# Bands with one great musician **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 10, 2019, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bands-with-one-great-musician/830908 "2019-03-10T19:23:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Typo\_Negative](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/typo_negative/32/484_2.png) [@Typo\_Negative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Negative)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bands-with-one-great-musician/830908/81 "2019-03-12T18:42:26Z")
> [@Jonathan\_Chance](#): > > Wow, I’d disagree with that. Alex didn’t have a tenth to ability or innovation of his brother. Most of the first three or four Van Halen albums you could teach a rookie to play in a month. It’s not that hard to play in four with a doubled up bass drum on the three. > > And the first instrument I ever played in a band was drums. I wanted to be Neil Peart. > > I was quickly informed by experience that I ever would be. Alex is on the ‘Best of All Time’ lists for drummers in both Rolling Stone and Modern Drummer magazines. Too far down the lists IMHO, but still made the cuts. Same with Ranker, Arena and The Top Tens. Not really sure what those are, but they agree with me, so I mention them. [sub]granted, a lot of the drummers on the lists do nothing for me [/sub] ---
**Author:** ![Royal\_Nonesutch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecb155/32.png) [@Royal\_Nonesutch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Royal_Nonesutch)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bands-with-one-great-musician/830908/82 "2019-03-12T19:07:52Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > Garth Hudson gave music lessons to the rest of the Band. Taught them all how to play their instruments. Does that count? Not really true, as apparently he told his parents he was giving the rest of the members of The Band lessons, so they wouldn’t know the shocking truth, which was he was merely playing in a lowly roadhouse Rock & Roll band. Robbie Robertson, Levon Helm, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel were all at least competent musicians when The Band was formed in 1964 after originally playing under the moniker “The Hawks” (backing up Ronnie Hawkins) , although perhaps Hudson was able to give them useful advice or tips in the early going. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bands-with-one-great-musician/830908/83 "2019-03-12T19:12:07Z")
> [@blondebear](#): > > While it’s true that John was certainly a bass virtuoso, I’d have to give the edge to Pete in the “great musician” department. After all, a huge percentage of Who songs are covers of Townshend’s demos where he played almost everything. Well sure, but the OP was about one GREAT musician in a band who outshines the rest. Not bands where one member was rather more important than the others (which would be most bands I suspect). The Who are absolutely disqualified. All the members were iconic and Entwhistle and to a lesser extent Moon were highly influential as musicians. > [@nearwildheaven](#): > > We R.E.M. fans didn’t realize just what a musical wizard Bill Berry was until he left the band. Sure, he’s an OK drummer, but he was also the band’s honest-to-goodness songwriter, as evidenced by their early vs. later material. With all due respect if The Who are a very bad example, this might be the worst :). REM are the antithesis of the one man band. You really can’t make the argument than Bill Berry was a better musician than Mike Mills or Peter Buck. While I agree the band never really recovered from his loss (I don’t own anything post _New Adventures in Hi-Fi_ myself and unlike Michael Stipe I rank that one dead last), I don’t chalk that up to him being the heart and soul of the band. I chalk that up to them getting older and running out of interesting new material (happens to most bands that last long enough) and the four-part synergy being better than the three-part version. But Bill Berry did not _clearly outshine the others on their instrument_ to roughly quote the OP in post #7. I think CCR and Smashing Pumpkins are both pretty good examples for the topic, as are **bordelond** ’s classic guitar trio. > [@GESancMan](#): > > Gotta disagree on Primus, Chili Peppers, and ELP. All three have amazing drummers, right up there in musicianship with the member you listed. Larry LaLonde of Primus is a really, really good guitarist. Les is the best, but he doesn’t dominate his band members in anyway IMO. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bands-with-one-great-musician/830908/84 "2019-03-12T19:20:14Z")
There are probably lots of good answers that none of us have ever heard of, of the form: “\_\_\_\_\_\_, the band that \_\_\_\_\_ was in when he was young, before he joined \_\_\_\_\_ and became famous.” ---
**Author:** ![Rough\_Draft](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/76d3ee/32.png) [@Rough\_Draft](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rough_Draft)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bands-with-one-great-musician/830908/85 "2019-03-12T19:49:09Z")
I’m not a Janis Joplin expert, but I’ve always heard that she deserved much better backup bands than any of the ones she had. I’ve also heard the same about a lot of the backup musicians Bob Dylan had, especially in the sixties (before he hooked up with The Band). ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bands-with-one-great-musician/830908/86 "2019-03-12T19:56:34Z")
