Music bands with every member being "all-star" talent

Mike Love reminds me of this guy that I have played bridge against - he is not very good but he got lucky that he found a good player that had just moved and didn’t know anyone to partner with - he rides that guy’s coattails like you wouldn’t believe - the same way that Mike Love rode the Wilson bros coattails.

 

This becomes more difficult as the group gets larger.

Over the years, Miles Davis and James Brown worked with some great people, but it is difficult to define them as a Super Groups.

Delaney & Bonnie worked with many talented guests, but not really a lineup that was sort of permanent.

Groups such as

• The Byrds
• CSNY
• Texas Tornados
• Small Faces
• Bad Company
• Etc

are examples of groups with multiple talented people, but not sure how many can be defined as being 100% loaded with All-Stars.


The Highwaymen were loaded with All-Stars up front, but they also had a backing band of non famous people.

 

Old and In the Way

 

Straying some from the original intent of this thread, but Ringo put together some All-Star stuff years ago.

This is a fairly loaded gathering of talent.

 

The original version of UK was a prog rock monster:

John Wetton
Alan Holdsworth
Eddie Jobson
Bill Bruford

 

The Police (greatest band in the history of the world, no hyperbole) and Rush are obvious choices. Each member of these bands are virtuoso musicians. Even Sting is a criminally underrated bass player. Listen to their first 3 albums. The bass line is busier than the guitar. And remember Sting has to sing and play those bass lines at the same time when they played live. And they were always SMOKIN' live.

Not sure if this counts, but every band Frank Zappa has ever played with. You HAVE to be a virtuoso musician to even be in the same room as Frank. Comes with the territory.

 

Radiohead

 

I thought about including the highway men but they were all front men. I guess the Travelling Wilbur’s were the same way.

Could also say the the Blues Brothers show band was an all star band as both Jim Belushi and Dan Akroyd were big stars. The backup band was also made of outstanding musicians who were great session and performer musicians in their own right.

 

Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin , Tool. Pink Floyd might be a stretch. Nick Mason was very mediocre on drums.

 

That's literally an all star team like CSNY or Temple of the Dog.

 

No, man, no. Never say that. You have value.

 

Can't really quibble with any already mentioned.

Mahavishnu Orchestra
The Band
Yes (the original band)

I guess you could include Steely Dan but they used the best session musicians in the land.

However, it's tough to not mention the Beatles. There is no other band in existence that was as better than the sum of their parts. No one even close.

 

I had thought about the band from the Blues Brother movie, but figure that I had strayed enough already.


Overall, I find that this thread topic is difficult to navigate.

Watching performances from decades ago on Youtube of singers such as Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt, it is easy to see/hear that there were some very talented people in the backing bands.

Yet, for the most part those people remained mostly unknown* to the general public because they were in a backing band and never went to situations were they would be featured and become Names in the music world. Just because somebody remained in a backing band rather than in a featured situation doesn't mean that they were a bad musician or even significantly much worse than one of the Names listed in this thread.

_____________________--
* Crowell and Skaggs from The Hot Band would be exceptions.

 

Fleetwood Mac is worthy of consideration.

 

I love me some Pink Floyd but Mason was a below average drummer (they had to bring in Porcaro from Toto to do the drumming on “Mother”) and don’t get me started on Roger Waters - a gifted lyricist and a visionary but a below average singer and bass player- it’s a pretty well-known fact that Gilmour played bass on some of their songs even the fretless bass. Gilmour + Wright carried that band instrumentally but needed Waters’ big picture vision.

 

A lot of these bands have a couple of all stars and the rest are role players to some degree -- The Smiths, The Cult, and Smashing Pumpkins I think are good examples.

 

I'm surprised there's been no mention of this band:

 

NIN, tool, dream theatre, RHCP, pretty much any local nashville band

 

Jane's Addiction I think deserves a mention.

 

Yeah OP might want to reconsider Harrison and Ringo since they've both been in supergroups with other legendary rock stars.