Musicians/groups that underwent huge transformations

One of the most extreme transformations has to be Talk Talk.

Most people only remember them from their cheesy synth-pop hits Talk Talk and It’s My Life. Gradually through three albums their sound grew more refined, somewhat Gabrielesque.

Then they released Spirit Of Eden. No synthesizers, no drum machines. Elongated, elliptical songs with long stretches of virtual silence, punctuated by crashing guitars, organ, and incredibly distorted harmonica. The follow up, Laughing Stock, was more of the same. Naturally, the record company was appalled, and the band folded shortly thereafter.

I strongly recommend those last two albums. It’s not for everybody, but those who like it fall in love with it.

Wire. Freaking phenomenal band. Anyhow, Pink Flag was one of the seminal punk albums of the 70s. Their followup, Chairs Missing shed the skin of punk for the more angular and intellectual sounds of post-punk. 154 started drifting towards New Wave, which A Bell is a Cup Until it is Struck delivered in the late-80s. This was easily their most poppy record to date. Then after a few weird (It’s Beginning To & Back Again) and weak (Manscape and The First Letter) efforts, Wire disappeared for more than a decade. They reemerged in 2002 with their stunning Read & Burn 1 and 2 EPs, which were nothing like any Wire previous. These two EPs are relentless, one to three chord songs that sound like the musical equivalent of a jackhammer. They’re extremely repetative, hypnotic chord progressions that take their cue more from industrial music and speedcore than post-punk.

If you just listen to the albums Pink Flag, A Bell is a Cup, and Read & Burn in succession, you would have trouble believing the same band produced all three equally incredible records. That’s the thing about Wire—they’ve reinvented (or, more accurately, matured) themselves several times, and each phase of their career is as strong as any other.

Pink Floyd went from heavy-duty psychedelia (Syd) to prog-rock experimentalism (Roger and David) to arena rock (Roger) to a shadow of their former selves (David).

Heart went from some decent women in rock (Barracuda, Crazy On You, Magic Man, Straight On) to some truly awful 80s mainstream pop (These Dreams, What About Love). Thankfully, their current live efforts are focusing more on the rock than the pop history.

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I think that The Clash transformed pretty majorly between Give 'em Enough Rope and London Calling.

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How about between London Calling and Sandinista?

The Velvets went from avant-garde rock&roll then made a stab at pop music with Loaded.

Iggy Pop went from the so called “godfather of punk” to his “Look I’m Iggy Pop and I have a synthesizer.” stage.

With In Rock Deep Purple went from about four albums of being a pleasantly innocuous, mildly trippy little late '60s pop band to being the globe-straddling, stadium-rogering early '70s Deep Purple: riffs like bulldozers, extended widdly-wee Blackmore guitar solos, show-off Jon Lord organ licks, and Ian Gillan shrieking like a banshee. Many considered this a good thing, myself included. Their lyrics were still crap, mind.

The Eagles went from being an almost-country band with Randy Meisner, to rock with “Hotel California” after picking up Joe Walsh, and then into dark rock with “The Long Run”. Of course, since all they do now is play their early hits, no one realizes that they had changed a lot by the time they quit.

Willie Nelson went from being a twangy country star to an ‘outlaw’ and hero to the Skynyrd/Allman rebel crowd, to being a MOR singer of standards (“Stardust”), to basically just being an elder music statesman who sings whatever the hell he wants.

Waylon Jennings went from being a rocker playing with Buddy Holly to a country star, and then ‘outlaw’ like Willie. There he stayed.

Johnny Cash had so many career changes you can’t count them. From classic country to weird progressive rock/country to folk, back to country, then a reinterpreter of Rock classics.

Pat Boone went from Christian crooner to heavy metal.

Agree it was something of a transformation, but profoundly disgaree with the gratuitous ‘crappy’ slur. Their first post-Gabriel outing, “Trick Of The Tail”, is a great album, brimming with talent and invention. Many die-hard Genesis fans at the time, wary of what the post-Gabriel era would bring, and especially wary at the news that the beardy drummer was going to try and (gasp) sing, were very pleasantly surprised, and considered TOTT to be the best Genesis album up to that time. And “Wind & Wuthering” proved it was no fluke, either. The critical and commercial success of both these albums suggests that “crappy” is just your opinion, and not an especially well-informed one. As soon as you’ve written or recorded even one song that wins equivalent critical and commercial acclaim, do let us all know. We’d love to hear it.

