EaglesIt took Peking Duk 16 years to release their debut album Paradise, which debuted at #1 on the ARIA Australian Albums Chart this week.
After meeting at a Canberra skating rink in 2010, plans to make the album were put on hold after they lost $625,000 after being fleeced by their accountant between 2019 and 2022.
The accountant Damien Luscombe was jailed for six years. Shattered by the experience, Adam Hyde and Reuben Styles took time off to work on solo work before returning as the Duk.
However, they’re not guilty of making fans wait the longest for a full-length record. In fact, music-lovers could look towards famed names such as…
Dean Gitter – Old Folkies Never Die (57 years)
In the 1950s, Dean Gitter was a folk singer who played around New York who produced other folkies such as Odetta. In 1957 he released his debut album Ghost Ballad.
It took him almost 60 years to tap out a follow up. A man interested in entrepreneurial ideas and life experiences, he got waylaid by endless projects.
These included developing 620 acres for a resort in the Catskill mountains, running a cinema and TV station, launching a First Nation spring water company, teaching meditation, and running a horse farm.
In 2014 he journeyed to Woodstock, in upstate New York, and put down 19 songs in a two-hour session. It was released as Old Folkies Never Die, a few years before he passed aged 83.
MC5 – Heavy Lifting (53 years, 3 months, 13 days)
Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello described the MC5 as having "basically invented punk rock." They stormed out of Detroit in 1963, calling themselves after the city’s brand name “motor city”.
Their much-covered signature tune Kick Out The Jams captured what they were – mean, nasty, loud, political, and wonderful. They drew 1,000 to their shows and landed a Rolling Stone cover before their first album. For founder Wayne Kramer, Detroit in those days was so industrial that music was the only alternative to factory work for a teenager.
They released the albums Kick Out The Jams, Back In The USA, and High Time before breaking up in 1972. In between, a number of members died of heart attacks and liver failure.
In 2024, Heavy Lifting came out on October 18th, two years after Kramer announced a new line-up was going into the studio with producer Bob Ezrin and four years after they toured Australia.
That year Kramer died in February, and drummer Dennis Thompson in May. They were the last of the ‘60s line-up. Mojo magazine said of Heavy Lifting: “If taken entirely on its own terms, it's profoundly agitational, a whole lot of fun, and a fittingly vigorous farewell.”
Parliament – Medicaid Fraud Dogg (38 years)
Led by the visionary George Clinton, Parliament helped change the face of ‘70s music, with a dazzling mixture of funk/R&B with sci-fi themes, spaceships and costumes, and million sellers like Give Up The Funk (Tear The Roof Off The Sucker). In between they pioneered Afrofuturism and laid the blueprint for hip hop.
By the ‘80s, legal issues and dissatisfaction with Clinton’s management style saw it dissolve. But in 2018 the band was revived. First came the Scarface and Mudbone-featuring hit I'm Gon Make U Sick O'me in January, then Medicaid Fraud Dogg, written by Clinton and his son Tracey Lewis.
Parliament’s tenth and final album was a two-hour epic, 23 tracks which sparked modern day funk/R&B and an update of hip hop. Lyrically it attacked the US health system, corporate greed, and nonchalantly equated addiction to social media with pill dependence.
Radio Birdman – Zeno Beach (25 years)
Radio Birdman roared out of Sydney initially as a Detroit rock jukebox but turning into a war machine. As Sydney writer Murray Engleheart’s book Radio Birdman: Retaliate First related, within two years of forming, the inter-personal antagonisms had begun. This was poured further into the music.
The end for Birdman came in the UK in June 1978 after they made Living Eyes. The album chugged out in 1981. As their legend continued to grow, they reunited for Big Day Out in 1996, and toured after. Zeno Beach arrived in 2006.
It was cut virtually live at Big Jesus Burger Studios in inner city Sydney, at such high volume that mics were destroyed and noise complaints were made. It took its name from one of the tracks, a surf rock instrumental by keyboardist Pip Hoyle.
Kossoy Sisters – Hop On Pretty Girls (46 years)
The Kossoy Sisters (guitarist Irene Salentan and banjo playing Ellen Christenson) were identical twins who emerged from New York City’s Greenwich Village as part of the 1950s folk boom.
In 1956, at 17 years old, they recorded Bowling Green which reflected their close harmonies and hillbilly instruments. However as adults, they married and moved away.
Irene went to Boston where she and her husband Tony formed a duo, and Ellen to St. Louis.
Both got divorced and moved to Guatemala where they shared a house. A resurgence took place in the 1990s, first when Bowling Green was released on CD for the first time.
One track, I’ll Fly Away was featured on the Coen Brothers’ 2000 movie O Brother, Where Art Thou. Its soundtrack won a Grammy for album of the year. Under the spotlight again, a second album – Hop On Pretty Girls – emerged.
They both retired after performing at the 2012 Newport Folk Festival.
Plastic Ono Band – Between My Head And The Sky (35 years, 10 months, 19 days)
In the mid-’60s when booked to do an exhibition in Germany, avant-garde artist and performer Yoko Ono came up with the concept of four plastic stands on which rested four tape recorders representing “her band”.
