groups who no longer should be without certain living members?!

Gina Hartman, Fox sisters reunite as 'Everything But the Everything But the Girl Girl'.

like can't they get in trouble for using Frankie's name even though what they mean is "we're formerly of the touring version of Maze that had Frankie Beverly in it but now he's not in our group", like...did nobody consult an entertainment lawyer

They are called "TMF Formerly Of Maze Featuring Frankie Beverly" ... I'm guessing autocorrect messed up the name in that tweet.

lol that makes a lot more sense.

my fav live band to go see is Oingo Boingo sans Danny Elfman. It's all the OG dudes, but for legal and booking reasons, they go by OINGO BOINGO FORMER MEMBERS and all their merch has FORMER MEMBERS as big as OINGO BOINGO. It's SO STUPID. Sickest band tho.

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/ZYkAAOSwLGNjECtt/s-l500.png

:zoviet*france: have never been as good since Robin Storey left, he was responsible for so much of the gritty ethno-ambient textures of their early work. In fact it's well documented that some of their early albums were just Storey solo.

The Bad Seeds have never been as good since Bargeld and Harvey left, obviously Cave sees Ellis as his main creative foil these days but it's not the same.

And obviously Fairport Convention have never been as good since Richard Thompson left.

A few years ago Fairport Convention toured playing "Liege and Lief" in its entirety; none of the current line-up played on the record.

There was a Them album after Van Morrison left.

simon nicol played on l&l

the rosie thru rising for the moon (maybe gottle o geer if that counts) fairport had no original members but when nicol came back they had that covered

Kast Off Kinks is spot-on for the purpose
https://kastoffkinks.co.uk/

Maze Featuring Frankie Beverly was always a weird name to begin with. Also I believe he still tours with some version of Maze, does this mean there is a version out there without him that still has his name awkwardly in the band name?

Maze Featuring Frankie Beverly Featuring Frankie Beverly

should have 4 Mazes in each region, Maze North, Maze South, Maze East, Maze West. a good band is hard to find.

https://gerryspacemakers.com/

I love the gratuitous interrobang in the thread title.

Lol

Wall of Voodoo post-Stan Ridgway seems very weird to me, I'm sure the other members contributed a lot but his vocals seem like such a defining part of the band. Plus apparently their drummer left at the same time.

I'm reminded of the Best Show gag about the reunited Ramones (three drummers and a bassist).

Reminds me that La Düsseldorf literally was a band of three drummers.

I'm pretty sure that ZZ Top is touring with lynyrd Skynyrd this summer. that is wrong on so many levels.

Skynyrd seems to have been slowly taken over by the replacement members, like an ant being consumed by invasive fungus.

Dusty Hill's sub for the forthcoming dates is a guy called Elwood. Works for me!

now that rock & roll is largely a nostalgia business, I'd expect this to become the norm over the next couple of decades, if it isn't the norm already. I mean the good news is that you'll still be able to see the stones in 2040, and they'll only play the hits.

Elwood Francis was Billy Gibbons' guitar tech, and it was Dusty Hill's wish that ZZ continue with Elwood on bass. I feel like that's a whole different situation than Skynyrd.

No, I generally agree. But they certainly water down their brand by touring with zombie Skynyrd.

So many deaths in Skynyrd. Crazy that Johnny has been the lead vocalist since 1987, way longer than Ronnie ever was. I only ever saw them once, back in the 70s, but I imagine they still put on a capable show, zombies and all.

Are there any rock bands with no living members left?

oh Jimi Hendrix Experience I guess

I would say Viola Beach but there seem to have been some early members who'd left before the unfortunate and fatal accident.

