‘I’m the only one that can say I never quit’: meet the bands with no original members left

Nov 09, 2023

Fans often question their authenticity – but members of Yes, Odyssey, Soft Machine and Molly Hatchet explain why they’re keeping the flame alive despite the gripes

Last month, the southern US rock band Molly Hatchet played to more than 10,000 bikers at Berlin’s annual Motorcycle Jamboree, 45 years after their debut album was released. There’s nothing too unusual about that – plenty of veteran rock bands still play to huge audiences. What is unusual, though, is that no one who played on that first album – in fact, no one who was on any of their first six albums – was on stage in Berlin.

Not that Bobby Ingram – the band’s guitarist and owner of the trademark to the name Molly Hatchet – is bothered. “I’ve been in the band longer than any original member was,” he says (he joined in 1987). “I have tenure. I am the only one that can say I never quit, or turned my back on the fans. I did what it took to keep this thing out here.”

Molly Hatchet aren’t alone. Groups with no original members are not uncommon, even among bands that remain vital forces: it’s 37 years since Napalm Death had any original members. For fans who obsess over the idea of legitimacy and authenticity – think how many people refuse to recognise Pixies in their current guise, owing to the absence of Kim Deal – this can cause problems. For the musicians? Not so much.

“Basically, if you’re in a band, you have the blessing to be there,” says Theo Travis, who plays saxophone, flute and keyboards with the jazz-rock group Soft Machine (longest serving member in their fractured history: John Etheridge, who first joined in 1975). “In any band in which there is this passing of the baton like a relay, then you are clearly accepted. And if someone doesn’t carry on, then they don’t generally say, ‘Well, you must all disband.’”

That’s not to say that these groups do not consider the question of legitimacy. Ingram points out that he gave Danny Joe Brown – the singer on the albums of Molly Hatchet’s first era – his first job as a frontman in 1975 with the band Rum Creek, before Brown left to join Hatchet. “Am I this guy that just came out of the blue? No, it’s completely the reverse. Molly Hatchet used to rehearse in my rehearsal hall before they got the record deal.”

Travis notes that the current members of Soft Machine are rooted in their connections to the Canterbury scene of experimental music from which the band sprang: bassist Fred Thelonius Baker was in the band In Cahoots; Travis himself spent 10 years playing with Gong, one of the key Canterbury scene bands, which was formed by Daevid Allen, one of Soft Machine’s founders. Gong, of course, is another group that continues with no original members. These bands, based around freedom of expression, never defined themselves by having lineups that were set in stone, Travis says. “People talk about the lineup of Soft Machine Third [the group’s 1970 breakthrough album] being the classic band, but that had two non-original members on it. John Marshall joined in 1972 [he retired earlier this year] and throughout the 70s, people told him it wasn’t the real Soft Machine, because where was Robert Wyatt?”

Steven Collazo, who leads the disco group Odyssey, stresses his own lineage. His mother, Lillian Lopez, and aunt, Louise Lopez, were the singers on the group’s classic hits – including Native New Yorker, Use It Up and Wear It Out, and Going Back to My Roots – and he was brought into the band back in 1977, albeit not in a front of house role. “In 1977, New York City was nearly bankrupt. My brothers and I were teenagers, and we weren’t going to school. We couldn’t find any jobs because the city was in such bad shape. But we were eating like men. So my mom decided we needed to do something to pay the bills.”

Collazo soon became Odyssey’s musical director, but because he was not a face of the band, he had to fight to assert the band’s legitimacy after his mother retired and he recruited new singers. “It was a bit of a struggle at first, because people know the group by particular members. One promoter said to me: ‘Listen, there’s no Odyssey without Lillian.’ And so it took a long time for me to finally own it. But I always felt, ‘Well, it’s mine now.’”

Sometimes, though, an original member and a classic member aren’t the same thing. Take the prog rock giants Yes, whose current lineup features guitarist Steve Howe, who played on the 1970s albums that forged the group’s reputation, but commenced the first of his four spells with them in 1970, after they had released their debut album. No one would dispute his right to play the music of Yes, and to continue to make new albums under that name – though there are still critics who say the lack of any other members from that era is an issue.

“We’ve had to live with it,” he says. “The best thing to do is not to fire back but to play really well – take your musical strength back to them. There will be naysayers, but they often come back to us, though there are hardliners.”

There was even one period when as well as Yes, featuring Howe, there was another group playing the same music, with different former members of the band – Anderson, Rabin and Wakeman (ARW). “That was the first time we had a staunch opposition.” The Anderson of that group was Jon Anderson, the singer with the distinctively high voice. Does his absence from Yes – as the most immediately evident sonic characteristic of the 1970s albums – ever create problems? “We never wanted a singer who had to sound like Jon. But [this lineup] was the first to be able to play Close to the Edge in the right key – because before it had been deemed too high.”

Groups continuing on after the original members have departed or died don’t just have to deal with musical issues. There might be legal problems, too. In order to continue with Molly Hatchet, Ingram had to first license the name, and then buy it from the group’s then management.

“How much did it cost me to buy the trademark? It cost every cell in my body,” he says. “Every thought; every past, present and future thought. That’s what it cost. I’m not going to tell you a dollar amount. It was offered to not only me – it was offered to every member of this group, and it was offered to non-members of the band. It was offered to Japanese investors, who were interested in buying Molly Hatchet. I couldn’t see that happen. I wanted to keep it intact. And I didn’t want this thing to be scattered, and I will be damned if I will let there be another Molly Hatchet out there. That’s for sure. I’ve stopped a few people dead in their tracks.”

What, though, do the musicians get out of playing old songs that they perhaps didn’t even play on in the first place? For Travis, it’s a chance to continue to create living, breathing music – Soft Machine continue to write and record – within the tradition past members created. “Each chapter in Soft Machine’s history is almost like a different band but with this thread going through it. I personally like to keep it artistically ambitious and forward looking but, at the same time, respecting this amazing history. I brought in Joy of a Toy on the new album, which originally appeared on the first album, but looking at it again, in a different way, and I think it’s still authentic – to grapple with that word.”

For Ingram, it’s about preserving something that might otherwise be forgotten, while still making new music. “It’s important to keep the whole tradition, the spirit going and not be a greatest hits cover band of old songs from 45 years ago. We are not about that. That’s only just a part of the legacy that we carry on. In the meantime, we’re paving our new paths, we’re creating the next generation of the band. And that’s important. I’m a widower – my wife died many years ago. I don’t have any children. You know who my children are? Every member of this band and the crew. They can call me Big Daddy.”

Ultimately, it’s the chance to bring joy, as Colazzo explains. “I do something that most of my contemporaries don’t seem to do,” he says. “After I do a gig, I make myself available to the public, just stroll around to the bar. This gives people the opportunity to actually talk to me, take selfies with me. And I’ll tell you that I never get tired of hearing people’s stories about how our music has been the soundtrack to their lives: ‘Saturday morning, my grandma and I, we would get up and clean the house with Native New Yorker in the background,’ or, ‘My child was conceived,’ or ‘I met my wife,’ or ‘I met my husband,’ or, ‘I had a breakup and this song helped me’. I never get tired of hearing it.”