Return of the Dinosaurs

Don’t feel alone this summer if you’re tempted to double-check the date of the newspaper when you glance over concert ads.

Who ever expected that such presumably dead-and-buried outfits as KISS (with the makeup again, thank you), Styx and--the biggest surprise--the Sex Pistols would be heading our way again?

Is this 1996 or 1976?

Since everyone thinks these tours are motivated more by money than creative urges, the Sex Pistols, in their outrageous style of old, are thumbing their noses at everyone by calling their reunion the Filthy Lucre Tour.

If, in fact, the Pistols’ first tour in 18 years (which was scheduled to have begun Friday in Helsinki, Finland) is as colorful as the group’s kickoff press conference in March in London, it is going to be a blast.

“We still hate each other,” Johnny Rotten, lead singer of the once-notorious British punk quartet, snarled contemptuously at an army of journalists. “But we have a common cause. It’s your money.”

One of the great ironies of the tour is that the band was expected to be seen by almost as many people in its three shows this weekend as probably saw the band in its original, year-plus existence, because the Pistols self-destructed before they ever did a large-hall tour. The final show was before about 5,500 fans in January, 1978, at Winterland in San Francisco.

If the Pistols make it through the entire itinerary, the band will be seen by up to 900,000 people in Europe, North and South America, Japan and Australia. The U.S. portion begins July 31 in Denver and includes stops Aug. 22 at the Universal Amphitheatre and Aug. 23 at the Hollywood Palladium.

Sitting in the backyard of a bungalow at a West Hollywood hotel a few weeks after the flamboyant London press conference, the four original members of the band are in a surprisingly serious mood.

Sure, Rotten, guitarist Steve Jones, drummer Paul Cook and bassist Glen Matlock look forward to a tour gross that should top $20 million--plus royalties from a new live album that will be recorded this week and released July 30.

But the Pistols say they were also motivated strongly by the chance to step into the spotlight one more time. Though all four have remained in music, none has come close to the impact of the old days together.

“To me, the reason for the tour is more like the chance to prove we were one of the best rock ‘n’ roll bands ever,” Jones, 41, says proudly. “People may say we’re too old and we have no business coming back, but I think we’re going to show them that we weren’t just a gimmick.”

In conversations with members of other key bands that are returning to action this summer, the same theme resurfaces: the idea of going on stage one more time--the same promise of action and applause that keeps luring athletes like Magic Johnson back onto the court for a last hurrah.

“I’m no different than the kid who jumps on the coffee table and says, ‘Look, ma,’ and starts tap-dancing to get a rise out of people,” says Gene Simmons, KISS’s 46-year-old bassist. “As long as you’ve got a little kid inside of your heart, you’re going to want to go up on stage and be a showoff.”

Rob Light, a Los Angeles agent whose rock clients range from Alanis Morissette to Bob Seger, also believes the motivation goes beyond money.

“These older bands won’t ever go away because there will always be somebody with money who wants to see them and there will always be artists who need that fix of fame,” he says.

“The single most addicting drug ever created--more than heroin, more than cocaine, more than cigarettes--is fame. Once you’ve tasted it, you want it again and again.”

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To understand why all these rock ‘n’ roll dinosaurs--as some of these bands were called as long as two decades ago--are hitting the concert trail again, you just have to read the box-office figures.

Managers, agents and musicians have been dreaming of one more big payday ever since they began noticing the tens of millions of dollars generated in recent years by tours starring such ‘60s outfits as the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. Those acts’ North American tours grossed almost $230 million combined in 1994.

It’s no wonder the Eagles were stirred from the retirement nest, even though the group’s breakup in the early ‘80s was so bitter that co-leader Don Henley vowed that they wouldn’t set foot onstage until hell froze over.

The Eagles did come back in 1994--with the Hell Freezes Over Tour--and they were bigger than ever. The quintet grossed an estimated $80 million in just 32 shows that first year--and they’ve been touring ever since.

By the time the latest leg of their world tour ends in early August in Scotland, more than 3 1/2 million people will have paid more than $210 million to see the group. Add to that another possible $200 million to $250 million in album sales and enough T-shirts to clothe half of the Sun Belt.

No one expects any of this summer’s reunions to approach those figures, but even a fraction of the Eagles’ gross is more than any of the bands’ members could hope to get in an individual career move.

So the rule among veteran rockers, obviously, is: Let bygones be bygones and call a good business manager.

What lures fans out to see these bands again?

Light, who works with Creative Artists Agency, believes a lot of it is timing.

“Each generation kind of finds a moment when it becomes nostalgic for its youth,” he says. “At the same time, you’re dealing with a generation of kids whose parents and older brothers are basically into the same musical form as they are.”

