Vocalists who joined a band with a robust discography...and only lasted one album

Lately I've been thinking about flash in the plan replacement vocalists who never had a chance, replacing a more popular lead vocalist and just never clicking, and essentially being canned after just that one album. Or the band abruptly folded because the album with them was such a flop.

This excludes your Blayze Bayleys, Ripper Owens, your singers who had multiple attempts to prove their worth. One and dones only. No vocalists who only performed live. Have to have recorded something with the band.

Some of my favs:

Jean-Michel Byron - Toto

Lasted FOUR SONGS on a greatest hits album. The band didn't much like him from the beginning, foisted on them by the label. He was more R&B centered, and the first song with him sounds like a BBD song filtered through Toto. He was fired the same year he was hired after being demoted to backing vocalist on the tour.

Gary Cherone obv a more famous example

Ray Wilson joined Genesis after Collins left, they released their least remarkable album in history, and they abruptly folded.

Others?

Black Sabbath - Born Again (Ian Gillian)

that guy who did vocals on Tangerine Dream's "Cyclone"

John Corabi - Motley Crue

Sabbath has several of these obviously but that's probably the only half-decent one

xps

J.D. Fortune counts, right?

The Byrds - Sweetheart of the Rodeo (Gram Parsons)

didn't even make it through the whole record!

Gordon Haskell on King Crimson's Lizard.

This assumes KC's discography was 'robust' enough by that point (I'd say it was).

I feel like this is really common with a certain generation of hard rock/metal bands

Yeah. See also: Deep Purple's Slaves and Masters.

Queen and Paul Rodgers only did one studio album.

haha was just about to post Slaves and Masters

Noel Burke - Echo and the Bunnymen

Chris Shinn joined Live two decades and some eight albums into the band’s history, after original singer Ed Kowalczyk left following a rift with the other band members. Live released only a single album with Shinn, and it got mixed reviews. He was then out of the band. (Kowalczyk subsequently came back).

Also Colleen Browne stepping in for the last Pale Saints album, after which the band imploded.

Gorgoroth - their last (final?) album had some Serbian dude on vocals.

Would the (Talking-less) Heads count here? I guess with Johnette Napolitano (only sang one song on the album but later chosen as the permanent vocalist for live performance), if we're focusing on a single vocalist?

Black Sabbath - Born Again (Ian Gillian)
― Οὖτις, Friday, January 17, 2020 5:35 PM

Sabbath has several of these obviously but that's probably the only half-decent one
xps
― Οὖτις, Friday, January 17, 2020 5:37 PM

Isn't this quite well loved? Gillan said it was the best time of his life.

David Reece, the guy who sang on Accept's Eat the Heat in 1989. The band split up a few months later, and when they came back, their original vocalist Udo Dirkschneider was back, too.

from: http://www.stevelukather.com/music/discography/1990/past-to-present-1977-1990.aspx

Lukather in 2004 about Byron: "So we do all this rehearsal and we go on tour, the first fucking gig and we see the guy putting on his fucking clothes. A little sheriff's badge on, he puts one golf glove on. We're thinking, man that's fucking funny, that's great, man that's a great joke. Hey says, “What are you talking about?” I go, “You're not going to go out there with a fucking glove, that's Michael Jackson's shit.” He said, “No it's not, it's my stuff.” I'm going, you've got to be fucking kidding me. We get on stage and we start the first tune, Love has the power and he starts dancing around like fucking Richard Simmons on acid. Some fucking fruity shit going on man. And the crowd is like looking at me and going, something's up. They're looking at him and flipping him the bird telling him to get off the stage. And I'm looking at Jeff Porcaro and he's looking at me going, what the fuck is that? I mean is was unbelievable…He thought he'd come to save the day. Like Christ had come down and blessed us. We get off the gig and we're like, what the fuck is that? We're nuts, we're psycho. You can't do that. He goes, “I'm going to make you all very famous.” He thought he was the shit, he was hysterical. And I was single, newly single at the time after my first divorce and I was out there for the chicks and every time I got with a chick, he'd try to get with her."

Byron came over and he was so completely different -- the personalities didn’t work at all, especially between me and him. This is a guy who had never heard of Hendrix or Led Zeppelin, and he’s reading ‘The George Michael Story.’ On top of everything he was just weird for the sake of being weird

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDKO8j8AEYo

holy shit! I've never heard that. you hear an audience member say "asshole!" right after he calls someone racist.

