Lineup Changes: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Bands are hard, messy business. For every band that’s hit the five year mark, a thousand have never made it past the first six months (which is a wholly speculative assertion on my part). Jam a bunch of ambitious creative types into a shitty, cluttered van and send them off onto the midwest club circuit for a few winter months, driving through ice storms, living off of cheap gas station food and making barely enough money for the occasional bed bug-infested motel room and it’s easy to see how tensions can rapidly escalate. And too often, success makes it even worse; throw money, contracts, management and significant others into the mix and you’re bound to suffer some departures — both professional and mortal. The real miracle is the number of bands that actually survive.
Lineup changes are to be expected and the most interesting ones occur after a band have achieved some notoriety or success. Stakes are higher because, well, people are paying attention now. Regardless of the circumstances, some bands ascend to even greater heights after a shakeup while others flame out. Here are some examples of both:
The Good
Bruce Dickinson for Paul Di’Anno (Iron Maiden)
At first blush, Paul Di’Anno replacing Dennis Wilcock was the upgrade that Iron Maiden needed to properly set their sights on superstardom. And indeed, the vitality of his work on Maiden’s first two albums cannot be understated; though he looked nothing like the flaxen-haired rock gods dominating heavy music in the 80s, Di’Anno breathed fire into Maiden’s sound with his gravelly sneer and pugnacious punk sensibility. However, unable to accept a role where founder/bassist Steve Harris exercised full creative control, Di’Anno was eventually kicked out of the band when his drug and alcohol abuse, along with withering personal relations with Harris, rendered his position untenable. Enter Samson frontman Bruce Dickinson, whose Iron Maiden debut, Number Of The Beast went on to notch the top spot on the UK charts and cement Iron Maiden as one of metal’s brightest new artists. His operatic vocal style and poetic lyricism invested Maiden’s galloping heaviness with a sense of drama and poignancy. It didn’t hurt that Dickinson was himself ambitious and energetic — in many ways, the same magnetic charge as Harris, which of course, caused its own set of problems. Famously, the two had to be separated on the day of the Number Of The Beast video shoot, when long-festering aggressions between them came to a head. And Dickinson ultimately left Maiden in 1993 to focus on his solo career, returning six years later. But even the most casual metal fan understands that Bruce Dickinson is the voice of Iron Maiden — the band’s just not the same without him.
Iron Maiden with Paul D’iAnno, center
David Gilmour for Syd Barrett (Pink Floyd)
Druggy and whimsical, Pink Floyd’s debut, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, showcased a dynamic and occasionally harrowing balance of avant garde musicianship, pop sensibilities and a hefty dose of late-60s psychedelia. Though it stands as one of the finest psych rock albums of all time, it also marks the one and only Floyd album to boast the considerable, fleeting gifts of co-founder Roger “Syd” Barrett. Once a charismatic and abundantly witty face on the UK’s rock scene, Syd was eventually hobbled by heroic substance abuse struggles and the onset of mental illness. The band hired Syd’s old school chum David Gilmour as both a fresh creative voice as well as a stabilizing presence but the arrangement of Pink Floyd as a quintet lasted, somewhat prophetically, a mere five shows. Barrett was sacked in April, 1968, his final stretch marred by unpredictable behaviour, a no-show for their Top Of The Pops appearance and bizarre on and off-stage breakdowns. In the aftermath, Pink Floyd would go on to reach the highest strata of superstardom, saturating popular culture in a way that few bands ever have or ever will. Much of this is down to Gilmour, whose confidence and ambitions fit perfectly with the band’s mature experimentalism and hard-working ethos. Though his personal relationship with bassist Roger Waters is notoriously acrimonious, the two men conjured some genuinely fascinating ideas together, feeding off both the tension between them and their shared passion for creating dark and immersive space rock textures. Sadly, Pink Floyd were doomed to futility until both the arrival of David Gilmour and the departure of Syd Barrett.
