Going out on a high note is something that many aspire towards but few manage to pull off. I imagine it's the kind of thing that's easier said than done. Since groups rarely tend to finish up while still on top, the majority are naturally at a disadvantage. Thus, the Bee Gees final hit single was 2001's "This Is Where I Came In", a respectable enough effort for such a late-stage release but it doesn't even hold up all that well next to eighties and nineties tracks like "You Win Again" and "For Whom the Bell Tolls", let alone their two-pronged peak from the late sixties and mid-to-late seventies.
Not surprisingly, the better grand finale singles are from short-lived acts. Wham! came to an end with "The Edge of Heaven" while The Jam closed up shop with "Beat Surrender": in both cases, they weren't quite top level songs but they each provided soft launches for George Michael's solo career and Paul Weller's next project The Style Council respectively. But the king of going out on a high note has to be the late Terry Hall. First, he and fellow bandmates Neville Staples and Lynval Golding quit The Specials while they were still at number one in Britain with the extraordinary hit "Ghost Town" but then he walked away from Fun Boy Three just two years later following the release of their version of The Go-Go's "Our Lips Are Sealed". Both are phenomenal singles with Hall subconsciously telling audiences that he was leaving while potentially their best material was still to come.
Steve Winwood would join and leave a handful of bands before eventually deciding to go solo in 1977 but it was only with The Spencer Davis Group that you could say he went out on top. (Blind Faith was never going to last more than one album so it hardly counts; his time with the on-again, off-again Traffic would have ended well had they finished with their masterpiece, 1970's John Barleycorn Must Die) Rather than pulling a Michael or a Weller by easing fans into what was to come with his next organization, he managed to succeed in bowing out while his band still had plenty left in the tank. Judging by "I'm a Man", the SDG could have easily carried on as a reliable chart act with plenty of critical standing for the remainder of the sixites — and, indeed, they may well have kept it up well into the following decade for all we know.
Actually, we do sort of know. While Steve Winwood was ready to explore acid rock, prog rock and jazz fusion with Traffic and his brother Muff was eyeing a more behind the scenes role in record company A&R, Spencer Davis himself wasn't as keen to pack things in. (This is a definite advantage to having the group named after himself) Not deterred in the least by having to replace Steve freakin' Winwood, he brought in Eddie Hardin who was no slouch himself but his time with the ground would be brief. Suffice it to say, the SDG didn't thrive as a revolving door with a figurehead leader on guitar.
Steve Winwood had only turned nineteen just the day before "I'm a Man" reached number one on the RPM singles chart. He wouldn't return to the top until he was knocking on the door of forty with a highly lucrative if creatively bankrupt pair of solo hits. This means we'll be missing out on his peak with the magnificent Traffic. Yet, "I'm a Man" is the first indication that he was reaching the level of Lennon, McCartney, Davies, Dylan, Gaye, Wonder and Wilson — and unlike many of them, he knew when to bow out. (For a while at any rate)
Score: 9
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