Agreed; but what about the other members? Not that they didn’t make a contribution, but the Kinks would be (and were) still the Kinks no matter who else was playing with Ray and Dave. Does that disqualify them from this thread?
I think the Gilmour/Waters era Floyd is a good example (and has a bit of that Lennon/McCartney balance to it as well, as Gilmour said that he couldn’t relate to the angst of The Wall.) However, I don’t feel the Syd era as much w/r/t this thread, because at that point they were indebted to the vision of Syd and held back by his inconsistency. I like Syd’s solo stuff just as much as PatGoD and the Syd singles.
I this fits with any band that made its reputation for songwriting rather than musicianship.
And the dynamic of a band often spurs songwriters to do their best work. Lennon and McCartney interested to produce a stronger output than they did individually, even with songs that were primarily written by one or the other.
Dragline
You might not know them. They are three friends of mine who have been playing Rock/Metal/Punk for a long time. The members went to high-school together and have been playing ever since. They are all now 50-52. They play for a while, get tired of the life, then break up for a while. They are currently playing clubs in Ohio/Pennsylvania/West Virginia/Maryland.
As single musicians they admittedly suck, but playing together they are magic.
Buffalo Springfield, the Hollies, and (arguably) the Byrds did not hit the stardom that Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young did.
CSN were the beneficiaries of a lot of hype when they came out. “Supergroups” were all the rage. And since their songs were “sensitive” (cf ‘Guinevere’ et al) they became the darlings of the college-age-female crowd. Which meant that college-age-guys had to pretend to like them too, if they wanted to get laid.
No pretending. There are many great songs by CSN(Y).
All those bands are good examples for this thread.
I mean, Buffalo Springfield? Chock full of good musicians: Stills and Young (and his Mynah Birds* bandmate Bruce Palmer), and Richie Furay who went on to found Poco with Buffalo Springfield engineer/bassist Jim Messina.
Come to think of it, Poco is a perfect example. Furay, Messina, Randy Meisner/Timothy B Schmit, Paul Cotton, and the amazing Rusty Young, the answer to “Hey, Jerry Garcia, who would you recommend on slide guitar?” And to underline Poco as deserving of this thread, some of the artists’ solo work is downright embarrassing…
*Just learned the Mynah Birds vocalist was James Ambrose Johnson Junior… that’s Rick James, bitch!
As someone mentioned above, The Band. All members were very, very gifted musicians who could (and did) play other instruments from time to time. Not many bands have such musicians that the piano player would drum on this song and the bass player would play violin while the drummer played mandolin. These guys could do that with ease. However it was the sum of their efforts that produced such a glorious sound unlike any other. This must have been mind blowing during the late 60’s. On one hand you have Hendrix, The Who, Cream and The Stones all playing wild and extremely loud music that had captured the times. Yet, this group of young men who were schooled by both the constantly touring, one night only Canadian soul revue Ronnie Hawkins and a young, world weary Bob Dylan opted wisely and purposely to focus on the integrity of their songs and play them delicately as musicians as opposed to “jamming”. It simply blew their contemporaries away. They were clearly musicians and not rock stars. Both George Harrison and Eric Clapton made the trek to Woodstock to see what was going on. Clapton said their music hit him in the solar plexus so much that he wanted nothing less but to join them. He was politely shown the door and promptly dissolved Cream upon his return to England to seek a new direction. (He was so taken by them that he spoke on their behalf and nominated them to the Rock and Roll HOF years later.)
Regardless of their time in the late 60’s and early 70’s they remained focused on their music and the relationship they had with one another as a Band. Once they broke up in 78’ there was no great solo breakouts or even memorable songs after that. It was clear that THOSE guys and only THOSE guys could do what they do together. They truly were the sum of their parts. I love The Band for many reasons but their focus and dedication at one time made them the greatest of the great.
Given Neil Young’s solo work alone, it’s hard for me to buy an argument that Buffalo Springfield was better than the sum of its individual members.
I like Poco, but OTOH I like Jim Messina’s three albums with Kenny Loggins. I’d be hard-pressed to say that one’s better than the other. So put me in the ‘dubious’ column with respect to Poco.
Agreed. Even plenty of bands that have a clear frontman are better together than the frontman becomes on his own.
We’ve had a number of examples mentioned in this thread already - The Police (Sting), the Kinks (Ray Davies), the Talking Heads (David Byrne). I’d add the Moody Blues (Justin Hayward) off the top of my head.
Not the best example of a band with a “clear frontman.” All five members of the classic lineup wrote, and all but Graeme Edge regularly sang lead. The Moodies’ later albums, after Mike Pinder left and Ray Thomas’s contributions diminished, sound like less of a group effort, and are the weaker for it.
Donny and Marie.
ABBA. While all four members had some pre-ABBA musical success and have tried to have post-ABBA success, it’s clear that they will never reachieve their ABBA success.
The Stooges
DEVO
Beastie Boys
Probably not the best example, but as I read through the thread, I thought of the Eagles, for a couple of reasons:
- While some of them (particularly Henley and Walsh) had some success as solo artists, or in other groups, their best work was very likely what they did with the Eagles.
- There are some Eagles songs with really lovely vocals (the harmonies in “Seven Bridges Road” come to mind), but indivudually, I never considered any of them to be particularly good singers.
The Weavers is one of the earliest examples of a band greater than all of its members. Their influence on the late 1950’s/early 1960’s folk music scene cannot be downplayed, but only Pete Seeger had any post-Weavers success.
Very true, though all of them were blacklisted during the McCarthy era, which made it difficult for any of them to record or perform for most of the 1950s. We can ony speculate, but it would have been interesting to see if the other members would have seen any greater success had it not been for the blacklisting.
I agree 100% and well said. Until you got to the end. Robbie Robertson’s first solo album remains one of my favorite albums of all time. It wasn’t The Band and didn’t try to be. And he had either U2 or The Bodeans backing him on most of the songs.
Agreed. Byrne wrote the songs for the most part, but I also think Weymouth made that band.