"What has eight legs, four egos and can turn us weak at the knees?" "The answer is..." "the rock 'n' roll band." "We've examined the individual roles." "Now on I'm In A Rock 'N' Roll Band, we're looking at the unit, the whole." "This programme contains strong language." "The timeless combination of vocals, guitar, bass and drums." "You take a shot on this thing to have a bit of fun." "And you go for it." "When it's good, it's very, very good." "It's like a gentleman's glee club, innit?" "On wheels." "You can get as drunk as you want and you don't have to stop drinking... at any point." "We're setting out a 12-step programme charting the classic journey that bands take, from the bedroom to the stadium, from small town wannabes to world-beaters, from their imaginations to our hearts." "# Tonight, I'm a rock 'n' roll star" "# Tonight, I'm a rock 'n' roll star" "# Tonight I'm a rock 'n' roll star... #" "It all starts with a dream." "A spark ignites in the mind of callow youth." "And a plan is hatched to form a band." "# Started turning when you were young... #" "But what is the driving force that has spurred on generation after generation to seek their place in the rock 'n' roll pantheon?" "A burning desire for self-expression?" "A fierce hunger to change the world?" "A band forms because four teenagers want to have it off with women!" "Basically, staying kids all your life." "You get to be one of the boys..." "in your band." "It's for the freedom, the joy, the sex, the chance to make some money." "# Teenage dreams so hard to beat... #" "My ambition in Joy Division was to avoid having a career." "Just cos you're in a group, you can get away with telling the whole world to fuck off." "It's also a great excuse for getting away with a really bad haircut." "Bands, they represent successful outlaws." "They seem to have bucked the system in some way and avoided getting a proper job." "Beats the shit out of working for a living, doesn't it?" "You get to travel the world, live the dream and create music with your mates." "The careers officer at school never told me about that option." "Thank you very much(!" ")" "Before joining the road to glory, step one is to recruit the perfect blend of personnel." "And whatever the era, wherever the location, in those early days the us-against-the-world mentality is crucial." "Bands, when they first start, there's a common camaraderie." "It's us against the rest of the world." "Most famously of all, The Beatles were a gang of Scousers whose success thrust crumbling post-industrial Liverpool onto centre stage in the '60s." "MUSIC:" "Welsh Male Voice Choir" "Four decades later, Caerphilly in South Wales was most celebrated for its piquant and crumbly cheese." "That was before four likely lads plastered on some eyeliner and mugged up on existential philosophy." "Little did their macho, working class hometown of Blackwood know that it was about to become the fountainhead from which Wales' greatest ever rock 'n' roll band, the Manic Street Preachers, would gush forth." "# Culture sucks down words" "# Itemise loathing And feed yourself smiles... #" "Things start off definitely with a gang mentality, it's vital, it sounds like a cliche and it's naive, but that's what all those classic things are." "That's not rock 'n' roll mythology, you form a band because you are a gang." "You might be a bit of a toothless nerdy gang, like we were..." "For us, it was just in our bedroom, with this little record deck listening to old Stones records." "It is deeply romantic." "We were all friends before we were in a band." "The things that Nick didn't like about me when I was younger," "I was rubbish at football." "# Under neon loneliness" "# Motorcycle emptiness... #" "Coming from Wales, there wasn't a huge tradition." "We had to prove ourselves ten times more." "# Motorcycle... #" "I think our background, the place that we grew up, just made us, more than we can ever realise." "CHEERING" "But whichever particular place they might hail from, what is the seemingly universal appeal of all this boys together camaraderie?" "I think the fascination with the band may be part of a larger fascination with certain very strongly bonded groups - sports teams, army units..." "Those bonds made in the crucible of wartime or combat on the pitch." "Instead of being in a gang where you attack old ladies or destroy shop windows, you're in a gang with your band-mates." "And you're creating things." "Whether it's the North East's mean streets or hippy West Coast beaches, it seems every band finds the version of the gang dynamic that suits them best." "Underlying the whole thing, messages from the unconscious are saying, "Come together with your fellows" ""and form this unit that is going to play" ""1-2-3-4, with the beat on 2 and 4."" "You come together and become one with each other, a mystical experience happens." "It's a battle with us, it's a war zone." "Four alpha-male guys in one band took a lot of containing." "There was a lot of aggression, an enormous amount of testosterone floating around." "It's like cowboy movies, isn't it?" "It's like that moment when you see a line and everyone just comes towards you and you think," ""I ain't going to mess with them."" "MUSIC:" "The Good, The Bad And The Ugly Theme" "When they just walk, they strut, it's that moment of menace." "I've always loved that feeling of being in a gang." "I just want to give myself that feeling in my guts, you know?" "Like when you leave a first date with somebody and you shut the