Second Banana Syndrome: Members of a group that would have been the main attraction had s/he not had the misfortune of being in a group with a bonafide genius, visionary and / or natural-born star

Inception! One of my favorite piano trio records.

lee ranaldo (kinda)

Colin Moulding
Tobin Sprout

I've heard people argue that the reason George Harrison wrote such great songs when he was in the Beatles was because being around Lennon and McCartney was such a creatively stimulating environment to be in, so I wonder how many of these folks were as good as they were because they were in a group with a "bonafide genius, visionary and / or natural-born star", rather than it being a misfortune (or I guess the reverse could be true as well, some of the first bananas were only bonafide geniuses because they had the superficially less impressive side(wo)men with them)

Well, yeah! Which is why the mention of Colin Moulding in this thread tickles me so much. I honestly don't think XTC would have amounted to much if Moulding had been the lead vocalist and main songwriter from the beginning.

The real XTC answer is, of course, Barry Andrews.

Ron Mael.

xpost I have heard some of the songs that Col did for XTC consideration. They got offered to us if we wanted them. We didn't.

I was mulling the same thing with regard to George Harrison. I do think being in that environment generally must have stimulated his slow-blooming gifts - not just being around John and Paul, but their whole recording-studio crew, the environment of creativity, even if he wasn't always invited to contribute his full capacity to it...surely must have helped ideas and possibilities percolate. And even if he only got a song or two per album, he also had these great musicians backing him up, contributing great parts and for the most part not slacking off.

Don't know if any of that would have been the case in some other Merseybeat band where he was the star and/or chief songwriter. I bet he would have done okay, as many other decent-sized talents who happened to be from Liverpool and playing the right kind of music did. Dunno if he'd have gotten the chance to flex his genius muscles though.

George may seem like an obvious answer here but excepting maybe a third of ATMP, dude's solo album track record is pretty abysmal. Have you listened to Somewhere In England lately? WOOF. To me, George is the very definition of the opposite of second banana syndrome: he shone brightest in the shadows.

Denny Laine

Pretty sure that's a McCartney composition

And yeah jazz may not yield the best examples here. McCoy Tyner was just as great as Coltrane in a band of equals (fwiw my all-time McCoy is 1975's "Trident"). But Miles Davis playing with Charlie Parker is certainly an example of a second banana that could no way ever outplay or display more star quality than the leader.

Chris Bell

Gone Troppo is Harrison's masterpiece imo, not sure what that says about the environment in which he most excelled: it's generally seen as a tossed off contractual observation iirc?

(getting off topic, sorry)

observation = obligation, obviously

George may seem like an obvious answer here but excepting maybe a third of ATMP, dude's solo album track record is pretty abysmal. Have you listened to Somewhere In England lately? WOOF. To me, George is the very definition of the opposite of second banana syndrome: he shone brightest in the shadows.

― Wimmels, Monday, September 5, 2016 5:20 PM (forty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

For me, it's...

Search: All Things Must Pass and Thirty-Three & 1/3, and maybe two tracks each from Living In The Material World, Dark Horse and Extra Texture and 'Blow Away'

Destroy: every fucking thing else.

Richie Furay in Buffalo Springfield.

xp i kind of like his posthumous record

ATMP is more than 1/3 good! I think his solo career in general suffered from "blowing it all on a multi-disc monument, then hitting a creative dry spell" syndrome. As is usually the case with these things, it's hard to imagine ATMP without its sprawl, but if he had made it a densely-packed single album of only classics, he'd still have had some very solid tunes left over. Replace the dreary/dirgey/aimless B-tracks on the next couple records with those songs, and suddenly I think his whole discography looks different.

But yeah - he's definitely far, far less consistent than the other solo Beatles, and I think most of the stuff he was really great at was not the kind of thing that suggests someone who would be the main attraction in a group with no other leading lights. He had a number of great songs, yes, but he was not a great songwriter on demand. His voice has a distinctive quality and fits a lot of his material, but he's not who you think of when looking for a great lead vocalist. He's really most essential as a guitarist (see: George Harrison as a Lead Guitarist -- What do you all think?), and as someone who could contribute a few good songs reliably - kind of a perfect band member in that way. That he also produced some classic songs, much more infrequently, is the cherry on top.

many many xposts but the first Preston School of Industry album is incredibly good, better than Terror Twilight, better than Stairs' Pavement tunes.

The second one, if I remember right, sucks.

I always get suspicious when I hear people say "George Harrison is my favourite Beatle" ... I always get the impression they've never once endured sitting through Dark Horse or Extra Texture.

why would anyone listen to solo beatles albums

bcz they rule

give my regards to broad street

why would anyone listen to solo beatles albums

Alex Lifeson is really the best example of this. How many others trios are there where the guitarist is the least recognizable/least acclaimed?

^^The Police, maybe.

In that Sting is STING and Stewart Copeland is a frequently cited influence by drummers of a certain age.

Huw 'Bunf' Bunford

Jon Venables

Simon Quinlank

xps Good call on The Police, exact same situation.

