I’ve been thinking about this since I bought some old Alice Cooper records(Killer, School’s Out, Billion Dollar Babies).
Alice has the perfect voice for those songs. Very cool, if simplistic guitar leads, complex arrangements, a great bass player, those records had it all. Except…
The drummer, Neil Smith. As a teen, I mastered his drum licks in my first week of owning a drum kit. After listening again, it’s obvious how much he held that band back. He was simply not up to the task. Completely inadequate, given the drama of the material.
You know of any bands that could have been sooo much better if the replaced one member?
Really? Neil Smith? Wow…I wouldn’t have thought so. “Billion Dollar Babies” and “Under My Wheels” strikes me as quite good as far as drumming goes. I’ve always dug Neil’s approach. If you wanna throw darts at the orginal Alice Cooper Group then look no further than Glen Buxton. That guy didn’t even play on MANY of the ACG records. For example: “Under My Wheels”? It wasn’t Glen doing the solo…it was Rick Derringer. Glen just couldn’t get it together anywhere. Glen was so inept that when the group went on tour, sometimes they just completely turned his amplification down so he wouldn’t screw up the rest of the band.
When I read this post, the first band that popped into my mind was the Goo Goo Dolls. I’m not a huge fan of theirs, but I picked up two of their albums in a used bin. The guitarist (John I think?) has a great voice (he songs on most/all of their radio songs), but the bass player Robbie…ugh. He does lead vocals on some of their songs and I really think he needs to just shut up and play his bass. He’s a decent bass player, but they need to keep him away from the microphone as his voice sounds very unappealing next to John(?)'s.