Any that have come close?
A lot of k-pop boy/girl bands have rotating members that can age out and be replaced.
Asking Alexandria, now that Ben Bruce has finally pulled the pin.
The Puerto Rican boy band Menudo from the 80s. Members are replaced once they hit puberty, Ricky Martin was one of its members. The group had 50 members in it’s lifetime.
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. 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/
I never knew bands could reproduce by mitosis.
I don’t want to set the world on fiiiire.
Richmond, VA has a few of these. the most famous one is GWAR
Newsboys, a major Christian rock band founded in 1985. All original members have been replaced.
Their most-recent lead singer, formerly of DC Talk, turned out to be a super rapey POS.
I just read up on it, and wow, yeah, the stories about Tait are pretty repey. It’s pitiful in several ways.
The allegations are literally the only reason I had any idea that the band is still ongoing (and that all the members has swapped out, several times apparently).
I used to follow them back in the 90s. The lead singer then left due to drug and alcohol problems.
Velvet Underground’s last album Sqeeze is basically a Doug Yule solo album and made without any original members. Yule joined the band about halfway through its existence. For that reason many don’t consider it part of the band’s catalog. Personally, I think the album gets unfairly judged. It’s pretty good, just not on par with Lou Reed’s work, but what is?
Lynyrd Skynyrd’s last original member died in 2023 and they’re still touring.
Saddest one, imo.
Skynyrd ain’t been Skynyrd since the plane crash.
And half that band half already died almost 50 years ago.
The Boston Philharmonic Orchestra
Any Orchestra then really (of any substantial age).
If we are going that route:
Royal Danish Orchestra: The orchestra traces its origins back to 1448
Naw, I think a few of the original members are still there
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.
I just listened to them for the first time in like a decade this past weekend, great band in the aughts but I haven’t heard any newer stuff
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.
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.
Is this AI slop? Because it’s certainly wrong.
Judas Priest: No original members are in the current touring lineup.
Rob Halfords left in the late 90s but returned in the 00s and is still the frontman.
According to Wikipedia, the band formed in 69 and the earliest a current member joined was 70 (Ian Hill). Halfords didn’t join until 73.
TIL. That all happened before their first album though. Not sure I’d count that.
Yeah, same for Opeth, Mikael is Opeth for all intents and purposes, him joining a few months after the band’s inception is irrelevant.
I’m so glad to find other people (besides at an Opeth show) who know Opeth.
Founding members are those who founded the band, who are (potentially) different from anyone on any record.
Although Judas Priest’s case is special, according to a comment below.
Could add Steely Dan to the “one member remaining” list. Donald Fagen is the only original member left and still tours with a backing band as Steely Dan.
I don’t know about other bands but the bit about iron maiden is really stretched.
I guess if you consider the first lineup to be the one for their first concert in a bar’s basement, alright. But if you take the first album, Dave Murray was already in the band and still is.
Opeth is a strange one and I don’t think it really counts. The band was still forming when the current leader of the band joined. Yeah if you’re super technical then the band that formed didn’t include him, but it seems like the “original” group hadn’t even played any showed before Akerfelt joined.
In a bio that Akerfelt wrote he says that basically the band died the day he showed up to a rehearsal and later he and the original founder “reformed” Opeth, so it’s debatable if it’s a ship of thesius situation or a new ship with the same name.
Some of these are real stretches involving band names getting swapped around.
The original band called “Judas Priest” broke up entirely. KK Downing, and Ian Hill were in a band called Freight together. Al Atkins of the now-defunct Judas Priest joined Freight, and they decided the now-available name of Judas Priest was cooler. It was not the same band. Furthermore, before their first album was recorded Atkins was replaced with Halford, and Tipton also joined. So I would count Ian Hill, Rob Halford, and Glenn Tipton all as founding members.
Opeth is similar. The first Opeth before Ackerfeldt broke up without recording any albums.
Yes: Features no original members.
This is technically true, but Yes does still have Steve Howe who was the guitarist on their first hit album (“The Yes Album” in 1971).
Wait. Judas Priest for sure has at least Raford
Napalm Death were formed in 1981, and were still developing their proper sound when drummer Mick Harris joined in late '85 and pushed their limits into what is now known as grindcore. That lineup recorded what became the side A of the first album, ‘Scum’. The last remaining original member, vocalist Nic Bullen, left after that, and the band cycled through several more changes, such that Harris is the only one present on the sides A and B of the album.
Harris was in the band for two more albums, leaving in '91 to form jazzcore band Painkiller with John Zorn and Bill Laswell. Napalm Death’s lineup stabilized by that time and continues with the new drummer Danny Herrera to this day, with the exception of ditching the second guitarist and later adding another one.
Funny enough, Harris started a side-project Scorn with Nic Bullen right after leaving Napalm Death, and they originally played sort of industrial metal. Bullen again bailed in '95, whereupon Harris changed to industrial illbient, before releasing ‘Greetings from Birmingham’ in 2000, the sound of which might be familiar to everyone here. Except Londoners somehow reinvented basically the same sound a bit later, turning it into a genre of its own.
The same year '91, Harris was also a touring drummer for Godflesh, a project of Justin Broadrick who was the guitarist on the side A of ‘Scum’.
Oh, man. I’ve totally heard of over half of these bands.
Jinjer is still awesome!
Napalm Death was what popped up first in my mind. I remember it being a bit weird at the time with a band that swapped every single member.
Of the bands listed I’ve only ever listened to In Flames, and it makes a lot of sense. I liked Come Clarity and A Sense of Purpose, but the newer stuff is just mediocre.
Tull comes close. Anderson at one point said the band was over without barre but he reformed the band this millenia without him so at this point he is the only one who has always been with the band and indeed many people think his name is jethro tull. The band has had a crazy amount of turnover even early in its career and a crazy amount of ex members in other well known bands. Heck in the first or second studio album there is a song about members that left the band before its success. The 20 year album had a little flow chart of band members who ended up in other groups.
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.
Not up to date personally, but I feel like at one point Guns n’ Roses was just Axl and all different musicians
Yes, that’s because it was. The album Chinese Democracy was basically a solo project by Axl.
Apparently many versions of the songs exist (or have existed) as parts of songs were also re-recorded as members joined and left over the many years it took to finish the album. In itself a ship of theseus album.
Certain irony in that, given Matthew Sorum’s involvement successfully lobbying Beijing for animal rights reforms.
