By Damien Corless
Monday May 9 2011

As Girls Aloud get set to go back on the stage, Damian Corless looks at the makings of a successful reunion

So, it's official. There's to be a Girls Aloud reunion next year, to mark a decade since the Popstars Rivals winners first stormed the charts and our hearts with the memorably meaty ‘Sound Of The Underground’.

The group's manager won't reveal just what form it will take, beyond saying: “There will be something.”

Just “something”. It all sounds very vague and casual but it's anything but. Cheryl Cole let that slip over a year ago when she said: “There are three albums sitting there just waiting to go.”

Which begs the question: is a reunion really a reunion if it’s really just a resumption of business as usual after a three-year career break?

Not that the girls have been slacking since their last show in 2009. Cheryl Cole has hitched a ride on the up-elevator to solo superstardom. If the US succumbs to her Geordie charms, her bid for world domination will be complete.

Derry's Nadine Coyle, meanwhile, is trapped in a bargain basement nightmare, reprising the role of Brian Jones after Mick and Keith hijacked the Rolling Stones from him. Girls Aloud was meant to be Nadine's stairway to lone star heaven until Cheryl butted in with her superior x-factor.

The other three will forever be The Other Three, quietly topping up their big piles of cash with acting cameos, celebrity slots and cosmetics lines.

The Girls Aloud PR machine has been playing up grudges between the members as a reason for taking the “hiatus” in the first place. But even the spinners haven't come up with anything more threatening to the group than “squabbling”.

People squabble over whose turn it is to empty the dishwasher or point the TV zapper. Squabbles don't derail a corporate juggernaut like the one built around Girls Aloud.

However, there's nothing better for boosting ticket sales than the prospect of some unfinished business between tetchy divas.

Singer David Lee Roth once likened his reunion with Van Halen to a stock-car race, asking fans: “Are you coming to see the winner or the crash?”

While no one doubts Cheryl that there are three albums ready to go, the real deal will be a series of stadium-sized shows.

There was a time when groups toured to sell discs, happy to break even in the knowledge that they'd reap their reward with the merry ringing of record store tills. U2's 1997 Pop Mart world tour played to almost four million punters and still came close to proving ruinous.

However, on the back of that global trek the Pop album sold six million copies and all was put right in the world. But that world is almost gone. Free downloads have destroyed the old reliable revenue streams, forcing a radical change of corporate strategy. The real money now is to be made in concerts. But the rule changes apply both ways. Fans paying top dollar for a show will no longer pay obedient attention while an act debuts an hour of new material, before being sent packing with a few crowd pleasers.

Now, punters want wall-towall greatest hits. Nothing could be more reasonable.

And what could be more reasonable than for the acts best equipped to supply that demand to get back together for one last big payday? Or, better still, a month of paydays.

Time is supposed to heal all wounds, but where that's not the case a sackful of money can usually provide a short-term solution to a festering rift.

On The Police's last tour before splitting in 1984, drummer Stuart Copeland cracked one of Sting's ribs in a fight. After the first show of their 2007 reunion Copeland blogged that his singer performed like “a petulant pansy”.

One reviewer of their Croke Park comeback show said the trio's body language looked like “pure hatred”. If there was any crying done, though, it was all the way to the bank.

The enduring tension between Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel stemmed from the fact that one was the George Michael of the duo and the other the Andrew Ridgeley. They split in 1970, reuniting in 1981 for a concert in Central Park. One thing (money) led to another (touring), which involved separate limos, hotels, dressing rooms and a Cold War atmosphere on stage.

Cold has never described relations between the warring factions of The Beach Boys, who have come to blows so often that a protocol has evolved of using different stage exits. They can agree on nothing, except seemingly that they're all going to ride the same gravy train to the end of the line.

On the final night of The Eagles' 1980 tour Glen Frey and Don Felder exchanged threats between numbers, promising to flatten each other as an encore.

For years Don Henley insisted they would only reform “when Hell freezes over”, which was the inevitable title of the first of their money-spinning comeback tours.

But hard cash isn't always the only reason for an old pals’ re-enactment. As Phil Collins stressed when announcing the last Genesis comeback: “We're all loaded enough not to worry about where the next million is coming from.” Instead, he insisted, they were doing it because they “missed the camaraderie”.

And why shouldn't he be telling the truth? Perhaps at heart it is all about something more than the money.

Perhaps making it to the top with your mates is a bit like finding yourself in the The Eagles' Hotel California, where “you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”

FIVE HAPPY RETURNS ...

1 Pink Floyd Having persuaded The Who to reform for Live Aid, Bob Geldof repeated the trick on Pink Floyd for his Live 8 bash under the slogan ‘Make Poverty History’. The poor stayed poor but Floyd got a lot richer, with album sales skyrocketing by 1343%.

2 Blur As Britpop faded its former kingpins were, in the style of Spinal Tap, ‘becoming more selective about their audience’. Coxon was burned out and their drift into electronoodling seemed indulgent. They got back to basics with live stormers including Oxegen 2009 and are reborn.

3 Take That Four-fifths of the boyband reformed as a manband in 2006. They’ve made the best music and played the biggest shows of their career.

4 The Pixies When they played Dublin’s Stadium in 1989, they wowed 1,500 clued-in punters. Their legend grew to the extent that more people claimed to have been there than survived the GPO in 1916. They reformed in 2005 for the money, deserving every penny.

5 Led Zeppelin With the coming of punk Led Zeppelin were dismissed as rock’s ultimate lumbering dinosaurs,but when they reunited for a once-off in 2007 they gave a devastating reminder of how and why they had once ruled the world.One million people sought 20,000 tickets.As Alan Partridge would say:“Jurassic Park!”

... FIVE WHO SHOULD HAVE LET IT BE

1 All Saints While the Spice Girls were hoovering up the pocket money of little sisters, older brothers were besotted with the slinky foursome. Their 2006 comeback was cancelled due to lack of interest and the girls have since been on “a hiatus”.

2 The Sex Pistols When Johnny Rotten first screamed “no future!” it sounded like the end of the world might be nigh. If only he’d meant it. The band reunited in 1996 and continue to embarrass themselves , with one reviewer describing Rotten as “a plump Bart Simpson”.

3 East 17 In younger days they were the lock-up-your-daughters rivals to squeaky clean Take That. But the Cockney lads presented a sad case of arrested development. Their comeback came to blows in Round 1 with writer Tony Mortimer throwing in the towel.

4 Bucks Fizz They won the Eurovision in Dublin in 1981 with the boys ripping the skirts off the girls. It was a mere foretaste of what was to come when they reunited two years back to undergo plastic surgery for a satellite show.

5 Guns N Roses “We’re trying hard to get Axl back on stage. I would ask you to refrain from throwing items at him.” That was a plea made by an official at Dublin’s O2 arena in 2010 to the crowd who’d turned up to see the bad boys r

- Damien Corless

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