"that's not allowed on this stage"

Graham Bonnet - Rainbow, "Down To Earth"
Graham Bonnet - Michael Schenker Group, "Assault Attack" (only their 3rd album I guess)

A pattern emerges.

Trevor Horn - Yes, "Drama". Return to form but the subsequent tour was a disaster.

been a very long time since i have had a reason to add this answer to a thread : Age of Chance.

Yes addendum: Benoit David on 2011's "Fly From Here" and Jon Davison on 2014's "Heaven And Earth" both only lasted one album too, guess Jon Anderson's shoes are a bigger fit than they look.

I just checked INXS & Journey but they do not qualify as their replacement singers have both done 2 albums with the bands.j

Sort of related, but after their first album, the James Gang felt they needed to ease up some on Joe Walsh, who was singing, playing guitar and keyboards (and-iirc-extra percussion) live. So they hired a lead singer with whom they recorded a song slated for a movie the band would appear miming it in. However, when the group arrived on set to film their part, the filmmakers discovered the band had already fired the singer and Walsh ended up lip-syncing the other guy's vocal in the film.

Black Flag - Jealous Again (Ron Reyes)

almost works except that I guess Reyes showed up on that 2013 reunion album

re: INXS, J.D. did one full album and one song on an album of covers; does that really count as doing two albums as "the lead singer"?

ah yes, the robust Black Flag discography (one 5-minute 7") prior to the Jealous Again EP...

(xp)

haha yeah well

heh yeah I was gonna mention Chavo but it seemed like a stretch

That Toto story is awesome!!

That seriously sounds like the greatest possible Toto show ever.

JD Fortune did one album, toured, was fired at an airport by being told the tour wasn't continuing, was rehired next time they toured, recorded one song, was fired again by later reading on INXS.com that they were touring. (So you can put him on either side of the line, really. Schrodinger's singer.)

INXS had already churned through like five vocalists between Hutchence and Fortune though, at least three of which they were expecting to become permanent. The fact that they ended up hiring someone who was literally homeless, through a massive publicity event, suggests that either the members of the band are impossible to work with or that C. Murphy & A. Farriss genuinely thought they could get a rock star with their own career to be a compliant puppet, and kept being confused when it didn't happen (more than a decade since Farriss had even written a good song with Hutch)

I'm just reading the Keith Morris memoir My Damage in which he says that both Ron Reyes and Dez Cadena were friends of his from early days who were around at Black Flag gigs all the way through his time in the band. I think Ron Reyes was singing for about a year and tehn Dez for about 6 months. All 3 of the vocalists recorded more material tahn was released at the time and the results of the recording sessions were released on the Everything Went Black double lp. I think They get at least a side of vinyl each. Ids the 4th side various radio commercials for their showes etc? been a long time since i had the vinyl.

NOt really sure offhand what the circumstances for Ron Reyes to be posthumously or post-exit-uoulsy dubbed chavo pederast but think I heard teh story somewhere. & far from sure he deserved that connotation .

Somewhat interesting podcast interview with Johnny Edwards who was just working musician trying to get something going, when all of a sudden he's drafted to be the replacement for Lou Gramm in Foreigner.
https://thehustle.podbean.com/e/episode-239-johnny-edwards-of-foreignermontroseking-kobra/

trying to figure out why this is/was such a common thing for hard rock/early metal sorta bands and not so much for others. Possibly related to the frontmen in such bands not always being critical to the writing process maybe...? Like it's hard to imagine indie rock or punk bands doing this, where the lead person is so often also the lead songwriter. Country didn't really have as much of a focus on bands per se, and rap is obviously a whole different category.

and R&B acts tended to be split between groups that had multiple singers or solo artists, so the phenomenon's less likely there as well.

or less common anyway

Hard rock had guitarists who were as well known as the singers. Sometimes even the drummers were famous. I think that plays into the bands carrying on with a disposable hired hand after the original singer goes solo

re INXS

I have never found anything funnier than Tim Farriss saying due to his finger injury the band could not possibly go on whereas Michael Hutchence ACTUALLY DIES and it's another day another dollar.

More grist for the mill: John Sloman on Uriah Heep's Conquest.

Gary Cherone on… Van Halen III.

nm, I need to get my mid-term memory checked.

