Tuesday, October 18, 2005

The revolving door

It seems that very few bands keep the same line-up for a long period time. Motley Crue have done well to have only had six members since the release of the first album. We always used to joke about the Exploited changing band members like most people change underwear and they probably have had more band members that any other punk band, but what about metal bands? What metal/hard rock band has had the most members? Black Sabbath comes to mind due to the changes made after it was just Tony Iommi and a backing band because they went through a number of guys just between 86-90. Whitesnake might be up there as well. They went through a number of guys before 1987 and a lot of different people have played on tours over say the last ten years. However, my guess would be the band who has had the most members is LA Guns. In an interview with Metal Sludge last year, Phil Lewis was asked to name everyone who had been in the band and it was like 26 or 27 guys. Even though they have not done a lot of studio albums, LA Guns have toured a lot over the last 17 years so I guess that accounts for all of the members. However, unlike Black Sabbath, Whitesnake or even the Exploited, there hasn't even been one member who has been in every version of LA Guns. Traci Guns was in every version from the beginning until like two years ago. He hasn't been on the last two tours or the last album because he has been doing BOD, Phil Lewis and Steven Riley are in the current version and those guys have played on fewer Guns albums than Traci. Well, I would say that 27 members is a lot of guys for a band that has only produced two good albums (the first two) although I have heard the new album is supposed to be good. Let me know if you can think of a metal/hard rock that has had more members. I am trying to think more of bands than just solo artists although Whitesnake are really just a solo band. However, if I counted solo acts then Alice Cooper is probably up there as well with the number of guys who have played with him and the Nuge and Ozzy probably have high numbers as well.

2 Comments:

Blogger Phantasmak said...

Iced Earth maybe... I know they've been around for "only" 15 years, but aside from John Schaffer I don't remember anyone other than Matt Barlow that stayed in the band for more than 2 years. Schaffer is the only one who stayed in all versions of the band.

Whitesnake should at last be renamed to "David Coverdale" as even though there have been great musicians passing there, he dismissed them/they quit the band every so often.

4:09 AM  
Blogger Metal Mark said...

I was looking at BNR's metal pages and they listed Krokus as having 23 members between 1976 and 2004. Fernando Von Arb was the only one who was in every line-up during that time. Now Marc Storace has a version of Krokus out on tour and Fernando is not in it. So like LA guns, they don't even have one guy who has been in every version.

9:36 AM  

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