gate." "You walk away and you go, "Ohh!"" "It's like chasing the bittersweet curse of that chase forever." "Look at the cover of The Ramones, the first record, that kind of says it all, doesn't it?" "You can't look at that and not actually want to be in their gang." "And just be one of them, you know?" "There's that great photo of Bob Marley And The Wailers just walking into the Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury Park, they're carrying their own instruments and they look the nuts." "Not every great band grows up in each other's pockets, mind." "Some are much more calculating in their tilt at stardom." "That's how The Police went about it." "# Every breath you take... #" "Well, there are two different ways that groups can come together." "Either they all grew up in the same village and they bust out and they're joined at the hip." "And the other kind of group, which is where mercenaries say," ""You're good, you got what I need and I got what you need," ""so let's do it."" "# Every word you say... #" "The Police was a mercenary group." "Cream, Led Zeppelin, these are groups that were established musicians, they already had their thing going and they found the right guys." "They could choose the best because they were the best." "Yeah!" "The band is formed." "But will never get beyond the four teenagers mooching around in a bedroom stage, unless they come up with a killer name, one that will intrigue, slip off the tongue and define the band's very essence." "Agonising over the choice of moniker is all part of the rock 'n' roll rite of passage." "After all, would The Beatles have conquered the world if they had remained The Quarrymen?" "Or would Blur have done so well as Seymour?" "How a name fares over the years can make or break a band." "So, no pressure then, coming up with the right one!" "How you feel about the name, the day you name your band, and how you feel about it five or ten years later, are going to be completely different things." "There's so much pressure when you're trying to come up with your name, to get something where you think," ""I hope when I tell everybody what my band's called..."" "There's that awful moment, "We're called (Razorlight)"." ""What's that?" "Razorlight"." "You're like..." "# That's not my name That's not my name... #" "You've got to write it down, you've got to see how it looks." "Cos a name..." "Of course now, it's going to be a graphic thing, it's going to be a visual thing." "And what does it mean?" "I've come to the conclusion it doesn't really matter what your name is." "It might sound good in your head, then you look at it and say," ""Oh, Jesus Christ, uh-uh!"" "But eventually, by dint of repetition, the words become something other than words, they become part of you." "When you start out, most of the time you're telling people your band name is in an indie club after you've played, and you have to be able to shout it really loud in someone's ear," "with them understanding what you're saying and to remember it." "They'll shout something unintelligible, then say," ""Yeah, it's small A, big A," ""little A, D...!"" "But if you just shout Kaiser Chiefs as loud as you can in someone's ear, you only have to say it once." "The Ricky Wilson indie-club holler method is only one strategy for cracking the name game." "Even mind-altering substances can come into play in pursuit of that eureka moment, if your name is Iggy Pop." "One night, we'd been up all night taking psychedelic drugs, all four of us." "So I said, "Well, look..." ""..what are we going to call our group?"" "And then Ron Asheton just said," ""Well, we're just like the Stooges." ""We can't get anywhere," ""everybody hates us for no reason."" "And that was the naming of the group." "The double Os... ..are magical." "There should be a little magic in any good name and the double Os had it, cos there's an "Ooh", you have to do that when you say the name of the group." "You're already letting us in!" "As soon as you say "Stooge"." "Try to get John Wayne to say that without..." ""You goddamn Stooge!"" "Once the gang has its name, what's needed next is a look." "Whether it's punk, emo, indie, new wave or no wave, image and style defines a band." "If they don't look the part, they'll never get anywhere." "I think a band's image is absolutely 100% important to their survival." "I remember early days, trying all sorts actually, like really bizarre hair and I had all my hair shaved off, with just this long fringe for a while, which looked awful." "Then I started gigging in a suit for a while, with a pair of sunglasses and no shoes, I thought that'll be my thing!" "Some fledgling bands don't even realise they're creating a look." "Take Mancunian post-punk lads Joy Division, with their functional clothing, neat haircuts and big macs." "Once you start getting into a band, you need an image." "That's manager talk, "What's your image, lads?"" ""Well, we're sort of like neo-Gothic really."" "What we thought our image would be is that we would have no image, which is obviously wrong, because you can't exist without having an image, unless you're ghosts." "And we weren't ghosts." "# Love, love will tear us apart again" "# Love, love will tear us apart... #" "Your image really comes from outside." "One thing that summed up what Joy Division were was a photograph that Kevin Cummins took of us and the bridge at Hulme." "That becomes an image... but at the time it's, "That's a crap picture of me." ""You can't..." "Mum, look..." "Can you see me