Bandmembers Who Changed Everything

Vince Clarke leaves Depeche Mode, Martin Gore takes over songwriting duties and they get less poppy and more darker.

Yes lost a lot of its funky energy when Bruford was replaced with White IMO.

Uli Roth is a good one

speaking of Yes I think Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman joining both changed the band's sound considerably

Nels Cline joining Wilco

^ nah they’re still boring af

speaking of Yes I think Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman joining both changed the band's sound considerably

― frogbs, Wednesday, April 3, 2024 4:22 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Oh yeah that for sure

J. Geils when he was removed from the J. Geils Band

Damo joining CAN
Rollins joining Black Flag (w/ Dez switching to 2nd guitar)
Milo joining as well as leaving The Descendents
Dave leaving/Bilinda joining MBV
Yamamotor leaving Boredoms
Gary Young leaving Pavement
Bobby leaving Jesus & Mary Chain
Lou getting fired from Dinosaur Jr
Suzzy joining The Roches
Eno leaving Roxy Music
Todd joining Slint
Lindsey & Stevie joining FMac

do these count?
Charlie Goucher leaving this planet (and the Sun City Girls)
DBoon dying (then trying to be replaced by Ed fromOhio)

Always thought the Matt Sharp leaving Weezer and that changing things thing was a bit of fantasy

I kind of agree that Nels Cline joining Wilco was underwhelming. the guy is a genius guitar player but I never feel like he's doing everything he is able to do in that context; their albums became much less adventurous after he joined. He's a professional so he plays to the music and doesn't overwhelm it, so I don't think their decreasing inventiveness is due to him.

I think when Nils AND Glenn AND Jim O'Rourke (also Loose Fur) were in Wilco was kind of the peak of those wild Wilco goes experimental era... but I am coming from an extremely ignorant POV as I haven't heard a Wilco song in probaby 20+ years.

Richard Thompson leaving Fairport Convention after Full House. They were never as inventive or exciting again.

dave gilmour vs pink floyd ?

Half of Tindersticks' original line-up left after their sixth album, including the violinist who had been key to their sound. They've kept going with a new line-up but they've never recaptured the glory of those first few albums.

David Jackson played for a year with the reformed Van der Graaf Generator and then fell out with the rest of them. They've soldiered on as a trio but it's thin gruel without his sax presence.

dave gilmour vs pink floyd ?

― mark e, Wednesday, April 3, 2024 2:55 PM (two minutes ago)

Syd!

yeah, but dave came in and changed everything surely.
i.e. syd was the core of the orig groove ?

The timing! Just about to post the below suggestion:

Pink Floyd had like 2 majorly impactful changes. Almost the poster boys for this thread

Syd leaving while Gilmour joins
Waters leaving

BTW here's a fun electronic music entry:

Andy Turner and Ed Handley leaving Black Dog for Plaid

It wasn't Dave coming in that changed everything as much as Roger taking control.

xps

fair enough ..

another suggestion : trevor horn vs yes ?

Nils, Glenn and Jim were never all in Wilco at the same time though

Pulp three times:
Simon Hinkler joining in 82
Russell Senior joining in 83
Steve Mackey joining in 88

Bill Berry leaving R.E.M.

Wonder how much Russell Senior led them down their path of the uneasy listening years, following the gentle poppiness of It

(Pulp of course)

Nils, Glenn and Jim were never all in Wilco at the same time though

― PaulTMA, Wednesday, April 3, 2024 3:17 PM

Ah... that's my ignorance showing there. I searched to see if they ever toured together and stumbled upon this reddit post:

I had the opportunity to talk to Nels Cline a couple times at his shows. Suffice to say, he didn’t seem to be a huge fan of Jim O’Rourke. He said he was basically fired from Sky Blue Sky for wanting to make it sound like YHF and AGIB. “I don’t think Jim O’Rourke likes music anymore,” I remember Nels saying.

Speaking of Yes, Trevor Rabin gave them the pop writing chops they never managed on previous attempts to commercialise the sound.

Speaking of Genesis, Phil Collins upped the rhythm game quite considerably.

Eric Bell being replaced by Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson in Thin Lizzy - turned them from a bluesy rock band tring to play heavier into a twin guitar hard rock powerhouse that were soon filling arenas worldwide (plus doing shedloads of drugs).

