Bands that thrived after the main songwriter left?

Fairport Convention carried on for years after Richard Thompson and Sandy Denny left, thereby displaying many of the same characteristics as the chicken that runs 'round the farmyard after it's head has been cut off.

Soft Machine - Kevin Ayers wrote or contributed to a pretty high proportion of the songs on the first album and the band also managed to continue after Robert Wyatt left in 1971 (although there were shite from then onwards).

The Damned also survived the loss of two main songwriters (first Brian James then Capt. Sensible) and went on to have their greatest chart success (albeit with a cover version).

Deep Purple seem to have existed without every conceivable combination of their original / core members at one time or another (and I believe many of the associated bands weren't much better).

Arguably Black Sabbath and AC/DC (most of both bands' early material seem to have been credited as collaborations / group compositions)

this book is no good bcz the author does not make himself one of the characters

i like the ideology/ethos behind the "rockband", but i like it bcz it is peculiar and somewhat deluded, not bcz it is common sense (common sense = "yr songwriter is a dullard on-stage, so don't put him on-stage" + "yr songwriter leaves, so hire another one")

Q: during what musical era did Rebranding Commercial Orthodoxy convince itself it wz pure essence of counterculture resistance?

(and was any of their solo stuff a match for the stuff that came of the clusterfuck-fighting era?)

(ie often the songwriter doesn't thrive after leaving either: he needs those disrespectful sneering bastards to animate him and his ideas)

happily ever after = boring ever after, artwise

don't run away to find better yesmen, run away to find better no-men

Mayhem has been quite successful after the deaths of their songwriter (Aarseth) and lyricist (Ohlin).

Edge Of Sanity are still active without Dan Swanö, although "thrive" is probably an exaggeration.

And what about Underworld? How much did Darren Emerson write?

but when the entire group came together in it's entirety for the self titled effort - it was marred by jealousy and craziness - all four original writers on the same room, each holding back, the best songs for their own solo albums...so the solo albums did their damage ... crazy.

So, weakly, I'll say: It's obvious the record-buying public at large cares not a whit whether the recording artist had a hand in cooking the pudding. I mean, Elvis is the King and had few and mostly disputed co-write credits to his name. So, isn't OK for one kind of cult (the rock crit/music geek demo) to fixate on the source of songwriting? Amongst the various other cultural non-concerns we (OK, I) obsess over?

(I'm not surprised, Dan.)

other bands that thrived after their songwriter left were supertramp and mercury rev (aren't they quite the same nowadays?).

Uh, thrived how?

?

Can and Malcolm Moonie, the first singer/songwriter on their first two albums and some later work in the 80s, maybe a good example. He thought of the name 'Can', and he wrote most of the songs, and Can continued on for nearly 15 years without him when he left in 1970 due to acid-related psychosis.

Although you could argue that the vocals don't play the same part in Can's music as they do in other music, and that Holger and Irmin were the REAL leaders of the group, the fact is still relevant

The Gin Blossoms' hits were with songs that the former member had written. The second album, by all accounts, stank.

I can think of several instances of bands with multiple songwriters where one of them left to do their own thing. For instance, Guided By Voices are doing just fine without Tobin Sprout, although I liked the way his occasional contributions provided a counterpoint to Robert Pollard's songs. And Silkworm did pretty well for themselves after Joel Phelps left. Treepeople put out one more album after Doug Martsch left, and then they changed their name to Stuntman.

Anti-answer: Pale Saints, because Slow Buildings was lousy and I never understood why they tried to keep going after Ian Masters left.

Bands where the main songwriter / lead singer left, but was thoughtful enough to stay in the same neighborhood of my alphabetized record collection:
Human League --> Heaven 17
Genesis --> Gabriel
Haircut 100 --> Nick Heyward (this last band definitely did not thrive, though I do enjoy their post-Heyward album)

Denny Laine is in my ears and in my eyes

(very sorry)

This def seems to be thing British bands in the 60's did in particular tho

Pink Floyd kinda

lol first post nvrmnd

Renaissance are a classic example of this though perhaps not so much the main songwriter as the everyone in the band

Kind of applies:

David Conway iirc was the frontman, singer and the one writing the lyrics for My Bloody Valentine (he also gave the band its name) whilst Kevin Shields wrote the music.

