Travicity
01-20-2011, 11:39 PM
Replacement Lead Singers That Failed
We all know the horrors of Van Hagar, but check out these other cases of bands who ditched their lead singer and made a horrible mistake in replacing them.
11
Motley Crue
Pity poor hair metal artists at the beginning of the 1990s. Grunge was starting to rise up, alternative scenes all over the world were kicking out truly interesting, progressive jams, and the days of tight Spandex and cocaine excess were coming to an end.
For Motley Crue, one of the most famous artists of that era, things were even worse. Frontman Vince Neil was so screwed up in 1992 that the rest of the band forced him out and started looking for a replacement. They found one in John Corabi, singer for bands Angora and The Scream. Corabi's performance with the Crue was competent, but he just seemed so earnest about everything. Motley Crue and sincerity weren't exactly friends
The 1994 album with Corabi as the singer bombed, and by 1997 Vince was back in the band.
10
Sublime
So with the death of Bradley Nowell, Southern California ska-punk band Sublime came to an early end. As it should be, really - when a singer is that associated with the band, carrying on without him is a bit of a shameless cash grab.
Oh, they waited a few years to do it? That's OK then. Thirteen years after Nowell's death, with the royalty streams running pretty dry, the remaining members of the band got back together with new singer Rome Ramirez for a tour. However, the band name was Nowell's intellectual property, so a judge ruled that they couldn't call themselves Sublime (like they wanted to). Instead of starting something new, the remaining members settled for the quais-derivative "Sublime With Rome," which is embarrassing.
9
INXS
What was with Australia and the 1980s? That was like the best decade ever for the Land Down Under, with the rest of the world gobbling up their cultural exports like woah.
One such export was INXS, the rock band fronted by the charismatic Michael Hutchence. They mixed the overproduced rock style of the late 80s with electronic twinges and enjoyed some chart success before falling off the radar in the late 90s. Hutchence killed himself in 1997 in a hotel room, and the band took a year off before playing again.
After their reformation, they worked with a few singers including Terrence Trent D'Arby, but its their current micman that makes this list. In a callow grab for cash, the band signed up for a reality show in 2005 to find their new singer. The winner was a Canadian hack named J.D. Fortune, and despite getting booted from the band for his cocaine abuse, they've brought him back for another round of state fairs and casino nostalgia concerts.
8
Dead Kennedys
So one would think that punk bands would be immune from the cash-driven quest to keep soldiering on when the original lineup is done, right? Wrong, friend. Take the case of seminal San Francisco punks the Dead Kennedys.
Founded in 1978, the DKs were notorious for their politically-soaked rants set over frenzied hardcore, courtesy of singer Jello Biafra. But when an argument over royalties broke up the band, Biafra went his own way, releasing a series of well-recieved spoken word albums.
The rest of the band, not so much. After recruiting Dr. Know singer and former child actor Brandon Cruz to take Biafra's place, they went on to farm out the DKs to whoever would take them, licensing songs for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games and releasing new songs about how bad it is to download MP3s. Yikes.
7
Blind Melon
Oh, sure, you remember Blind Melon. That 90s band that sounded like a lot of the other 90s bands, only watered down a little bit. They had the video with the bee.
And then the singer died - Shannon Hoon was found dead on the band's tour bus of a cocaine-induced heart attack in 1995. The band tried to find a new singer but ended up going their separate ways - the dignified choice, in my opinion.
But dignity never lasts, as the surviving members put the band back together in 2006 with a brand new singer, the completely generic Travis Warren. What was the thing that put him over the top? He has a tattoo of Shannon Hoon's face on his back. That's just creepy, dude.
6
Judas Priest
Is Rob Halford the hardest-rocking gay dude ever? If there's a harder-rocking one, I'd like to meet him. The lead singer of Judas Priest led the band through the first days of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal with his powerful four-octave range. But after Priest had soldiered on for over a decade, Halford wanted something more.
He left the band to pursue a more thrash-metal direction with his new unit Fight, and Priest needed to scrape up a replacement. They settled on Tim "Ripper" Owens, frontman of Priest tribute group British Steel. Fans weren't pleased (it's not like anyone can fill Halford's codpiece), and Ripper was out of the band by 2003.
5
Journey
New lead singers can come from just about anywhere - but YouTube? After the meteoric success of Justin Bieber, it's apparently the hot new place to find a vocalist. That's what legendary 70s cheese-rock band Journey did, anyways.
Singer Steve Perry has been out of the band since 1998, when he injured his hip in Hawaii and could no longer perform. The band ground through a number of replacements before their manager saw YouTube videos of Filipino cover band The Zoo playing songs by Kenny Loggins, Journey and other 80s wuss-rock heroes. They immediately reached out to the singer, Arnel Pineda, and recruited him to be the new singer.
Let's just say that fans of Journey are less than pleased. Thankfully there are only like eight of them in the world.
4
The Misfits
Lodi, New Jersey's favorite sons, the Misfits were like a bullet of trash-punk nonsense shot straight from Frankenstein's brain. Their early albums are ultra-catchy slabs of primitive punk anchored by Glenn Danzig's hilariously creepy lyrics.
