What bands have had their former members either erased or attempted to be erased from the bands history? I know this question might not make sense, but it will with two successful examples, and one attempted example.
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Example 1**, On Bad Company’s web site, check out their discography. Interesting. Not a single album from when Brian Howe and Robert Hart were lead singers. I guess after Paul Rogers came back he didn’t like the fact that he was replaced, so he pretended like it never happened.
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Example 2**, OK, not quiet the same, but close. The band YES has had quiet a few members come and go. Recently I read talk of Trevor Rabin possibly coming back, but apparently it won’t happen as long as Steve Howe is there. According to this
And finally, example 3. After the Van Halen brothers kicked out Michael Anthony out of the band, they photoshopped him out of the album covers on their Website, but fans got upset and they put him back in.
Anyway, are there other examples of bands trying to rewrite their own history by either acting like certain members never existed or by refusing to play their music?
The German rock band “Die Ärzte” (“The Doctors”) did something similar once:
In a video to their new single they left out the drummer Bela B. and at the same time erased every single reference to him on their website - band biography, pictures, they even (very clumsily with a magic marker) blacked out his face on older album covers.
This obviously had the fan community go absolutely insane, until the band released a new version of the video several weeks later that featured scenes that showed the drummer oversleeping, at which point they restored the old website.
Die Ärzte are doing that kind of stunt on a regular basis, a few years later they celebrated the launch of a new album by changing their name to “Die Köche” (The Chefs) for a few weeks, redesigning all old album covers and giving them food-related names.
Sadly, they haven’t done anything in quite some time, I do hope a new album is due very soon.
David Coverdale. No mention of him on Deep Purple’s website, including their description of their own history (where other former members are included), and Ian Gillian refuses to perform any of the songs they wrote while Coverdale was in the band.
Not sure it she was erased from history but when Florence Ballard left Motown in the 1960s, her new label Atlantic was not allowed to mention she had been in the Supremes. Not only in it, she chose the name (from a list Motown gave them).
You can also find spats at the Rock and Roll hall of fame ceremonies. The wiki article on “Blondie” guitarist Frank Infante mentions Debbie Harry refused to allow Infante and Nigel Harrison to perform with the group in 2006. For “The Hunter” album in the early 1980s they kicked him out and he got a court order to dub his guitar parts. In 1993 John Fogerty refused to play with former CCR bandmates Stu Cook and Doug Clifford over years of fighting, spoiling Tricia Fogerty’s plans when she brought Tom’s ashes to the event expecting a reunion.
This story may not exactly fit the OP, but I can’t resist telling it. During the recording sessions for the Byrds’ Younger than Yesterday, David Crosby was fired. When the album came out, the cover depicted the three remaining members looking out of the windows of a stable; a horse was looking out of the fourth window. Crosby was offended, saying that they had used the horse to represent him. Some time later, Roger McGuinn responded, “If we had really meant the horse to represent Crosby, we would have turned it around.”
Michelle Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas. When group-leader John Phillips learned his wife was having an affair with other group member Denny Doherty, he had her fired from the band and replaced with another L.A. blond Jill Gibson. Gibson re-recorded many of the songs Michelle had already sung for the groups’ second album and overdubbed into them. Michelle was also cropped out of the albums’ cover shot and replaced with Gibson. Erasing Michelle out of the groups’ history didn’t work though, since it turned out that Gibson couldn’t really sing.
Paul Kantner’s current touring edition of Jefferson Starship will not play any of the Mickey Thomas era material. And not just “We Built This City” and songs that were hits AFTER Kantner left the band. They never play “Jane” (which was actually written by David Freiberg, who is a sometime member of the band) or “Find Your Way Back” or some of Kantners’ lesser known (but IMO quite good) songs from this period. Kantner & Marty Balin were on the Howard Stern show once and Kantner pretty much admitted that he despises Thomas.
There was a fair amount of bad blood between McGuinn and Crosby, though they’re friendly today and Crosby pretty much admits that he DESERVED to be fired, because he was doing a lot of drugs and acting like a jerk.
And if Crosby thought McGuinn was domineering, he learned quickly that McGuinn was a softy compared to the dictatorial Stephen Stills.
Years after their breakup, I saw a joint interview they gave in which they talk about some of the sniping they did at each other after their split. Crosby admitted that he spread a rumor (false) that the reason for their split was that McGuinn was a religious zealot who disapproved of the song “Triad,” which was about a sexual threesome.
Aerosmith made a good album, “Rock in a Hard Place,” without Joe Perry or Brad Whitford… but today, they won’t ever admit that Jimmy Crespo or Rick Dufay existed, let alone that they were members of the band. they certianly never play any songs from that album (which was probably their lest popular).
After Michael Pinder left the Moody Blues, they replaced him with Patrick Moraz, who made several albums and played on numerous tours with them. But when they fired him, they claimed he was just a hired sideman and never a member of the group (I saw part of the trial on Court TV). Today, they pretend there was never any such person as Patrick Moraz.
Have the Stones even mentioned Mick Taylor in the past 30 years? Mick gave a shout out to the late Brian Jones when they received their lifetime achievement Grammy, but never even alluded to Mick.
The Funk Brothers never were in history! They played the background music for most of the songs produced by Motown records from 1959 until 1972 and never got credit, or much pay.
It is said that they had more #1 hits than The Beatles, Elvis Presley, The Beach Boys and Rolling Stones combined.
And while I can’t find it online, I read a quote from Keith, who while he has talked smack about Taylor for leaving in the past, said something along the lines of “I wish he’d never left” while commenting on the recent Exile remaster…
British pop group Sugababes (the name is a reaction to “Spice Girls”) are notorious for replacing their band members, and over the years have replaced all of their original members. When they were releasing their hits album Overloaded in 2006, they were down to one original member, one long-time replacement and one who had just joined. There were very strong rumours that they new members would be re-recording the vocals of the members they replaced, therefore turning the hits album into a bit of a joke - a hits album is supposed to include the hits, not versions of the hits sung by other people - and the fan backlash was huge so the idea was swiftly dropped.
Florence Ballard has been mentioned already. All photos of the Supremes on the walls of Motown after she left featured her replacement Cindy Birdsong, and as was mentioned she wasn’t allowed to say she was in the Supremes, only a “popular female singing group”.