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Legacy Bands, Take Two: Who Are You?

Podcast host Mike Hanks offers an insightful perspective on bands losing their identity over time…

When is a band no longer itself? Does the song remain the same with new faces and voices? Those are questions I posed in a recent article, available here. Should an entirely or nearly entirely new lineup have the right to perform under a legacy name? Examples in the piece included The Four Seasons, Little River Band, and Ambrosia.

These questions are ones that people can relate to on an intimate level. Bands aren’t just a collection of musicians and singers…they represent significant times in our personal lives. They are the voice of an era. They speak our feelings through the language of music. And although we treasure reunions and anniversary performances, it’s usually not the same experience when the majority of members are replacements.

The Tubes – Photo: Jorgen Angel/Redferns

The most disappointing live concert this writer ever experienced was in Portland Oregon a few years back. During my college days, the wild seventies San Francisco band The Tubes (above) had just gone mainstream. They released the major hit “She’s A Beauty” and appeared in the film XANADU with Olivia Newton-John. In every way, The Tubes were my jam.

But when I finally saw them live in concert four decades later, only lead singer Fee Waybill looked familiar (he’d returned in 1993 after a seven-year split). The show was atrocious and they didn’t play a single recognizable song. I walked out after fifty minutes, crushed.

It turns out that there were actually three original members present that evening. But now, as old men, their essence and soul had been replaced by something boring this diehard fan couldn’t relate to. So perhaps I’d have enjoyed myself more if new members had invigorated the group. Hard to say, and therein lies the conundrum.

My esteemed colleague and friend Mike Hanks created and hosts the Can’t Turn It Off Podcast, which he’s had me on a time or two. He also publishes Vegas Insight, a witty and perceptive blog about the more fascinating aspects of Sin City. Mike penned an intelligent and thoughtful response to my article. I think you’ll enjoy it.

Mike Hanks

Put together a list of 20 bands of questionable authenticity in 2025 and I’m sure no two of us will agree on which ones are fairly or unfairly using the band name. Not a new question, but one that seems as topical as ever.
I’m not a music historian, but I know there was a time when some of the really old bands of the ’50s were being sold in the ’80s and ’90s. They allegedly didn’t have any original members, and often the ticket buyers were none the wiser. Especially without an internet to provide any information about who is performing under the band’s flag. It seemed like the common denominator was that there would be one original member, part of the classic lineup, or an early replacement in the lineup at the end of the commercial heyday. 
Circa 2007 I was playing blackjack at the Sahara, and a guy who sat down at my table that night seemed to be familiar to the staff in the pit. It turned out he was one of the performers from the showroom. They had a combo of oldies acts from the ’50s or ’60s. This guy was a singer for The Coasters.
He mentioned his name…I had no idea how young or old he was, or how far back The Coasters went. It wasn’t until I did a little online research to learn that the guy was not an original member. He didn’t say he was, and I learned that The Coasters already had a long history dating back to the 1950s. At that point, they may have had one early/original member performing with the group.
I just looked up their Wikipedia page, and some form of The Coasters still exists. The oldest member dates back to 2001. That’s a long run, and you may have once shared the stage with one of the classic era members, but would I really consider it The Coasters? I don’t know.
It’s not as if it was one lead singer that people identified as the face and voice of the band. So perhaps it’s fair that a band that dates back to the mid-fifties is allowed to continue under the name people know…despite the fact nobody in the band was around when they recorded “Yakety-Yak”. 
I think the same can be said for the Oak Ridge Boys. Technically none of them are original members, I don’t believe, but most of them were part of the commercially successful era of the band. It’s a band that goes back to the 1940s and probably wasn’t as commercially successful as the band would become in the ’80s. So in theory the entire band should continue when the three classic-era members retire? Or should the name be retired when all the most famous members have retired or died? 
Foreigner is doing a farewell tour, if I’m not mistaken, and it’s down to one member from its heyday. That’s a guitarist, and he doesn’t even do every show anymore. He makes select appearances, I’m assuming, because of health and age. So you’re getting Foreigner concerts with none of the guys who were there in the heyday. Few of them have probably been around for more than two decades, but is it really Foreigner? 
Despite all the goofiness with band names and who was performing under them from the ’50s, we’re seeing similar issues with our ’80s hair bands. Research the history of Quiet Riot and then tell me whether or not that band qualifies as Quiet Riot. There’s one thin thread to their early commercial success as of 2025. 
I saw Guns n’ Roses on Halloween night 2012 at the Hard Rock in Vegas. Fun show. Lots of music, Axl Rose could sing some of the tunes well, but others were a little lackluster. Not sure what to make of that. Nobody else on that stage in 2012 was part of the heyday.
While I will acknowledge having been to a Guns n’ Roses concert, I generally suggest I saw a Guns n’ Roses tribute band fronted by Axl Rose. He may be the voice, but I’d credit members of the classic lineup as being highly important to the songwriting and sound of the band. It felt a lot like a tribute band to me that night. 
Here’s an obscure one, I saw the minorly successful hair band Britny Fox about 15 years ago here in Minneapolis. They were opening for a band I wanted to see. The only original member was the bassist. I had never been to a Britny Fox concert, I never needed to see one, but what the heck. Yeah, it’s hard to say I saw Britny Fox in concert, because who did I see really?
Britny Fox
When it comes to hair bands, we’ve had a couple of instances in recent years of two groups performing under the same name, or one performing under a variant of the name. There were essentially two versions of Great White until about a year ago. LA Guns had a dispute over who had the right to bill their band when there were two versions circa 2019. 
Rock DJ Eddie Trunk has emphasized many times that the term is “music business”. Emphasis on ‘business’. Even with the internet, even with resources to tell you who or what you’re getting, plenty of people don’t care about how authentic the band is. They’re buying the name on the marquee.
Nobody wants a tribute band performing as Journey, But if there’s some connection to the band’s history, and the band performing has a legal right to use the name, the promoter needs the name to move product. Fans cry regularly that bands should perform under new names when a key member dies or leaves.
It’s amazing how upset people get by the name the band is using when they know who is and isn’t on the stage. They probably have zero interest in going regardless of who was performing on stage. I’m all for authenticity, but people get weirdly obsessive about what a group of musicians is calling themselves, and whether or not they have the right to. 
It’s a fascinating topic you have tapped into. Despite all the uncertainty and vagueness of who has the right to what from past generations, and despite the knowledge of bands today that they have to set up a business structure detailing who owns the rights to the band name who owns what percent of the band entity, etc, we continue to have issues regarding what constitutes a band and who has the right to be that band. 

 

 

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