Amplified Observations takes a look into bands that continued to make music despite the death of their artistic voice.
Your lead singer died. Bummer.
And now all of your fans are worried your band will, in effect, fold and start releasing greatest hits comps and live recordings to scrounge every penny left out of your artistic magic. It’s easy to replace guitar, bass or drums — but a voice?
For most bands whose lead singers either meet an untimely demise or quit the band, this formula tends to follow, such in the cases with T.Rex, Nirvana, The Minutemen, Queen and a variety of other groups.
However, there exist several notable exceptions in the history of long-haired guys playing music together. Just because the voice of your band is gone doesn’t mean your future discography must follow.
For instance, AC/DC is a prime example of a band truckin’ on following the 1980 alcohol-related death of original frontman Bon Scott. The band recruited Brian Johnson to fill in Scott’s high-pitched screaming shoes and put out one of its most popular albums Back In Black, which features popular songs including “Back In Back,” “Hell’s Bells” and “You Shook Me All Night Long.” And, although I’m not a huge fan of AC/DC, I have to admit that Johnson only amplified the momentum Scott created to new levels of rock ‘n’ roll.
To a lesser extent, Van Halen and Black Sabbath also continued to put out some decent content after the departures of David Lee Roth and Ozzy Osbourne, respectively. Say what you want about Sammy Hagar, but “Finish What Ya Started” is a snazzy rock tune. And Dio fit the bill for Sabbath just as well.
In other more progressive cases, bands will restart under new names when they lose their lead singer. Notably, after Zak De La Rocha quit Rage Against the Machine, the other band members met Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell and formed Audioslave, which would be a mainstay on modern rock radio for the first decade of the millennium.
Likewise, Joy Division (you know, that band from the T-shirt?) formed New Order after the 1980 suicide of lead singer Ian Curtis. Through the 1980s, New Order put out some of the best post-punk, alternative rock music of all time combining guitars with synthesizer and drums machines and putting out tracks like “Blue Monday,” “Temptation” and “Age of Consent.”
Yet, these strategies sometimes don’t work out as well. Sure, it was exciting to see Sublime put out some new music, but with Rome? It didn’t compare to the soul of the earlier music with Bradley Nowell. And did anybody really pay attention to Lyrnrd Skynrd after its lead singer, along with a few other members, died in a plane crash?
But, can you really blame bands for trying to continue their legacy and put food on the table (or a Porsche in the garage) doing what they love? Of course it doesn’t work out sometimes, but other times it does, and to great extents.
So maybe your lead singer dying wasn’t such a big deal after all.
He couldn’t even hit those high notes, anyway.
