Whatever Happened To ....

Nothing. They're still touring

We all know about One Hit Wonders: groups that had a big radio hit in the 60’s or 70’s and were never heard of again. And many of the promising groups back in the day succumbed to one or more of the Big Four group-killers:

• Drugs and alcohol

• Bad management

• Personal differences within the band

• One member gets all the attention and goes solo

But then, there are groups that did not die. They’re still around! You can still go to their shows.

I’m not talking about the Stones, the Who, the Eagles, or Fleetwood Mac, because it’s still news when they go out on yet one more reunion tour. They’re too big to fail. Any promoter can book some gigs and drag them out for another payday, even with no original members. I’m not talking about those groups.

No, these are the groups you haven’t thought of in years, who’ve stuck it out through 50+ years of death, drugs, members quitting, and being dropped by their record companies, and they’re still out there entertaining the fans. This is the real spirit of rock ‘n’ roll.

Before we get into the bands, we have to deal an age-old philosophical problem: if you replace all the original members, is it still the same band?

Ship of Theseus

Plutarch posed it thus:

The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned from Crete had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their places, in so much that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.

Philosophers from Thomas Hobbes, Aristotle, and Heraclitus have had a go at this, and as with most good philosophical problems, there’s no accepted answer. Grok summarizes it thus:

The Ship of Theseus suggests there’s no definitive answer to whether a band with no original members is "the same." Different perspectives yield different conclusions:

Materialist View (members = parts): The band ceases to be the original once all founding members are gone. A new lineup is a different entity, even if it uses the same name.

Functionalist View (form = music/brand): The band remains the same as long as it performs the same music and upholds the band’s legacy.

Nominalist View (identity is a label): The band’s identity is whatever we call it—fans, promoters, or legal owners decide.

Perdurantist View (temporal stages): The band is a series of stages, and the current lineup is just a later phase of the same entity.

People who assert the Functionalist View would say that if they do the same songs in the same way, they’re the same band. You’re free to adopt this view, but I lean to the Perdurantist View: the original band was a series of stages that it evolved through. Had it continued with all original members, it might be something today that’s different from the new replacement version. It might even be worse, since they could refuse to do the old songs. Or maybe they’d just run out of energy and not feel like performing anymore. So no: the current Yardbirds are not what the original members would have evolved into, probably, but that group is gone. Little Feat are definitely not what Lowell George would have changed them into, because he was already cutting them loose when he died.

Here are some groups adhering at least to the Functionalist View, backed up by lawyers: they have the legal right to use the name.

Climax Blues Band

Remember Couldn’t Get It Right? Great song. This live performance is from 1976:

The band’s history is exhaustingly recounted in the Wikipedia page. What an incredible career they’ve had! Derek Holt, an original member now retired, said in an interview.

Our first album was recorded over two days in the infamous Abbey Road Studios in 1968. We were in Studio 1, The Beatles were in Studio 2 and Pink Floyd in studio 3! I was just 19 years of age.

Now they’re still touring, at least in the UK, with no original members. Pete Haycock, Colin Cooper, and Arthur Wood have died, and others have retired.

The Yardbirds

“What? The Yardbirds? Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page? Those Yardbirds?”

Yes, those Yardbirds. The massively influential British group from the late 60’s: For Your Love; Shapes of Things; Smokestack Lightning; Heart Full of Soul.

They just finished a tour in the US. None of those three guitarists played on it, unfortunately, one (Beck) being dead. They do have one original member, Jim McCarty (drums), Here’s the setlist for their last show of the tour, April 2025.

Here they are on a cruise ship in 2024:

Little Feat

Little Feat and its founder, Lowell George, are one of those great 70’s groups that everyone should know, but doesn’t, necessarily. There’s a movie about George, which I wrote about here.

Waiting for Columbus is one of the greatest live albums ever recorded. If you only own one Feats album, this is the one to have. You’ll hear some world-class musicians at the very peak of their game:

Lowell died in 1979, but the group had already started to splinter. Pianists Bill Payne and guitarist Paul Barrere had asserted a larger musical influence than George thought warranted, and had become interested in jazz-rock fusion, which disgusted George.

The group reformed with some of the original members (Payne, Clayton, Gradney) and continues to tour. They recently put out a new album featuring the single Too High to Cut My Hair, which isn’t bad at all.

An aside: this bears on the Ship of Theseus question: the pre-breakup Little Feat had ceased to exist already when George died, so what does it mean for some of the members to continue in the style that made it famous? I’d say, yes, this is Little Feat.

Tower of Power

They formed in Oakland in 1968, and had their greatest hits in the 70’s. Here’s one of their best known songs, recorded live on Soul Train:

They are still touring, with several original members (Emilio "Mimi" Castillo, Stephen "Doc" Kupka).

Just for yucks, here’s my favorite tribute / cover band, Leonid & Friends, a group of Russian and Ukrainian musicians who just love the music well enough to learn to play it note-perfectly. You can still see them on their current US tour.