Ask Lemmy

Tangential, but I this made me realize I honestly don't know the member names of most of the bands I listen to. I kinda know their faces if they have videos.

Blood Sweat & Tears had like 200 members, my dad knew one of the founding members and went to one of their concerts a couple years back. Got to talk to them after the show and not one of them had even heard of the guy. Feels like the ultimate example of this

Newsboys, a major Christian rock band founded in 1985. All original members have been replaced.

Glenn Miller Orchestra was formed a while after Glenn Miller (of "Glenn Miller and his orchestra"-fame) disappeared in 1942. The new band was more or less a continuation of the old band, with some overlap in members. They're still active today.

IIRC, the intention was for Deep Purple to continuously have members come and go, effectively making them a Band of Thesseus. However, there was one lineup that was a lot more successful and famous, so changing the lineup would be detrimental to success.

Not up to date personally, but I feel like at one point Guns n' Roses was just Axl and all different musicians

The Ink Spots are an interesting case. They're a vocal group from the 30s. Not only did that group Theseus itself and then dissolve by the 50s, but afterward there were legal disputes. A bunch of the past members claimed rights to the name. Courts ultimately said 'nobody owns the name, you can all use it'. So anybody with any connection was going around performing as The Ink Spots, and those groups were also changing members. So over the decades there were probably multiple fully Theseus'd versions of the group going at the same time.

Andrew Hickey has a good podcast episode on it that you can listen to/read. https://500songs.com/podcast/the-ink-spots-thats-when-your-heartaches-begin/

Napalm Death though the current line-up has been the same since their third album with sad exemption of Jesse Pintado who passed away in 2006.

Foreigner

ELO is an interesting case. Pinning down the original members is already a bit tricky, because the first album was really just a side project of The Move, before Roy Wood left to start Wizzard in the middle of doing their second album. If we're generous and say their third album was really their first as a seperate band, we end up with a group that's fairly static throughout the 70s and that most fans would call the classic lineup. the only two truly original members, though, were Jeff Lynne and Bev Bevan, and everyone else in the and was technically considered an employee, which you can imagine led to all sorts of legal chaos

in the late 80s Jeff decided to shutter the band. Bev Bevan wanted to continue but Jeff considered himself synonymous with ELO being their writer, so eventually the two of them agreed to let Bev tour under the name ELO Part II with a lot of the members of the classic lineup. In the early 2000s, Jeff wanted in again but the "employees" thing and some legal trouble between him and Part II left him wanting to start fresh. No one knows the full story, but Bev, who was seemingly still enthusiastic about touring, suddenly decided to retire. Part II had to rebrand to The Orchestra, no longer having a The Move representative, but kept touring. Meanwhile Jeff did an album and a short tour with his new ELO, which had their classic keyboard player but The Orchestra had basically everyone else from the classic lineup. Jeff's ELO went dormant until 2015 where it went by the literal name of Jeff Lynne's ELO. Keyboard player Richard Tandy recently passed away, and with violinist Mik Kaminski retiring this year from the Orchestra, ELO has not one but two ships, one of which has been completely and thoroughly Theseused and the other just one plank away.

there's a metal band called Zao that's been around for ages and have had all members replaced. they wrote a song (called ship of Theseus) about it.

Yes for a couple of decades was like the anti-Ship of Theseus. They would go on tour with everybody who had ever been in the band at any point. They even had Peter Banks (guitarist on their first two largely unknown albums) and The Buggles with them.

Actually kind of a cool concept as their studio albums used a lot of overdubbing which was impossible for single musicians on stage to reproduce. Having 17 guitarists means you can do it all.

I think "The Skatalites" qualify, simply out of the age of the band.

Technically "Panic! at the Disco", if you can count every band member except the singer leaving, and being replaced by sessionists

I'm outing myself, but La Bottine Souriante is a Quebec/French Canadian folk band who's founding member are all no longer current members.

The Wiggles only have Anthony as an original member.

Tangerine Dream, but that's kind of their whole thing to be a ship of theseus, always changing.

The Hype Williams duo made some great hypnagogic pop in 2010-12, and then stopped. Then in 2016 it turned out that they handed the project over to some completely different people, who released two or three more albums since then. These new releases suck in comparison.

Lynyrd Skynyrd's last original member died in 2023 and they're still touring.

Sugababes in the UK.

At one point all the original members were replaced.

Then in 2011 the new members were replaced by the originals again.

The search results are interesting, but I haven't heard of half the bands:

Bands with No Original Members

• Opeth: No original members remain, with the last, David Isberg, leaving in 1992.
• Jinjer: All founding members from their 2008 formation have left.
• Napalm Death: Formed in 1982, the band replaced its entire original lineup within the first five years.
• Molly Hatchet: None of the members from the 1978 original lineup or first album are present.
• Thin Lizzy: Still tours with no original members, including only two who played on earlier studio material.
• Blood, Sweat & Tears: Has had nearly 200 members, with all original members leaving early in their career.
• The Spinners: While they had long-term members, by 2010, the original lineup was gone.
• In Flames: No original members from their 1990 inception remain.
• Foreigner: Due to health issues, founding member Mick Jones ceased touring with them.
• Judas Priest: No original members are in the current touring lineup.
• Yes: Features no original members.

Bands with Only One Original Member Left (Often Considered "One-Member" Bands)

• AC/DC: Angus Young is the sole remaining original member, as of 2024.
• Iron Maiden: The only remaining original member is bassist Steve Harris.

The Boston Philharmonic Orchestra