However, Irving Azoff, the longtime manager and record company executive who masterminded the Eagles reunion, warns against generalizing when talking about reunion tours.

“My feeling is that each one of these things stands on their own two legs,” he said. “Some of them will be bigger than people think and some will fall flat.”

Styx’s Dennis DeYoung, too, cautions the Reunion Class of ’96 not to be blinded by the Eagles’ success.

“Don’t judge everything by what happened to the Eagles,” he says good-naturedly. “That’s like saying Gerry & the Pacemakers looked at the Beatles reunion and decided to get back together again.”

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The one tour that no one expects to fall flat this summer is KISS, whose original four members will be back in their trademark costumes and makeup for the first time in 17 years.

After a warmup appearance last weekend at the KROQ Weenie Roast at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, the cartoonish band, whose biggest hits include the aptly titled “Forever,” begins its formal tour Friday in Detroit.

The group--Simmons, guitarists Paul Stanley and Ace Frehley and drummer Peter Criss--is expected to play as many as 200 shows and gross upward of $100 million over the next two years. The tour includes stops Aug. 23, 24 and 25 at the Forum, where KISS first headlined 20 years ago.

“I always knew it would happen,” says KISS fan Gary Conn Jr., 31, founder of a Nashville fan club called Kissaholics. “The fans wanted it so much that I knew they’d have to give in because KISS has always done what the fans wanted.”

About KISS’ continuing appeal, he replies, “It’s nostalgia. It takes you back to more simpler times in your life--and maybe more fun times.”

Styx, which broke up in 1984 after nearly a decade as one of rock’s top concert draws, is another reunion that is expected to do good business--though not on the KISS level.

Surprisingly, the band’s DeYoung had to be talked into reforming the group, whose biggest hits include 1974’s “Lady” and 1979’s “Babe.”

“We were together for 10 solid years,” the singer-keyboardist says. “We averaged 100 shows a year for eight years and we sold out Madison Square Garden--and the Forum--something like six tours in a row. It was the greatest experience anyone could ever have in life, no question about it, but I’m different now. I’ve been married 26 years, I have two kids--and traveling is hard.”

But last fall, after the band regrouped to redo a track for a greatest-hits album, agents and managers started calling, suggesting that it tour. The result: Styx last month began a 57-date U.S. tour that is expected to gross about $10 million--and the group may add as many as 35 dates because of high ticket demand. The band will be at the Greek Theatre on Aug. 14 and 15 and at the Blockbuster Pavilion in Devore on Aug. 16.

“I told my wife, ‘Sometimes opportunity is standing right in front of you and you can’t look the other way,’ ” De Young, 49, says of the return. “We weren’t pursuing this. It was pursuing us. And since that was the case, I felt that it could be a truly wonderful experience. And it has been.”

The Sex Pistols tour is the most fascinating of the reunions because no one outside of the band and its representatives can quite decide whether the comeback is a good idea. It’s even got industry experts divided over how much business it will do.

“The Sex Pistols are something of a question mark,” says Gary Bongiovanni, editor in chief of the concert industry magazine Pollstar. “You’re talking about a band that only toured a few dates in its heyday and was not really a radio-friendly act. So who knows?”

To some observers and fans, the return of this irreverent band is seen as a sad twist in the Pistols’ legacy.

When the band exploded on the British rock scene in 1976, it ignited a revolution in which the Pistols and their punk followers called for all the old rock geezers to move over and make way for a new generation of musicians. Now, detractors say, the Pistols have become the old geezers.

To others, however, the tour will be a chance to relive rock history.

The Pistols brought an anyone-can-do-it attitude to music that encouraged thousands of young musicians to plug in a guitar. Some critics even maintain that it’s no exaggeration to say the Pistols saved rock ‘n’ roll.

Though not all subsequent bands echoed the precise punk sound, virtually every rock group of worth since the Pistols was influenced by Rotten and company, from U2 and R.E.M. to the Pretenders and the Police to Nirvana and Oasis.

The group’s debut album, “Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols,” brilliantly reflected youthful disillusionment in Britain at the time, and is now widely regarded as a seminal work in rock. However, the Pistols’ music was considered too radical by conservative U.S. radio programmers, and the album only made it to No. 106 on the charts here.

Even if things had gone differently, however, the Pistols would probably still have been torn apart by the savage infighting that pitted Rotten against, among others, former manager Malcolm McLaren, and by personal problems, including drugs, which in 1979 killed bassist Sid Vicious, who had replaced Matlock in 1977.

The Pistols still shudder at the pain of those traumatic years.