there?"" ""No, that's a terrible picture, our Stephen."" "Joy Division may not have even noticed the distinctive image they were creating, or that others were making for them." "But other bands know precisely what they're up to." "The three blond mercenaries who made up The Police certainly did." "I think the way you look, the way you present yourself, is obviously an important thing." "I mean, it was fortunate that nobody in The Police was hard to look at." "We were pretty good looking as a group of people." "Our success coincided with the rise of MTV, visuals suddenly became important." "It was a happy accident." "The blond hair thing we did because of a Wrigley's chewing gum commercial, where they hired us to pretend that we were a band in their commercial." "They said, "Let's dye their hair all blond."" "We said, "That's kind of cool", and we kept it." "# Message in a bottle... #" "We'd never dress ourselves up or anything, with the exception of our singer who used to walk past mirrors and..." "Something like that." "We never had a discussion about it, or rather the only discussion..." "We said, "Look at you primping"." "He'd say, "Hey, dude, it's my job."" "# You must remember this A kiss is still a kiss... #" "Colouring your hair is one thing, but others are happy to go much further." "One band has based a 40-year career on vaunting the visuals over the music." "Step forward those shameless glam image-mongers Kiss." "We wanted to be more than a band." "I don't want to be in a band, I want to be in a brand." "It's not enough to be in U2, and I love U2, it's not enough." "If I was in U2, you'd have U2 cola, baby, you'd have a country called U2, you'd have U2 hotels, you'd have a lifestyle." "# Tonight" "# I want to give it all to you" "# In the darkness" "# There's so much I wanna do... #" "When I dream, perhaps my dreams are bigger than yours, they're limitless." "I don't want just to play guitar and bass." "I want the entire lifestyle." "I want the food you eat, the bed you sleep on the planet you walk on, to be Planet Kiss." "# I can't get enough of you, baby" "# Can you get enough of me...?" "#" "And yes, even Kiss Mr Potato Heads." "Are they known in England?" "You just can't get near us." "Rich, successful and humble too!" "# Riding along in my automobile" "# My baby beside me at the wheel... #" "Band formed, image devised." "What happens next involves a scramble of bodies and equipment in the bass player's Transit in search of gigs." "It's like a character-building National Service for troublemakers." "And it never did the old guard any harm." "# Riding along in my automobile... #" "Paying your dues... is hell, but I do think that it builds character." "And it puts you in a position where you don't take things for granted." "If you weren't working in a bar every night, four sets a night, for two or three years, your band wasn't going to be very good cos that's how you get good." "You play Chuck Berry and Beatles and Rolling Stones and RB, I don't care if it's Mustang Sally, you learn those songs and then the band is tight then." "Driving round and winning audiences over and battling and fighting with your audience is a very important thing in the life of a group." "# Mustang Sally... #" "Before you're successful and you're playing Saturday nights in the Black Country, in the Midlands, it's a real rough crowd in a real rough and tumble pub." "About ten o'clock at night, you could always guarantee a fight would break out and it would be like a Wild West show." "Tables and chairs would be flying and this happened every night." "Saturday night was fighting night in the Midlands and all over the country." "# Hit me with your rhythm stick... #" "But you carried on playing, you learned how to handle it." "One you played in front of those tough, rough-and-ready audiences, you could play anywhere, you could play anywhere in the world." "# Get your motor running" "# Head out on the highway... #" "Money might be scarce, fans even more so, but who cares?" "!" "These are the happiest days of your lives." "You don't see it as paying your dues cos you're just having fun." "Whilst you've still got a dream, everything's a lot lighter." "It's got a kind of romance." "We paid our dues, schlepping round the country in a van with all the equipment in the back." "There's many a time we'd be playing in Aberdeen one night and we could be playing down in Plymouth the next night." "And you'd be coming down from Scotland in the snow and fog and you'd be driving over the Shap near the Lake District and you'd be stuck on the top of the Shap in freezing fog and ice and snow." "# Look to the future now" "# It's only just begun... #" "You'd have to have a sleep in the van on the top of the Shap on the way down cos it's too dangerous to drive in the fog." "# Oh, yes" "# I love my label" "# And my label loves me. #" "What's all that dues-paying and relentless motorway travelling geared towards, then?" "The Holy Grail sought by thousands of hopefuls, that's what." "To get noticed by an A and R man with a plan, who wants to make all their dreams come true by signing them up." "You really felt like, until you had a deal, you were just howling into the void." "Nobody was hearing you." "There was nothing." "We spent five years being in a band." ""Have you got a deal?" "Um, no..."" "Like that and then, finally, someone wants to pick up your band." "I've only been signed as one band." "We were signed as Bad News to EMI." "# Mama... #" "It was very exciting because, suddenly, the