A few years later when she met and married John Lennon, they decided to form another ever-changing entity to cover their concerts, events as “bed-in for peace”, experimental albums and exhibitions away from The Beatles. The name came from the “plastic” concept.
First formed in London, original members included Eric Clapton, drummer Alan White, and German bassist Klaus Voorman who designed The Beatles’ Revolver album cover, and at times Keith Moon and Billy Preston also boasted membership.
Plastic Ono Band had hits such as Give Peace A Chance, Happy X’Mas (War Is Over), and Instant Karma.
In November 1973 Ono released her fourth solo album, Feeling The Space, which she produced and had a feminist theme. Tracks included Woman Power and She Hits Back.
Ono and Lennon’s move to New York saw the Plastic Ono Band play a few shows.
From 2009 to 2015 Ono led a version with son Sean Lennon as band leader and producer. The ensemble – including Cornelius (Keigo Oyamadan) and Yuk Honda – toured America.
One of its projects was a collaboration with The Flaming Lips. Between My Head And The Sky emerged in September 2009, a mix of art rock, experimentalism, and avant pop.
Pink Floyd – The Endless River (20 years, 7 months, 13 days)
Even the most ardent Pink Floyd fans accepted that they’d creaked to a halt with The Division Bell in 1994. So it was un-accepted when The Endless River emerged November 2014.
According to last-men-standing David Gilmour and Nick Mason, there were two reasons for The Endless River.
Firstly The Division Bell had started life as a double album; half songs and half ambient instrumentals. The latter didn’t make the final cut, and were used 20 years later for The Endless River. One song, Louder Than Words, was the exception.
Secondly it marked a farewell to Rick Wright, keyboard player and co-founder, who died on September 15, 2008, aged 65.
“It is a tribute to him,” Gilmour told Uncut magazine. “ To me, it’s very evocative and emotional in a lot of moments.
“Listening to all the stuff made me regret his passing all over again. This is the last chance someone will get to hear him playing along with us in that way that he did.”
Mason agreed: “I think the most significant element was really hearing what Rick did.
“Having lost Rick, it really brought home what a special player he was. And I think that was one of the elements that caught us up in it and made us think we ought to do something with this.”
Napoleon XIV – For God's Sake, Stop The Feces! (56 years)
Napoleon XIV was New York-born singer, songwriter, record producer, and talent agent Jerry Laurence Samuels. He emerged in 1966 with the novelty disc They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!.
Based around a loop of snare drum, tambourine, and claps, it was about someone having a meltdown after losing their lover.
But to avoid condemnation he was laughing at folks with mental illness, the last line revealed the brain stew was actually over a runaway dog. “They'll find you yet, and when they do, they'll put you in the ASPCA, you mangy mutt!”
Samuels said: "I felt it would cause some people to say 'Well, it's all right.' And it did. It worked.”
It peaked at #3 in the US where it sold a million, and reached #4 in Australia and the UK. The B-side was the track played in reverse.
Samuels actually started work on a follow up in 1968. But it was rejected by his record label Warner Bros due to lyrical content, including his love for smoking pot, a graphic description of a rape, and a man writing a suicide note.
As Samuels ended up in a nursing home with the onset of Alzheimer’s, he made it his mission to get the album released.
For God's Sake, Stop The Feces! was padded out with demos, and included sleeve notes from ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic and radio legend Dr. Demento. It came out on April 20, 2023, a month after Samuels' death.
Noiseworks – Evolution (31 years, 4 months, 10 days)
Few bands celebrate having a No. 1 album (as Noiseworks did in 1991 with Love Versus Money) by breaking up a year later. But tour exhaustion had crept in by then, and Jon Stevens told The Sunday Telegraph one of the band had been flirting briefly with heroin.
But the breaking point came when their record company Sony Music rejected an early version of Love Versus Money which they self-produced, and brought in US producer Randy Jackson to redo the songs.
Their solo careers took off. Stevens was in Jesus Christ Superstar, fronted INXS for four years, made solo records, and hosted a reality show in his native New Zealand.
Guitarist Stuart Fraser did Superstar and then plugged in with the John Farnham Band. Bassist Steve Balbi and keyboardplayer Justin Stanley had a hit Greedy People with psychedelic pop outfit Electric Hippies, and produced acts such as Jenny Morris, Nikka Costa, and Vincent Stone.
Stanley relocated to Los Angeles and worked with The Vines, Eric Clapton, Beck, Prince, and Sheryl Crow.
By the late 1990s the dust had settled and various Noiseworks incarnations were starting to work together.
In 2017 there was talk of a full blown reunion of the best known line-up.
But Fraser’s diagnosis and death from lung cancer on December 1, 2019, derailed the process, as the band mourned.
Evolution, which included Fraser’s guitar parts, was further delayed when COVID temporarily closed the music business down. It finally saw the light of day on November 11, 2022.