Glenn left the band in 1983 to found the more musically complex Samhain (not necessarily a wise move), and the band members went their separate ways. But in the 90s, with money to be made, former members Doyle and Jerry Only sued Glenn for the rights to the name and mounted a comeback, with new signer Michale Graves behind the mic.
Unfortunately, what's funny and punk when you're a teenager is just sad when you're an old man, and the modern Misfits were such a joke they were soon reduced to appearing on WCW wrestling programs to promote their albums. Graves also left the band, with Jerry, the sole remaining original member, now singing as well.
And Graves? Would go on to work at IHOP. Oof.
3
Black Sabbath
There's kind of a disproportionate number of Metal acts on this list - I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because the hard-charging lifestyle of drugs and groupies burns through singers so fast?
One of the most intense singer replacements in music history happened with one of the most influential bands of all time. Black Sabbath, led by Ozzy Osbourne, paved the way for doom-slow songs of horror and despair with crushing guitars courtesy Tony Iommi. But when Ozzy was fired from the group in '79 because of his boozing, they lost the spark that made them truly trailblazers.
It's not like new vocalist Ronnie James Dio was bad, per se - he was a completely competent heavy metal vocalist. So were Ian Gillen, Glenn Hughes, Tony Martin and all of the other mic jockeys that Iommi recruited to stand in Ozzy's shoes. But none of them were Ozzy.
2
Venom
Staying with English heavy metal for a second, here we have the sad case of Newcastle's finest. Venom was founded in 1978 and blazed the trail for thrash and death metal with their first two uncompromising albums with singer Conrad "Cronos" Lant delivering harsh Satanic screeds over pummeling tracks.
After their fifth album, the corny fantasy Calm Before The Storm, bombed, Cronos split the scene, leaving drummer Tony Abbadon the only original member. His attempts to keep the band going with Tony Dolan were an absolute disgrace, pissing off legions of British metal fans until the original lineup eventually got back together.
1
Van Halen
There could be no other name to finish this list. For my money, the only real Van Halen is with David Lee Roth, no matter how drug-addled and ridiculous he might get. I know that there are some partisans to the Van Hagar material, but I'm not one of them. But even Sammy looks good when he's compared to the third singer for the band.
In the mid-90s, the band started recording with David Lee Roth again, alienating Sammy Hagar, who quit the group. Then Eddie Van Halen decided he couldn't work with Roth either, leaving the band without a singer. They chose Gary Cherone, singer of acoustic wimp-metal bands Extreme. A more inappropriate frontman could barely have been concieved of, and the resultant album was the band's biggest flop.
UGO
We all know the horrors of Van Hagar, but check out these other cases of bands who ditched their lead singer and made a horrible mistake in replacing them.
11
Motley Crue
Pity poor hair metal artists at the beginning of the 1990s. Grunge was starting to rise up, alternative scenes all over the world were kicking out truly interesting, progressive jams, and the days of tight Spandex and cocaine excess were coming to an end.
For Motley Crue, one of the most famous artists of that era, things were even worse. Frontman Vince Neil was so screwed up in 1992 that the rest of the band forced him out and started looking for a replacement. They found one in John Corabi, singer for bands Angora and The Scream. Corabi's performance with the Crue was competent, but he just seemed so earnest about everything. Motley Crue and sincerity weren't exactly friends
The 1994 album with Corabi as the singer bombed, and by 1997 Vince was back in the band.
10
Sublime
So with the death of Bradley Nowell, Southern California ska-punk band Sublime came to an early end. As it should be, really - when a singer is that associated with the band, carrying on without him is a bit of a shameless cash grab.
Oh, they waited a few years to do it? That's OK then. Thirteen years after Nowell's death, with the royalty streams running pretty dry, the remaining members of the band got back together with new singer Rome Ramirez for a tour. However, the band name was Nowell's intellectual property, so a judge ruled that they couldn't call themselves Sublime (like they wanted to). Instead of starting something new, the remaining members settled for the quais-derivative "Sublime With Rome," which is embarrassing.
9
INXS
What was with Australia and the 1980s? That was like the best decade ever for the Land Down Under, with the rest of the world gobbling up their cultural exports like woah.
One such export was INXS, the rock band fronted by the charismatic Michael Hutchence. They mixed the overproduced rock style of the late 80s with electronic twinges and enjoyed some chart success before falling off the radar in the late 90s. Hutchence killed himself in 1997 in a hotel room, and the band took a year off before playing again.
After their reformation, they worked with a few singers including Terrence Trent D'Arby, but its their current micman that makes this list. In a callow grab for cash, the band signed up for a reality show in 2005 to find their new singer. The winner was a Canadian hack named J.D. Fortune, and despite getting booted from the band for his cocaine abuse, they've brought him back for another round of state fairs and casino nostalgia concerts.
8
Dead Kennedys
So one would think that punk bands would be immune from the cash-driven quest to keep soldiering on when the original lineup is done, right? Wrong, friend. Take the case of seminal San Francisco punks the Dead Kennedys.