idea, obviously completely erroneous that you were going to be rich from doing your most fun hobby." "That's the overriding idea, A, that you're going to be rich and B, successful," "C, sleep with more women." "None of these three things happened." "# Signed, sealed, delivered I'm yours... #" "For the lucky ones, signing a deal is hitting the jackpot." "It's like a Pools with, birthday and Christmas rolled up into one brain-bogglingly hedonistic package." "It's got to be up there as one of the best days ever." "We quit work and we were skint and then we pissed a hundred grand up the wall in a year, which was funny." "Yeah, we had a good time." "We had a good time and then we got stung." "We had no album to release" "We hadn't played live yet and no singles out, so we were in a lot of trouble." "We didn't take huge advances." "We gave ourselves a wage, maybe 50 quid a week." "That was a giant leap from £16 a week signing on." "I think I spent mine on sweets and stuff and chocolate." "We signed to a label called Arista Records, why did we sign with them?" "They had Iggy Pop, they had Lou Reed," "Patti Smith, I mean, the coolest record label in the world." "We went to the offices in Mayfair." "There was only one portrait on the wall." "There was this huge portrait and these marbled halls... of Barry Manilow." "Because it was Barry that was paying everybody's wages." "# You know I can't smile without you" "# I can't smile without you... #" "And nothing against Barry Manilow, but that was the reality." "And then you get there and you're in a lawyer's office and thinking, "Never been in one of these."" "And you sign it and there's this anti-climax." ""What do we do now?"" "You realise you've got money in your pocket, so you can get as drunk as you want to get and you don't have to stop drinking." "HE BURPS" "Once a band is signed, they release some tunes in the hope someone will like them." "For the lucky ones, the first sweet taste of success can come quickly and in the olden days, they'd find themselves on a popular TV show where the latest beat platters got an airing." "# I wouldn't laugh at you when you boo-hoo-hoo" "# Cos I love you... #" "This is what you've been wishing for when you were standing in front of the mirror when you were a kid with your tennis racquet or your cricket bat, pretending you're a rock 'n' roll star." "You want to be No 1 in the hit parade - as it was called in those days, "the hit parade"." "It's a fantastic feeling." "It's mind-blowing." "I think it used to be Top Of The Pops, didn't it?" "The first real breakthrough, when you knew you had made it." "# I get so tired of walking" "# Yeah, yeah... #" "Old people say, "I'll see you on Top Of The Pops one day,"" "and you do Top Of The Pops and think, "I'm on Top Of The Pops." "This is weird."" "# Yeah, yeah, yeah... #" "My first recollection of Top Of The Pops was how small the studio was and that they moved the audience from stage to stage." "There's only one audience, but you think there's lots." "It was a terrifying experience and you have to do this insane thing called playback, where you have to mime, which is still..." "What's that all about?" "People say, "You're not very good at miming," thank God." "I remember the bar most cos you end up having drinks with the people from EastEnders." "That was the main memory." "I had a fag with Dot Cotton and a pint with Frank Butcher." "What's wrong with that?" "It's all wet." "And for the really lucky few, the topper most of the popper most awaits." "The pinnacle, the apogee." "That heady moment when they land their first No 1." "# She keeps a Moet Chandon in a pretty cabinet" "# "Let them eat cake," she says" "# Just like Marie-Antoinette" "# A built-in remedy" "# For Khrushchev and Kennedy" "# At anytime an invitation you can't decline... #" "I remember we were in the Holiday Inn in Bristol and somebody said Killer Queen's gone to No 1 in the Melody Maker chart." "We all jumped in the air." "We were in the elevator and it stopped." "We were stuck there for about 10 minutes, I think." "And what of the feverish excitement of topping the charts today?" "We had a No 1, one of our songs." "I remember being on the bus, travelling somewhere and someone shouting it down the back and I stuck my head out." "I went back to sleep and thinking now, "Wow, where was the Champagne popping?"" "They could at least have pulled over." "At last they've made it, or have they?" "The moment where the band strikes gold marks the point where the real work begins." "Now it's time to capitalise on that first success by hitting the road again to take the music to the fans." "They may have left the white van days behind, but however state-of-the-art the bus, however cavernous the venues, however swanky the hotels, all that luxury won't ease the emotional strain of being cooped up with the same people 24/7." "What other thing do you end up on a big, bloody tour bus sleeping in a line together?" "You all lie there in your bunks, sleeping you get up in the morning, your hair's all sticking up." ""I'm so tired."" "And then you put on the face and everybody gets their showers and you sound check and then it's getting ready to do the next show." "It's like a mobile Big Brother house." "You're in a bus together." "Everyone's getting on each other's nerves." "It's very difficult to describe the tedium and the boredom that's then balanced against these outrageous, fantastic highs." "I was like, "God, I'm surrounded by all these bloody men."" "Like