Now we know what it takes to be too uncool for Toto.

I have never found anything funnier than Tim Farriss saying due to his finger injury the band could not possibly go on whereas Michael Hutchence ACTUALLY DIES and it's another day another dollar.

:D

Foreigner replaced Lou Gramm in 1991 with some rando named "Jonny Edwards". Gramm was back by the next album (though it was his last with Foreigner, and the band's penultimate album)

Jonny did record an album to be clear!

Entertainment Weekly's review of it:

"Should Spinal Tap re-form and need new material, they need simply raid Unusual Heat, the first Foreigner album since the departure of singer Lou Gramm. New front man Johnny Edwards grunts and moans his way through a genuinely awful collection of sexist and humorless crotch-rock"

I had no idea this was true of Bad Brains. apparently they had a vocalist named Israel Joseph I for one album, and HR was back within two years because it was so awful.

He wasn't that bad. He sounded enough like HR, if you did whatever the listening equivalent of squinting was:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5WkZ_M1PPQ

yeah, he's not abysmal there. just kinda generic/bland.

i was going to posit that it was the music itself, which is well-played, but further and further away from classic Brains, but you could level that charge against the previous album too, no?

in any case...I learned something today.

Chuck Mosley had replaced HR at one point. They played the Marquee when it was on Charing Cross Road.
THat line up also had the drummer from the Cro-Mags replacing HR's brother Earl.
Sad to see the state that HR had gotten into at one point, pretty non-responsive onstage.
Can't remember exactly why he was replaced by Mosley since that wasa different point than Israel Joseph.
Saw that Bad Brains documentary some time last year and can't remember chronology.
I saw teh HR band in around 1989 and they were quite good. I think he'd been out of the Bad Brains and returned by the time of Quickness too hadn't he?

went to a Bad Brains show in the early 90s, not realizing it wouldn't have HR, and it felt very WTF. I pretty much forgot about that until reading the above posts.

Wikipedia has a detailed account of Bad Brains lineup chaos (there's been a lot of it):

Despite the success of I Against I, H.R. quit the band again, taking his brother Earl with him after spending most of 1987 touring. 1988 dates for the I Against I tour were done with Taj Singleton on vocals and Mackie Jayson on drums. In 1988, Bad Brains signed with Caroline Records, who released their fourth album Quickness the following year. Since vocalist H.R. and his brother, drummer Earl Hudson were unavailable for the recording sessions, Quickness was originally recorded with Taj Singleton on vocals and Mackie Jayson on drums but before Quickness was ready for mastering, H.R. returned, rewrote the lyrics and overdubbed the vocals for Quickness replacing Taj Singleton's recorded lyrics and vocals.

...

H.R. experienced financial problems after an unsuccessful European tour with the group Human Rights and Bad Brains touring replacement singer Taj Singleton did not fit well with the band, so H.R. and Earl both returned for the Quickness tour. After the Quickness tour, H.R. and Earl left once again and H.R. was replaced by former Faith No More vocalist Chuck Mosley. Soon afterwards, Bad Brains broke up yet again.

...

As bands influenced by Bad Brains (such as Living Colour and Fishbone) enjoyed commercial success, Dr. Know was approached by Mundane Records in 1992, offering the band a major-label record deal. The former Cro-Mags drummer Mackie Jayson (who had played as a session musician on Quickness), and vocalist Israel Joseph I joined at this time. Rise was released in 1993. The Rise tour began in 1993 with Mackie Jayson on drums and finished in 1994 with drummer Chuck Treece.

...

With the original band back together for the first time in five years, Bad Brains signed to the Maverick Records label for the 1995 release God of Love.[5] In support of the album, Bad Brains opened for the Beastie Boys on the Ill Communication tour, and headlined a U.S. tour with then-unknown Deftones.[10][11] However, the reunion did not last for long, because of H.R.'s erratic behavior while performing with the band, such as punching their manager in the face, beating a skinhead and a security guard in separate incidents throughout the tour. These incidents prompted the Bad Brains to break up once again.

Paul Shortino of Rough Cutt recorded one album for Quiet Riot in 1988, before Kevin Dubrow rejoined the band by the next one, which came out in 1993. reception to Shortino was actually pretty good, critically-speaking, but sales were shiiiit and it barely made a dent on radio.

