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I was thinking this the other day whilst listening to at track on six music; which bands that are generally recognised as brilliant had/have a frontman/woman who is a weapons grade fin-de-cloche?
I'll start with the band that inspired the thought:
The Smiths
Potentially controversial, but the Velvet Underground.
Exactly my thought - although TBF, he only really hit weapons grade post Smiths (but is now thermonuclear WG)
(I'll admit; he was a bit 'outspoken' when with the Smiths, but i have to allow that because they are still among my 5 favourite bands and I can't bring myself to drop them on account of his later efforts)
Erm, most of them?
U2 - Bono // . So far up his on arse only the soles of his vegan shoes are showing .
U2 – Bono
That was MrsIHN's choice 🙂
The Fall? Can't imagine ol' Mark E was a joy to be around. Genius, obv, but challenging personality by all accounts. Propensity for randomly sacking band members too!
Trouble is, the presence of the lead singer generally artificially degrades the rating of the band.
eg
I think Jamiroquai are/were a pretty decent band, but can't get past that creature who fronts them.
Simply Red might be pushing that too far, though.
Arctic Monkeys.
Alex wasn't too bad when he started but has seemed to have become worse with increased fame.
PRIMAL SCREAM.
Gig in Cambridge, band clearly going through the motions with very little enthusiasm and someone slings a beer at Gillespie, cue him marching off stage, big delay eventually Mani comes out, stream of abuse to all the crowd and then they re-start with equally little enthusiasm, been hard to enjoy any of their tracks since.
Don't agree with Jay Kay though. I have always loved him. He is maybe a little self loving but he never comes across as selfish or mean person.
I'm going to say Oasis because I generally prefer the Noel authored/sung stuff to the Liam sung stuff, but they are both still pretty far up on the BE scale.
Don’t agree with Jay Kay though. I have always loved him. He is maybe a little self loving but he never comes across as selfish or mean person.
Lol! Someone hasn't seen the journalist nutting incident. Extremely far from a "great band" anyway.
Shinedown!
/endofthread/
Guns and Roses
No mention of The Doors yet? Surely the definitive example of a really good band with an absolute throbber leading man.
Oasis with whiny Liam on the mic.
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Don’t agree with Jay Kay though. I have always loved him. He is maybe a little self loving but he never comes across as selfish or mean person
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This is a joke, right? He comes across as a weapons grade bell-end!
Isn't the nature of a front man that they are generally all bellends? Mark E Smith, Liam, Morrisey, Jagger, and many more all had distinct idiot tendencies.
As Alexei Sayle once said - who wants their rock stars to be [i]NICE[/i]?? 😀
Damn Chapa beat me to it The doors/Jim Morrison by a very very long way so far up his own arse it was a wonder we could still hear him sing and his glorious "poetry"
But without Morrison what would the Doors have been?
Lost Prophets? Maybe need a new category past bellend for him though,
Dave Mustain of Megadeth seems like a bit of a tool.
+1 for the Doors.
Isn’t the nature of a front man that they are generally all bellends? Mark E Smith, Liam, Morrisey, Jagger, and many more all had distinct idiot tendencies.
I was going to start with 'all of them' but thought I'd stick within the OP's question! 🙂
By all accounts John Lennon ranked pretty high on the list, and after watching a Netflix thing about session musicians I'll never see Billy Joel the same way again!
Although not strictly the frontman can I give an honourable mention to Richie Blackmore as well?
Lol. Never saw the headbutting incident so i may have to retract my statement. Although I'm sure some paparazzi deserve it sometimes.
U2.
Remember when Bono fell off his bike and smashed himself up? Well, that night I thanked god it was him instead of you.
after watching a Netflix thing about session musicians I’ll never see Billy Joel the same way again!
Ooh, what was that?
Eagles of Death metal frontman
Isn't that Josh Homme? I thought he was quite the decent bloke. Could be wrong (on both counts!)
As noted above, there are a lot of nobbers on stage (unlike on internet forums) so for the great band/bellend thing to work more criteria are needed. so whilst it's hard to argue with Morrisey/Smiths, he did go on to have substantial solo success. And whilst Bono is the very platonic ideal of throbbing nobber, he has not (to the best of my knowledge, and if I'm wrong here please do not enlighten me) done any solo stuff and the band are very much a band.
Pub bands like Oasis don't count.
So I'd say you need a huge actual band fronted by some over-the-top joke, who thinks he's the reason for that success and wants to prove it by being a success in his own right. But fails. You need the Rolling Stones and Mick 'Let's Work' Jagger.