people on holiday." "That's how they behaved - animals." "# This is the happy house... #" "You can imagine how the bus got after a while." "The road crew, maybe one change of socks for the a two-month tour." "You got the band and different stops and different female bodies coming on a different times." "It drove me mad." "I remember waking up one morning and screaming inside, "I hate the fucking lot of you!"" "Believe me, three months on a bus with somebody... cabin fever, right, you know." "They would have this small, tiny habit and by the time you've been on a bus with them for three months in Europe, it's huge and you want to kill them all the time." "With a blunt knife." "On tour, the most innocuous thing can become the straw that breaks the camel's back." "In late-'80s blues outfit, the Jack Bruce band, the backbone comprised of Jack himself, his former Cream compadre, Ginger Baker on drums and a hot-blooded whippersnapper called Blues on guitar." "I remember when Ginger was in my band," "I had this very young guitar-player, he was only about 18, and Ginger was sitting on the bus smoking his pipe." "Blues left the band." "He said "That's it." "I'm out of here."" "So Ginger had to follow the bus, driving a car so he could smoke a pipe." "Ludicrous." "As egos start to get out of control, the band can end up on the road to nowhere." "It's a bubble and everyone thinks they're Peter Pan." "Nothing changes in that bubble and that's why everyone has a downer when they go home." "I think that's why U2, their wives make them stay in a hotel for a week when they finish a world tour, cos then they come home, they're a pain in the arse." "I agree." "You can't walk off stage playing to 50,000 people, phoning the president then come home and watch EastEnders." "That won't wash." "We do that." "We have a day." "We can't afford a week." "The world of incessant touring takes hold and life within the band fast takes over what's left of its members personal lives, until they start to become each other's nearest and dearest." "No wonder being in a rock 'n' roll band is compared to another age-old institution." "It's harder than a marriage." "In a marriage, you're coping with two people." "It's like being in four marriages, really." "And, don't forget, when you're on the road or in the studio working on a new album, you are with one another 24/7, pretty much." "You're travelling on that plane together, you're sitting in that dressing room together." "The only break you have is in your hotel room and when you get some kip." "# Hey, little sister who's the only one?" "#" "It's not easy being in a band." "It's a marriage without sex." "Who wants that?" "I'm not sure I wanted it." "I don't want to have sex with the other guys in the band at all." "It's an analogy." "# It's a nice day to... #" "Absolutely, sexless one." "Well, in our band, yeah." "Especially, me and him," "Bezwick." "That's a sexless marriage." "It's like lovers, if they stick together 24/7, you're going to have a feud, but when you come back together, it's more exciting." "You miss each other." "It's like lovers, when they have a feud, they have the sex make up." "Which is always the most fun." "Never skip on that." "My marriages only lasted five years." "This has lasted 32." "So marriage is small potatoes compared to this - in my pathetic case." "A time-honoured touchstone on the band's journey to rock 'n' roll nirvana is the "experimental" stage, meaning taking a lot of drugs." "The idea generally being that getting out of their heads might improve the music and help them cope with their oh-so complicated lives." "I think bands cope with the pressure of being on the road or not getting along with each other in a variety of different ways." "Some drink a lot, some exercise a lot, some take a lot of drugs." "Getting high as a means of bettering the music is an idea that can be traced back to way back before the dawn of rock 'n' roll." "You can go back to Mozart, mate, and he was at it." "That's art." "That's rock 'n' roll." "# Picture yourself on a train in a station... #" "When I was a kid, it was "Oh, we just drink Perrier water." "I don't want to read about them sort of bands." "They didn't float my boat as a kid who loved rock 'n' roll." "It's not necessary, although, would you say Pepper would have been made without LSD?" "In the '60s, certain hallucinogenic substances to whit, LSD, you find, under the influence of that substance, there's a oneness that happens, not only with the universe, but with three, four, five people in the band." "# Deep and wide" "# Break on through to the other side" "# Break on through to the other side... #" "There was no more Ray Manzarek, there was no Jim Morrison." "There was the beat, the energy, the chord changes, the structure of the song and the lyrics to the song." "You leapt outside yourself and entered into a zen." "It's zen oneness." "You're zen monks making music." "The only thing I didn't count on was Jim Morrison and alcohol." "That fooled me." "That came out of the blue and I could never understand what Jim saw in that bottle." "But there was something within his genes that said, "I need this whisky." "I want this whisky." ""I want this Bourbon" and by God, that's what he drank." "Wild Turkey was his drink." "That's what killed him." "Others claim to embody a purer, more Corinthian spirit." "That's not allowed in Kiss." "Kiss is square." "We treat what we do with the pride that Olympic athletes have." "The best of the best." "Make no bones about