Over the years, Jeff Lynne went from being a member of Electric Light Orchestra, to the lead singer and sole songwriter, to the only full-time member of the band (the last ELO album, 2001’s Zoom, was essentially a solo album, with Lynne playing most of the instruments, backed up with guest musicians on some tracks).
Talking Heads - The band was co-founded by the trio of David Byrne, Tina Weymouth & Chris Frantz. (Jerry Harrison joined a little later.) Pretty much all of the bands’ material was jointly co-written by the members, with a fair amount of input by their frequent producer Brian Eno. Byrne was never the “Sting” of the band, writing anything like the lions’ share of the songs. But nowadays, people think that Byrne was the mastermind of the band, and that its’ success was entirely attributable to his “vision.” Not true in the least.
Journey - As hard as it might seem to believe, Journey was formed by former members of Santana, and was originally a post-psychedelic SF “heavy prog rock” group. Their first record was all instrumental songs. But their record label put the thumbscrews on them to become more pop radio friendly, their manager hired (without the bands’ consent) Steve Perry and forced them to record Perry’s ‘girly’ ballads. Of course, once those songs became mega-hits, the band didn’t mind too much.
I watched something on Journey; I don’t think it wasn Behind the Music, but it did go over the history of the band. Perry said he never felt like he was really a part of the band :dubious:. Jonathan Cain wondered how that could be considering that Perry was pretty much in charge of the band while he was in it
David Lee Roth? Quiet? Never!
Much more obscure, but The Music Machine (they had a minor hit in '66 with Talk Talk) became the Bonniwell Music Machine. Lame-o!
How they could go from some intense fusion on the first two sides of Chicago VII, to, in the space of only a year or three, the kind of excreble crap Cetera kept putting out, is beyond me-was, and still is. I’d blame Terry Kath’s death, but he blew his brains out 5 years after VII came out. It’s colored my perception of any of my favorite bands to date, in that I expect them to fall off a creative cliff sooner or later (most recently for me Porcupine Tree). So far I am hard-pressed to find an exception, unless it’s one of those bands who essentially write the same stuff from album to album, like the Ozric Tentacles.
Scandal morphed into “Scandal featuring Patty Smyth” for their only full-length album.
After Syd Barrett left Pink Floyd, Roger Waters took over more and more of the songwriting duties. By the time of “The Final Cut”, he was writing and singing everything. After leaving, he sued the other members to stop them from using the name Pink Floyd, uttering his infamous quote “calling themselves Pink Floyd is like George and Ringo reuniting and calling themselves The Beatles”, showing his opinion of his importance.
Jethro Tull didn’t start out that way, but eventually became Ian Anderson and whoever was part of the crew this time around - although Martin Barre has been with the group for an extremely long time, he was not original and doesn’t have anything of a similar following. I believe I even saw someone on this board refer to Tull as if it was the name of the front man, not the name of the band (and the agronomist from whom the name was taken). The band in its early years was even named after John Evan, so it was not always the Ian Anderson Show that it came to be. The album that he thought was going to be his first solo album turned into a Jethro Tull album at the insistence of the record label, partly due to featuring Martin Barre. A few years later they won the Grammy for best Hard Rock album over Metallica.
A lightweight example, but the other Pussycat Dolls are just Nicole Scherzinger’s back-up dancers.
When Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band started, the singer we now know as Captain Beefheart took the stage name “Don Van Vliet” (being born as Don Glen Vliet) and was by no means the group’s leader (being the one with the least musical education and experience). In the following years, after taking over the lead gradually, at some point he became “Captain Beefheart” and his backing group “His Magic Band”, which evolved into an everchanging oufit with Beefheart/Van Vliet being the only constant.
True, but I thought the thread was less about billing and more about a single member “taking over” the band? After Tosh and Wailer left the band, “The Wailers” for all intents and purposes carried on, albeit with major personnel changes, but a single member “took over” the group.
Lesson for today, kids: once Vice starts, it’s nearly impossible to stop.
There was the band Sandwich that was fairly obscure until Meatloaf went out on his own and left behind Bread.
Dude, that band totally sucked anyway after Ketchup died.
Not many people like jam bands.
Oops, Vince I mean. :o