I'd argue The Meters have the same situation (the guitarist being the least acclaimed member). Certainly it's a rare case where the drummer is clearly the biggest star of the band; other such cases usually have the drummer singing too.

see also: gtr-bass-drums bands where the sole guitarist is the least visible and/or 'important' member

Benjamin Orr
also, I think either John Deacon or Roger Taylor from Queen might qualify

Eno was forced out of Roxy Music because he had essentially become the main attraction of Roxy Music by the release of For Your Pleasure (Ferry took the hump at punters chanting for Eno during gigs and laid down a 'him or me' ultimatum to the band). I don't believe in genius but if I did I've have no hesitation in calling Eno one. And he was clearly the premier visionary - in musical terms at least - in Roxy Music. Ferry being more of a great entertainer/conceptualist/singer. (Ferry may well be a natural born star I will concede though.)

Whoops, sorry about the double Roxy in the first sentence above. Past my bed time.

Don Cherry

Ferry being more of a great entertainer/conceptualist/singer.

... songwriter.

If he'd been the lead guitarist in pretty much any other hard rock band, he'd easily be the star attraction, but in Rush he's outshone by not only Peart, but Geddy too.

Agree that this is a great answer but, man, every solo on side 1 of Moving Pictures is a masterpiece.

xp... yeah, songwriter as well - you're right. Although his songs tended to be fleshed out quite heavily by an uncredited roxy music. I believe his song writing style on the piano involved playing chords of two notes. Still, a better songwriter than most.

But I wonder if it's another case where he was so good because of the group dynamic he was playing within. xp

Brad Delp?

lee ranaldo (kinda)

This one's kinda hard for me because I don't really think of his style as being extremely distinct from Moore's, except in that Ranaldo plays lead on the occasions where SY go for a lead/rhythm dynamic (which is not most of the time). SY's guitar sound is such a two-part thing for me, to the point where Spin gave them double-billing as the 'greatest guitarist of all time'.

xp Definitely Brad Delp.

Benjamin Orr

I was thinking about Orr, but idk - Ocasek wrote pretty much all of the Cars songs (though Orr co-wrote the songs on his one solo album, along with someone called Diane Grey Page), Easton was the virtuoso guitar hero
I guess Orr seems like a more natural frontman than Ocasek in some ways, I like the way that the Cars' straddling of classic rock and weirdo synthy new wave is kind of embodied in the appearance of their two singers. (it's also notable that on some songs Orr would sing in a more straightforward classic rock style, like "Let's Go". and on others he sings in a different style that sounds a lot more like Ocasek, like on "You Can't Hold On Too Long")

imo the best solo Cars record is Elliot Easton's Change No Change, all co-written with Jules Shear, but I don't think Easton would have been a massive star on his own

Delp's voice is so amazing, you could swap him into any random semi-competent band and elevate them to hitmaker status. Did he have any 'star' presence at all in their heyday? Just thinking that if a lead singer can't manage to be seen as the "star" of a band (even one so tied up in a 'one man mastermind' kind of narrative as Boston), they might manage to end up second banana no matter where you put them.

i don't want to diminish eno's contributions to roxy music, but it is true that ferry wrote all the songs on the first two albums, and eno wrote nothing- and also that roxy music got _better_, in terms of songwriting, after eno left, and eno agrees with this. ferry might well have been miffed that eno, a self-admitted non-musician, was getting all the credit for dressing outlandishly and playing little synthesizer whoops while ferry did all the actual work (though this is the sort of accusation that only ever seems to come out as unsourced rumours), but if true, it would at least be understandable.

John Entwistle was a fantastic bassist and you have to wonder if The Who would have given a bit more effort to some of his songs that they could have been a bit more popular. After Tommy's success, there really wasn't room for singles for Entwistle's tunes as things got centered LPs and the building of the next big concept album in 'Lifehouse'. Because of this one of Entwistle's best songs in the Who "Heaven and Hell" never really got a proper and great single recording, which if done right as a single in the late 60s, it perhaps could have been a hit. I don't think Entwistle would have been big as a lead singer as he really wasn't as distinctive as Daltrey or Townsend and his solo records he didn't have the rest of The Who to back him up either. I do think some of Entwistle's tunes on the later Who albums are some of the stronger songs on the records.

Lee Ranaldo kind of got a bit of a similar short straw as 'Heaven and Hell' in Sonic Youth as to me I can't figure why 'Genetic' was not on the Dirty album, let alone perhaps be considered as a single as it is pretty catchy in a pop way that most SY is not. Maybe too pop and the couple called the shots.

i saw that show! calderone concert hall. the internet tells me it was 3/26/75. there was, like, no one there. it was earthshakingly loud, is about all i remember.

― Thus Sang Freud, Monday, September 5, 2016 8:37 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ha, no way! From what I've read, the tour was a mix of empty headlining venues and arena slots opening for Humble Pie. Also, the guitarist in Entwistle's band imitated Townshend's stage moves, upstaging John in his own band.