declaring so." "We get up on stage and say," ""You wanted the best, you got..." Oh, by the way, I invented that." "It is at about this point in a band's journey that one member, more often that not, the singer..." "Give us your coat." "..will feel an insatiable urge to mess with the formula, to ignore the naysayers and go it alone for the nearly always ill-advised side project." "Some people can get a bit cocky." "They think they're the singer, they don't need the band and go off and be solo and get distracted and should really have stuck with the band." "# Give me just another night" "# Just another night with you... #" "Mick Jagger went off and...still does go off and do solo albums that no-one wants." "# Cos I'm homesick" "# Feel a little... #" "The whole point about a band is the collective." "You can go on about the lead singer, but the ideal singer is no more than part of the collective." "It's a moot point as to whether you'd buy a solo album as opposed to a U2 album." "It kind of doesn't work." "Sorry, dude." "We'll talk about it later." "Keith's solo album didn't really work." "Mick's solo album didn't really work." "Even Stones bassist came to the conclusion he owed the world his solo contribution." "# Je suis un rock star" "# J'avais un residence" "# J'habite a la" "# A la South of France... #" "It's great for the person who's doing it." "It's very rewarding, but the general public and the people who like your band, they can't accept that you've just gone off in this direction." "# J'avais un residence" "# J'habite a la... #" "A Pete Townsend album as opposed to a Who album." "Even when you say it, it's just not going to work, is it?" "You shouldn't go off doing solo projects if you're in a band." "To me, I think it's an alien thing that I don't think anyone should do." "If you want to do it, leave the band and go and do it." "# You say yes... #" "By now, the band is a runaway roller-coaster of ambition, delusion and musical differences." "Yes, they may have made it to the top, but the cracks are showing and arguments are starting to flare." "There comes a time in a band's career where you've gotten to the mountain." "And then fewer, but some, get to the mountain top." "There's only one way to go from that mountain top." "Down." "When times of crisis happen in bands, it usually goes in groups." "Everybody would talk about everybody but nobody will ever bring it to the table." "He sits at one end of the bus and I sit at the other end of the bus." "Sometimes he doesn't want to listen to me." "I'm going like that..." "I'm very hyperactive and I talk a lot." "I..." "I..." "Like now." "And when tempers really erupt, it's singer in the red corner, guitarist in the blue corner." "Queensbury rules and no punches below the belt." "We were never serious as fights go." "A few serious fights that's all." "It's always wonderful afterwards - kiss and make." "When we was young, fights were physical." "Broken noses, fingers, black eyes." "Especially brothers." "A kid you've known since he was nine years old and you're arguing, the first thing you do is launch at him or they'll launch at you." "The arguing's just done with them." "One of the most momentous fallouts in rock 'n' roll folklore involved '60s belters, The Troggs." "Luckily for future generations, it was recorded for posterity." "# Wild thing" "# You make my heart sing" "# You make everything groovy" "# Wild thing... #" "There is the infamous Trogg Tapes where we went into a studio and we were arguing probably the biggest argument that The Troggs have ever had and somebody left the tape running." "'That's a load of BLEEP." "'If that bastard doesn't go then..." "'I'll BLEEP retire.'" "'I think it is a good song." "I agree it is a good song.'" "'But it BLEEP won't be unless we spend a little bit of BLEEP thought and imagination 'making it BLEEP number one.'" "The argument started where Ronnie, bless him, he's gone now..." "He started doing a riff and I thought, "That's not bad." "He could do better than that."" "So there was another argument to get him to do something else and try something else." "'Why don't you just do what you BLEEP started out doing?" "'Dub-a-dub-a-dub-a-cha!" "'Dub-a-dub-a-dub-a-cha!" "DRUMMING" "'No!" "'" "'You're talking out the back of your arses cos all you want is the same BLEEP thing...!" "'" "INDISTINCT ARGUING" "I think bands would have found the humorous side of it almost immediately because I bet you they've been through it." "'BLEEP drummer!" "I...'" "Most bands experience these stormy moments, but only a handful develop the happy knack of keeping the ship afloat amidst the most tempestuous storms." "But how do they manage to keep the core steady when the waters get choppy?" "You need rigid discipline." "An example I would give you is..." "U2, who rigidly discipline themselves." "They've been mates for ages." "But, obviously, they've got competing interests but they sit down over practically every decision..." "# Come on, come on, let's stick together... #" "..and they talk through things and they've worked out what they're going to do, where the band is at now, where they're at, where the audience is at, what they should be doing, who they should use." "Bap-bap-bap!" "And that's the key." "You don't stay up there by chance." "You really, really don't." "In order to make a living in music, as a band, you've got to want to do it more than you don't." "And you've got to want to... set aside your personal differences, work through stuff that perhaps you can't