Michael Hann at the Graun on bands still touring and recording but with no original members left - among them Molly Hatchet, Napalm Death, Soft Machine, Yes (debatable but strictly-speaking correct) and Odyssey.
The current incarnation of Gong is another example.
It's a bit like organ replacement and limb transplants taken to the extreme, such that there's no original body left.
Perhaps it's not so odd... You could see a band as an institution (like a school or hospital) or a commercial entity (a shop, a company). Why shouldn't it perpetuate itself after the resignation, retirement, or decease of the founders and original staff?
Then again, in rock and pop, so much of what makes a band is the players as individual instrumental voices and the almost-instantly-identifiable composite of their playing as the band's sound.
Likewise the voice of the singer - and in some cases how the lead voice meshes with the harmonies of other members.
(E.g. the way Fleetwood Mac got increasingly ersatz in certain phases when most of the principals had left).
(Conversely, you could take Fleetwood Mac's journey - with original central figure Peter Green long gone, the arrival of a wholly new creative engine in Buckingham-Nicks - as a good example of evolving longevity in a band-as-institution.... That said, they always had the continuity of the rhythm section, which was also the source of the band's name)
Given that rock and pop are audio-visual hybrid forms, you could further say that the physical appearance - the face, body, expressions, gestures, mannerisms - of the performers are part of what makes a band a band.
In fact, given that rock and pop are audio-visual-verbal-textual hybrids, you could further-further argue that a particular way with words, an imagination, the personality and humour of a band - expressed in lyrics but also interviews, stage banter - is what makes a band a band. (Oasis isn't just the songs, the recordings and the concerts, it's the interviews, the ongoing saga of Liam versus Noel... )
In rock and pop, you are consuming audio-visual products but you are also consuming identities.
If a band is both the personalities in it and the collective personality of the group, how can that still be said to exist in the absence of all the original persons that constituted its make-up?
In the arc of ersatz, at what point does a band where all the originating members have left effectively morph into a tribute band?
Some members are more integral and identity-constitutive than others. Ergo, they should have disbanded after Moon died... like Zep did after Bonham.
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So true about the Who. Other bands that should have quit when they lost their drummer: REM, Sleater Kinney, The Rolling Stones
Didn't R.E.M. actually stop when the drummer left cos he was sick?
Haha that is a sign of how pointless their continuation was. They actually made (count them) five albums after Bill Berry retired for health reasons.
The Stranglers are going to go this way, aren't they? Dr. Feelgood have been so for many years.
Think Soft Machine were out of original members by 1977, or thereabouts. The first album they made that was original member free, "Bundles", is actually very good though. It kind of worked for the Softs, because each time a virtuoso left they were replaced by another virtuoso with a somewhat different angle.
Tangerine Dream, if I recall rightly, had all the original members replaced, then had all the replacements replaced. Any other third-generation bands?
To be pedantic, and I'm sure you know this anyway, but every cell in the body gets replaced about every two years. You, Simon, are on roughly the thirtieth line-up of you.
Also Fairport Convention, more or less from 1973 onward...
As another third-generation group, the Sugababes may count. Or at least, they counted for a while.
The original three, who had all quit or been fired, got back together to reconstitute the group, and regained the use of the name last year: https://www.godisinthetvzine.co.uk/2022/06/27/sugababes-win-back-their-name-and-announce-triumphant-tour/#:~:text=In%20March%202010%2C%20Buena%20filed,They%20said.
Would never have taken you for a Softs fan, Phil, and a late period (well I suppose midperiod given their longevity) Soft fan
I could swear R.E.M. had some kind of "all for one, one for all" / it ain't R.E.M. without all four of use stance. (They split their earnings four ways, didn't they? Secret of long life in a band). The last album I listened to them by came out in '98 and only because someone was reviewing it for me at Spin.
Hazard Profile is a fabulous groove:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zSZBAcQ-5M
In the case of Soft Machine, I personally find that the fewer original members the better.
One day I got a call from a friend. SHe had just watched Crystal, by New Order. She was so stoned that she tried to explain that the line-up had completely changed "but they still sound great".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVMyXDsadLQ
Tangerine Dream wasn't out of original members until Edgar Froese died in 2015. But he was the only original member from the second album onwards - and the rest of the lineup did indeed change many times over the years (especially after Chris Franke left). That the remaining band chose to continue after Froeses death was kind of a bold move, given that he pretty much was TG.
That first original lineup was really wild though - Froese, Schulze and Schnitzler!!
Another way of looking at a band is as a football team, seen this analogy twice recently from Steve Lilywhite and I think someone from Yes (unsurprisingly). Yes certainly had a football team like policy of replacing people when they found someone they considered better. Original member is no guide to quality anyway, a lot of bands go through an album or two and personnel changes before finding their classic sound and/or configuration (Yes again, Jefferson Airplane, personally prefer the Hanley Scanlon Fall but debatable I know).
Fairport took the leap into greatness when they replaced Iain Matthews and Judy Dyble with Sandy Denny. Even their '70s albums after Denny and Thompson left are worth a listen. I had a similar experience with post-Gram Parsons Flying Burrito Brothers; their third album is a perfectly good country-rock album of that period.
Okay, Tangerine Dream aren't third-generation yet, but I think I've found a bona fide example: Iron Butterfly. The Wikipedia page lists every line-up they had over fifty years, and I think me citing it now is the first time in existence that it's been of interest to anyone on the planet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Butterfly
An early example of this syndrome would be the twilight-incarnation of Velvet Underground - the Squeeze album (rec 1971; released '73) contained no original members. Doug Yule, who basically played and recorded the whole album, had joined VU after White Light, White Heat. Original drummer Maureen Tucker was set to play on the album but got fired by the group's manager.
"It's a bit like organ replacement and limb transplants taken to the extreme, such that there's no original body left."
Mereology: think Ship of Theseus and Grandfather's Axe, or E Cig devices
there are no "bands" only musicians
Gemeinschaft vs Geschellschaft
Mechanical Solidarity vs Organic Solidarity
Männerbande
If you have something against personnel changes in "bands" you are a Blood and Soil Fascist right?
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