> [@Smid](#): > > It’s a loaded question about musical ability versus ability to play their specific instrument. The latter of which might well exclude singers from the list. > > For instance, the main songwriter by a long shot in Pink Floyd was Roger Waters. But reports were he wasn’t the greatest of bass players. But boy could he write and arrange music. Plus the lyrics. > > In that band, David Gilmour was the one who could play the instrument of choice as well (up to you if you think Mason and/or Wright are in the running, but to me both disappeared into drugs). Yet he didn’t write very many songs of his own (were many really his, or were they just the solos?) in the main floyd run, and boy he couldn’t write lyrics. > > Sometimes the bass players are the musical talent behind the band, without the technical competency they demand from their instruments. Phil Lynott, for instance. Not loaded at all. Its a very specific question concentrating on one specific aspect of music, instrumental virtuosity. There is nothing wrong with a thread asking about groups where one person is more important than the rest. Its just not this thread. There are quite a few examples of people who are at best journeymen on an instrument but know it well enough to write amazing songs on it. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bands-with-one-great-musician/830908/87 "2019-03-12T20:04:05Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > Larry LaLonde of Primus is a really, really good guitarist. Les is the best, but he doesn’t dominate his band members in anyway IMO. I feel the same way about Blues Traveller. John Popper is so good that its ridiculous. Hearing the radio hits would make you think he is the band. He is the focus on stage but Chan Kinchla holds his own on guitar. They truly are a band and not just a backstop for the frontman. ---
**Author:** ![Royal\_Nonesutch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecb155/32.png) [@Royal\_Nonesutch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Royal_Nonesutch)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bands-with-one-great-musician/830908/88 "2019-03-12T20:11:49Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > There are quite a few examples of people who are at best journeymen on an instrument but know it well enough to write amazing songs on it. Perhaps THE single most respected, revered and admired still-living “Musician’s Musician” (IOW, more or less all but unknown to the Great Unwashed Masses but immensely influential to serious music junkies and other musicians alike) would be a perfect example of this, namely one (Sir) Van Morrison. ---
**Author:** ![Rough\_Draft](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/76d3ee/32.png) [@Rough\_Draft](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rough_Draft)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bands-with-one-great-musician/830908/89 "2019-03-12T20:23:00Z")
> [@Royal\_Nonesutch](#): > > Perhaps THE single most respected, revered and admired still-living “Musician’s Musician” (IOW, more or less all but unknown to the Great Unwashed Masses but immensely influential to serious music junkies and other musicians alike) would be a perfect example of this, namely one (Sir) Van Morrison. Absolutely! Van is the **Man**. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bands-with-one-great-musician/830908/90 "2019-03-12T20:52:47Z")
> [@Rough\_Draft](#): > > I’ve also heard the same about a lot of the backup musicians Bob Dylan had, especially in the sixties (before he hooked up with The Band). That’s rather dubious, to say the least. First, the Band (then still the Hawks) were his first touring backing band at all, except for his legendary 1965 Newport Festival gig, where the band was Mike Bloomfield, Sam Lay, Al Kooper, Barry Goldberg and Jerome Arnold, basically an extended Butterfield Blues Band and a mixture of Chicago Blues veterans like Lay and hot new cats like Bloomfield, plus Al Kooper. I’d love to have these guys for my band at my first gig, that’s for sure. As for studio work, the musicians on Dylan’s famous electric trilogy Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde had a similar mixture of experienced studio cats and hot new talent. Those liner notes read like a list of great and important musicians from that time. Dylan did a many things and made a lot of mistakes, but he always had a knack for picking great bands all throughout his career. ETA: looking up the few posts before, I have to say that Dylan in this way (and in many other ways) is similar to Van Morrison. He also always had the greatest guys in his bands. ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bands-with-one-great-musician/830908/91 "2019-03-12T21:22:34Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > That’s good, because it wasn’t intended to contradict anything you said. 🙂 We good. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bands-with-one-great-musician/830908/92 "2019-03-12T21:43:20Z")
> [@Smid](#): > > For instance, the main songwriter by a long shot in Pink Floyd was Roger Waters. But reports were he wasn’t the greatest of bass players. But boy could he write and arrange music. Plus the lyrics. How, exactly, do you assess bass talent? When you listen to, say, _Time_, you hear Waters laying in his notes right where they need to be. As an arranger, he seems really good at adding just the right canvas for Gilmour to spray his colour on. Also, Waters’ voice can be the perfect counterpoint to Gilmour (there are also some songs where Wright takes part in perfect-blend harmony). Gilmour was able to build incredible bridges that even he struggles mightily to reproduce live, but the guitar and the middling-to-good singing seem to be the extent of his talent. Waters seems to be a much broader talent, and he has far greater emotional range in his voice. Now, Syd, that would have been an interesting talent to see develop. ---
**Author:** ![Wilson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/96bed5/32.png) [@Wilson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wilson)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bands-with-one-great-musician/830908/93 "2019-03-12T22:05:17Z")
> [@Reindeer\_Flotilla](#): > > It took 59 posts for someone to mention Big Brother and the Holding Company? > > :p:p Sam Andrew was a great guitarist (and all-around musician) - sure, he’s not of Janis’s class, but that’s sort of like judging the rest of the Jimi Hendrix Experience against Jimi. ---