Ramones

Original members, yeah, but not replacement members

I think we had a thread on this

Cream are only a Clapton away from this

I think all the members of Buddy Holly and the Crickets are dead, but probably not all who played under the Crickets name.

this thread title makes me think that it's suggesting the government should intervene to force these bands to accept these ex members back

Floyd were not w/o Syd, except Wish You Were Here, which was about and for Syd, not Waters' usual beefs.
RIP Gary Rossington kept Skynyrd going as a tribute band to its former self, with at least one younger Van Zant brother filling in for Ronnie, and other classic line-up members as long as they survived the plane crash and could play, then pulling in previous members, the last of whom might have been Ricky Medlocke, singer-guitarist (also led Blackfoot, who did a cool cover of Spirit's "I Got A Line On You," but otherwise were maybe too much of a Southern Rock start-up for late 70s). Van Zant talked Medlocke into drumming for Skynyrd, because they needed a drummer and VZ liked to talk people into shit("C'mon, get back on the plane"). Have read that current LS, whoever they may consist of, were "kickass" on whatever recent country awards show (not the most recent, but pretty recent). I don't think Top would take them along if not.

Of course if you really want to get into various line-ups all at once, there's this. as I blog-mentioned a few years ago:

Richard Thompson is an ever-riveting, never-showboating
featured team player ("Sloth" gets really dead-to-zombstring
strange: is it about wages of sloth, of a sloth? Both?) on
Fairport Convention's roiling, autumn-leaves-shanking
What We Did On Our Saturday(headlined yet another Cropedy Festival), documenting a sometimes
alarmingly energetic hive of all surviving Conventioneers
who came to play
--- which is most, incl. the entire founding line-up, I think
---their 50th Anniversary Concert
(taking things a little easier on Disc 2, but understandably
so, given the earlier waves).

Tangerine Dream is touring, but probably shouldn't be.

I guess Edgar's wife has blessed it?

what's amusing to me rn is how many metal bands are doing the "one original and 4 hired guns" thing, where the original is the vocalist.

Exhorder right now have Kyle on vocals, and everybody else in the band are relative newbies (nobody going back further than 2017). Atheist is the same, with Kelly Schaefer on vox, the band mostly full of people hired in the last year or two. Suicidal Tendencies has been doing that for years, with Mike Muir basically getting older and his band staying the same age. Possessed are the same, with just Jeff Becerra and an overhauled band, though they've all been together as a unit a wee bit longer (closer to a decade).

In all cases listed above, the only original/classic member is the frontman - sometimes, not even someone who had anything to do with the songwriting. And in almost all cases, it goes off without controversy, because I feel like to be blessed, the following has to be true:

The original member has to be distinctive. If they're the vocalist, that helps - particularly if they're well known in the scene like the examples I gave above.

If they're a guitarist, they need to be one of the chief songwriters from their classic period, known for their riffs or solos.

If they're the bass player, unless they're a Steve DiGiorgio, LOL, it will not work sorry. Nobody will show up to see the original bass player and a buncha other people.

If they're the drummer, it works if they're a legendary drummer like Pete Sandoval and not someone who is technically competent but faceless.

ALSO, releasing an album with said lineup helps - especially if the album sounds like the band and people liked it. That helped legitimize the current Possessed lineup.

nothing will ever beat the fake Frankie Goes to Hollywood that toured though once

they came to my town!!!!

LOL - did you go?

A friend of mine once saw Herman's Hermits, without Herman.

Fake FGTH came to my town, too. Without any info on who was actually in the band, the tip-off that they were frauds was the t-shirts, which all said, “FRANKIE SAYS.” It was Frankie SAY, dammit! (And I still have my shirt from when I saw the realsville FGTH in 1984.)

I'd probably pay to see From the Jam if they ever toured the U.S.

Me too. I’d even go see Ex-TC.

A friend of mine once saw Herman's Hermits, without Herman.

That's still a thing, IIRC. One of the guys from the old band owns some rights to the name, and sticks to touring the UK under the name. Peter Noone plays every weekend in the States as 'Peter Noone's Herman's Hermits' or something like that.

yeah, my mom saw that act a few decades ago and got Peter's autograph and she was so excited that dad for a moment worried he was about to get dumped.

lmao so apparently Herman's Hermits now is the original drummer, some singer who joined them in the 80s, and two relatively recent hired guns. who the fuck would wanna see that

NARRATOR: Apparently, lots of people.

Currently, Iron Butterfly's earliest member first joined the group in 1995.