(Though to be fair, his version of Don't Look Back with Peter Tosh was okay. Stick it in the duets thread.)
+1 Oasis.
Double bubble.
Eagles of Death metal frontman
Isn’t that Josh Homme? I thought he was quite the decent bloke. Could be wrong (on both counts!)
No, it’s Jessie something or other iirc. (Not bothered to look it up.) Homme plays with them occasionally but not as front man.
No Josh Homme founded them and used to play drums sometimes: its Jesse Hughes
Axle Rose
Biggest twonk in the rock industry.
Other frontmen have issues which have impacted upon the band's, (addiction issues etc) but this doesn't make them twonks of the highest order
GnR is a really excellent shout
Isn’t that Josh Homme? I thought he was quite the decent bloke. Could be wrong (on both counts!)
Him being a bellend (wanting all the publishing rights) led to the breakup of Kyuss. There'd have been no Slo Burn if that hadn't happened though, so every cloud...
after watching a Netflix thing about session musicians I’ll never see Billy Joel the same way again!
Ooh, what was that?
It's called Hired Gun. It was quite eye opening for me.
Biggest sausage jockey in the rock industry.
You might want to double-check and de-homophobify your euphemism there chap.
I remember watching a sort of Q and A TV programme and Robert Palmer was being interviewed.
He didn't show himself in the best light..
No Josh Homme founded them and used to play drums sometimes: its Jesse Hughes
Weapons grade bellendry of the gun lobby is an interesting thing.
Take this forum though, how much vitriol is there when a headline reads "cyclist killed by car". We're all jumping up and down saying "cars don't kill people, people in cars kill people" and that the solution is more training, better education, staffer sentencing etc etc. Then when someone get's shot by a gun the instinctive reaction is to ban guns (and the gun lobby shouts back, guns don't kill people, rappers do).
Always useful to try and see the other side of the argument, however moronic you think it is.
Footnote: yes cars are useful and guns aren't, to which gun owners would probably wouldn't point out that public transport and Uber make cars redundant in the same way 150 years without a civil war makes guns redundant.
As Alexei Sayle once said – who wants their rock stars to be <em class="bbcode-em">NICE?? 😀
Well I do, if that means Rory Gallagher, Kevin Ayres and frankly quite a lot of others. And front persons can be neither nice nor "bell-ends" - Van Morrison fr'instance. I'm sure there are more recent examples you can think of.
What a tosspot that Eagles of Death Metal guy is
Bit sexist that we've had no frontwomen yet.
Erm... The Supremes maybe? Diana Ross is known to be a bit of a handful.
Nico - member
Never mind all that, can't you give us the inside scoop on Lou Reed and the Velvets?
Lemmy;not only the nazi memorabilia, but choosing to do pointless collaborations like the plasmatics and in doing so precipitating breakup of their best line up.
Bob Geldoff, Bono, Midge Ure (have you heard his latest Sh it e)
Deluded the lot of them
Is it not a bit like politics, all careers end in failure (and the ones that don't are just forgotten)
What about Lemmy..? He used to push drugs on all and sundry back in the day. Proper rock star though, so his dubious behaviour doesn't really diminish his contribution.
And Johnny. Good ol' Mr Rotten. Personally, I love to hear him in conversation.... but butter ads, I'm A Celebrity..? I can bet there are people who hate the man with a lot more passion than I admire him ! 😉
Lemmy? Really? Disagree mate, the guy was rock and roll to the day he died.
I thought that's what I said...
Sorry mate, slow connection.
Mainly from my brain to my keyboard lol I was answering phantombikers post.
Dinosaur Jr.
Them.
Pink Floyd.
The Zutons.
Pink Floyd - Roger Waters is an arrogant dick.
Oasis doesn't count. They're dicks, but they're not a great band - some catchy songs, sure, but not great.
Lemmy? Really? Disagree mate, the guy was rock and roll to the day he died.
Just so we're clear on the definition of 'Dick'.
Rock-'n'Roll is Teenage Kicks
Rolf Harris is a kiddy fiddler
Billy Corgan seems to have a collection of rather unpleasant character traits rather than an actual personality. Whether you could argue the Smashing Pumpkins was a great band though is probably harder.
the Smashing Pumpkins was a great band
Once they were, now, not so much.
Rolf Harris is a kiddy fiddler
Reminds me, The Glitter Band used to have a frontman you probably wouldn't go out on the pull with.
Oh I could definitely argue that the Smashing Pumpkins were a great band ..all the way up to the Machina album ..
I can't stand the frontman out of the Killers ..not that they were a great band..popular granted but not great ..