Eventually he left and Shields decided the lyrics and vocals were better left blurred in the background anyways.

I think all of Little Feat's charting singles came after Lowell George died

Paramore is a half-example of this — obviously Hayley Williams is still there, but the difference between their Josh Farro era and the Taylor York era is dramatic (I much prefer the latter).

xp Never realized that. That's totally weird.

Sorry

The Wurzels were formed in 1966 as a backing group for, and by, singer/songwriter Adge Cutler.

Adge Cutler died after falling asleep at the wheel of his MGB sports car which then overturned on a roundabout approaching the Severn Bridge. He was returning alone from a Wurzels show in Hereford in May 1974. He was buried in Nailsea.

Cutler's death marked a turning point in the history of the Wurzels. Deprived of the main song-writing talent, the remaining Wurzels recorded The Wurzels Are Scrumptious! in 1975, an album containing many favourites from the back catalogue, including a number of previously unrecorded Cutler-written songs. In order to continue the surviving band needed its own songs, and these mostly took the formula of re-written popular pop songs of the time with the lyrics changed to include the usual Wurzel themes (cider, farming, local villages, Cheddar cheese, etc.)

In 1976, the Wurzels released "The Combine Harvester", a re-work of the song "Brand New Key", by Melanie, which became a UK hit, topping the charts for 2 weeks. The band quickly followed its success with the release of a number of similarly themed songs such as "I Am A Cider Drinker" (a rework of Paloma Blanca which was written by and had been a hit for the George Baker Selection and also covered by Jonathan King the year before) which got to number three in the UK chart, and "Farmer Bill's Cowman" (a reworking of the Whistling Jack Smith instrumental "I Was Kaiser Bill's Batman").

Poco were a lot more successful after Richie Furay left I believe?

in 1976 there was a band called Strontium 90 whose main songwriter was an ex-Gong dude named Mike Howlett. Howlett left and the remaining 3 members formed The Police.

Arguably Black Sabbath and AC/DC (most of both bands' early material seem to have been credited as collaborations / group compositions)

Back in 2007 I interviewed Ronnie James Dio and he told me how happy Geezer Butler was when he joined the band, because Butler had written the vast majority of the lyrics when Ozzy was up front, but Dio wrote his own lyrics and Butler was happy to turn over the reins.

Another "half example" is 10,000 Maniacs – John Lombardo co-wrote most the songs on their first two albums, then left the group in 1986 due to "creative and political differences" (according to an "citation needed" quote in Wikipedia); after which the band really took off.

Ultravox! with an !

nwa's follow-up album without ice cube wasn't as successful as the first but still did pretty damn well with mc ren handling most of the songwriting

yep ozzy wrote almost none of his own lyrics, whether in sabbath or solo. there's been a lot of retroactive PR to make it look otherwise. doesnt take away from him being an amazing vocalist and presence though.

and not just retroactive PR; re-recording of his solo albums to replace the musical contributions of the guys who wrote the songs who were suing to have their contributions credited and to be paid properly

yep ozzy wrote almost none of his own lyrics, whether in sabbath or solo. there's been a lot of retroactive PR to make it look otherwise. doesnt take away from him being an amazing vocalist and presence though.

I interviewed Lemmy three times over the years, and in one of those interviews he mentioned that the most money he ever made from music was for writing "Mama I'm Coming Home."

I think all of Little Feat's charting singles came after Lowell George died

The thing here is all of these singles only charted on the AOR charts, which didn't exist during George's lifetime. Interestingly, their first entry was a version of "Rock'n'Roll Doctor" from the Hoy! Hoy! comp in '81.