Kirk Hammett for Dave Mustaine (Metallica)
It was an utterly brutal — and deeply douchey — move on the part of Metallica’s James Hetfield, Cliff Burton and Lars Ulrich. As inter-band relations with guitarist/vocalist Dave Mustaine fractured beyond all hope of repair, they invited Exodus guitarist Kirk Hammett out to New York City to audition for the band. Barbarously, they didn’t let Dave in on their plans until Hammett arrived in New York; on that day, they gave Mustaine the heave ho, handed him a bus ticket and sent him packing back to California. He never saw it coming. Cold-bloodedness aside, the move proved inspired; Hammett’s bluesy, melodic style dovetailed perfectly into Hetfield’s virtuosic rhythm playing and the band’s frenzied and complex thrash metal structures. More importantly, Hetfield finally had the impetus to step up and to become a bona fide frontman. Until that point, he had tried his hand at just vocals, and then just guitar but his early performances betrayed a crippling lack of confidence. With Mustaine gone, Hetfield developed a distinctive voice and a commanding stage personality that sees him as one of metal’s preeminent frontmen today. And while Mustaine seems to have never fully recovered from the indignity thrust upon him by his former bandmates, it was the best move for him as well. Though not exactly gifted with an angelic singing voice, Dave Mustaine was always destined to be a frontman and in Megadeth that’s exactly what he became — a successful, Grammy-winning, songwriting tour-de-force. Something he arguably might never have achieved with Metallica. The ashes still smoulder, but this was a win/win across the board.
Metallica, circa 1983 (l-r) Cliff Burton, Lars Ulrich, James Hetfield, Dave Mustaine
Ronnie James Dio for Ozzy Osbourne (Black Sabbath)
They swapped out one full-on rock legend for another but with Rainbow vocalist Ronnie James Dio now in the fold, Sabbath had somebody who could actually sing. Replacing Ozzy’s malevolent sneer with his bold theatrical vocals, Dio pushed their music in a heavier direction and his ability to self-harmonise opened new dimensions within their sound. To some, it’s heresy, but qualitatively, Dio’s Sabbath albums stand toe-to-toe with the best ones they cut with Ozzy. It’s a shame that we’ll never know where they could have gone over the course of two or three more Dio releases.
Rod Stewart for Steve Marriott (The Small Faces/Faces)
On New Year’s Even in 1968, a pissed-off Steve Marriott stormed offstage in the middle of a Small Faces gig, breaking up the band shortly thereafter and forming Humble Pie with Peter Frampton. In a brilliant display of, “Fuck us? Fuck you!”, the Small Faces turned around and poached the mega-talented Rod Stewart (and guitarist Ronnie Wood) from Jeff Beck’s group and changed the band’s name to Faces. The lineup also boasted Ian McLagen, Ronnie Lane and Kenney Jones — a supergroup in their own right. It was a weird arrangement, with Stewart concurrently working on his solo career and members of Faces occasionally playing in Rod’s solo endeavours as well as the band’s. Still, Rod the Mod took them considerably further than they were destined to go with Marriott in the mix. Under Stewart, they eventually hit paydirt with Stay With Me, in 1971.
Faces with Rod Stewart (center) and Ronnie Wood to his left
Lindsey Buckingham for Bob Welch (Fleetwood Mac)
By 1974, Fleetwood Mac had experienced modest levels of success with guitarists Peter Green and Danny Kirwan, eventually bringing Bob Welch (of Sentimental Lady fame) onboard in 1971. Reportedly they hired him without ever actually playing with him but like the others, his tenure proved short, lasting barely three years. Enter the highly-volatile and stupidly-gifted songwriting duo of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, whom Buckingham insisted be hired as well as part of his deal. If you’ve ever heard of Rumours, you know how the story ends.
The Bad
Brian Johnson for Bon Scott (AC/DC)
Look, by all accounts, Brian Johnson is an absolute gem of a human and his work on Back In Black will endure as one of the greatest rock vocal performances of all time. But hindsight has exposed Brian as a one-trick pony, both as a vocalist and a lyricist. In fact, if you look at the quality of AC/DC’s output since Back In Black, it charts a steady decline in both quality and consistency. To the point where the rock press enthusiastically celebrates utterly mediocre outings like 2020’s Power Up, rather than rigorously applying the same exacting standards to which they hold newer acts. Brian’s tenure in AC/DC began with his high point and it’s been downhill since. Conversely, with Bon Scott on the microphone, AC/DC had been in steady ascent, with their two greatest albums — Powerage and Highway To Hell — marking the end of Bon’s tenure. Whether he would have stayed in AC/DC much longer than another album or two is beside the point; when Bon Scott passed away, he was not only in his vocal prime but his evocative streetwise lyricism had evolved from puerile double-entedres to colorful and deeply-relatable vignettes. Highway To Hell going into Back In Black is one of rock’s most powerful one-two punches but it also signaled the end of AC/DC’s Golden Age.