**Author:** ![Smid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/838e76/32.png) [@Smid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smid)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2019, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bands-with-one-great-musician/830908/94 "2019-03-12T23:08:30Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > How, exactly, do you assess bass talent? When you listen to, say, _Time_, you hear Waters laying in his notes right where they need to be. As an arranger, he seems really good at adding just the right canvas for Gilmour to spray his colour on. Also, Waters’ voice can be the perfect counterpoint to Gilmour (there are also some songs where Wright takes part in perfect-blend harmony). I personally never had any problem with Waters bass playing, someone who I knew was very anti Waters seemed to be saying there was claims that Gilmour played the bass half the times in the recordings and that Waters wasn’t good enough and playing live was a problem. I had strong opinions that Momentary lapse wasn’t an actual Floyd album, and they hijacked the name, it was a Gilmour solo album and Floyd would be dead without Waters, after Wright and Mason disappeared into living off Dark side funded cocaine habits. I suspect the “couldn’t play the bass” might have been some sort of emotional slur and perhaps half confused story from another band. Personally thought Division Bell was much more a floyd album than Momentary. It featured people who actually liked classic Waters Floyd. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2019, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bands-with-one-great-musician/830908/95 "2019-03-13T00:53:41Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > There are probably lots of good answers that none of us have ever heard of, of the form: “\_\_\_\_\_\_, the band that \_\_\_\_\_ was in when he was young, before he joined \_\_\_\_\_ and became famous.” Tomorrow Steve Howe Yes How’d I do? ---
**Author:** ![Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/les_espaces_du_sommeil/32/308_2.png) [@Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Les_Espaces_Du_Sommeil)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2019, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bands-with-one-great-musician/830908/96 "2019-03-13T10:10:40Z")
> [@Penfeather](#): > > John McGeoch would like a word. I… don’t disagree ;). However, I’ll note in passing that both he and **Smith** played guitar for **Siouxie and the Banshees** , which shows how influential this band was in spite of its relative lack of mainstream success. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2019, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bands-with-one-great-musician/830908/97 "2019-03-13T12:11:53Z")
I want to say **The Divine Comedy** but that’s a joke, given that the band is basically Neil Hannon doing almost everything plus a few other people now and then. > [@Reindeer\_Flotilla](#): > > It took 59 posts for someone to mention Big Brother and the Holding Company? > [@Rough\_Draft](#): > > I’m not a Janis Joplin expert, but I’ve always heard that she deserved much better backup bands than any of the ones she had. A couple of weeks ago I was watching a clip of Janis Joplin and Tom Jones singing together. Now, I like Tom Jones and he’s a talented and successful singer, but watching him sing with Janis was like watching the winner of a college track meet, saying “Wow, that guy’s fast!” and then seeing Usain Bolt blow by him like he was standing still. She was in a whole other league. > [@GargoyleWB](#): > > Being one of my favorites of all time, it pains me to say **Blue Oyster Cult**. Buck Dharma is a guitarist’s guitarist that any band would envy. Everyone else in the band are mere working professionals. Bouchard does pull out some tasty bass lines, but still isn’t on that transcendent level. But what about Gene Frenkle?\* 😃 \*Actually producer David Lucas. ---
**Author:** ![Mixolydian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/da6949/32.png) [@Mixolydian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mixolydian)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2019, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bands-with-one-great-musician/830908/98 "2019-03-13T15:30:14Z")
> [@digs](#): > > Dire Straits. > [@Loach](#): > > My first instinct would be to agree but if you saw them live it was clear that Pick Withers was an excellent drummer. Terry Williams was no slouch either…check out his work with Rockpile. ---
**Author:** ![Snake\_Plissken\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Snake\_Plissken\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snake_Plissken_1)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2019, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bands-with-one-great-musician/830908/99 "2019-03-13T16:08:35Z")
Todd Rundgren’s ‘Something/Anything?’ was a two record set where he played all the instruments and sang all the vocals. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2019, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bands-with-one-great-musician/830908/100 "2019-03-13T17:41:44Z")
> [@Snake\_Plissken](#): > > Todd Rundgren’s ‘Something/Anything?’ was a two record set where he played all the instruments and sang all the vocals. So which guy in the band was the superior musician? Was it Todd or Todd? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bands-with-one-great-musician/830908.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bands-with-one-great-musician/830908.md?page=6)