When I was really young, in my “pre-rock n roll” days, it never occurred to me that fame was fleeting. My parents still loved Elvis, who was from the (gads) 50’s so he still seemed current if not relevant, at least in our house… well, he did until his untimely death. Every weekday they had talk shows like Merv Griffin or Mike Douglas and you could see stars like Chuck Berry come on. I just thought if you became a famous rock star, it was like in the movies, everybody lived happily ever after and you just remained rich and famous, forever and ever.

I understood that certain groups broke up, I wasn’t completely starstruck. The Beatles were still the most famous band to break up but all of them were studiously working on solo careers so it seemed like they’d never gone away. I do know that as Billy Joel sang about on Turnstiles, people longed to see the Beatles get back together. They’d only been broken up 4 or 5 years so that hope of reunion was palpable. At the time though, I did think that Beatles arc was the blue print: Musicians came together, formed a band, became rich and famous and if they didn’t get along anymore, they all went solo and then lived happily ever after making their own individual, idiosyncratic music.

I knew that these shimmering creatures, these rock stars, could die. Even before the King passed away I was aware of the Buddy Holly story. Probably because of that abysmal song “American Pie.” I can’t imagine my folks sitting me down and taking me through that story. My parents were huge Jim Croce fans and he may have been the only artist for who they owned more than one album, high praise indeed. I knew Croce died in a plane crash probably from dad telling me. I don’t think I knew who Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin or Jim Morrison were until I was in junior high school, but to me, that was the only way a rock star’s career would end – death. Other than Elvis in ’77, It wasn’t until Keith Moon died in ’78 when I was just getting into music, and then John Bonham in ’80 that I started to think that not only was fame fleeting, maybe so was life? I couldn’t help but wonder, why is it always the drummer? Those were the first two rock n roll deaths that actually grabbed me after I’d had my rock n roll “awakening.”

Of course even in my early rock n roll days there were hints that fame was fleeting. Disco was so huge when I started listening to music in the late 70s. The Bee Gees were probably the biggest of the groups associated with disco. Although as I’ve stated before, my favorite rock bands were slipping disco influenced songs on their albums. While I was more in the “Death Before Disco” crowd (I’m not a dancer), I was surprised by the cultural backlash that eventually struck disco and the Bee Gees in particular. I don’t really consider the Bee Gees to be a “shooting star,” since they had had a long career before they’d gone disco, but man did they sink like a stone when disco thankfully died. The same thing happened in the late 80s/early 90s when Kurt Cobain and Grunge came along and basically killed all the Hair Metal bands… By then I knew how fragile fame could be for a rock band.

It wasn’t until the 80s that I experienced what I consider to be my first real shooting star type of band. I guess you could think of Peter Frampton as someone who only had a brief period of superstardom. However, he’d had a great career in Humble Pie and released a series of superb studio albums that were oddly ignored until his live album came out. But Frampton’s live versions of his tunes were all still in high rotation on my local rock station.

When I talk about a band who was a shooting star, burning brightly butbriefly, I’m talking about bands that came out of nowhere and shot to the top of the rock world…but only for an album or two. These are the bands that you can associate with a certain era – be it the 80s or the 90s – because they were white hot popular at that particular time. They may have stuck around and released more music but they never achieved that early burst of popularity. Here’s my list, but if there is a band you think fits this model, please drop it in the comments.

Huey Lewis And The News

After their debut stiffed and their second album only had one hit (“Workin’ For A Living”), Huey and his News exploded in popularity in 1983 with Sports. Huey was a good lookin’, affable gent. His father had bought him a harmonica and a airplane ticket to Europe when he got out of school and told him to “find his fortune.” Eventually he founded the band Clover, who backed Elvis Costello on his debut album. They changed their name and recorded those first two records before they found fame on Sports. The hits just exploded off that album. “Heart Of Rock N Roll,” “I Want A New Drug,” and “If This Is It” just to name a few. MTV certainly helped handsome Huey and his goofy looking band. I considered them more pop rock in the vein of Big Star than actual rock n roll like say, Springsteen, but even I recorded Sports on a blank cassette. Personally, I always liked “Walking On A Thin Line,” about a Vietnam vet…it had a little more heft. That record sold 7 million copies. Alas, the pressure to repeat that success got to Huey… he took 3 years, a lifetime back then, to follow up with Fore!, which despite selling 3 million copies was largely a disappointment to us rock n roll guys… “Stuck With You” was particularly cloying. By the time Small World came out in 1988, Huey had largely been forgotten, which seemed inconceivable only 5 years earlier.

Men At Work

Men At Work were a goofy group of Aussies who exploded in 1982 after their debut LP was released, Business As Usual. The LP came out in late ’81 and there was a small lag before MTV helped their first single, “Who Can It Be Now” explode. Lead singer Colin Hay looked like he’d come from Mars, not Australia. The next track cleared up where he was from with “Down Under.” That album sold 4 million copies. I was not a huge fan. But then the second album dropped, Cargo, and the single “Overkill” and they even caught my attention. But alas, for Men At Work, the bottom fell out. I think they released a third album but by then fans had moved on.

Hootie And The Blowfish

Despite lead singer Darius Rucker’s late career success as a country crooner, there aren’t many people who own up to being a fan of Hootie’s first LP, Cracked Rear View, but considering it sold 21 million – yes, TWENTY-ONE Million – copies, somebody was listening to them. Ah, 1994 when Grunge was king and here’s a guy singing about how “the Dolphins make (him) cry…” I’ll admit, even I bought the CD. And yes, to my shame I saw them in concert… I watched as a busty young lady pulled off her bra and threw it on stage in front of Rucker. It looked like a parachute without a sky diver landing in front of the mic stand. By the time 1996’s follow up, Fairweather Johnson had come out, most of us had taken those 21 million CDs down to the used record store and traded it in for some Thin Lizzy… at least that’s what I did. I’ve never seen a band explode and then disappear as quickly and to the magnitude that Hootie did.

Counting Crows

It was late 1993 when the Counting Crows dropped their debut album August And Everything After. I’d always been a huge fan of Van Morrison and the song “Mr. Jones” evoked that sound to me. Adam Duritz was a goofy looking guy who sported fake dreadlocks, but it all seemed to work. That album went on to sell 7 million copies. Duritz went on to date most of the female cast of the show Friends. I think these guys suffered from Phil Collins-level over exposure. I hung around for the follow up Recovering The Satellites, but the herd and decidedly thinned by then. I dug the song “Long December”… these Crows could always summon a sad song and I’m always a sucker for despair put to music… By 1999’s This Desert Life, like most folks, I’d departed the Crows bandwagon and back to obscurity they went. I think they’ve continued to put out records, but they’ve never come close to that initial 2 album run.

Those, to me anyway, are the foremost examples of bands who shot to the top of the rock n roll world in a bright, white-hot explosion of fame and adoration, only to burn out quickly and completely. I know there are countless other examples but these are the bands who spring to mind for me. Are there others? I’m sure. Let me know your thoughts, if any, in the comments…I did finally learn the valuable lesson that even for rock stars, fame, like life is fleeting. Enjoy it while you can.

Cheers!