Everybody who’s not Sebastian Bach for Sebastian Bach (Skid Row)
Sebastian Bach fronted Skid Row for nine hugely-successful years, while the late Johnny Solinger went on to hold lead vocals for sixteen years, but Bach will forever be regarded by fans as the band’s true voice. Bach departed after the criminally-underrated Subhuman Race (1995), the band’s first outing to not receive platinum — or any — certification. Reportedly quitting when his bandmates declined to open for KISS, Bach would never tap into the same magic that he conjured with that group. Skid Row fared just as well; Solinger released two largely-ignored full-lengths with Skid Row, during which time the band slipped from the arena circuit to the club circuit to the last refuge of heritage acts — the state fair circuit. While it’s not fair to argue that all of Skid Row’s diminishing returns were down to a single personnel change, it can’t be ignored that Bach’s departure heralded the end of their creative peak. And it’s a hell of a thing that even as Bach continues to petition the band to reunite the classic lineup, the band remain squarely uninterested. Assuming that in declining Bach’s entreaties, Skid Row are foregoing a substantial payout and surely a high-profile tour, one can only speculate as to just how unpleasant things had become with him on the bus. With ZP Theart now on vocals, there appears no signs of change anytime soon.
Ronnie Wood for Mick Taylor (Rolling Stones)
A cursory scan of the band’s output establishes that it was during the Mick Taylor era when the Stones hit their creative peak (Sticky Fingers, Exile On Main Street, Goats Head Soup, It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll). It wasn’t just that Taylor was better technically, though he was; Taylor was stylistically-gifted in a way that allowed him to contribute in subtle but enthralling ways — an innovative, multifaceted jazz man working within the confines of a blues band. Woodie might be the fans’ emotional favourite and he’s no slouch in his own right but his by-the-books approach only underscores how much the band lost when Taylor left in 1974. Worth noting that had Brian Jones survived, he likely would have eclipsed both.
Vinnie Vincent for Ace Frehley (KISS)
It could never happen today, but in just over three years, from February, 1974 to June, 1977, KISS dropped six legendary albums, packed with the biggest hits of their career. The first three went gold and the next three went platinum and all of those albums featured the fretboard heroics of Ace Frehley. Prodigiously-talented and a bona fide innovator of his craft, Frehley went on to inspire generations of rock and metal guitarists. It seems that when he left the band in 1982, he took a good bit of the magic with him because in the wake of his departure, the band has never rivaled the quality of those first releases. Even as glam metal began its mainstream takeover in the early-80s, KISS had been stalling. Replacing Ace with Vinnie Vincent gave them Lick It Up, which performed fairly well in 1983 and would eventually be certified platinum in 1990. But by then Vincent was long-gone, fired after constantly butting heads with his bandmates, often over the indulgent length of his live solos and, according to Gene Simmons, over what Simmons felt was “unethical behaviour.” Things only got worse from there, with Paul Stanley reporting that Vincent has sued KISS fourteen times. That pretty much destroys any shot of seeing Vinnie jump onstage some night for old times’ sake. And let’s face it - nearly fifty years after KISS dropped their incendiary 1974 debut, we just want to see Ace back with KISS. It’s the natural order of the Universe.
KISS with Vinnie Vincent, second from right
The Ugly
Mitch Malloy for Sammy Hagar (Van Halen)
In a band that deserves its own wing in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for lineup changes, Van Halen plumbed new depths of personnel management when, in 1996, they replaced Sammy Hagar with an unknown solo artist named Mitch Malloy. Blessed with soap opera good looks and a voice perfectly suited for his saccharine pop rock stylings, Malloy was reportedly told that the Van Halen job was his after a three-day audition that included both jamming with the band and hanging out with Eddie and Valerie Bertinelli. Malloy claims that Eddie raved, “You’re the nicest guy I’ve ever met. Best singer I’ve ever heard in my life. Congratulations, you’re in the band.” It was not to be. Rumours of a David Lee Roth reunion gathered steam but that idea died an agonising and painfully-awkward death at the 1996 MTV VMA’s. Ultimately, however, the gig went to Gary Cherone.