Last week, we started looking at the musicians on Wikipedia’s list of the longest gaps between albums:

The Longest Gaps Between Album Releases – Part 1

Here now are the Top 5. There are a couple names you’ve heard before, but the lesser known ones have interesting stories, too.

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#5: 49 Years:

British Folk duo Fresh Maggots got their questionable name from a sign in a sports shop selling bait.

Mick Burgoyne and Leigh Dolphin were from Nuneaton, UK and had met through mutual friends. A music publisher happened to see their second gig and that led to their 1971 self-titled album.

The strange but compelling album mixes gentle acoustic songs with flashes of fuzz guitar, tin whistle, and other unexpected instruments. After the record failed to sell, the pair drifted into ordinary lives and other work. For decades, the album lived on through reissues and word of mouth. It became a cult collector’s item, and curious new fans found it.

Burgoyne and Dolphin remained friends and a long, quiet revival began after renewed press interest in the 2000s, and especially after a German magazine interview in 2017. Burgoyne and Dolphin started writing again and released Waiting for the Sun in October 2020 — 49 years after their first album. That huge gap is part of their charm:

Recommended Listening

• “Dole Song” (1971)
• “I’m Getting Old“ (2023)

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#4: 52 Years:

This one confused me.

Alice Cooper was always around, and new albums came out regularly. Then I remembered:

The band formed in Phoenix, AZ in the late 1960s with a raunchy mix of Hard Rock and horror theater. They made a string of gold, silver, and platinum albums — Love It to Death, Killer, School’s Out, Billion Dollar Babies — and then released Muscle of Love in 1973, the last studio album by the original group before they broke up. It looks like each member had their own reason, ranging from burnout to disagreements about money.

Alice Cooper, the singer, went solo.

He kept the shock-rock persona and had a hit with “Welcome to My Nightmare” in 1975, while the other players scattered into side projects, session work and occasional reunions.

Guitarist Glen Buxton died of viral pneumonia in 1997, a week after performing with other ex-bandmates. 

The original members popped up on a few of Cooper’s later solo records and joined in for special live shows over the years.

Just a few months ago in 2025, the remaining original band returned to the studio for the first time in 52 years, releasing The Revenge of Alice Cooper — a reunion that the members described as “picking up where they left off.”

Recommended Listening:

• “Teenage Lament ‘74” (1973)
• “Black Mamba” (2025)

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#3: 53 Years:

“MC5” stands for “Motor City Five,” and the band was indeed from Detroit.

They formed in the late 1960s as a furious, political Rock band — energetic, loud, and raw. Their classic run produced three records close together: the live blast Kick Out the Jams (1969), the studio firecracker Back in the USA (1970), and High Time (1971).

Alongside Detroit’s Iggy & The Stooges, they’re considered Punk godfathers.

After 1972 the original group fell apart and the members scattered into very different lives.

• Singer Rob Tyner formed Rob Tyner & the National Rock Group who played many shows but never recorded. He died of heart failure in 1991. 
• Guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith formed new bands and later married Patti Smith. He too died of heart failure in 1994. 
• Drummer Dennis Thompson played with numerous bands in Los Angeles, Australia, and, of course, Detroit. 
• Guitarist Wayne Kramer struggled with addiction, went to prison for selling drugs, then rebuilt a career as a solo artist and prison-arts activist. He also appeared on a couple of Was (Not Was) records. 
• Bassist Michael Davis joined experimental outfits like Destroy All Monsters, and also served time on drug charges. 

They announced a new album in 2022 and began recording, but all three had passed away by the time it was released. Heavy Lifting came out in October 2024  — 53 years after High Time. 

Their long gap isn’t a mystery so much as indicative of Rock’s hard life: initial success, burnout, politics, prison, other bands, reunions, and finally,

Recommended Listening:

• “Sister Anne“ (1971)
• “Heavy Lifting” feat. Tom Morello (2024)

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#2: 57 Years:

Songwriter and producer Jerry Samuels — better known by his oddball persona Napoleon XIV — keeps surfacing on one-hit-wonder lists.

(The B-side of the 45 single was the same recording:)

That year also saw a full Napoleon XIV album of the same name, which kept the same “insane” theme. Samuels didn’t ride pop stardom into a long recording career but the single became a novelty classic.

Prior to his hit, Samuels co-wrote “As If I Didn’t Know,” a top-10 hit for Adam Wade in 1961 and wrote “The Shelter of Your Arms” for Sammy Davis Jr. in 1964.

After his 1966 moment on the charts, he wrote songs under various names, produced other artists, and ran a talent-booking agency he started in the 1980s.

A second studio album recorded between 1968 and 1970 was rejected for its dark content. No one at the label saw humor in rape and suicide. The album only saw an official release decades later in 2023, two years after Samuels’ death.

That means there’s a 57-year span between releases, though that second album was recorded not long after the first. Should we count it on the list of longest gaps? Well, Wikipedia does, so I include it here, but discuss it amongst yourselves.

Recommended Listening:

• “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!” (1966)
• “I Owe A Lot To Iowa Pot” (1970 or 2023,depending)

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#1: 57 Years:

Dean Gitter was one of those people who lived two lives at once — as a tasteful Folk musician and a restless entrepreneur.

In music, he’s best known for 1957’s Ghost Ballads, a collection of spooky old songs, and for returning to the studio in 2014 for Old Folkies Never Die. That’s 57 years, the longest ever gap between studio albums.

What did he do in between? Plenty.

Early on he worked behind the scenes in the Folk revival. He produced records, including Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues, a crucial album in the scene and one of Bob Dylan’s favorites.

He also promoted the enormous Belleayre Resort plan, but it was delayed for years and greatly reduced in scale due to local protest against its detrimental environmental impact.

He kept tinkering in music, writing songs and later setting Carl Sandburg poems to music. In later life, he lived on a New Mexico farm, raised horses, and played with local musicians. He died in 2018, four years after his second album.

Recommended Listening:

• “Anne Boleyn” (1957)
• “Ride Around Little Dogies” (2014)

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With the possible exception of Napoleon XIV:

These long gaps between albums are reminders that creative work can pause for decades, and that a comeback doesn’t need to follow anyone else’s timetable. Creativity itself never ends. It changes as each person changes, so there’s hope for all of us.

So I’m no longer feeling antsy that I haven’t been on a record for five years.

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