Any that have come close?
The Ink Spots are an interesting case. They’re a vocal group from the 30s. Not only did that group Theseus itself, 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.
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.
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.
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.
Hype Williams duo made some great hypnagogic pop in 2010-12, and then stopped. Then in 2016 it turned out that they handed the project over to some completely different people, who released two or three more albums since then. These new releases suck in comparison.
Technically “Panic! at the Disco”, if you can count every band member except the singer leaving, and being replaced by sessionists
you have different definition of “all” than OP
I fully misread 😭
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.
I’m outing myself, but La Bottine Souriante is a Quebec/French Canadian folk band who’s founding member are all no longer current members.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidevolk, damn shame tho, I liked their pre 2013 work better
Pretty sure the Village People are not the original crew. Also it would be surprising if it were, considering their participation at Trump inauguration.
The guy who wrote YMCA & still performs as the cop in the VP is a HUGE trump fan and maga assholes. Also claims the band/song is not a gay anthem. I’m not fucking kidding. They’re all fucking delusional.
Oof, ty for the info
The Wiggles only have Anthony as an original member.
you must have different definition of “all” than I
Tangerine Dream, but that’s kind of their whole thing to be a ship of theseus, always changing.
The Swingin’ Medallions have had a rotating group for most of their career, but Wikipedia does say that the drummer, Joe Morris, has been consistently with them since ’62. So I guess they’ve only had one. And they were still performing last year.
Sugababes in the UK.
At one point all the original members were replaced.
Then in 2011 the new members were replaced by the originals again.
The women that left after the first album has been back in the band for over a decade and I had no idea. That’s more time than she’d left for.
In 2012, Donaghy and her former colleagues Mutya Buena and Keisha Buchanan confirmed their reunion.
But they only got rights to the original band name in 2019
The original trio were not able to release music under the name Sugababes as it was still owned by the management company. They instead released music under the new name Mutya Keisha Siobhan, until they secured the legal rights to the Sugababes name again in 2019.
Lynyrd Skynyrd’s last original member died in 2023 and they’re still touring.
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.
Oh, man. I’ve totally heard of over half of these bands.
Jinjer is still awesome!
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).
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 join 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 then adding another one.
Funny enough, Harris formed 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’.
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.
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.
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.