The biggest dick out there though is Chris Martin for actually believing he can sing ..
Love QOTSA but Mr Josh H recently kicking a photographer from the stage -lady if remember- totally denying it then having to apologise due to 3rd party video evidence. Great musician not such a great person.
Oasis doesn’t count. They’re dicks, but they’re not a great band – some catchy songs, sure, but not great.
Seriously?? Biggest band of my time by a long chalk and wrote plenty of tunes that still get airtime 25 years later.
Successful & popular doesn't always equal great.
Always thought Oasis were dull and deriviative and that "Britpop" was a cancer.
someone should start a 'decent people despite fronting a band' thread, it'd be more of a challenge
If anyone ever sees me in the pub I've got a really good Van Morrison story from someone who played guitar for him
And... not a front man but the bassist from Ocean Colour Scene is a weapons grade
Axle Rose is a massive chopper.
Lars Ulrich isn’t the lead singer but is a gigantic weapons grade bell end.
Ian Astbury was a bit of a tool too.
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
Seriously?? Biggest band of my time by a long chalk and wrote plenty of tunes that still get airtime 25 years later.
Seriously! They had some catchy songs, made a lot of money, but weren't innovative like the really great bands were - The Beatles, David Bowie, Queen, Nirvana, for a few examples off the top of my head.
While Live were hardly a huge band and probably make it no further than pretty good, their on-off-on lead singer Ed Kowalczyk seemed to go through a pretty significant bellend phase. Despite the band members being friends since high school, his departure from the band involved a lot of accusations of prima donna behaviour and a 2 million lawsuit. He's since rejoined the band, so maybe everyone involved realised that none of them were important enough to make it without the others.
Mike Patton could be a dick, but then everyone in Faith No More (except maybe Mike Bordin) were dicks so that sort of balanced it out. They are great, though.
Oh, and Billy Joel doesn't count either, his music sucks. All of it.
Are The Cure a great band?
Regardless, if regularly sacking all and sundry counts as BE criteria, Robert Smith certainly has form. He was perhaps not an overachiever like Mark E Smith, but it wasn't for lack of trying, every new album seemed to have a different line-up. He eventually sacked Lawrence Tolhurst too, though iirc they kissed and made up quite quickly..
He eventually sacked Lawrence Tolhurst too
AFAIK he didn't want to, but the guy was an alcoholic and he didn't have much choice.
Yes, The Cure are a great band.
Not all front-persons are nobbers. But IME the position does tend to over-select for narcissism and a lack of emotional maturity. I do heartily recommend anyone read the autobiog 'Head On/Repossessed' by Julian Cope for greater (and hilarious) elucidation.
Agreed on Jay Kay.
He’s ALWAYS been a massive, massive bellend. At first his galaxy sized ego was blamed on his coke addiction, then he got clean, but the ego remained.
I think only real die-hard fans could pick any of the rest of the band from a line-up such is his demand for the lime light.
Ive never disliked Jim Morrison, he’s a bit of a dick, but ‘front man’ comes with a requirement for being at least a bit of a dick - also Racing Drivers.
I know a couple of others have said it, but surely GnR is the de facto answer here?
Interesting to see Primal Scream mentioned here too, I was only talking to someone last night about what a waste of DNA Gilespie is. I saw them live a couple of years ago, and he'd clearly taken enough $something to collectively kill the Rolling Stones.
This thread started with the OP mentioning The Smiths. There can be no greater bell-end than Morrisey, the thread reached its natural conclusion at its very start.
Although not the singer, I can't believe the bass player with the long tongue from that band that like to dress up a bit hasn't been mentioned? 😉
Surely he's the biggest bellend of them all...
There are those who like Van Morrison and there are those who know him.
I can’t believe the bass player with the long tongue from that band that like to dress up a bit hasn’t been mentioned?
Suggestion that fits well into a thread entitled "Shit bands with bellend bass/guitar/drum players." but not this one, oh no.
Dinosaur Jr.
How so?
J Mascis IS Chris from Family Guy.
I think Lou Barlow has finally forgiven him (and we got Sebadoh out of it).
Weapons grade bellendry of the gun lobby is an interesting thing.
Band front man + bellendry + guns = Ted Nugent
Hateful man!
Lemmy;not only the nazi memorabilia, but choosing to do pointless collaborations
His go in Probot is pretty worthy.
This thread started with the OP mentioning The Smiths. There can be no greater bell-end than Morrisey, the thread reached its natural conclusion at its very start.
I did set a pretty high bar 😉