be bothered with at the time for the sake of keeping the whole thing together." "But ultimately, if a band cannot resolve its differences one way or the other, there's only one course of action left." "TEARING" "Will anyone ever replace The Beatles for you?" "No." "No." "It's just one Beatles' group." "That's it." "There couldn't be another." "What is it about them?" "We grew up with them." "They started when they were younger and we were younger." "And all through these years we've developed with them and grown up with them and they, like, belong to us, you know." "But there could never be another Beatles." "Never." "In so many ways the archetypal rock 'n' roll band, The Beatles, also gave the world the classic break-up." "ROY ORBISON: # Golden days before they end... #" "As it does for most bands, all that money, fame and adulation proved too much for the Moptops." "Tears are shed." "It's the end for the gang." "The dream is over." "There are very few bands..." "who can sustain the creative curiosity and also, the personal aspects of living together as grown men... and sustain that for a lifetime." "# Your baby doesn't want you... #" "I needed to grow away from it" "I needed to grow up." "# It's over... #" "Bands break up...because everything breaks up." "We're born and we die and there's an end to it." "The Libertines broke up for personal reasons more than music." "It was just a..." "It was just thundering out of control and it was going to destroy itself and ruin the legacy it made." "# It's over!" "And it ended at the best time it possibly could." "# It's over!" "#" "Bands are temporary." "They're not meant to last forever." "You look at a band like the Rolling Stones and that is a weird phenomenon." "That's a thing." "They're meant to be kind of incendiary, exciting, temporary shooting stars that kind of light the whole sky up for a very brief moment and then expire and disappear." "I think bands break up in the end when the goals change for each individual and they're no longer chasing the same goal." "I also think a lot of financial structuring of bands can lead to the break up of bands." "# It's over!" "#" "Because of money..." "I reckon, don't you think?" "At the end of the day..." "Got too much or you've not got enough." "# It's over!" "#" "With Oasis it would've been about money but about 50p or something." "It'd be, "Whose 50p is that?"" ""It's mine, it fell out me jeans." "You just saw it fall out my jeans...our kid." Maybe..." "WIND BLOWS" "Once the group has split, estranged band-mates go their own separate ways and enter the wilderness years where usually they try their hand in other career areas, often with little success." "Many moons will pass until out of boredom and or, poverty a thought strikes someone." "Mmm. "Maybe being part of that rock 'n' roll band I couldn't wait to get shot of" ""is the sole reason I was put on the planet."" "And before you know it, the gang is reunited for one night only, unless it goes well." "Together again, once more, except for the keyboard player who nobody's told." "In a band it's very, very concentrated." "You don't realise how amazing it is, how special." "You don't realise what you've got, you completely fuck it up by bickering about nothing... whether it's about money, songs, girlfriends...usually." "And then you go away." "You have your boring life for another 15 years where your kids have all grown up, they've left the house and you're like, "What the fuck did I do?"" "Get on the phone to the boys, be like the Blues Brothers and get the band back together." "# The boys are back in town The boys are back in town... #" "The Specials are a classic example - they split in the early '80s and it took three decades before Terry Hall and his band-mates felt enough water had flowed under the bridge for them to share a stage once more." "# This town..." "Town is coming like a ghost town. #" "We just sort of got together cos it was our 30th anniversary of our first record." "And over the years, there's been talk of us trying to do something or reforming to do something, but to me nothing made sense until that point." "It came out of me being very ill and getting better and looking at my ex-band members in a totally different way." "But that wasn't really the intention at the start." "The start was to realise who your mates were and who they could be again." "# This town..." "Town is coming like a ghost town. #" "And we've all really grown up now." "We've all had families and stuff, but there's still that tension there and we still row, but we can deal with it now, whereas before it became physical." "# Bands won't play no more" "# Too much fighting on the dance floor" "# Yah-yah-yah" "# Yah-yah-yah" "# Yah-yah-yah" "# Yah-yah-yah... #" "I know what makes them get back together." "I don't give a fuck what anybody says - money." "It's the money." "It's the money." "It's simple." "It's the green." "Yeah." "If they say it's for the love, I think they're lying." "You can tell." "The Sex Pistols didn't even bother to pretend when they reformed in 1996 - calling it the Filthy Lucre tour." "But is it always as cynical and cash-driven as that?" "I don't think they really get together for money." "They get together cos it's really bloody good fun and they absolutely miss it." "They completely miss it and they can have any kind of side project or pretend they're making an album in their own studio at home..." "What it really means is they miss the band and they can't wait for someone just to say