After reading this thread about how Rush doesn’t use backing musicians on stage, it made me think of bands that do use extra musicians to fill out their live sound. For example, during the 80s Genesis used former Zappa drummer Chester Thompson to fill in on drums for Phil Collins. Not only would asking Phil to drum and sing the entire show not be practical, but the audience expects the singer to be upfront anyway. What other bands do this? And did you like the results or not?
I think every time I saw the Moody Blues in the 90s they had extra musicians. IIRC they had not only a percussionist but also another drum set apart from Graeme Edge.
They were old by then already (and still performing, 20 years later!) so I didn’t hold it against them. Plus when your album music is complex you can’t always re-create the sound on stage without extra help. It was nice to hear “the whole thing” instead of something thin, and strained.
Plus Daryl Stuermer on guitar/bass, to fill in for the departed Steve Hackett (aka “Steve who?”)
Post-Waters Pink Floyd and post-Moon The Who would bring entire ensembles with them on tour.
Not as a regular thing but I have seen Kansas perform their music live with two different “city” orchestras. Fantastic!
I got to play in the orchestra in a few of these types of concerts back in my violin days. Moody Blues was one of them, and ZipperJJ is correct that they had two large drum sets. Maybe 8 folks on stage with instruments, plus three ladies singing at times.
I liked these concerts because I got paid to go to a rock concert, and the music was easy enough for just one (paid) rehearsal a little before the concert, which was the first time we’d see the sheet music.
Even in the '70s Pink Floyd had extra musicians onstage at various times: Dick Parry on sax, Snowy White on guitar, and the Blackberries for the “soul” vocal parts–and a bit later, of course, a whole “surrogate band” for the Wall shows.
The Rolling Stones have almost always been supplemented with horns, keyboards, and backing singers. Nowadays even their longstanding bass player, Darryl Jones, is technically an extra musician, as he has never been made an official band member.
The Kinks in the '70s were augmented with a horn section and female singers.
This reminds me of when I saw Peter Gabriel a few years back, he was touring with what he called the “New Blood Orchestra”. About half of the orchestra was a touring group, and the rest were local musicians from the city where he was playing.
I saw Ramsey Lewis about ten years ago. He mentioned that his regular drummer was sick, and the got the stand in drummer from the union hall. They had a short rehearsal in the afternoon. That evening there was the stand in drummer… site reading the charts. Incredible. And flawless.
Well, during the Works Volume 1 tour, Emerson, Lake & Palmer toured with a 60 piece orchestra- does that count?
R.E.M. had an extra member to add guitar and keyboards on many of their tours. Two that come to mind are Buren Fowler from Drivin ‘n Cryin’ and Peter Holsapple from The dB’s.
Pat Smear, the unofficial 4th Nirvana member, and current Foo Fighter.
The Band added a five-man horn section for their 1971-72 New Year’s shows, including the great swing trumpet player Snooky Young (a Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra alum) and tuba god Howard Johnson. Allen Toussaint wrote the charts. Some of the best live rock n’ roll ever recorded. Getchaself a copy of the ROCK OF AGES album.
For groups prior to the era of computer “musicians”, don’t they all? If one person is playing multiple parts on their recordings whether vocals, percussion, guitars etc., of course they’d need more people to re-create the sound in a live performance. I guess I’m not seeing the issue here.
I should probably read the Rush thread.
Jason White was the touring guitarist for Green Day starting with the Warning tour in 2000. He eventually became a full member of the band in 2012. On their most recent tour there were 6 people on stage - the 4 band members, Jason Freese (keyboards, sax, and other stuff) and Jeff Matika (miscellaneous guitar work)
I asked a question on this site a long while ago about how Van Halen’s “Jump” was executed live. In the studio, Eddie Van Halen played both lead guitar and keyboards. Someone filled me in: Former Night Ranger keyboardist Alan Fitzgerald frequently performed off-stage with Van Halen during live shows.
Yep, this happened a lot with hard rock/heavy metal bands that had keyboard players to augment songs here and there. They didn’t always appear on stage because… I guess either they were considered uncool or because they’re not on every song and they would look awkward standing there for long stretches with nothing to do. I can think of:
Black Sabbath - Geoff Nichols (though he actually got “promoted” to official member status for a while)
Kiss - Gary Corbett and Derek Sherinian
Whitesnake - Richard Bailey
Iron Maiden - Michael Kenney
Queen - Spike Edney
Also, Terry Lawless for U2.
When I saw them in 1984, the stage set up had 2 elevated risers with Alex’s drum kit in between them. During “Jump” and “I’ll Wait”, Eddie went up the stage left riser and Michael climbed the stage right one. Eddie had a guitar waiting for him at the top. Eddie would start on keyboards and Michael would play the bass lines on the other set of keyboards. During the solos, Eddie would switch to guitar and Michael would keep the synth chord progressions going. Neither song sounded as full as the studio version, so I doubt there was an auxiliary musician on that tour. I was sitting 7 rows back and above Eddie’s riser, and it sure looked like he was playing.
I don’t know about later tours. The only other time I saw Van Halen was the first tour with Sammy, and they didn’t play “Jump”. For the synth based songs on 5150, Eddie played keyboards while Sammy played guitar.
In the classical realm, versions of Resphigi “The Pines of Rome” require extra musicians for the finale. I saw the Philadelphia Orchestra perform it, and as they reached the end, a group of magicians entered to play at the side of the stage.
Did they saw the concertmaster in half?
I should mention that Genesis in concert…of course for some instrumentals, Collins would have a drum-off with Thompson…but for at least one song, Mike Rutherford (!) would get back there and play also.