Why let past albums present themselves for future?

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Sequels may work for movies, but do they work for audio content too? If you go by the number of albums cashing in on the success of an earlier effort, it is obvious that commercial necessities are the governing force for doing so.

Fortunately, musical sequels are relatively rare, but they do exist and, usually, if the sequel immediately follows the predecessor, the effort is generally as good as, or even better than the previous album, but if the sequel arrives after a number of years, the resultant “follow up” is an unmitigated
disaster for the music listener.
One of the earlier artistes initiating an exercise of reminding people of his past glories was multi-instrumentalist Mike Oldfield. Tubular Bells was his debut album, also the first album released by Richard Branson’s Virgin Records, and became a no.1 smash. It spawned three sequels in the ’90s, Tubular Bells II [1992], Tubular Bells III [1998], and The Millennium Bell [1999], and was completely re-recorded as Tubular Bells 2003 on its 30th anniversary. Sales of all the subsequent albums paled in comparison to the original.
Bat Out Of Hell was the second album from American rock musician Meat Loaf, released in October 1977, and became his first collaboration with composer Jim Steinman. It became one of the best-selling albums in the history of rock music, having sold over 40 million copies worldwide, and then became the title for two more Meat Loaf albums: 1993’s Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell, and the 2006 album, Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose. Each successive Bat sold less than half of its predecessor, once again proving that you cannot take fans and the music buying public for granted.
Now dubbed a “classic”, Welcome To My Nightmare was the eighth studio album by Alice Cooper, released in 1975. This was a concept album tracing the nightmares of a child named Steven. Cooper, in searching for a return to his successes from the ’70s, launched the sequel, Welcome 2 My Nightmare, a little over 35 years after the “original”. While it became Cooper’s highest-charting album in the US since 1991, the sequel was certainly a patch on the original and it became obvious that Cooper’s Welcome 2 had been overstayed.
The first person bringing credibility to the concept of sequels was legendary rocker Neil Young — who gained acclaim initially as a member of country rock band Buffalo Springfield and, thereafter, as a member of quartet Crosby, Still, Nash and Young — when he launched the country flavoured Harvest in 1972. Twenty years later, Young released Harvest Moon, an obvious sequel to Harvest, featuring several musicians that appeared on the “original”. Again, sales wise, Moon was a shadow of its predecessor. In recent interviews, Young has denied a correlation between both albums, but a listen makes it obvious that the musical link cannot
be broken by mere words...even if they are spoken by the artiste!
Of course, there also remain innumerable instances of sequels that are immediate follow ups of previous albums which are not only as good, but often better [both in terms of music and in sales], including Queen II, Led Zeppelin II, Extreme II: Pornograffitti, and Van Halen II, among others. However, in the instance of Van Halen, by the time they released III, it was 19 years after II, spelling a disastrous album and sequel, both critically and commercially. So is the case with Queensryche’s Operation Mindcrime II, released in 1998, six years after the release of the original.
Efforts to cash in on live album sequels have usually ended in disasters too. No one knows better than guitarist Peter Frampton with his break through Frampton Comes Alive released in 1976, following which every album released thereafter went downhill but, by the time of releasing Frampton Comes Alive II 19 years later, Frampton’s career was paradoxically dead.
While sequels usually have “II” or “2” suffix added to the original album name, there remains an exception, though. Former Genesis vocalist, Peter Gabriel, refused to provide a specific title to any of his first four solo albums, which were all named Peter Gabriel, and all utilised the same typeface. However, each featured different cover designs [by Hipgnosis, designers of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon] where Gabriel’s face is wholly or partially obscured in some manner. Nevertheless, Gab-riel’s record label in the US, Geffen Records, had tired of the artiste’s name by then and played appropriately safe by releasing his fourth album as Security!

The writer has been part of the media and entertainment business for over 23 years, still continues to pursue his hobby, and earns an income out of it!