“I didn’t think we’d ever get back,” says Jones, a trace of bitterness still in his voice. “I was totally through with it. I dug my own hole. After the Pistols, I discovered heroin and I just lost self-respect. I went completely down the toilet.”

Rotten, 40, nods.

“I also wanted no part of the Pistols . . . ever again,” he says. “I wanted to purge my system completely of all the dilemmas and problems and the sad, sickening, stupid way it fell apart--which, in hindsight, was not really between us as band members, but all the managementmanipulations and auxiliary units . . . the hangers-on. . . . I was so depressed I was suicidal. Quite frankly, I thought it was the end of my life.”

Though Rotten--who returned to his real name of John Lydon after the Pistols’ breakup--formed a new band called Public Image Ltd., the memory of the Pistols was so bad that he went five years before even singing a Pistols song again.

The Pistols had been receiving handsome offers for a reunion album or tour for years--and the bad memories had faded enough by the early ‘90s that everyone except Rotten thought positively about it.

“The big change for me came about five years ago,” says Jones, who, like Rotten, lives in Los Angeles. “That’s when I started to realize what a [expletive] great band we were. You couldn’t pick up a magazine without reading about some other band saying how much we influenced them. But I knew John was adamant about not doing it. So, I just thought, ‘Well, maybe one day,’ not really knowing if there would be that day or not.”

The reunion began looking more possible after Rotten published his autobiography in 1994. The book, “Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs,” seemed to liberate him.

“What happened, I think, is that I purged myself of all the things I had run away from,” Rotten says now. “In the process, I started remembering some of the good parts of the Pistols, including the songs. When you look at those songs, they are so solidly excellent that they haven’t been bettered to this day in that [punk] genre.”

With the blessing of the band members, Eric Gardner, who manages Rotten, and Anita Camarata, who manages the other Pistols, began making the reunion arrangements last summer.

Besides the tour and album, there’ll be separate home videos of the Pistols’ Dallas and San Francisco concerts on the historic 1978 U.S. tour as well as a feature-length documentary on the Pistols put together by Julien Temple, who directed “The Great Rock and Roll Swindle,” a satirical 1980 film about the exploits of the Pistols.

But what about the Pistols’ tour? Will the 1996 version of rock’s most outrageous outfit still reflect the spirit of ‘76?

Rotten rolls his eyes when asked if he feels kinship with today’s young punk or grunge groups.

“Not that much has changed,” he says firmly. “Most of the pop music of today is very safe. You see all these people wanting to call themselves grunge and fit into a format. To me, all that plaid shirt stuff is [Irish blues-rock guitarist] Rory Gallagher all over again.”

Rotten, long known as one of the great interviews in rock, pauses, pleased with his answer. But he’s not through. He’s suddenly serious again--as if no longer obligated to play the role of the sarcastic figure.

“Now, there was one song I loved,” he says. “Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit.’ Genius song. But what about the drugs and the wallowing in the ‘Sid & Nancy’ mythology? [Kurt Cobain] and that wife of his [Courtney Love] got it wrong big time. Nothing brilliant in killing yourself and leaving a child behind.

“None of us do this because we want to die young--sorry, Sid! Quite the opposite, we want to live as long as possible. They used to say we were destructive . . . nihilistic. Quite the opposite. We tried to show that you could do something with your life . . . that you could make your own rules. And, now, maybe, we can show people something again . . . that you can still make your own rules.”

Will dinosaur rock live forever?

Besides those bands already mentioned, the trail this summer also includes shows by Bad Company, Boston, Kansas, REO Speedwagon, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Moby Grape, Ted Nugent, the Monkees, the Village People, Black Oak Arkansas and Jethro Tull. And Journey is apparently warming up.

Will we see more reunion tours in the ‘90s and beyond?

Pollstar’s Bongiovanni believes so.

“It seems like every year there are a couple of acts that get back together,” he says. “I’m not sure how many more of them are left out there, but just when you think you’ve seen them all, somebody like Grand Funk Railroad reforms and you go, ‘Oh, yeah, I forgot about them.’ ”

Late flash: Grand Funk Railroad may be heading our way too. The hard-rock band from Flint, Mich.--whose anthem “We’re an American Band” was a No. 1 single in 1973--has already started a series of test shows to see whether it will do a full-scale tour next year.

Like many of the other musicians interviewed, the group’s singer-guitarist Mark Farner was wary of being embarrassed by a reunion. No one wants to return to half-empty auditoriums.

“We’re ready to do it,” Farner says, “but we want to be convinced that it’s going to be well received. We don’t want to go out there on a roster with two or three other bands as a classic-rock package. We’ve still got the schmaltz, bro.”