Happy days are here again

The Happy Mondays have this week ended months of speculation about a possible reunion confirming they will be reuniting with their original line-up and will tour in May.

Rumours of a Happy Mondays comeback first circulated in early December when a report claimed the group, with Shaun Ryder at the helm, was set to reform for a full tour and documentary next year.

The Happy Mondays follow The Stone Roses who follow Steps, Eagles, Rage Against the Machine, Take That, Black Sabbath, The Beach Boys, Culture Club, The Police… the list goes on and on.

With a show from Duran Duran — another team re-formed — around the corner, Billy Ocean — more than a decade since his big hit days — and Eagles in April, tabloid! takes a look at other reunions.

Happy Monday's Ryder once said the Stone Roses reunion has been on the cards ever since Ian Brown announced he was getting divorced, hinting "they can be costly things, those splits".

After a decade of rumour-mongering and band members themselves crying wolf, John Squire, Brown, Mani and Reni have finally buried the hatchet and the group will play two gigs at Heaton Park, Manchester on June 29 and 30. Brown himself told tabloid! in 2009 he had no intention of ever reforming. Oh how things can change.

Ask a cynic (me) and we'd say reunions are motivated by money. Towering amounts of cash are often a good incentive to get over year-long arguments and rekindle a love for the thing that made it all happen in the first place — the music.

For others it may be a chance to relive their youth. Boy bands, girl bands, alt-rock bands, metal bands. It seems everyone is getting back together. Even The Darkness are back, proving you don't even have to wait long to make your grand re-entrance.

The Eagles famously declared hell would freeze over before they would re-form, then got back together anyway — cleverly releasing an album of the same name. But Spandau Ballet singer Tony Hadley went one further, stating: "In our case, hell is frozen and we still wouldn't do it." Yet anyone who saw the group in Dubai a few years ago will agree — on stage anyway — all has been forgiven.

The Police parted company in 1987 with Sting continuing a still successful career. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are The Police and we're back!" he said at the 2007 Grammy Awards. The world went wild.

Lucrative

The reunion tour was a huge success and ended with a final show at Madison Square Garden in New York City in 2008. While announcing the show, the group also announced their donation of $1 million (Dh3.67 million) to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's initiative to plant one million trees in the city by 2017. Sting and his trio of former bandmates staged the most lucrative reunion tour in history, reaching three million people and grossing in the region of $340 million. "It's like mum and dad got back together," he said at the time. "There's sentiment there, which I understand. People like things to have continuity."

If you ask me a reunion can be a last chance to have it all again, the rock equivalent of a pension fund.

The Spice Girls are the perfect example. They started, they hit a high, they broke up, they got back together, it all fell apart and now they are miraculously all mates again ready to play for the Queen's Jubilee in June. Convenient to say the least.

We've had "Greatest Hits" tours from Ultravox, the Specials and ABC. Madness have reformed a few times and Simple Minds went a step further and started recording new material.

Britpop legends Blur and rave duo Orbital have both propped up the festival seasons since getting back together. Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon fell out before the band recorded their last album, Think Tank, due to Coxon's alcoholism. Following one of the teariest reunions in history, the band members all admitted to being idiots for falling out in the first place.

There was mixed reaction when Johnny Rotten, Steve Jones, Paul Cook and the band's original bassist, Glen Matlock, put the Sex Pistols back together in the mid-90s. But since John Lydon's other outfit, Public Image Limited, was back in business things didn't quite last as long as they had originally hoped.

Happy Mondays' backing vocalist Rowetta Satchell said the reunion includes their full original line-up.

‘Special'

"We want to put on a really good show. We decided it would only be special and work if it was the total, original line-up. We're all really excited. They are my family these boys, I've really missed them and I'm sure they've missed each other."

Originally discovered at a Battle Of The Bands at Manchester's Hacienda in 1985 the group went on to release Squirrel And G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out), Bummed, and Pills ‘n' Thrills And Bellyaches before disbanding after 1992's Yes Please!.

So could we see the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays share a stage or have egos inflated over the years rather than subsided?

But here's the question on every cynic's lips. Is reuniting for the glory, for the love of music or to pay the mortgage?

Equally, does it really matter as long as people still want to see them live?

I'm going with the mortgage.