Bands where a member leaves, and BOTH that member and the band become more successful as a result

enh, like i said, i'm not enough of a takethatologist to support the suggestion - i probably could make a somewhat tortured narrative to say there is a cause/effect relationship but tbh i don't care enough to type it out xxp

xpost Did Fleet Foxes get bigger since 2012?

Bobby Brown / New Edition, for a few years at least

Fleet Foxes and Father John Misty

no

FF haven't released anything since he left

Blondie, when original bass player Fred Smith quit to join Television

Jonathan Donahue/Flaming Lips

both kevin ayers and daevid allen did pretty well for themselves after leaving soft machine, and soft machine stayed on the up-and-up. mind you the softs were downhill after robert wyatt left, but that was years later...

Both Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock sold more records after they parted ways in '68, though not immediately

jazz seems like a p big grey area for this

Yeah, I guess especially in that period when jazzers were alternating between an esoteric approach and a more commercial one.

Maybe slightly more relevant would be cases where singers got famous from big bands in the '40s and the band got bigger too, which I'm sure has happened, but don't know if it's worth opening that box.

I was gonna say, sidepeople seems like cheating. Hell, Miles alone -- Coltrane, Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams, Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Billy Cobham, John McLaughlin...but in a lot of instances, the sidepeople were also recording (or had already recorded) as leaders while with Miles.

Wayne hussey / dead or alive

arguably Suede/Butler who both had a big(ger) success right after the split : Suede with "Coming Up" and Butler with "Yes".
that didn't last a long time, though.
― AlXTC from Paris, Tuesday, January 10, 2017 4:46 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Suede were successful right up to A New Morning, which was their first poor seller. Butler's solo career was a non-starter, and Suede are making some of their best music now.

Stephen tin tin Duffy / Duran Duran

The Housemartins -> The Beautiful South / Fatboy Slim.

Tin Tin Duffy/Duran Duran

I was thinking of that one earlier as I headed out. Think it took a while before Stephen Duffy became popular or was that just became credible. Was Tin Tin a teenybop popstar who became more underground with the Lilac Time?

He was massive in smash hits for a whole month in 198~

Fleetwood Mac / Bob Welch (his leaving the band led to Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joining).

Did Welch become more successful after leaving the Mac, though?

he had a successful jelly line iirc

I'd say yeah. Mac with Welch had some medium selling albums and a bunch of non-charting singles; French Kiss went #12 on the Billboard chart and spawned 3 hit singles.

Jam & Lewis/The Time

When did they quit The Time? They play on "Pandemonium", the band's most popular album, so it doesn't seem like they'd fit this thread's premise.

I mean, Jam & Lewis are certainly now better known outside The Time, but The Time didn't become more popular without them.

Klaus schulze / tangerine dream ?

Jay Farrar / Uncle Tupelo (which became Wilco after he left)

Michael Rother / kraftwerk

When did they quit The Time? They play on "Pandemonium", the band's most popular album, so it doesn't seem like they'd fit this thread's premise.

they quit prior to Purple Rain & Ice Cream Castle. Ice Cream Castle has the band's biggest hits on it.

Jonathan Donahue (Mercury Rev) / Flaming Lips

Jerry Butler / The Impressions

Ben E. King / Drifters

^ That's the one I was trying to think of, but I got sidetracked thinking of Clyde McPhatter, who had pop hits post-Drifters while The Drifters were having pop hits as well (1960s) but it's not the same because the '60s Drifters were a completely different group from the '50s Drifters

Syd Barrett + Pink Floyd

Yeah, Syd's astonishing run of platinum solo albums was something no one could have predicted.

Chevy Chase leaving the band he had with Fagen/Becker

Strawbs / Sandy Denny, sort of

Madonna / The Breakfast Club

rod stewart / ron wood / jeff beck group (maybe)

Then you've got Ry Cooder quitting Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band after their first record. Sort of thing seems to happen a lot in certain scenes... Van Dyke Parks was a member of the Mothers of Invention around the same time...

Somehow I'd gotten this far in life without ever knowing either of these things. Wow.

Humble Pie/Peter Frampton?
Frampton went solo and had success with Show Me the Way, Comes Alive etc but were Humble Pie passing their peak or was that their greatest success point?
I like the Frampton era stuff anyway and think Clempson was pretty good elsewhere too.

Buffalo Springfield.
Neil Young and Stephen Stills. Richie Furay and Jim Messina too, actually.
― kornrulez6969, Tuesday, January 10, 2017 12:10 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh wait, never mind on Buffalo Springfield. Read the thread title wrong.
- kornrulez6969, Tuesday, January 10, 2017 12:10 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You could make a case for Poco and Jim Messina though

Somehow I'd gotten this far in life without ever knowing either of these things. Wow.

― Ⓓⓡ. (Johnny Fever)

vdp's involvement in the mothers is not very well-known - he's not on any of their recordings - but cooder plays guitar on the first magic band album _safe as milk_ and that record is fabulous.

D.J. Bonebrake was apparently in the Germs in 1978, before X. Depends how you define "successful."

How about Skip Spence starting a bunch of bands then leaving them to, well, make it? Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape and The Doobie Brothers..

Didn't Moby Grape fall off the map after their first three (Spence) albums, though? I know they made more albums.

I don't think this one really fits, but how about Michael Steele leaving The Runaways in 1976 before they recorded their first album, then joining the Bangles 8 years later.

(Random Wikipedia fact: Michael Steele briefly played bass for Snakefinger.)

Hard to know what would've become of Genesis had Gabriel not left but I highly doubt it could have resulted in something like Invisible Touch. Phil was definitely more of a hitmaker than Peter was, and I don't think Peter could've done the things he wanted to within the band.

In an alternative universe, "In Your Eyes" would have probably sounded almost same and just been called a Genesis song. And stuff like "In Too Deep" would have been saved for solo Phil Collins because it sounds way more like his solo stuff than full band.

maybe not but Kim Deal/Pixies of the 90s? she left and within 2 years the Breeders had a bigger hit than the Pixies ever did.

might be hard to make the case for now financially but imo creatively the Breeders are still way more successful whereas Pixies have kind of lost their magic and turned into a generic bar band.

Eh? That is almost completely wrong afaik. Kim didn't leave, the band broke up, the same year as the Breeders had their big hit. I suppose the same year is within 2 years, so not quite completely wrong.

But how do you figure Kim "leaving" the Pixies made them more successful when the Pixies were then defunct for 10 years?