Any that have come close?
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.
None of the current lineup of The Ventures is original, kinda far from it at this point. And Pretenders only has Chrissie Hynde remaining at this point
Sugar Babes, but somehow they are back to the original trio :)
Richmond, VA has a few of these. the most famous one is GWAR
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?
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.
napalm death had this happen on their debut album. first side is one group of guys, second side is a completely different group, except the drummer
Does Skid Row count? The original band saw people come and go all the time, to the point that nobody really knew who was a member at that point. In 1987, Gary Moore, who hadn’t been a member anymore, actually “sold” the name to a US band. The last original member still disputes the sale. So, you have two bands with the same name, with the original band had members replaced multiple times, with even the last remaining original member leaving and rejoining twice.
Journey apparently only has one original member left. I mention them because I remember them having a lot of turnover.
Neal Schon, the guitarist, is the only one who’s been in the band constantly since the start. Until very recently they still had a couple (Ross Valory & Jonathan Cain) who played in the heyday.
And they still sound as awesome now as they originally did.
Is anyone left from original Deep Purple?
Looks like Ian Paice has been consistent
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.
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.
I just read up on it, and wow, yeah, the stories about Tait are pretty repey. It’s pitiful in several ways.
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 don’t want to set the world on fiiiire.
I never knew bands could reproduce by mitosis.
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
