Bandmembers Who Changed Everything

Daniel Fichelscher joining Popol Vuh.

The George Duke era of Zappa is also a standout.

― Instead of create and send out, it pull back and consume (unperson)

see that's the interesting thing, most of the members of the band stayed on for the spring '75 tour with beefheart which you can hear on _bongo fury_, including george duke, tom fowler, napoleon murphy brock, and on that tour they sounded _very_ different than the fall '74 band is. like not to attribute _too_ much to underwood's presence but to me, that tour was where the late '70s sneering grossly misogynist zappa really _started_. there was some of that on the '73-'74 tours, like, "dinah moe-humm" and "camarillo brillo", stuff like that, but those songs were not exactly the core of the '73-'74 band's material, they were more like, hey, let's play "dupree's paradise". when the '75 band played the old material like "echidna's arf" and "florentine pogen" they sounded like an oldies act doing their old hits, or like zappa would do a lot in the late '70s going "ok let's do some Weird Stuff" and to me, that's just a huge fucking waste of george duke's talents. the shows seemed to be more about shit like "carolina hardcore ecstacy", "advance romance", and "the torture never stops". boring blues numbers. captain beefheart was _there_ but he wasn't _there there_, if you know what i mean, whether or not beefheart had his own billing it was zappa's band. don didn't want to be there, zappa was "doing him a favor" and made sure don knew it.

the other change for that tour was terry bozzio replacing chester thompson, and there's definitely a difference, but there had already been a difference between thompson and ralph humphrey - but there was still that sense of continuity. the "bongo fury" band didn't have that sense of continuity, for me.

talking about ian underwood, though, i will say that his _joining_ the mothers really changed them. the mothers at that point already had at least one top-notch musician in don preston, but underwood's background was more suited to, i think, zappa's formal writing. a lot of the stuff on _uncle meat_, for instance, underwood being in the band was a _huge_ part of what made that possible for zappa. and you can't really hear that live because there are basically no live recordings from before fall of '67, but from what there is, yeah, underwood's joining just made them a fundamentally different band, to the extent that zappa, who was, uh, not one to share the spotlight, kind of highlighted underwood's playing in a couple of places on _uncle meat_. and then of course zappa and underwood were the shared backbone of _hot rats_. they weren't quite _equals_ i wouldn't say, but i think underwood had more influence on that than he did on any of zappa's other projects, and i think a lot of what differentiates _hot rats_ from zappa's other projects _is_ down to that influence.

which record was this? because the Strontium 90 stuff seems pretty split between Sting and Howlett - "Visions of the Night" reappeared as a B-side, parts of "3 O'Clock Shot" were reused on Police songs, there's that demo of "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic"...was this a record that just never came out? clearly there wasn't really a finished product there. anyway, Andy Summers is on this stuff, from what I remember of the booklet Andy had some other work so Padovani came along, but then Andy retook his spot

― frogbs

oh ok thanks for the correction lol, my apologies, i should get my facts straight before "correcting" people :)

all that tuned percussion stuff on Uncle Meat was Underwood correct? big part of that record, always wondered if Zappa truly deserved the songwriting credits he gave himself there

Zappa can be accused of a lot of things - except not composing very precise marimba and vibraphone lines.

Eddie Jobson joining Roxy.

I was thinking about this in relation to my posts yesterday, and even though the violin solo in "Out of the Blue" is maybe my favourite moment in the catalog, there's something "merely ornamental" about a lot of his contributions.

his replacement of eno was a major change in the band's approach and sound tho, come on

RINGO

that does make me think of a fun new idea for a thread: new band members who changed nothing. starting with the ramones shuffling their members in the 80s

his replacement of eno was a major change in the band's approach and sound tho, come on

The songs were "going that way" by Stranded anyway, he was by no means the instigator. It's as if Ferry told him, "play my keyboard part, but fancy".

Neil Young firing Danny Whitten from the Harvest sessions is pretty monumental in what followed.

RINGO

Anyone who underrates what he brought to the group should have to listen to their Decca audition tape repeatedly.

The songs were "going that way" by Stranded anyway, he was by no means the instigator. It's as if Ferry told him, "play my keyboard part, but fancy".

― Halfway there but for you,

Ferry has said Jobson's hiring freed Ferry from his keyboard, making him a frontman at last.

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

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

bob stinson leaving (or, rather, being told to leave) the replacements. his, um, replacement was a very different guitarist and a very very different presence, and they were an irrevocably different band after that.

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