What band/artist most changed their style in pursuit of the almighty dollar?
My first instinct is Jefferson Airplane, RIP and god bless recently deceased members.
Late 60s revolutionary band, by the mid 80s a miserable mutation of the band under the name “Starship” pumping out muszak with Mickey Thomas such as “We Built This City”, “Sara” and other Top 40 slop.
Off the top of my head there’s also Billy Idol: Gen X punker mass producing Top 40 hits by the mid 80s.
Who else?
Thread relocated to Cafe Society from IMHO.
Metallica. When they released the “Black Album,” many critics and fans accused them of selling out in an attempt to sell more records. The lengths of the songs were shortened to more radio-friendly times, they started doing videos (though the first video they did was for “One,” which was off of the previous album).
And they were accused of selling out even more when the follow-up album was released. They’d cut their hair, and generally seemed like trying to become even more mainstream.
Journey adding Steve Perry. Doobie Brothers adding Michael McDonald.
I don’t know if he did it for the almighty dollar, or just for fun, but compare David Johansen’s work with the New York Dolls with his work as Buster Poindexter.
Michael Bolton was a middling hard rock artist before he became…well, Michael Bolton. Although, to be honest, it wasn’t that far to fall.
Oddly enough, the first name to pop into my head was Nat King Cole. Cole was an accomplished jazz pianist who occasionally sang jazz songs, and was fairly successful at it. As his voice got more attention than his piano work, he started singing more, and by the late 40s was doing pop numbers, which remained his genre for the rest of his days. To be fair, history is littered with jazz musicians who had to compromise in order to eat regularly.
Big question: what’s wrong with changing styles or directions for ANY reason? If nobody was buying Journey’s early progressive rock albums or if fans were tiring of Genesis’ lengthy songs about the Meaning of Life, why SHOULDN’T they have tried going in a more pop oriented direction?
Because that’s the very DEFINITION of a sellout. Both of those bands sacrificed their artistic ambition for the sake of a big payday. And for the record, no one was “tiring” of Genesis’s prog format–in the UK their albums from 1973 on reliably charted in the Top 10, and although they were much less well known in the USA, their popularity was steadily increasing here. Of course, once they started releasing pop singles, in parallel with Phil Collins’s equally poppy solo career, they became Top 10 regulars here and #1 charters at home.
I’ve always disliked this line of thinking. For one, it was the “black album” which got me into Metallica in the first place, and I worked my way backwards through their discography after that. Second, any time I hear someone gripe “sell-out,” what I really interpret that as is “how dare they do anything different from when I discovered them!!” Some people seem to act like whatever music they latched onto during adolescence somehow “belongs” to them.
IMO what really happens is that these bands get older, their tastes and lives change, and the music they create reflects that. When Kill 'em All was released, Metallica was a handful of young 20-something guys who got drunk a lot and hated the then-current crop of hair metal bands. Now they’re in their 50s, have families, and (especially in James Hetfield’s case) simply aren’t physically able to perform the same way anymore. 30 years of screaming takes a toll on one’s voice.
as a more recent example, I’ve been a fan of Slipknot for a while. But their front man Corey Taylor seems to have been paying more attention to the more mainstream Stone Sour for a while now. Sell out? nah. I think he’s honestly seeing the point where he can’t keep up with Slipknot anymore.
Jefferson Airplane always gets mentioned for this. They admitted it, it was about making money and maintaining the life. There’s plenty more that didn’t become the poster child for the concept though, a much shorter list would be the bands that didn’t sell out in the end.
Rod Stewart.
The man who gave us ‘Stay with Me’, ‘Every Picture Tells a Story’, ‘You Wear It Well’, and many other kick-ass rockers jumped on the disco bandwagon querying whether we considered him sexy and if, by chance, we might want his body.
If that wasn’t bad enough, he has since released FIVE ‘Great American Songbook’ albums, regurgitating old chestnuts one after the other because he can apparently no longer be bothered to write or sing original material.
(add to that a GAS live album followed by a Christmas album in 2012)
mmm
I’d say they really sold out a little bit later than the “Black Album”- there were still several old-school songs on that album. “Load” (the next album, and 5 years after the “Black Album”) is where they really sold out. No real fast songs, several Top 40 hits, short hair, etc…
How about bands who sold out only to find that no one was buying? Gentle Giant struggled for years purveying a particularly intricate brand of prog-rock and never made it past the lower/middle reaches of the charts. When they finally made a concerted effort to “go commercial,” however, it bombed miserably.
When The Shaggs (like, decades after the fact) and Jandek finally decided to play live.
What’s wrong with it? Well, let’s look at the ultimate protest band of the early 1970’s: Grand Funk Railroad.
Here’s a pure protest band that fires their manager (Terry Knight) because he suggested a few changes to make money, and then turn around and do the very thing they criticized him for: they put out an album laced with commercialism and bubble-gum songs- ‘We’re An American Band’
Hypocrites!
Genesis changed direction after Peter Gabriel left - a MAJOR change in personnel. Then Steve Hackett left. After that, who’s to say that Collins, Rutherford, and Banks weren’t making exactly the kind of music they wanted? Collins’ solo work and Mike and the Mechanics would seem to bear that out. Gabriel’s solo work was more “alternative,” but also became more radio-friendly.
How about a counter-example - ever listened to Rush’s first album? Working Man is a great song, but a pretty obvious Sabbath rip-off. The rest of the album isn’t bad, but highly derivative throughout. (Which explains Geddy Lee as a vocalist - he channeled Robert Plant pretty well, actually). Then they traded in the drummer for Neil Peart, and went in the opposite direction. Of course some would say they “sold out” with Moving Pictures…
I guess I don’t automatically see moving in a more radio-friendly as selling out. There is nothing wrong with seeking a wider audience. Metallica’s black album was tremendous, and if that’s selling out, well then yay for selling out. Same with Rush’s Moving Pictures. In neither case did they abandon their artistic integrity.
In some cases, such a breakthrough album can lead to a more genuine sell-out, and thus can be mistakenly seen as the sell-out itself. But sudden widespread popularity can happen organically.
FYI- Tony Iommi admits in his book (Iron Man) that the title track from Paranoid is a direct take from Zeppelin’s Communication Breakdown.
One that really disappointed me was the great Louis Armstrong, who went from singing powerhouse blues songs like “Why Am I So Black and So Blue” to crap like “Hello Dolly” and “What a Wonderful World”. In both those instances, he lived down to comments from some quarters that he pandered to white audiences.
Not so much “change their style”, but they are the ultimate example of selling out. They (Gene and Paul) shamelessly whore the name to anything and everything for a buck. Good business? Sure. Pathetic? Most definitely! It was never about making music, just making cash and getting laid.
Yeah, I’m just jealous. 
(I’ve still got a sheet of KISS Army temporary tattoos from the KISS Alive II album!)
To be fair, McDonald was just a fill-in for an ailing Tom Johnston that ended up staying too long. Blame Skunk Baxter.