Ask Lemmy

The Boston Philharmonic Orchestra

Lynyrd Skynyrd's last original member died in 2023 and they're still touring.

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/

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.

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.

A lot of k-pop boy/girl bands have rotating members that can age out and be replaced.

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.

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.

Tangerine Dream, but that's kind of their whole thing to be a ship of theseus, always changing. None of the original members are still around. The current members were all born decades after the band was started.

Are any original Gwar members still there?

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.

Newsboys, a major Christian rock band founded in 1985. All original members have been replaced.

Richmond, VA has a few of these. the most famous one is GWAR

Not up to date personally, but I feel like at one point Guns n' Roses was just Axl and all different musicians

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?

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.

Are there any original members of Ghost?

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.

Technically "Panic! at the Disco", if you can count every band member except the singer leaving, and being replaced by sessionists

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...

EVERY Japanese girl band... Morning Musume, AKB48, etc...

Tangential, but I this made me realize I honestly don't know the member names of most of the bands I listen to. I kinda know their faces if they have videos.

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

Asking Alexandria, now that Ben Bruce has finally pulled the pin.

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.

The Drifters ("Under the Boardwalk," "Save the Last Dance for Me," "This Magic Moment") have been more of a product than a band since the mid-1950s, when manager George Treadwell bought the name. Since then, there have been several incarnations of the Drifters with different lineups, and at times, different lineups have toured under the name at the same time.

The Drifters had three "golden" periods: the early 1950s, the 1960s, and the early 1970s (after the Atlantic label period).

The lineup included more than 60 musicians in total. Nevertheless, the band is in both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Vocal Group Hall of Fame - with different lineups:

The first lineup (founded by Clyde McPhatter) and the second lineup (with Ben E. King) were inducted separately into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame - once as "The Drifters" and once as "Ben E. King and the Drifters."

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee package includes members from several incarnations: four from the first lineup (Clyde McPhatter, Bill Pinkney, Gerhart Thrasher, Johnny Moore), two from the second (Ben E. King, Charlie Thomas), and one from the post-Atlantic phase (Rudy Lewis).