Paul Thompson being fired from Roxy Music cut them off from the full range of styles they had mastered by that point.

I argue that was a lot more important than Eno leaving.

I agree. Losing Thompson is when they lost muscle and got slick. But they stayed weird for years post Eno.

i mean if we're talking wilco i'd say Jay Bennett (joining and leaving) had way more of an influence on them than Nels Cline

anyway, considering the revolving door of band members zappa had, ruth underwood leaving the mothers made a _big_ difference. (compare to ian underwood, whose departure from the mothers, after being one of zappa's major collaborators for years, made nary a blip!)

OTM re Bennett

How about Jerry Harrison joining Talking Heads

that guy that left Yuck after the good album
that guy that left Midlake

(many would argue the album WITH Milo is when they became All, esp since the album was named All. All.)

― CEO Greedwagon (Neanderthal),

Milo was on the Mojack podcast and said that he has subbed in for sick or otherwise unavailable ALL vocalists for a few concerts.
He said that All is his favorite band and that he knows the words to all of their songs.

I've probably told this story on here a zillion times but Milo was my OChem TA at college (which was the same college that Milo left to) and when ALL would come to town from about 2 hours away from where they were based they would perform a half set as ALL and then Milo would jump on stage and finish off the show as The Descendents while Scott would be in the crowd screaming along.

That sounds like a mega fun evening of music to be at

John McGeoch with Siouxsie & The Banshees is such an obvious answer here, that I forgot that Budgie (who's just as important here) joined around the same time.

What about Jim O'Rourke joining Sonic Youth? I don't know enough about the band to say what difference he made, if any.

A more gradual change, but Warren Ellis joined the Bad Seeds eventually led to him becoming Nick Cave's right hand man and the departures of Blixa Bargeld and Mick Harvey & the music becoming more dominated by Ellis' role.

Another one: while nice enough, the last two Jethro Tull albums do seem to be missing something and that something must be Martin Barre.

Bruce Gilbert leaving Wire. Maybe personal but I've never been interested in anything they've done since.

PaulTMA at 11:23 3 Apr 24

Wonder how much Russell Senior led them down their path of the uneasy listening years, following the gentle poppiness of It

this thread had a good opening post

3) Dave Lombardo quits Slayer — the band carries on, but the music is just not as good (heavier, stiffer) without him

Divine Intervention (with Paul Bostaph) isn't any different/stiffer than the previous albums though, their decline started an album later.

There are tons of examples of the front man leaving and the band turning to shit, the inverse is much rarer: an already established band changes a key member, and the new guy isn't just there doing a job happy to be there (Jason Newsted-style), but actually takes over and leads the band to become better. Bruce Dickinson in Maiden comes to mind here.

re: nels cline - the first wilco album cline played on was sky blue sky, he was brought on to tour a ghost is born. he certainly changed their live show for the better but he's rarely gotten to demonstrate what he's really capable of on record with wilco

i think kotche joining wilco and bennett both joining & being fired from wilco had more dramatic impacts

Fair enough, I'm thinking of records rather than live shows. That really widens the scope of the question.

― Halfway there but for you

yeah, when YouTube became a thing I was struck by how much of their live sound (and studio presumably) depended on Ferry's keyboards; Eno handled the FX and more outlandish sounds.

Doug Gillard. Both times he joined Guided By Voices.

Jannick Top really changed Magma's sound, in fact he's responsible for a certain strain of Zeuhl, specifically the more grindy bass-heavy stuff

― frogbs

he did, but what _really_ changed them IMO was when the "jazz" players left... ok, look, i'm a huge bootleg nerd, and that 1001 degrees centigrades period, very jazz, and all through that time you have this thing that started as "mekanik kommandoh" growing out of it, and what comes out of that, to me, the first time you hear it is at the chateauvallon festival in august 1972, something that is clearly recognizable as the "mekanik destruktiw kommandoh" on the album, with the vocals taking center stage. like if you listen to them playing it less than a month before in avignon, it's still this very funky, jazz kind of thing. and at chateauvillon it's not, it's more martial. and teddy lasry, jeff seffer, faton cahen, they're all about to leave.. ... they play no more of a role, really, than they do on the album version. they're ornamental. and right after that show they players leave, i can't remember why, the nature of that dispute.

and the period after that which you have is very interesting, it's this very skeletal group, kind of what you'd hear on "Wurdah Itah" but without Top involved. to me the big influence you have here is the organist, Jean-Luc Manderlier, who isn't seen as a major member but who I think had a major influence during this time period. Because you also hear him at Chateauvallon, which is where this big change to MDK happens, and it's the keyboards that are really leading the music here, without Top involved. And Rene Garber, he's also, I think, a big name, a close collaborator here, even though you don't necessarily hear him play much. And of course Klaus Blasquiz, but he's a singer, not an instrumentalist.

Top is a big influence - you can hear over this time K.A. evolving into Kohntarkosz, and Top is a big part of that, and you have particularly this _incredible_ transformation of "Sowiloi", a piece which dates back to at least '71, into something even greater than what you can hear on the "Inedits" album - it's really an exceptional piece, and Top is key to that. And then you have kind of the slow collapse of the band, that legendary tape from the end of the year that's held within the inner circles, the weird occult fascist shit that goes on, this might be around the time when Nico got them all addicted to cough syrup, I don't know.

But the thing is when you have the '75 band come together a couple months later, it doesn't sound like a new band, even with the tremendous influence of Didier Lockwood. They sound like a continuation of that same sound, even though it's Bernard Paganotti (who I love so much, BTW, he's my personal favorite of Magma's bass players - listen to his solo on MDK on the Reims '76 release, plus of course Weidorje) on the bass instead of Lockwood.

So if there's any one person I'd name as a key influence, I'd say that I'd say it would probably be, oddly enough, Jean-Luc Manderlier. That he was the one whose presence coincided with this sea change in Magma's sound.

Ernie Isley joining the Isley Brothers made a _huge_ difference for them.

Chris Jasper + Ernie joined at the same time and Jasper's keys/synth and songwriting was a huge game changer for them.

Bernie Worrell joining Funkadelic, though his influence grew over the years.

Steve Shelley joining Sonic Youth, for sure.

Another drummer who added muscle: John Weathers of Gentle Giant.

hah - I knew we had someone big into Magma bootlegs around here. I agree the biggest change was whatever happened after 1001 Degrees but I never knew if that was due to lineup turnover or if it was just Vander starting to realize his creative vision. certainly the seeds of it were there on the first 2 albums, but he's not the only songwriter. I might be wrong here but I thought Jannick Top was the only one past that who actually got a songwriting credit on a Magma album - at least, up until their latest one

off the top of my head, i think rene garber got a cowrite credit on "eliphas levi"? an early version of which was on his unreleased "heart music" album. which by the way is terrible, it's a bad album, and the version of "eliphas levi" on there isn't nearly as good as the _merci_ version either.

No, the aforementioned jazzers wrote stuff on the first two albums.

(xp) Oh sorry, misread you.

ah, you're right. Paganotti also has a credit on "Weidorje" on Udu Wudu.

looking this up informed me to the fact that Jannick Top has a son named Jimmy Top, not to be confused with Jimmy Pop of the Bloodhound Gang

Steve Shelley joining Sonic Youth, for sure.

Yeah, when I revisited their first decade of work recently, I really wondered what they might have become if Richard Edson had stuck around on drums. They could have been like Konk with clanging guitars! But really, Shelley was the drummer they needed (and he seems to be a primary force behind their wave of archival releases).

Guess the inverse of this is when 3/4 members are replaced but the band still sounds the same

I think this is kinda true for The Stranglers where the only original band member left now is the bass player, but their work and performances remain strong & consistent with their sound and overall variety. They found an amazing frontman with Baz. Of course, this is discounting the Paul Robert years (which certainly had its moments as well but also a couple of their weakest albums, can't help but see Paul standing in the shadows of Hugh and Baz).

Cake were like that too, I think the entire lineup minus the singer and trumpet player turned over after their 2nd album. They didn’t exactly sound any different

And of course The Fall, who regularly turned over the lineup but for Mark E Smith and yer gran on bongos, but always sounded the same.

Well they didn't really tbh

Dunno if that’s the band members themselves as much as it is MES finding people willing to do what he wanted, iirc most ex band members say he wasn’t really a fan of their creative liberties

ah, you're right. Paganotti also has a credit on "Weidorje" on Udu Wudu.

― frogbs

oh yeah, i forget that's technically a magma song. it's more of a stealth pilot, like that time mork and mindy appeared on, uh... was it laverne and shirley?

Happy Days