Any that have come close?
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
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.
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.
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’.
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).
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.
Wait. Judas Priest for sure has at least Raford
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.
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.
Are any original Gwar members still there?
Balsac has been consistent. Debatable depending on your definition of original but it’s been the same guy for a long time.
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.
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
Are there any original members of Ghost?
Iirc the nameless ghouls wear masks for this exact purpose
And the singer is a big douchebag.
it’s always been the same frontman so yea
:3
Lol this is a good one
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.
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.
Kraftwerk has at one point or another not had each of its core members. The only original member now is Hütter, but he left the band briefly in the early 70s (when they were still doing psychedelic rock) so nobody has been in the band continuously. And even though they typically have 4 members, a total of 21 musicians has rotated through the group.
Idk if that quite counts, but it’s close at least.
They did sing “wir sind die Roboter”, and robots are replaceable, so I guess it’s an appropriate band history. But, the output has still declined…
While Hütter was absent (to study architecture), Kraftwerk’s lineup was basically Neu with Florian Schneider. There are a couple bootleg recordings of this lineup: ‘Ruck Zuck’ and ‘K4’, offering some Kraftwerk tunes being played by Neu.
Upon his return, Hütter promptly kicked out Rother and Dinger, and they formed Neu proper.
TBF, though, Kraftwerk is pretty much Ralf und Florian (hue hue) — starting way back with their proto-krautrock band Organisation.
That makes sense, I suppose the bootleg song Heavy Metal Kids was also from that proto-Neu period? Because as great as it is it’s such a different aesthetic…
Btw what are your thoughts on early Kraftwerk/Organisation in general? Do you enjoy those albums? I found them wildly varying in quality, ranging from incredible to unlistenable…
Yeah, ‘Heavy Metal Kids’ was on ‘K4’, which is a recording from a Radio Bremen concert (with pretty good quality). The track names there are unofficial, afaik. Some of them could be variations on properly released tracks or those recorded on other bootlegs.
Frankly I myself amn’t a fan of some early Hütter-led experiments, like the incredibly drawn out ‘Ruck Zuck’, which sounds interesting a couple times and is kinda meh after that. This particular track was reinterpreted by the different lineups, and Organisation’s version is groovy, while Neu-Schneider’s one is more hypnotic and at the same time raw in comparison.
It’s very obvious that Kraftwerk were still looking for their proper sound back then. I’m due for a relisten of the first albums, but also am in no hurry to do that, as I never could find anything quite catching the ear. But completely dismissing them like Kraftwerk did is imo unwarranted, it’s a document of the era. Also Dinger was bringing some energy to the music that they couldn’t properly realize until Hütter was gone.
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.
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?
Technically “Panic! at the Disco”, if you can count every band member except the singer leaving, and being replaced by sessionists
So, not “technically” at all (see my user name)
Menudo? Journey?
Journey was the one that prompted this question 😆
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Journey_band_members
Neal Schon has been around through their history no?
I think they still have one member who’s been there from the beginning (Neal Schon). But they are getting really close to meeting OP’s criteria.
A quick web search revealed there are far more than I imagined.
