It's hard to say when the life of a band starts and stops... but playing music together is an act of trust. When that's broken, it's impossible to continue.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I've seen bands split up for five years and do nothing. That sounds great to me, but it just hasn't worked out that way.
Being in a band is far more than playing an instrument. It's surviving. It's getting an album together.
I do know many a band out there, because believe me, we've played with most of them, who are together because they have to be. They might not talk to each other offstage, but they realize they can earn a living by going out and keeping that music alive.
There's a lot of bands that get to a certain level, and it just stops. They scrap it. Compare this to, say, The Rolling Stones or The Who, where they just continued on forever and are still playing, or they quit after 20 years.
A band is like a marriage - you don't know why it works, but when it does, everything feels right.
When you form a band, you form a real relationship that's like a marriage. It's an emotional connection, especially when you're young... because you don't know what's out there.
I think a lot of bands go on way past the point where they're relevant. Some of them keep doing it because they're making millions of dollars. Or people are afraid - they don't know what else to do. It's scary to get out of a relationship of any kind.
Most bands have a two-year success rate. By the third year, it's sort of over. Here we are in Poison still together 26 years later.
If you start off writing an album with a band, the reality is that you're constantly in each other's company, so it's really important that you get on with each other.
People forget that keeping a band together is hard; man, it's really hard. All the cliches apply about living in each other's pockets; of it being a relationship, a marriage, a family.