Life on tour mostly happens in hotel rooms, tour buses and backstage corridors. For some musicians, the real shock of retirement is how quiet and fixed the days become once the bus stops. Where they end up says a lot about what they were missing.
The nine musicians below chose very different landing spots. They include a hay farm, a desert, a psychiatry clinic and an English country estate. A few of them still pop up for the odd performance, but each one built a life away from the touring circuit.
Elton John, Old Windsor, England
Elton John played his final tour date in Stockholm in July 2023. The show was billed as the last time he would perform as a touring artist. By then he had played roughly 4,500 concerts over half a century.
His retirement home is one he already knew well. Woodside, the house, sits near Windsor, close to Windsor Castle. He has owned it for nearly fifty years, but until the pandemic he spent little time there because most of his life was in hotel rooms on tour.
Bill Berry, Farmington, Georgia
R.E.M.’s drummer Bill Berry left the band in 1997. Two years earlier he had collapsed on stage in Lausanne, Switzerland, from a ruptured brain aneurysm. That scare was a catalyst for his exit rather than the whole reason.
He chose farm life over the studio. He settled on a hay farm in Farmington, Georgia, near Athens, where the band had started. Since then he has reunited with his bandmates only a handful of times.
Captain Beefheart, The Mojave Desert, California
Don Van Vliet, known as Captain Beefheart, built a reputation in the 1960s as an avant garde rock pioneer. His double album Trout Mask Replica is often considered his greatest work. He walked away from music completely not long after the 1970s ended.
He retired in 1982 and withdrew from public life into the Mojave Desert. There he spent the rest of his life painting and making visual art. His second career as a painter never needed a stage.
Kevin Moore, Minot, North Dakota
Kevin Moore is best known as an early keyboardist with Dream Theater and the founder of the project Chroma Key. His career after music was about as unconventional as his career in it. Few musicians trade amplifiers for a medical degree.
Moore became a doctor, and since 2020 he has worked as a psychiatrist at Trinity Health in Minot, North Dakota. Minot is a long way from any major tour stop, which may be part of its appeal.
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Terminator X, North Carolina
Terminator X earned admiration from hip hop fans as a DJ with Public Enemy. His turntable work helped define the group’s dense, urgent sound. Then he made one of the stranger exits in music history.
Norman Rogers, his real name, retired from music in 2003 to run an ostrich stud farm in North Carolina. It is a long way from arena stages, though it proves that a rural life can suit a city born DJ.
Phil Collins, Miami and Switzerland
Phil Collins has retired and returned so many times that his story is tricky to pin down. His young family was the main reason he retired from the road and moved to Switzerland full time. When his marriage ended in 2008, his wife took the boys to Miami.
Collins followed them. He moved into Jennifer Lopez’s former house in Miami to be closer to his kids. He bought the estate in 2015 for thirty three million dollars and sold it in January 2021. Genesis played their last show in 2022 with Collins on stage.
Bill Withers, Los Angeles
Bill Withers wrote some of soul music’s most durable songs in a short run of years. He retired in the mid 1980s, worn out by touring and by a strained relationship with his record company. Nothing tempted him back.
He made his home in Los Angeles, where he lived with his family until his death in 2020. He spent decades out of the spotlight, and he rarely seemed to miss it. His songs kept circulating without any help from him.
Neil Peart, Santa Monica, California
Neil Peart, the longtime Rush drummer and lyricist, stepped away from touring after the band’s 2015 tour. Years of physical strain had taken their toll, and he had spent much of his life on the road. He was also known for writing travel books about his journeys.
He settled in Santa Monica, California, where he lived until his death in 2020. The quiet stretch let him step back from the demands of playing night after night. Rush never toured again after that run.
Garth Brooks, Owasso, Oklahoma
Garth Brooks was one of the biggest country acts of the 1990s. At the end of that decade, he announced he was stepping back from touring and recording to raise his daughters. He wanted to be present for school years rather than stay on a bus.
He moved his family home to Owasso, Oklahoma, near Tulsa, where he lived during his break. He eventually returned to performing in the late 2000s, once his daughters were grown. The years in Oklahoma are still remembered as one of country music’s best known family timeouts.
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