Founded in 1978, the DKs were notorious for their politically-soaked rants set over frenzied hardcore, courtesy of singer Jello Biafra. But when an argument over royalties broke up the band, Biafra went his own way, releasing a series of well-recieved spoken word albums.
The rest of the band, not so much. After recruiting Dr. Know singer and former child actor Brandon Cruz to take Biafra's place, they went on to farm out the DKs to whoever would take them, licensing songs for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games and releasing new songs about how bad it is to download MP3s. Yikes.
7
Blind Melon
Oh, sure, you remember Blind Melon. That 90s band that sounded like a lot of the other 90s bands, only watered down a little bit. They had the video with the bee.
And then the singer died - Shannon Hoon was found dead on the band's tour bus of a cocaine-induced heart attack in 1995. The band tried to find a new singer but ended up going their separate ways - the dignified choice, in my opinion.
But dignity never lasts, as the surviving members put the band back together in 2006 with a brand new singer, the completely generic Travis Warren. What was the thing that put him over the top? He has a tattoo of Shannon Hoon's face on his back. That's just creepy, dude.
6
Judas Priest
Is Rob Halford the hardest-rocking gay dude ever? If there's a harder-rocking one, I'd like to meet him. The lead singer of Judas Priest led the band through the first days of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal with his powerful four-octave range. But after Priest had soldiered on for over a decade, Halford wanted something more.
He left the band to pursue a more thrash-metal direction with his new unit Fight, and Priest needed to scrape up a replacement. They settled on Tim "Ripper" Owens, frontman of Priest tribute group British Steel. Fans weren't pleased (it's not like anyone can fill Halford's codpiece), and Ripper was out of the band by 2003.
5
Journey
New lead singers can come from just about anywhere - but YouTube? After the meteoric success of Justin Bieber, it's apparently the hot new place to find a vocalist. That's what legendary 70s cheese-rock band Journey did, anyways.
Singer Steve Perry has been out of the band since 1998, when he injured his hip in Hawaii and could no longer perform. The band ground through a number of replacements before their manager saw YouTube videos of Filipino cover band The Zoo playing songs by Kenny Loggins, Journey and other 80s wuss-rock heroes. They immediately reached out to the singer, Arnel Pineda, and recruited him to be the new singer.
Let's just say that fans of Journey are less than pleased. Thankfully there are only like eight of them in the world.
4
The Misfits
Lodi, New Jersey's favorite sons, the Misfits were like a bullet of trash-punk nonsense shot straight from Frankenstein's brain. Their early albums are ultra-catchy slabs of primitive punk anchored by Glenn Danzig's hilariously creepy lyrics.
Glenn left the band in 1983 to found the more musically complex Samhain (not necessarily a wise move), and the band members went their separate ways. But in the 90s, with money to be made, former members Doyle and Jerry Only sued Glenn for the rights to the name and mounted a comeback, with new signer Michale Graves behind the mic.
Unfortunately, what's funny and punk when you're a teenager is just sad when you're an old man, and the modern Misfits were such a joke they were soon reduced to appearing on WCW wrestling programs to promote their albums. Graves also left the band, with Jerry, the sole remaining original member, now singing as well.
And Graves? Would go on to work at IHOP. Oof.
3
Black Sabbath
There's kind of a disproportionate number of Metal acts on this list - I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because the hard-charging lifestyle of drugs and groupies burns through singers so fast?
One of the most intense singer replacements in music history happened with one of the most influential bands of all time. Black Sabbath, led by Ozzy Osbourne, paved the way for doom-slow songs of horror and despair with crushing guitars courtesy Tony Iommi. But when Ozzy was fired from the group in '79 because of his boozing, they lost the spark that made them truly trailblazers.
It's not like new vocalist Ronnie James Dio was bad, per se - he was a completely competent heavy metal vocalist. So were Ian Gillen, Glenn Hughes, Tony Martin and all of the other mic jockeys that Iommi recruited to stand in Ozzy's shoes. But none of them were Ozzy.
2
Venom
Staying with English heavy metal for a second, here we have the sad case of Newcastle's finest. Venom was founded in 1978 and blazed the trail for thrash and death metal with their first two uncompromising albums with singer Conrad "Cronos" Lant delivering harsh Satanic screeds over pummeling tracks.
After their fifth album, the corny fantasy Calm Before The Storm, bombed, Cronos split the scene, leaving drummer Tony Abbadon the only original member. His attempts to keep the band going with Tony Dolan were an absolute disgrace, pissing off legions of British metal fans until the original lineup eventually got back together.
1
Van Halen
There could be no other name to finish this list. For my money, the only real Van Halen is with David Lee Roth, no matter how drug-addled and ridiculous he might get. I know that there are some partisans to the Van Hagar material, but I'm not one of them. But even Sammy looks good when he's compared to the third singer for the band.
In the mid-90s, the band started recording with David Lee Roth again, alienating Sammy Hagar, who quit the group. Then Eddie Van Halen decided he couldn't work with Roth either, leaving the band without a singer. They chose Gary Cherone, singer of acoustic wimp-metal bands Extreme. A more inappropriate frontman could barely have been concieved of, and the resultant album was the band's biggest flop.
UGO