Judas Priest has gone through numerous drummers over the course of the band’s history.
Singer Rob Halford quit the band for a while and was replaced by Tim “Ripper” Owens during his absence.
Guitarist K.K. Downing retired from the band several years ago and was replaced by Richie Faulkner.
Guitarist Glenn Tipton has stepped down from live performance due to advancing Parkinson’s Disease.
That leaves bassist Ian Hill as the only member of the band to have a 100% uninterrupted run, being involved with everything the band has done from the beginning.
Any other bands with a surprising member who has remained in place while nearly everything around him changes?
Does it matter that the band itself was not continually active throughout that time?
I probably wouldn’t have mentioned it, but Fripp, Belew, Bruford, Levin spent quite a bit of time in Champaign-Urbana while I was attending school and playing in a band. Ran into all of them quite often (the C-U music scene was not large at all.) At the time, it was accepted fact that the band had not been active for some time, and the current manifestation was something quite different than it had previously been.
Just seems to me that using similar logic, you could identify “that one guy” who was in any number of “one-hit wonder” bands back in the 60s, and who “regrouped” under the same name as the sole original member …
Alex Lifeson was the guitarist for Rush from the inception of the group. Bassist / singer Geddy Lee joined a few weeks later.
Jeff Lynne has been the guitarist and singer of Electric Light Orchestra since its formation, though the band has gone through several periods of inactivity since the mid-80s, and it now is essentially Lynne plus a backup band.
Good answers, but some miss the “unlikely” part of the question. I singled out Ian Hill as an example of “that guy” in the band who has never been in the spotlight at all; he just stands there at the back of the stage, doing his job, mostly unnoticed because the singer and guitarists are the center of attention. And, as far as I know, he doesn’t have a single songwriting credit after nearly 50 years in the band. Well, I guess it technically *is *50 years now, as the band formed in 1969 and Hill was a founding member. Halford and Tipton joined a few years later - Halford replaced the original singer, who was apparently not very good; Halford was “discovered” by Hill, who was dating Halford’s sister at the time. Tipton joined just before the first album.
He has a handful of songs he co-wrote, mostly back in the '70s. Once Tipton and Downing were rolling tho, he was smart enough to let them do their thing and let Halford write his own lyrics.
Ah, thanks. My old vinyl copies of the early albums were amongst a bunch of my stuff that was stolen a few years ago, so I didn’t have them to double check.
Graeme Edge is the last remaining original member of the Moody Blues. Current members Justin Haywood and John Lodge joined two years later, after the group reconfigured themselves once Denny Laine left.
Bassist Pete Agnew is the only original member of Nazareth still in the band. He’s good (check out “Morning Dew” from the first album) but the band sounds completely different today compared to the '70s lineup.
Mike Love still tours under the Beach Boys name, so he’s been a member continually since 1961.
I don’t get how any original member still being part of the group can be called surprising, though. I think most bands consider themselves a unit rather than a collection of important people and nonentities.
I think the opposite is more often true. I think there are a lot of performers who think (secretly or openly) that they’re the center of the band and the other members are essentially their side-men (and are replaceable). In some cases there may even be several people in the same band who all think that they’re the key member.
**Sepultura
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Paulo Jr. is the only one there from 1985, the time they really formed as a full band. He’s the bass player and definitely not the most famous of the group at all.
keith Richards and agnus of acdc… didn’t he have to be just about carried off stage so he didn’t lose what little of his hearing he had left at like 79 ?