The Stone Roses - Second Coming (1994)

FIVE years doesn't seem like a huge amount of time between albums, but in the fast and fickle British music scene, Second Coming was a long time coming. Their self-titled debut in 1989 was one of those scene-defining records that appears every five years in Britain and is regarded as a classic. By the time The Stone Roses got around to a follow-up, their moment in the sun had passed, Britpop had arrived and bands they had influenced, including Oasis, Radiohead and Blur, were ruling the roost. The main reason for the delay was said to be legal wranglings although drugs were alleged to have played their part during the protracted two-year-long recording process. The weight of expectations and some less-than-favourable reviews sank Second Coming upon release but it has its fans and has become something of a cult hit.

The Eagles - Long Road Out Of Eden (2007)

THE Eagles had a pretty good reason for taking 28 years between this and 1979's The Long Run - they broke up a few times. In fact, after their bitter split in 1980, Don Henley proclaimed they would reunite when "hell freezes over'', so it made sense they're 1994 reunion would be called the Hell Freezes Over Tour. In the ensuing 13 years they would get together sporadically for more tours, break up a few more times, sue each other, do some more shows and then spend six years trying to make this mega-selling double album. It was worth the wait for fans, who lapped up enough copies to make it their second biggest-selling studio album after the legendary Hotel California.

AC/DC - Black Ice (2008)

AS their appeal started to wane in the late '80s, AC/DC cut back their workload. After releasing 10 albums in their first 10 years, with not even Bon Scott's death slowing them down, they then released just four records in the next two decades. The Aussie rock legends broke the drought this year with Black Ice, their first record since 2000's Stiff Upper Lip. Neither age, nor increasing gaps between albums, has wearied AC/DC. All of their records have gone platinum and all of them have contained the same driving hard rock sound. The more the music world changes, the more AC/DC remain the same.

The Rolling Stones - A Bigger Bang (2005)

THE Rolling Stones can be forgiven for taking their time to make albums. They could be forgiven for taking a while to dress themselves as well, given their collective age of 257. Even so, fans had to wait eight years for a follow-up to 1997's Bridges To Babylon - the longest wait ever for a Stones album. The results were pretty good but it could be argued that the Stones have never made a truly bad album (even though some would say 1967 Sgt Pepper's rip-off Their Satanic Majesties Request is pretty terrible). In fact, A Bigger Bang yielded Rough Justice, Back Of My Hand and Streets Of Love - some of their strongest songs in a long time.