Of all the philosophical questions posed by pop music over the past 60 years or so — Will you love me tomorrow? Is there life on Mars? Should I stay or should I go? — among the toughest in 2024 is this: When is a famous rock band or R&B act no longer themselves? When should a group of musicians with a famous name stop performing under that famous name? For example: Kurt Cobain killed himself 30 years ago this past spring. But if Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic had continued to play together after Cobain’s death, even if they called themselves Nirvana, would it have been Nirvana? Alex Lifeson of Rush has hinted in interviews that he may record again with Geddy Lee. But without drummer Neil Peart, who died in 2020, is that still Rush?
Before The Beatles became stars, Pete Best was replaced on drums with Ringo Starr. But if Ringo was fired after they became THE BEATLES, would it have been The Beatles? Could they have lost George Harrison and been The Beatles? The Rolling Stones recently played two shows at Soldier Field with two original members — Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. But without the laidback yin of Charlie Watts on drums and Bill Wyman on bass to Richards/Jagger’s revved-up yang, was that really the Stones?
There are more important questions in life.
Such as, Who’ll stop the rain?
And who let the dogs out?
But it’s summer concert season and ticket prices are no longer reasonable. Don’t you deserve to know who is actually in ZZ Top and Lynyrd Skynyrd these days? They co-headline at Ravinia next month, and though even lawn seats are $72 (before fees), only one of the two original long-bearded guitarists of ZZ Top will be present (Dusty Hill died in 2021), and because guitarist Gary Rossington died last year, the touring band called Lynyrd Skynyrd has exactly zero original members left. Unless you count guitarist Rickey Medlocke, who was briefly a member of the band, for two years, pre-fame; he’s now the closest thing that Skynyrd has to an original member.
But what constitutes the true version of a band is not as common-sensical an answer as it might appear. Being an original member isn’t always important. Take Journey, who played at Wrigley Field with Def Leppard on July 15: Chicago-raised pianist Jonathan Cain didn’t join Journey until after it was a success, but arguably, his power ballads (“Faithfully,” etc.) are more important to the core of Journey than former lead singer Steve Perry. When Styx plays Credit Union 1 Amphitheater in Tinley Park next month, know that Styx — which lost original singer Dennis DeYoung three times, and likely for the last in 1999 — is down to two original members. Or three if you count Tommy Shaw, and really, though he was not one of the original members, you’d have to count Tommy Shaw because he was central to a number of the Chicago band’s signature hits.
That said, Styx is co-headlining with Foreigner, which has no original members. Before they canceled the show, the Commodores were also playing Tinley Park in July, with the Pointer Sisters and the Spinners — and between all three, there were just two original members.
Can they do this?
Probably. According to the Truth in Music Advertising Act — signed into Illinois law in 2006 by occasional Elvis impersonator Gov. Rod Blagojevich, and now law in 34 other states — it is unlawful to conduct a live musical performance through the use of a misleading connection or affiliation. But there are exceptions: if a live act has legal rights to the name, at least one member of the act was a member of the same recording act, the show is identified in advertising as a tribute. Or if someone representing the original band agreed to allow the performances.
The wiggle room could (and does) fill stadiums.
Notice the careful billing of “Jeff Lynne’s ELO,” playing two nights at the United Center in September. Or “Welcome Back My Friends: The Return of Emerson, Lake & Palmer,” playing the Arcada Theatre in St. Charles on July 26: It features drummer Carl Palmer partly playing along to archival footage of his late bandmates. Infamously, as early as the 1960s, thanks to legal parsing, several iterations of the Drifters toured simultaneously. Beach Boys singer Mike Love legally owns the Beach Boy name, but there have been times in recent decades when the official Beach Boys (which played Ravinia in early July) had fewer original Beach Boys than Brian Wilson’s touring group.
Yet you know what’s knottier than legal squabbles? Questions of authenticity.
Even if a live act can do this, should they?
Does their audience even care?
The more I asked music fans and industry professionals if they cared, the more I realized the only correct answer was someone’s incredibly personal cultural calculus.
Marc Solheim, senior talent buyer for Riot Fest, was faced this year with the choice of two versions of the ‘90s band Sublime: one featuring two founding members and lead vocals by Jakob Nowell, the son of late Sublime singer Bradley Nowell; the other was named “Sublime With Rome” and had no original members and was led by a guitarist (Rome Ramirez) who had briefly performed with those two founding members. “For us, it’s all about authenticity, so we went with the one that is as close to the real Sublime as we could get.” He said, however, that what makes a band its authentic version is nebulous and ultimately up to its audience.
Maria Palmer, a Chicago DJ for Rock 95.5, WCHI-FM, keeps her own math simpler: “If the frontman is still kickin’, that’s all the band the people need.” And yet the history of rock is full of bands that got bigger after losing the original singer — AC/DC, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac. Lose a seminal guitarist? Take heart that after the Stones replaced the late Brian Jones with Mick Taylor, they made “Let It Bleed” and “Exile on Main Street.”
Dan Leali, who has been the drummer of the popular Chicago-based tribute band Tributosaurus for the past 23 years (as well as a drummer for Poi Dog Pondering and Liz Phair), can’t imagine Rush without drummer Neil Peart, or The Police without drummer Stewart Copeland, or Led Zeppelin without drummer John Bonham. He stuck with the various versions of Yes — up until founding member Chris Squire died in 2015. He thought Squeeze was pretty good live with and without a few of its original members.
“But I guess it depends on the band? If there’s nobody left but a cousin of an original member or a brother, I understand why musicians do it, but I wouldn’t be interested. The problem is when someone is not there who had been more than the sum of their parts.”
