Fleetwood Mac was arguably a supergroup, combining members of the moderately successful Buckingham-Nicks and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers.
There was a one-off country music band, Outlaws (not to be confused with the country rockers “The Outlaws”) comprised of Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Tompall Glaser and Jessie Colter. My guess is that their album sold on par with any of Waylon and Willie’s individual efforts, and accounts for most of the listeners of Glaser and Colter.
Folk music has had at least two relatively successful supergroups: HARP and Four Bitchin’ Babes!
Does anyone recall the Million-Dollar Quartet? It was an impromptu jam session at the Sun Records Studios between Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis, on December 4, 1956. Although they came together by chance, not design, and didn’t release any finished tracks, you might call them the first super group.
In 1986, the three surviving members of the MDQ, Cash, Perkins, and Lewis were joined in the studio by Roy Orbison, another Sun alumnus, and recorded The Class Of '55, which was partly in tribute to Presley, and partly a commemoration of the original MDQ get-together in '56.
According to Wikipedia, Velvet Revolver had a #1 album in both the US and Canada, and their song Slither was #1 on two charts (US modern and US mainstream), with "Fall to Pieces"reaching #2 and #1 on them, respectively. I’d say that’s highly successful.
Their website says they are currently working on new songs for their next album. I expect it will also be quite good, or at least, sell well from the anticipation!
ABBA has to be THE most successful supergroup. Formed from members of The Hep Stars and The Hootenanny Singers, both of whole were big in Europe, plus two young women who had successful solo careers at the time.
Not really. Fleetwood Mac was a semi-popular group for quite awhile before Nicks and Buckingham joined. Very few people ever listened to the Buckingham Nicks LP until after Rumours was released, IIRC.
Well, “done better” cannot be determined objectively. Bad Company had four albums and one single in the Billboard Top five; King Crimson has had none (highest chart position: 28; all of Bad Company’s first six albums did better than that). King Crimson put out many more albums, though, so it’s hard to tell who sold the most.
And it’s clear that Bad Company did better than Free or Mott the Hoople; both groups had minor hits and successful albums, none were up to Bad Company.
[fanboy]And Crimson is still putting out the occasional new album… [/fanboy]
I’m probably one of the three or four most overt King Crimson fans on this board (Hi, Biffy!), and even I don’t consider them a supergroup. IMHO, a supergroup is comprised of people who had notably successful runs in prior groups first. That isn’t even remotely true of the original 1969 King Crimson lineup.
However, it could be argued that they became a supergroup in their 1974-vintage lineup, since Bill Bruford of Yes and John Wetton of Family joined the group then.
Damon Albarn is the only permanent Gorillaz member, though. The others rotate in and out. It’s not a supergroup, so much as a Damon Albarn side-project that his peers get in on.
My own personal favorite supergroup is the Lost Dogs, which was formed in 1991 when the lead singers/songwriters/guitarists from four great Christian Alternative Rock bands (Terry Taylor of Daniel Amos, Mike Roe of The 77s, Derri Daugherty of The Choir, and Gene Eugene of Adam Again) got together to record an album’s worth of songs (of various styles: blues, folk, rock, country, gospel) that didn’t really fit their regular bands’ styles. The group started as a one-off side project but somehow kept going, and to this day they have released 9 studio albums and still tour (though without Gene Eugene, who died in 1999).
During the group’s existence it got more commercial success and attention than its members’ original bands (which continued to exist and release new material, at least on an off-and-on basis), though not as much as it deserves.
I saw Terry and Mike in a cafe in Orange County a couple years ago. They made sure to make fun of “Fairy Derry”, just because he wasn’t there. I finally got to tell Mike that I’d liked his work since “Ping Pong Over the Abyss.”