sorry." ""Please say sorry and we can get on stage" ""and pretend to be the old cock rockers we were."" "And talking of...reformed bands, none come bigger than The Police who got back together in 2007 for a mammoth world tour." "Reforming The Police was my idea." "The timing was my idea." "I said, "No, no, no" for many years, but I suddenly had an instinct that this would be the right time, that people would be ready or pleased to see us again." "And that we could re-create that nostalgia." "# Feel so lonely... #" "It was difficult in many ways because we'd all matured in different ways and had different interests, so had to, basically, lock ourselves down to the task and say," ""OK, we have to do this now."" "Um... some of the old volatility came back, some of the old arguments came back." "STING LAUGHS" "That's going to be fucking cover of Modern Drummer magazine." "It's going to be fucking devoted to that drum fill." "It's amazing that you could play that drum fill in nine beats." "Ah-ha!" "Yeah!" "It's fantastic." "Just because you get lost." "Just cos it's a little confusing for the fucking bass-playing element." "It was going so well, too(!" ")" "'There were kind of resentments at the beginning.'" "I really thought after the first four or five days," ""Not going to happen."" "But it was sort of too late because we'd sort of like, we'd turned the key of this massive machine and it was up and running and we couldn't turn back." "Bow!" "Bow!" "This is the coda?" "Yeah." "OK, so you don't want it to continue any more?" "Well." "Now you want something different?" "You know..." "It's hard without writing it all down..." "For me, it was a no-brainer." ""Course, let's do it."" "I've got a great career as a film composer, but this is an opportunity to go out and play stadiums and spend a year doing something completely outside of my world, impress the kids." "# Walking back from your house" "# I was walking on the moon" "# Walking back from your house" "# Walking on the moon... #" "I would've thought the problem of being a reformed band is people want you to play like when you were 19." "You might not be able to any more, you may have forgotten how it goes." "No matter how many times you listen to the record can you figure out what you were doing." "# Walking on the moon. #" "The Police got back together, year before last and they seemed to at least, in their concerts, be trying to propel the music and reinvent themselves." "Of course the audiences weren't interested." ""Play it like on the record, you wankers." HE LAUGHS" "We got through it." "We didn't strangle each other and... all left happily." "APPLAUSE AND CHEERING" "But one story of band reformation tops the lot, proving that even the loss of a key member won't diminish our desire to see our favourite band just once more, even if the band is as beloved as Queen," "and the band member as revered as Freddie Mercury." "I think when Freddie died, we did sort of, mentally, call it a day." "Then it just sort of gained a momentum of its own again, you know." "People were still keen to see us." "# On and on... #" "Paul Rodgers came along, purely accidentally..." "So we did about five tours with Paul, actually." "Never at any point did I feel I was going to try and replace Freddie." "That would be a dangerous thing to do." "They broke the mould when Freddie died." "He was the one for that band and he was very unique." "So the only way I could deal with that was to actually just be me." "# The show must go on" "# The show must go on" "# The show must go on... #" "If it can exist in the way it has after Freddie, then it could certainly exist after Brian and/or, myself." "So there it is - the lifecycle of the rock 'n' roll band from birth to death, regeneration and even beyond." "For five decades and counting, life in a rock 'n' roll band has represented one of the most thrilling adventures known to man." "These mean and women are self-destructive superheroes, louche legends in their own lifetimes." "They and only they have earned the right to say " "I'm in a rock 'n' roll band." "From watching my cousin's band in my aunty's front room as a six year old, to then appearing on Top Of The Pops, to having worldwide acclaim, it's living the dream." "# This is our decision, to live fast and die young" "# We've got the vision, now let's have some fun... #" "It can't be that difficult cos I managed to do it." "In the old days, you ran away and joined the army, or the circus, you know." "Nowadays you run away and join a rock band." "It's cos we're dangerous and we visit." "We never live where you can find us, you know." "And that time comes at night and I hear, yes when I hear it, the roar of the crowd and the smell of the greasepaint." "No other band can say that." "They wish they were us." "There's nothing like it." "It's the gods of Mount Olympus descending... ..to show the mortals a fucking rocking good time." "The glory of rock 'n' roll, long may it reign." "Now it's over to you." "A shortlist of the ten greatest rock 'n' roll bands as selected by a panel of music experts awaits at out website." "And next week, Jonathan Ross hosts I'm In A Rock 'N' Roll Band Live where the nation's most loved bands and favourites in each band role will be revealed." "MUSIC: "Time To Pretend" by MGMT" "# There's really nothing, nothing we can do" "# Love must be forgotten, life can always start up anew... #" "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd" "E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk"