Bandmembers Who Changed Everything

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

David Conway leaving My Bloody Valentine

Steve Perry joins Journey and they become the band they wanted to be

Albert Bouchard quits Blue Öyster Cult and they cease being a worthwhile band within an album or two

Gillian Gilbert joining Joy Division/New Order

James McNew joins Yo La Tengo.

It's difficult for me to separate in my mind what seems like a foregone conclusion, when someone joins or leaves and a band heads toward some now inevitable evolution. But two which come to mind:

Alan Myers joining Devo in 1976
Jason Loewenstein joining Sebadoh in 1989

Jah Wobble and Keith Levene leaving PiL.

Ozzy leaving Sabbath

Alan Myers joining DEVO is a good one I think. I also think that D.H. Peligro joining the Dead Kennedys was a pretty important change for them.

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

Larry Graham leaving Sly and the Family Stone... I'm not sure it made _quite_ as much of a difference as people sometimes say, but it certainly was _very_ significant.

I also think Hugh Hopper replacing Kevin Ayers in the Soft Machine made a really big difference. Karl Jenkins joining the Soft Machine too, but in a less positive sense.

Lindsay Cooper replacing Geoff Leigh in Henry Cow. I think that changed them a huge amount.

With jazz it's hard because it seems like nearly every bandmember change is an important 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