I agree. Genesis didn’t really start getting crappy until after Abacab, a few records into the Phil Collins era.

Their self-titled 1983 album had some good stuff on it.

Invisible Touch not so much. We Can’t Dance just plain sucked.

What about 90’s Genesis? They had some semi-decent stuff in the early to mid 80’s but by the 90’s? Holy Moly-- save us from that crap!

I kind of doubt you would grant ggurl’s opinion legitimacy even if that happened.

Does anybody really buy the old “you are not allowed to criticize someone until you have achieved their level of success” argument anymore?

Wow-- all these comments about Genesis just confirm to me a thought I’ve held for some time now: no band has ever moved so far along the continuum of Utterly Fantastic -----> Totally Disasterous as has Genesis.

(Not saying they were ever all the way to either end of the spectrum… just that no other band has ever moved as far as they did.)

PS-- I read **ggurl’**s comment of “…crappy “new” Genesis with Phil Collins as frontman” to mean right around Genesis and certainly by Invisible Touch. But maybe she (or he) really feels that A Trick of the Tail, and Wind and Wuthering are total crap.

I thought Genesis was a fine album. One of my favorite Genesis albums.

Ah yes, well opinions will differ, eh? Actually, I like a lot of Genesis. It’s just that that album is the most marked turning point southwards for the band, IMO.

Most of *And Then There Were Three * is kinda sucky, some of Duke is; only a few songs on Abacab are bad, but by this point the band has changed significantly-- just that it’s still good stuff, only different. Same for Genesis only less good stuff and by this time we have reached full Collins-ballad-glurge in “Taking It All Too Hard” this just becomes more sickening and overbearing on *Invisible Touch * and We Can’t Dance.

Note that we see the beginnings of the Corrupted Collins Crap in "Man on the Corner" on Abacab, but that song still had redeeming Genesis Style to it whereas the more developed later glurge has none.

To make it more succinct: by the time Steve Hackett left the band they really changed (again). They had some good stuff on *Abacab, Genesis, * and a little on Duke. Other than that-- forget it.
Geez— I sound like Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. Except that he exhorted the horrific newer Genesis and found the great old stuff “too intellectual.”

  1. Exile started out as a soul/disco band, and had a huge hit in the 70’s with “Kiss You All Over.” They later turned completely away from that sound and became a very popular Country & Western band.

  2. King Crimson changed lineups repeatedly, and each time, came up with a very different sound. The early lineup sounded like a more gloomy version of the Moody Blues. Later, they turned to sax-oriiented jazz, then to heavy metal cum Bela Bartok, and finally to a New Age/African synthesis.

Steely Dan went from a full-fledged rock band to a duo almost totally reliant on studio musicians. The music changed too, from basic rock with a vague jazz tinge to slick, studio-enhanced fusion pieces.

Wanda Jackson was a rockabilly singer who later turned around and performed only inspirational fare.

Someone upthread mentioned Deep Purple with Ritchie Blackmore. Ritchie’s now one-half of a great Renaissance-rock band called Blackmore’s Night. (Well, I like them, anyway.)

Elton John has run the gamut from folk-tinged rock sensation to pop idol to bloated grand dame of schmaltz.

Miles Davis was the master of stylistic change, roughly from bebop to cool to modal to Gil Evans collaborations to whatever that amazing quintet with Shorter & Hancock was doing, through various forms of “fusion”…being in the forefront of the *invention *of many of these styles along the way.

A few that come to mind:
Tom Waits went from smokey-piano ballads and jazzy songs in the early/mid70s to today sounding like a carnival barker for the Sanford and Son junkyard jamboree.
Michael Bolotin (now Bolton) started out with a couple of “hard rock” (term used loosely) albums in the 80s before he became the suave love machine we know him as in the late 80s/early 90s.
Alanis Morisette’s first couple albums were bubblegum crap pop. Her later more popular albums were alterna-crap rock. At least she kept the crap.
The Afghan Whigs started out like any other guitar-based college rock band and by the time they broke up, Greg Dulli was convinced he was a black man living in Detroit during the Motown heyday.
Bowie was already mentioned, he’s a good one.
I don’t know if I’d call it a “huge transformation”, but listening to Fugazi’s First EP and their latest, you wouldn’t know it’s the same band.

Ween’s early music was drugged out stupidness (even though I love it). They since have a much more polished and “real” sound.