The band had fired DuBrow mainly because of comments he was making to the metal press about Quiet Riot's supposed superiority over other bands, which strained friendships that members of Quiet Riot had with those bands.[2]

seems like this has to be the case for at least one of the big 60s vocal groups that lasted into the 70s or 80s and whose latter-day recordings are barely known or heard...

meanwhile: is Live really the only big 90s rock band in this boat? wow. i could have sworn Everclear did this, but no, they were the inverse, a "eventually it was just the lead singer plus hired guns" scenario.

oooh Blind Melon did one of these in 2008 but i guess their discography is not exactly robust. maybe the real reason why 90s bands don't fit the bill... most only ever put out an album every 2 or 3 years.

Does Stone Temple Pilots changing their name to Talk Show and bringing in a different singer for one album in 1997 count? If not, the five-song EP they made with Chester Bennington must.

"Hello Hello" was a good song

Surprised to see no mention of Mott the Hoople. After Ian Hunter left, they changed their name to Mott and had Nigel Benjamin front the band. As imagined though, this lineup only released two poorly received albums.

The Byrds didn't hire Gram Parsons as a lead vocalist, and I'd say he was fortunate to get three lead vocals (and two writing credits) on Sweetheart of the Rodeo; but if he counts, I'd also include these Fleetwood Mac alumni:

- Dave Walker on Penguin
- Rick Vito on Behind the Mask
- Bekka Bramlett on Time
- Dave Mason on Time

Parsons was supposedly hired as a keyboardist, but quickly fell into the guitarist/singer/songwriter roll of the recently departed David Crosby, and from there was able redirect the band in the direction that the stuck with past his departure and into the '70s.

Back on Sweetheart, he cut more leads that weren't released until the '90s, and one of the 3 or 4 completed outtakes was an original he rerecord with the Burritos.

Speaking of the Burritos, Rick Roberts joined up for a studio album and a live set before their first breakup.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4f/Squeeze_The_Velvet_Underground.jpg

I know Doug Yule sang on a few songs on Loaded and even "Candy Says" on the album before that but that seems to be in the spirit of this thread.

^^Also featured Willie Alexander.

Sure? I thought it was just Doug, with Ian Paice on drums..

You are correct! IIRC, the old AMG review erroneously cited Alexander as the singer on the album.

saw a dude called Dan Nelson singing for Anthrax back in 2008/9.... he was okay! They re-recorded his vocals on the only LP he had partly contributed to when Joey B came back...painful for him.

He got arrested a year or two ago lol. Real hothead apparently

CRIME - The ultimate sin. Your iso-cube is waiting when he brings you in.

won't fuck around no more!

10,000 Maniacs released a 2006 live album (later reissued in a “condensed version” under a different title) with a singer named Oskar Saville, who now offers a psychic-based service called intuitive life coaching.

(whoops, scratch that last bit – in classic Wikipedia fashion, they seem to be conflating two ppl with the same name.)

my fav was when they suggested Sugar Ray vocalist Mark McGrath was in a production of Company (when it was just someone else named Mark McGrath)

I went to that first bad brains show opening for the beasties and everyone was stoked “they are back original line up wow!” Mca produced their album and we were ready and then ONE song in HR bashes a skinheads face in with a mic stand and it was like uh oh.

Does Stone Temple Pilots changing their name to Talk Show and bringing in a different singer for one album in 1997 count? If not, the five-song EP they made with Chester Bennington must.

I was going to say that they did this a possible third time, but it turns out they've released two(!) albums now with the post-Weiland and post-Bennington lead singer, Jeff Gutt.

why tf didn't he just make it easy and adopt the stage name Jett Gutt

Jett Guff

Jett (Nott Scott) Gutt

Congratulations to Jon Davison of Yes, no longer fitting this thread since his second album as lead singer is coming out in October.

Jufe Gytt

Ross Hamilton who joined Wolfstone for their (to date) last album Terra Firma and then left again almost as quickly.

(whoops, scratch that last bit – in classic Wikipedia fashion, they seem to be conflating two ppl with the same name.)

I was wrong about this! I checked the links again, and it is the same person (her IG/FB pages confirm it). Dunno what threw me off before.

Whoa, plot twist… the 10,000 Maniacs’ latest lead singer is Leigh Nash, of Sixpence None the Richer fame.