Top 5 Bands with One (or Fewer) of Their Original Members

Keeping a band together is a tricky thing. Like any business, it is a rare band that can weather touring, fame, and excess without some "restructuring" of their personnel. While Led Zeppelin managed an entire career with its original lineup intact (for their recent LZ reunion show, the late John Bonham was classily replaced by his own son), more likely is the case where at least one or two members reach their rock 'n' roll omega point and call it a day, often citing one of the big three: family, creative differences, or asphyxiation. At the far end of the rainbow, we find those exceptional collectives who just hemorrhage bandmates. Here are 5 bands down to one (or none) of their original members.

5. Megadeth

For all the fun we had watching Metallica air out their dirty laundry in Some Kind of Monster, the full story of Megadeth--founded by guitarist and sole remaining member Dave Mustaine after being ousted from Metallica--is a far crazier one. A staggering 20 musicians have passed through Megadeth's ranks mostly due to drugs, creative differences, and drugs. About 7 years into their career the band solidified with what is widely regarded as its strongest lineup. After a decade long run however, that too eventually fizzled. Although Mustaine invited this beloved lineup to reunite at one point, all have thus far proved unavailable for the occasion. Their reasons? Lead guitarist Marty Friedman is busy with his J-pop career, drummer Nick Menza pretended to have cancer, and bassist Dave Ellefson is living off of an inheritance from the late L. Ron Hubbard (FYI, I only made up ONE of those). Now with a band of ringers in tow, Mustaine continues to tour the world as Megadeth, mostly playing countries that probably never knew what the guys in Megadeth looked like in the first place. Here's the new lineup performing "Peace Sells", the intro of which they licensed up the wazoo for MTV News:

4. Napalm Death

Per the title of this piece, we give you a band with no original members remaining in its lineup. Napalm Death represents the frontier of heavy metal to legions of folks who've never heard a note of their music. Although commonly categorized as grindcore or death metal, ND now opt for the simpler 'extreme metal' tag. At some point, Napalm Death became more of an institution than a band--they were never going to go pop or add a cellist or explore any new horizons in the autumn of their career. True to their name, Napalm Death was always going to play caustic, unyielding metal. Consequently, most of this group's members have opted to depart for no other reason but to chill out, content to allow the beast that is Napalm Death to rage on without them. Apparently extreme metal is taxing even for its practitioners, and most ND alum went on to more eclectic, even mellower projects (see Justin Broadrick's band Jesu). In this sense, Napalm Death is like college--you spend a few years there, you learn some things, and you move on. But I'm not sure how laid you get during your freshman year in a death metal band. Here's a classic clip of Beavis & Butthead taking the piss out of the boys:

3. Smashing Pumpkins

A close 2nd to Guns 'N' Roses on the 'rose so high, fell so far ladder,' we find Smashing Pumpkins. The mid-1990s saw the kind of wild success for the band that traditionally either births a wonderful career of celebrated albums and an ever-growing legion of fans or precipitates a steady decline into irrelevance, self-parody, and hedonism. Smashing Pumpkins somehow magically chose both routes. Although they successfully morphed their epic, moody guitar rock into epic, moody synth dirges, the bummer of moving from the 9-million-selling Mellon Collie to the mere million-selling Adore caused irreperable rifts and reflections inside the band. Billy Corgan kicked/discomforted EVERYONE out of this band, and as of 2009 remains the only original member of this endeavor. What we don't get is why he thinks the band is still interesting without the beautiful Tinkerbell pixie bassist/violinist, the half-Martian/half-Japanese lead guitarist, and the heroin-crazed free-jazz drummer. Eh, at least he's done with <a href="http://omglists.blogfaction.com/article/100965/top-5-disappointing-supergroups/"_new">Zwan</a>. Here's Billy Corgan performing with a group of kids who probably grew up listening to his band:

2. King Crimson

Prog Rock has long been a critical whipping boy, its pretensions legion. Given music that typically requires a Classical musician's level of dedication and skill, it's not surprising that the players often exhibit a Classical musician's level of ego and prissiness. As such, clashes and reconfigurations were perpetual following the Golden Days of British Prog. The titans--Yes, Genesis and King Crimson--all had revolving door lineups throughout their careers along with some of the most extraordinarily complex 'family tree' intersections imaginable (Bill Bruford has officially drummed for all three bands as well as for Anderson/Bruford/Wakeman/Howe, the band that featured more original Yes members than the band calling itself Yes at the time-still with me?) With a staggering 7 distinct lineups, King Crimson reigns supreme, their only mainstay being guitarist/founder/philosophical point man Robert Fripp. After a decade of soul-searching hiatus, Fripp had suddenly veered the sound of KC from orchestral proto-metal to minimalist electro new wave-with an entirely new lineup, of course-prompting him to consider a name change from King Crimson to 'Discipline.' The King Crimson moniker won out in the end and BDSM-ers everywhere breathed a sigh of relief. Note the extraordinary amount of discipline this performance must have demanded:

1. Guns 'N' Roses

For all the truly great music attached to their name, Guns 'N' Roses have nonetheless been paragons of rock and roll bullshit throughout their career and their bullshit-to-music ratio reached its apex in the unnecessary wait for Chinese Democracy. Fans have been pondering the sound of the return of G'n'R for longer than the band existed in the first place. Along the way, the lineup of this reunion continued to morph inexplicably, at no point featuring or even hinting at the presence of a single member of the band that recorded Appetite for Destruction, but for eccentric lead singer Axl Rose. Ultimately, Chinese Democracy was of course a Rose production, albeit one with marginal contributions from Use Your Illusion keyboardist Dizzy Reed (seriously, how many people could identify this guy from Adam as a G'n'R member?) Our point isn't to debate the merits of CD but simply to point out that from a purely biological perspective, Chinese Democracry IS NOT a Guns 'N' Roses album. Of course, half of the Illusion-era band resulted in Velvet Revolver so maybe we're beating a dead horse (pun intended). I was gonna link to a recent performance but life is too short so here's "Paradise City" from '91 instead: