Most breakups feel final. Members drift into solo careers, lawsuits get filed, and fans learn to live with old records. Then, occasionally, a stage lights up again decades later.
The eight bands below all came back after a gap of more than twenty years, whether for a concert, a tour or a new album. Each case is different, and a few of the reunions came with real limits. Here they are, roughly in the order they happened.
The Stooges
The Stooges formed in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in the late 1960s and broke up in 1974. Their raw, abrasive sound sold modestly at the time, though it later became a blueprint for punk. For almost thirty years, the band existed mostly as a legend.
That changed in 2003, when Iggy Pop reunited with guitarist Ron Asheton and drummer Scott Asheton, with Mike Watt on bass. They played festivals including Coachella that year. In 2007 they released a new album, The Weirdness. Ron Asheton died in 2009 and Scott Asheton in 2014, which makes the reunion years more precious in hindsight.
Cream
Cream lasted only a little more than two years. Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker said goodbye at London’s Royal Albert Hall in November 1968. The trio’s relationships were famously strained, so a return looked unlikely.
Yet in May 2005 they played four nights at that same hall, almost thirty seven years later. A run of shows at Madison Square Garden followed in October. Bruce died in 2014 and Baker in 2019, so those dates remain the trio’s last major appearances together.
The Specials
The Specials, from Coventry, were central to the British ska revival around 1979 and 1980. The original lineup splintered in 1981, and the members went their separate ways for decades. A reunion tour arrived in 2009, timed to the thirtieth anniversary of their debut. Songwriter and keyboardist Jerry Dammers did not take part.
What made this reunion unusual was that it kept producing new work. Their 2019 album Encore reached number one in the UK, which is a rare feat for a band returning after so long. Singer Terry Hall died in December 2022, and that brought the band’s story to a more somber point.
Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin ended in 1980 after drummer John Bonham died. The surviving members said at the time that they could not continue without him. For years they turned down most offers to return.
The exception came on December 10, 2007, at London’s O2 Arena, a tribute show for Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun. Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones played with Bonham’s son Jason on drums. Demand for tickets was enormous, with requests reported in the millions for a hall that held far fewer people. The show ran as a single night, and no tour followed.
The Police
The Police released their last studio album, Synchronicity, in 1983 and effectively went quiet soon afterward. Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland spent the next two decades on separate paths. Their tensions were well known.
The band announced a reunion at the Grammy Awards in February 2007. The tour that followed ran into 2008 and took in more than three hundred million dollars, according to widely reported industry figures. It ranked among the highest grossing tours of its time. They have not made a studio album together since.
Pink Floyd
Roger Waters left Pink Floyd in 1985, and a bitter legal fight over the band’s name followed. The four classic members had last performed together in 1981 during The Wall shows. A reunion seemed all but off the table.
Then came Live 8 at Hyde Park in London on July 2, 2005. Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright played a short set together, roughly twenty four years after their last shared stage. It was brief and it was not the start of a tour. Wright died in 2008, so that appearance stands as the last time the four played together.
ABBA
ABBA stopped working together in the early 1980s, and the four members long resisted offers to return. Their last album before the split was The Visitors in 1981. For decades, they declined enormous sums to perform again.
They surprised fans in November 2021 with a new album, Voyage, their first in about forty years. In May 2022 the ABBA Voyage show opened in London, featuring digital versions of the band alongside a live band. It was a return of a different kind, since the members did not perform in person.
Pulp
Pulp is a looser case, because the Sheffield band has come and gone more than once. They went quiet after their 2001 album We Love Life, then reunited for shows in the early 2010s before pausing again. A full return to touring came in 2023.
In 2025 they released a new album, More, the first since We Love Life, so nearly a quarter century passed between records. Fronted by Jarvis Cocker, the band had finally turned a sporadic reunion into fresh music. Fans who had waited that long got a real album, not just a nostalgia run.