The Stooges – The Weirdness (34 years, 27 days)
The wild and confrontational Stooges were formed in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1967 by singer Iggy Pop, guitarist Ron Asheton, drummer Scott Asheton, and bassist Dave Alexander.
In the same way Iggy would inspire generations with his attitude, self-mutilating antics, and popularising stage diving to break the barrier between band and crowd, he himself hit a crusher after seeing two Doors shows.
He was awed by Jim Morrison’s combative stance and contempt for everything around him.
The Stooges released The Stooges (1969) and Fun House (1970) before breaking up briefly. They reformed for a third album, Raw Power (1973), before dissolving again a year later.
They all lived rough lives but Pop’s long time heroin addiction even saw him thrown into a mental hospital in Los Angeles.
He confessed, “I'd go to jail. I used to go to jail. I used to go to the hospital. When I lived in L.A., I would do a – like a double and I'd go to the hospital and then get out and go straight to jail.”
The Weirdness, from March 2007, was their fourth album and first new material since Raw Power.
By then Iggy had (sort of) cleaned up his act and his ground-breaking solo albums made him (sort of) respectable. He thought it was time to put the spotlight on The Stooges who, despite their influence, sold a miserable amount of records.
He told ICE he was on a plane to LA making a long list of whom he wanted to work with. “Suddenly, I thought, ‘Well, fuck, why not The Stooges? They’re cooler than anybody on this list!’ So I just called them.”
The new album featured Pop, the two Ashetons, bassist Mike Watt of Minutemen, and saxplayer Steve Mackay who’d been on Fun House. There had been a delay when Iggy insisted he produce. But the word came back: there’d be no money for the record until they agreed to a “real” producer.
The album was recorded by Steve Albini at his Electrical Audio studio in Chicago, Illinois during October 2006, with the working title Secret Plan.
It included My Idea Of Fun, Trollin’, Greedy Awful Period, and a cover of John Lennon & Paul McCartney’s I Wanna Be Your Man but more a nod to the gruffer Rolling Stones version.
Reviews ranged from “pathetic” and “disgrace to the legacy” (just one or two stars) to “ready for action” and “modern”. It sold 30,000 in America.
Magazine – No Thyself (30 years, 4 months)
After bringing punk to Manchester with Buzzcocks, Howard Devoto formed Magazine. It also consisted of John McGeoch on guitar, Barry Adamson on bass, Bob Dickinson on keyboards, and Martin Jackson on drums.
An inspiring and inspirational outfit with great lyrics, even greater melodies and out-of-the-blue playing ideas, Devoto suggested Magazine music was made to be never out of time.
1981's Magic, Murder And The Weather had its moments. But it missed McGeoch who had quit to devote his life to bringing up his daughter, and died in 2004.
McGeoch rose to the complexities of Magazine music with inventive chords and rhythms.
After taking a break. Magazine returned in 2009 for a UK tour with new guitarist Noko, which saw the old spark remain, and which featured new songs.
But it took two years for No Thyself to surface. The reason, Devoto told Louder Than War, was, “Barry was directing his first film at the same time. We waited for him to do his bass on the tracks and we waited an awful long time and then he quit!
“It was frustrating at the time but it made me realise in a sense that he was right. It’s a lot of work to record an album. We haven’t all worked together for a long time. It tends to be a different way of working now with the use of digital technology.”
No Thyself, with John "Stan" White replacing Adamson, emerged to gushing reviews, and maintained Magazine’s legacy.
Eagles – Long Road Out Of Eden (28 years)
By the time of The Long Run (September 1979), the Eagles were well beyond refusing to be in the same dressing room together. It got to the point where they had to hire five limos to the same show because they couldn’t stand to be in the same car.
They split after an on-stage argy-bargy when Don Felder told Glenn Frey, “Only three more songs till I kick your ass, pal”, to which Frey responded “Great, I can't wait!”
Rumour is that this happened during the song Best Of My Love. After the show, Felder threw his guitar at the dressing room wall and stormed off in his limo.
But as Frey said, as the years rolled on, they’d only remember the good times, and calls would be made to meet up again.
Long Road Out Of Eden came out in 2007 – 13 years after the aptly-titled Hell Freezes Over live album, which documented their unexpected reunion.
It was their first double album and took six years to make. It was their sixth consecutive Number One in America and topped the charts in 13 countries, including Australia where it went on to be certified 3 x platinum.
Of the 200 million albums the Eagles sold worldwide, 3.23 million were in Australia.
There was a divided opinion on whether the songs captured them at their best. Even Don Henley thought it would have made a strong single long-player but was out-voted by the others. It yielded five hits.
The title track used biblical terms to hit out against America’s foreign policy under George W. Bush which involved wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Weavin' down the American highway
Through the litter and the wreckage and the cultural junk
Bloated with entitlement, loaded on propaganda
Now we're drivin' dazed and drunk
Henley said he originally wrote it as “information highway” with conspiracy theories and clickbait items replacing balanced researched news stories.
For a report on 30 more acts who took a decade to make a record, read David James Young’s Since They Left Us feature on The Music.
