more going on than just on stage.

Why do people start threads with subjective statements of fact.

"Do bands suck later in their career?"

Is an actual question, not a pre-loaded statement. Just saying.


Some bands get worse some bands get better, much better!

All kinds of thoughtful answers in this thread, and I really appreciate the various personal experiences being shared. The premise of the OG topic is a little gooey for me, though, and I think thehightenor gets that, too. Of course, of the thousands of acts I listen to, many have made records with diminishing artistic returns, but so many more have either carried on with consistently impressive releases or maybe have had peaks and troughs... and peaks. One of my big heroes is Julian Cope. He was a pop star in various parts of the world with the Teardrop Explodes, and later had a handful of radio hits as a solo artist. But as his music became less and less commercially-minded, his records became more and more fascinating. These days, I buy anything he releases, knowing that it's going to be a fascinating listen. He's got his devoted cult audience and an uncompromising vision for his art.

Another fav of mine is XTC, a band that only got better as they went on. For some acts, integrity, taste and good judgement are natural parts of their craft.

Sure, many acts are worn down by the music biz, or maybe their comfort-to-suffering ratio has moved them from a place of easy inspiration, but there are so many out there making amazing music, whether it's still hitting the same audience size or not.

Creativity is ephemeral. It comes, it goes, it can't be regulated. The can be no "perfect system for insuring maximum creativity". If there was -- we wouldn't be discussing "why do bands start to SUCK later in their career."

Creativity flourishes when there is a very particular alignment of forces, creating a situation where the artist feels comfortable, yet motivated, confident, clear-headed. Nearly impossible to control those forces.

As many have mentioned, youth is an advantage (for popular music, at least): new discoveries being made, fearlessness, recklessness, few responsibilities, excess libido.

In some other art forms, it may be the same situation...or not. The poet Arthur Rimbaud stopped writing at age 20. But...the film director Michael Haneke didn't make his first feature film until 47. And painters often peak late: Claude Monet started painting in his 40s; Paul Cezanne, Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, Yayoi Kusama, Louise Bourgeois didn't get attention until they were in their 40s or 50s or later.

newer „artists“ won‘t/don’t have this problem:
there‘s AI now. they will sound just about the same later in their career as now … sh*t.