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

Black Sabbath/Ozzy Osbourne. Their last two albums with him were significantly less successful than their peaks with him, only going gold, and when Ronnie James Dio took over as frontman, Heaven and Hell went platinum in the US.

The Human League / Heaven 17

Buffalo Springfield.

Neil Young and Stephen Stills. Richie Furay and Jim Messina too, actually.

Oh wait, never mind on Buffalo Springfield. Read the thread title wrong.

Jason Isbell and Drive-By Truckers maybe?

kind of cheating but wayne hussey / sisters of mercy

Kurt Vile and The War on Drugs?

Vince Clarke (again) and Alison Moyet with Yaz(oo)

robbie williams / take that

crosby & the byrds? or were byrds more popular w/ crosby

Tanya Donelly / Throwing Muses

I don't think Take That were more popular post-Robbie than when he was still in?

the byrds did not become more successful than they had been before crosby left.

yeah, take that split up not long after williams left.

In fact, didn't they break up pretty soon after he left?

Xpost

they got back together in 2006 and have been at least as big if not bigger than before - comeback album sold nearly 3m in the UK alone, iirc, and they enjoyed a level of critical success they didn't have before

i am by no means an authority on take that studies but the tax-dodging tory cunts have been inescapable in the uk since the comeback

Yeah, but Everything Changes alone sold over 3 million, and they've hardly had any hit songs (at least outside the UK), compared to the steady stream of hits in the early '90s.

Also, their reunion and second success was hardly a "result" of Robbie leaving them 10 years earlier, it's a totally different phenomenon.

Tuomas, thread-lawyer

Fleet Foxes and Father John Misty

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

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?

can't believe we're this deep in with no mention of van halen

Van Halen's apex was 1984, no? so they wouldn't qualify

No way, Van Hagar sold waaaaaaay more records.

. Also the rare instance, along with Genesis, of both the original singer and the replacement singer having successful solo careers of their own. Though I don't know if Hagar counts, because he was successful pre-VH.

Well, actually it's complicated, re: VH.

http://www.guitarplayer.com/news/1024/roths-van-halen-sales-trounce-sammy-hagars-hold-on-there-dave/52326

solo Roth was big, but did he ever equal 1984 sales?

Yeah I don't buy that re: Van Hagar. The whole thing about Roth taking seven records to sell what Hagar did in four... well, yeah. Hagar joined after VH's best-selling album ever. the thing about the Hagar albums hitting #1 is useless imo, only sales matter.

I thiiiiiiink Van Hagar made more $$$, if I recall Hagar's memoir "Red" correctly, but yeah, established brand.

There were a lot of factors at work re: Van Halen vs Van Hagar. Van Hagar were building on Van Halen's established rep, and the industry around them was changing, too - they'd started out a bar band, served a couple of years as an opening act, and only in their last few years (say, 1981-84) headlined. Meanwhile, rock shows were themselves getting bigger, so VH circa '85 was able to play stadiums rather than arenas, which wasn't an option for Roth-era VH until close to the end of their run.

On the flip side, think how much Hagar lost paying speeding tickets.

I guess Fairport Convention shedding members in 69 to begat solo Sandy Denny and Steeleye Span and a little later solo Richard Thompson doesn't count? Not sure how popular Fairport Convention remained at the time. Maybe it does though, could be when they were closest to being a popular band. Certainly meant a lot of great music came out. The Albion Band or whatever variation thereon was also great.

The Commodores only Grammy winning single "Nightshift" was released after the departure of Lionel Richie.

hard to argue that they were more successful overall after he left, considering that was their last hit and lionel became one of the biggest stars of the 80s

I know but I was listening to that song this morning and was like wow that was the only Grammy they won (& not for "Easy" nor "3x a Lady" nor "Lady" nor lol "Brick House" etc.)

it's a good song

Did we mention Massive Attack and Tricky?

A rare situation where two members of a band leave and both the original band, now a solo act, and the new one do better:

Black Dog / Plaid

Okkervil River and Shearwater are an interesting case. Shearwater was originally an Okkervil River side project for songs which didn't fit on their albums, and for which writing credits were more or less split between Will Sheff and Jonathan Meiburg. I think Meiburg became dissatisfied with this arrangement so he left OR and after that SW became more or less a Meiburg solo project. Since then Shearwater have become much more successful than they were before the split, although it's a moot point whether OR have also become more successful.