Anyone who underestimates the work ethic of rock stars needs to look at our list of the 40 Longest Active Touring Streaks.
Each of the artists highlighted has spent decades on the road, delivering their music to audiences of fans around the world.
Maintaining a streak of annual performances isn’t easy. It’s common for acts to take years off while they focus on recording new material. Others have dealt with less voluntary interruptions, as groups’ tour plans have been derailed by addiction, infighting and – tragically, in some cases – deaths.
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Our list below features an assortment of acts who weathered the storm and successfully maintained active performance streaks. For our purposes, all an act has to do is play one show in a calendar year to keep their streak alive. Benefit concerts, television performances and other unique occurrences were included. Put simply, if an audience was there to hear it, we counted it as a show.
All of the statistics come from setlist.fm, where we crunched the numbers to find Rock’s 40 Longest Active Touring Streaks. Unsurprisingly, solo acts make up a strong portion of our list – it’s a lot easier to keep touring when you don’t have any bandmates to clash with. Yet many bands found the way to survive lineup changes and inner turmoil to still make it out onstage.
Two notable names who didn’t make the cut, yet deserve honorable mentions: Bob Dylan and Ted Nugent. Both men have consistently toured for decades, but took off 2020 due the COVID pandemic.