Well said. The Beatles needed all four members to stay the Beatles. Yet regardless of who’s singing, a Van Halen without Eddie Van Halen is no longer Van Halen. Santana would not be Santana without Carlos Santana. Then again, the death of a band’s namesake is not always the end: In the years before rock, the Glenn Miller Orchestra began touring without Miller, who went MIA during World War II. It plays the Arcada in September. Sun Ra, late legend of Chicago jazz, died in 1993, but the Sun Ra Arkestra remains a popular fixture on concert stages.
Technology, of course, will make the question of authenticity even more thorny.
“I went to Coachella in 2012 because I was a huge Tupac fan and never got to see him live,” said Christopher Wares, assistant chair of the music business department at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. “He performed as a hologram alongside Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, and it was a beautiful experience. It looked real! It wasn’t Tupac, of course, but was I worried about how authentic my experience was? I’m not sure if I did.
“I think of how the remaining Beatles released that new song last year. So fascinating. They used AI to separate (musical) parts. We never had the tech to separate John Lennon’s voice from his piano, but what we heard was not a clone of him. It wasn’t AI-generated. It was written long ago, performed by Beatles. But was it a Beatles song?”
Wares is a vocal proponent of using AI technology in music, “but as a collaborative tool. It will never replace human expression.” He said the issue of authenticity is a constant on social media among students, though generally, when they discuss authenticity it’s about values and sincerity, rather than slavish fidelity to a genre or an artist’s image.
That’s an old standard, and perhaps why audiences are more generous now with zombie bands playing as 2024 facsimiles of the original: In a digital era, authenticity begs for more than conforming. Besides, as Ware noted, the question of authenticity in pop is ancient. It’s a foundational influence on both rap (“How street are you?”) and country music (“How country are you?”). Part of the beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake is some perceived lack of credibility. One reason hip hop itself was distrusted early in its history was its talent for dicing original songs into new original songs, forcing audiences to decide what’s more real. Even publishing (which has authors who don’t write their books) and visual arts (which has artists who dole out the execution of ideas to staff) face this issue.
But rock, especially, was once rooted in credibility.
So much so that even newish members of longtime bands — I’m thinking of Skynyrd here, which replaced late singer Ronnie Van Zant in 1987 with brother Johnny Van Zant — tend to be blood relatives, soundalikes, or just look the part. In fact, the faceless nature of many pre-MTV ‘60s and ‘70s rock acts brings them closer to mid-roster members of a baseball team or supporting actors on a sitcom, coming and going without much loss of identity to the whole. Who remembers what Foreigner looked like anyway? Earth, Wind & Fire and Chicago — those once ubiquitous Illinois hitmakers (who recently played together in Rosemont) — have collectively shed about 50 members over 50-plus years; each has also held on to a surprising core of its original members.
But would you notice if they hadn’t?
Jake Austen, who books the live music at The Promontory in Hyde Park, and has been the longtime editor of the music zine Rocktober, said a lot of vintage vocal groups like the Platters get by because “people understand they are getting a brand,” not the actual members of a group founded in the ‘50s. He said if the act is good, audiences are happy. Still, he was booking disco stars Heatwave (“Boogie Nights”) “until the last member passed away.” They were “amazing,” he said, “but I would not bring back the current version.” Likewise, he’s booked ‘90s stars Tony! Toni! Tone! They were “great” yet he only got two Tonys. Last time he booked them he got one Tony.
He wasn’t happy.
It’s so common now to see few or none of an act’s original members on stage, it’s worth noting bands still largely intact despite many decades together. Indeed, much of Riot Fest this fall is almost a tribute to such dedication and good luck: Chicago’s Fall Out Boy is mostly the group founded in 2001; Public Enemy is still Chuck D and Flavor Flav; Pavement has barely changed in 35 years; aging Los Angeles punks NOFX, the Descendants and Circle Jerks have most founding members after 40-odd years. Even Smashing Pumpkins, playing Soldier Field next month with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, despite 36 years and myriad changes, is still touring with three of four original members.
Conversely, Metallica, also playing Soldier Field next month, has just two founders (Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield) and one key early member (Kirk Hammett), partly because, they fired Dave Mustaine in 1983 — who later founded Megadeth, which is playing Tinley Park in September, though now Mustaine is the only founding member of Megadeth left.
Rock history is complicated, like an unemployment office for the fired and temporary.
“So to be honest, I find it hard to get religious about this,” said author Steven Hyden, whose several books on the history of classic rock include “Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock” and his latest, “There Was Nothing You Could Do: Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ and the End of the Heartland.” “As long as there have been reunion tours, people have wondered this stuff, but also, I think the definition of what makes a band most has become much more liberal with audiences.
“I’m sure there are people in Chicago who’ll swear Wilco hasn’t been Wilco since Jay Bennett left the band (in 2001) and hasn’t made a good album since. But I wouldn’t.”
He thinks of the Grateful Dead losing Jerry Garcia then adding John Mayer and going back on tour playing Dead tunes, albeit under a newish name. “In what world would that be acceptable? And yet Dead & Company is one of the biggest stadium acts right now.” Likewise, I think of Springsteen going on tour in 1984 without Steven Van Zandt, who left the E Street Band for a solo career. For some faithful, it was a death in the family. Except, in 1984, Springsteen went from leader of a large cult to superstar, and in years since, after actual deaths in the E Street Band (and the return of Van Zandt in 1999), their stage show has become a bittersweet celebration of community and resilience.
“I think of a lot of classic rock now as a sort of agreement with the audience: This is better than nothing,” Hyden said. “As in life, as people get older and more vulnerable, we feel tenderness. We feel it for bands. When all the members of a favorite act were alive and it was possible for them to get back together, I might have felt differently. But as they get older and you no longer have that possibility? The alternative is worse.”
cborrelli@chicagotribune.com
