After Happy Mondays broke up and Shaun Ryder formed Black Grape, Bez was the first guy to join the band! Bez might be the only person who’s been a money hog in two bands.
To be fair, it was in the middle of a concert where she was effectively performing the equivalent of a highly energetic modern dance routine. Either that, or you’re thinking of Linda McCartney.
And Ringo, I think, really added a lot to keep the Beatles together… and whimsical. Very key player in the entire group dynamic, I think. Underrated man, underrated drummer.
I think this is the winner. “Posh” is easily the most forgettable Spice, and the others contributed vocally and stylistically. Posh was essentially a mannequin. Now she’s famous for being famous. You could replace her with any preening female and the band would totally work.
And before someone opines that the preening presence was in any way innovative, eye candy is the oldest hook into music.
A lot of prejudice against bassplayers in this thread?
No money to hog, but I always thought Joel Gion of The Brian Jonestown Massacre was just there for comic relief or something.
Not at all- NOBODY suggests that Paul McCartney, Sting, Geddy Lee, Chris Squire or Jack Bruce was ever a “money hog.” But then, all of those guys sang and/or wrote a lot of songs in ADDITION to playing bass.
Competent bass players and drummers who don’t sing or write music are not in short supply. When one of them hooks up with a band that becomes extremely successful and profitable, well good for him. He lucked out.
I don’t begrudge Al Jardine a dime of the money he’s earned. If being with Van Halen enabled Michael Anthony to score with hundreds of groupies, more power to him. If John McVie owns 10 mansions and 20 Rolls Royces, it doesn’t hurt my feelings a bit.
I just hope THEY know how lucky they are, that they could have been replaced in a heartbeat by somebody at LEAST as good as they are, and that they’ve mostly coasted on other people’s talent.
My god yes. This jackass has made a career off of saying “that’s right” and “yeah” in the background of talented people’s songs and then proceeded to milk the death of Biggy by having another group write a song for him about how much he missed his “friend.”
You miss the point. Her talent is for entertaining people by being who she is and producing what she does. I have no time for the woman but she is a freakin’ genius at what she does. Saying she can’t sing misses the point. The point is she does stuff and people love it and buy it. If she were a celebrity created by others I’d agree but that doesn’t seem to be the case. She is not freeloading on others’ talent.
I don’t know about you but I suspect that there are some, cough, *slight *indications that U2 are rather well managed. You may not like them, but they are way, way too successful for me to believe without damn good evidence that they are not managed almost to perfection.
I really have to wonder if you know anything at all about ABBA. Benny and Bjorn were pop song geniuses who not only wrote but also produced some of the catchiest pop songs of all time. A session musician could have sung them, and a couple of models from an agency could have fronted for eye candy, but without the songs and arrangements taht Benny and Bjorn provided they would have been a flash in the pan like so many other manufactured bands, rather than what they were.
Right, and so having a solo song voted the third greatest in history by Rolling Stone, and at least one solo number one album worldwide were what? Just luck?
Linda McCartney and Yoko Ono both deserve at least an honorable mention in this thread and fit the OP a lot better than some other folks who have been mentioned.
Whether or not you like someone or they are in your taste, if they are the “star” they must be contributing something. Maybe even if they just happen to be the one who fits the suit.
To expand on my post: Yes, I do respect B&B’s song writing talents. I sing the praises of Chess, Kristina fran Duvemala and I am a huge fan of ABBACADABRA and have all the recordings of it.
However, the money they got from ABBA was mostly due to the eye candy and vocals of the women and now the unbelieveable success of MAMMA MIA!, a show they had minimal input into (okay, yeah, you can use our songs…but you have to pay use our grand rights).
I do believe B&B have gotton the most cash for the smallest amount of work in musicals history. I wish they could write a new show that would really show their talents.
Wow, Annie, you are way off here. The likes of Posh Spice, Diddy, and Vanilla Ice are in this thread and you think the guys from ABBA are in their company?
They’re brilliant songwriters, and I seriously doubt that ABBA would have been the successful act they were without their songwriting. Now if you replaced either of the female singers with a talented singer that was also attractive, I don’t think their popularity would have waned. Flip the script and it’s not the case.
I think that’s the hallmark. If the person nominated were removed from a group, could they plug someone else in and keep moving without missing a beat? I still think Posh Spice wins this hands down. Any skinny model-type chick could do what she did in the Spice Girls. She’s not a songwriter, instrumentalist, or producer. Nor was she the founder of the group.
KSO, Paul McGuinness made the four U2 members very rich men. It didn’t start that way, and there were a number of U2-sounding bands that (in my mind) were far more likely to achieve world stardom - Simple Minds, for instance, can out-U2 U2 most days of the week. Good management is invisible to most of us, but without it the most talented bands make bad deals, go broke, or split up way too early (look at what ended The Smiths. Not acrimony between the principals, but the stress of managing the band drove Johnny Marr round the bend).
