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.
Sugar Babes, but somehow they are back to the original trio :)
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?
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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 Theseus. However, there was one lineup that was a lot more successful and famous, so changing the lineup would be detrimental to success.
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
Journey?
Any originals left in that band?
Steve Perry wasn’t even the first vocalist.
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.
Journey apparently only has one original member left. I mention them because I remember them having a lot of turnover.
Is anyone left from original Deep Purple?





