A (B²- 2A) + √D
C+4

Right that’s it, I think. It’s taken many sleepless nights and more coffee breaks than one of Silvio Berlusconi’s all night Bunga Bunga dinner parties, but I’ve finally done it. Here is my equation that a band should use if they’re thinking about reuniting. All they have to do is substitute how many solo albums the lead singer has made into A, the amount of bankruptcies band members have had to file for into B, the number of times they’ve said they’ll never reunite to their desperate fans into C and the amount of their ‘classic’ albums that have been re-issued since their demise into D. If the answer comes to over 20, then it qualifies them to do a special one off show. If it comes to over 50, then they can go the whole hog and do a world tour.
The band reunion seemed to be one of the main crazes in the noughties, like those Topman T-shirts with the strange downward collars and sending chain e-mails that threaten the receiver with extreme emotional trauma if they don’t re-send it to another 10 friends in the next 16 minutes. Everyone from Led Zeppelin to The Specials to Spice Girls to The Police and even, er, Blue, who reunited just after 5 years after splitting, have had a roll of the reunion die. Sometimes it works, like in the case of Madness, who still continue to fill festival slots and The Specials, whose songs like ‘Ghost Town’ and ‘Too Much, Too Young’ still feel relevant 30 years on, with the exception of ‘Free Nelson Mandela’, as the big man was very much free at the time of the magazine going to publishing.
However, it’s not always a guaranteed success. Take the serial re-uniters, the Sex Pistols for example. They were a band who’s stripped down, no-nonsense songs were in the right place at the right time. They didn’t have any artistic merit or even have that many good songs, but that wasn’t the point. Yet the Pistols didn’t seem to realise this and have played frequently since, even as recent as 2008. Of course, I’m sure ‘it just felt right’, rather than the multiple figure sums they presumably received, but surely John Lydon must have had enough integrity and dignity to not tarnish the Sex Pistols legacy for a few easy bucks? But this was the man who ‘couldn’t resist the temptation’ to sing the praise of Country Life Butter and frolicked around in the jungle with Jordan and Peter Andre, so I may be wrong. He could agree to The Sex Pistols playing Prince William’s stag night, citing ‘it was what the Sex Pistols were all about’ and I wouldn’t be that shocked.
I also have my doubts about the upcoming Pulp reunion, in which they’re playing several festival dates this summer. They sang for all the misfits that weren’t ‘avin’ it large to Oasis or having a knees-up to Blur. But those misfits have grown up and they don’t want to see Pulp. They’ve grown up, married, and have had children, who they warn to stay away from people that look like Jarvis Cocker. It’s just going to be a tad weird having the bearded Cocker doing that dirty whispering along to songs, like ‘Underwear’. It’ll just sound like some sort of Barnsley 35p a minute sex line, that no-one’s enjoying.
So what I’m getting at here is that while it’s healthy to occasionally dabble in nostalgia, can’t we just leave it in the past, where it belongs? Otherwise, it’s just going to get crazy. In forty years time, I don’t want to see a middle aged, balding man that slightly resembles Justin Bieber to be straining to reach the top notes of ‘Baby’ or a 64 year Tinie Tempah boasting that there’s a groupie everyday at his front door. We should look back on the noughties with a sense of pride, but not continue to re-live it. With the music industry already declining at worrying pace, the last thing new bands need is to compete with some ageing has-beens, belting out their irrelevant ditties.
So bands of the world! I offer you with this ultimatum. Either, stick it out like The Rolling Stones or Prince have done, and yes, make a couple of terrible albums, or you can split up, never to return, leaving us with only positive memories of you.