I also feel Ono and McCartney are poor choices, too. Lennon’s solo catalog is pretty scary at times, and I have no problem blaming Yoko for some of those choices. At the same time, Double Fantasy is a brilliant album, and I believe she had a role in the creative process of that project. Even if that role was “No John, I think it’s fine if I don’t sing a duet with you on ‘Woman,’” we’re all the richer for it. And McCartney’s solo work was attributed to “McCartney” because he felt that the songwriting was shared between he and Linda. I know there’s that horrible tape of her singing backup, but you can hear her singing backup on “Silly Love Songs” and she sounds fine. I also think being an inspiration to a more creative person has to count for something as well.
A lot of rappers have guys who basically shout the chorus out and that’s it. For a while, I would have placed Sen Dogg from Cypress Hill in this category, but he takes verses and is even the lead MC on songs like “Latin Lingo.” But we used to joke that he’d come in to the studio, shout “How I could just kill a man!” and get his check.
Sorry but this just doesn’t fit the OP. It may not have taken them very long to write the songs compared to the money they’ve earned, but the songs were creative input, and the OP is about people who have a low creative input for reward ratio. Some people named in this thread have done nothing but front the creative input of others which means they are in a whole other league towards fitting the OP’s requirements than B&B of ABBA.
Also, your suggestion that ABBA earned due to eye candy and vocals is just total crap. There are any number of women better looking than A&A, and who sing better. The difference with ABBA is the songs. That’s why they still sell millions of records a year even though the women are virtually invisible now.
And Mama Mia! would be nothing without the songs.
More to the point, you could have removed her and not plugged in someone else without making any appreciable difference.
You’re freaking kidding me. First of all, why does everyone suck on Public Enemy’s nuts now? I like them and always have, but 20-- hell, 10 years ago they were considered every bit the degenerate lowlifes you’re accusing Biggie of being now. Was it the Tony Hawk soundtrack, or Flavor Flav’s revival as a reality star, or the extremely belated critical acclaim or what? And Digital Underground? Get out of here, man. Mentioning them kind of discredits your calling Puff Daddy an ad man. And Dr. Dre claims to be 10 times the “gangsta” that Puffy ever claimed to be.
Acting like Biggie and Puff Daddy didn’t pioneer anything or contribute anything good to music is beyond ridiculous. It’s completely absurd.
I honestly don’t really care for P. Diddy or whatever the fuck he calls himself these days and it wouldn’t bother me if you just called him a douche or whatever but pretending like he’s a no-talent hack is just ridiculous, and pretending that Biggie is makes me wonder if you ever heard any of his music other than what got played on the radio. It’s contrary to reality. Him and Tupac together were practically a whole era in music themselves.
True, both detracted more than added to the popularity of the groups.
You’re right. But she is freeloading off those poor souls with shitty taste. 
How about The Monkees (all of them)?
They were hired, nearly entirely, as actors. And while they could play and write music, as soon as their contract ended they split up–i.e. they couldn’t successfully act as a team. Almost all of their songs were written by others and their albums were largely recorded by others.
As was pointed out in another thread here a few weeks ago…that’s not exactly true.
Of the four, Mickey Dolenz was the only one who was primarily an actor coming into the series. Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork were musicians, and Davy Jones was a stage singer (he played the Artful Dodger in “Oliver!”), as well as, according to Peter, actually a better drummer than Mickey was.
While session musicians played extensively on their initial albums (and the songs were largely written by others), the Monkees fought for, and eventually gained, the right to be a real band. By their third album, they were writing, producing, and playing their own instruments (though they did work with other musicians, as well).
Wow. I’m surprised so many people have this opinion of Wright. I think he was an absolutely essential part of Pink Floyd. The Wall and The Final Cut sound noticeably different from the earlier albums in great part because Wright didn’t contribute much or anything at all. As a matter of fact, I don’t think you can put it much better than David Gilmour did:
Having smeared a few musicians (well, they’re all rich, what do THEY care what I say???), I now feel compelled to backtrack a bit and say that… well, I wasn’t there in the studio, so I don’t really know who contributed what. Sure, I know who sang what, and who wrote which songs, but there’s more to making a successful band than that.
One example that comes to mind? Bill Berry of REM was a good drummer. Not a great one, not a virtuoso, not a master showman, just a decent timekeeper. He wrote very, very little of REM’s music. He could undoubtedly have been replaced by a drummer every bit as good. The band has managed to record and tour without him. So, was he a “money hog”?
Well, NOT according to his bandmates! They always gave him a lot of credit for his strong pop sensibilities, and his ear for what worked. Even if he didn’t write many songs, he was often the one who got to decide, “This song stinks, and it’s not going on the album.” He was often the one who heard something Peter Buck was working on and said, “THAT one could be a big hit, let’s keep working on that one.”
So, if the rest of the band is to be believed, Bill Berry’s impact on an REM album went well above and beyond his own performance.
And MAYBE a lot of musicians we’re disrespecting have similar strengths and have made similar contributions, contributions that don’t show up in the credits.