A lot of talk has been going on about the death of Rock as it becomes further fractured into subtypes that fracture into further subtypes, while Rap & Hip Hop are winning the popularity war. This shouldn’t be so shocking considering that the dumbing-down of popular music started many decades ago.

Before I discuss zombie bands, what’s the difference between a zombie band & a tribute band? A zombie band is a band that is officially legally recognized as the band allowed to use the band name, but typically has zero to 2 original members. Like a zombie, they keep replacing members and never die as a band. A tribute band isn’t allowed to use the official band name and typically has no members who were ever in the official band, and they exist simply as a tribute to an official band. In many cases, they even look like the original band in its heyday, but some tribute acts don’t go for the visuals & instead opt to recreate the music faithfully. There are also acts like Black Jacket Symphony who recreate music of dozen of artists in concert who don’t use visuals in their act, although BJS has used singers who looked very much like the original & who perform in an tribute act to that singer.

In the 1940’s, you had to know how to read music and be proficient on your instrument. Even singers had to know how to sing and also understand harmony, tempo, meter, etc. Fracturing in music began way back then as black Blues musicians were experimenting with a new style of music called Jump Blues which evolved into early Rock & Roll. By the 1950’s, the white musicians who had been listening to to this music jumped on the bandwagon & in many cases simply took the songs the black artists were playing & covered them & made big hits. The white group Bill Haley & His Comets took “Shake, Rattle & Roll” originally released by the black singer Big Joe Turner in April 1954, which hit #1 on the R&B chart and made a mainstream white (today’s Billboard Hot 100 chart) hit of it just 4 months later.

It didn’t take much talent to learn to play early Rock & Roll. You didn’t need to read music; much of it was improvisation within a 12-bar Blues framework. The lyrics were usually repetitive, at least in the 1st few lines of a verse, and choruses were usually the same line repeated 2 or more times.

When The Beatles hit in the early 60’s, it changed everything, and when they released the Rubber Soul, Revolver & Sgt Pepper albums, popular music required more talent to play & sing. You still didn’t need to read music, but you had to be somewhat proficient on your instrument & vocal. Virtually every musician born in the 1940s onward who plays Rock was infuenced by the Beatles whether they know it or not. With the exception of Blues-based Rock, you can trace virtually every Rock style back through them, even though the Beatles did their share of Blues-based rock, just not as much as the Stones or the Yardbirds, the latter of which evolved into Led Zeppelin by 1968. It’s still fair to say that the Beatles were influenced by musicians who came before them like Buddy Holly & the Everly Bros.

In the late 60s & early 70s, a new form of Rock initially called Art Rock and later called Prog Rock appeared which has its roots in Psychedelia, Classical & Jazz along with Rock. Groups like Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, Emerson Lake & Palmer & others led the way. This music didn’t necessarily require formal music training, but it didn’t hurt, and the most proficient of these musicians were indeed Classically-trained. Even the more proficient Pop artists of the day such as Elton John, Billy Joel & Eric Carmen all had Classical training to some extent.

Music in the 70s became even more progressive until Disco hit in the late 70s, then the advent of the affordable digital synthesizer in the early 80s made it even more accessible to musicians who had lesser talent. The early 80s band added synthesizers to their Prog-Pop sound and controlled the early 80s in bands such as Journey, Styx & Foreigner, and some of the 70s Hard Rock bands reformed doing this style such as Deep Purple, Rainbow, Uriah Heep, and Ozzy went solo & melded into this genre to some degree. Image was an important issue then as MTV began in 1981.

By the mid 80s, popular music started its downhill slide, but slowly. Bands who had been influenced by Led Zep, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Black Sabbath, Van Halen, Ozzy, The Who, KISS & others took the concept of the power trio & Hard Rock into a new direction that has been derisively called Hair Metal. The concept came from the early Hard Rock bands that had a single guitar, bassist, drummer & lead singer and played a more Blues-based music with lyrics centered on baser images such as drinking, sex, drugs & even Rock & Roll itself. The musicians were talented, but in a different manner that didn’t require the finesse of a Prog band.

While Hair Metal was rolling along, Rap started coming alive by the mid-80s, and it appealed to the mainstream with its repetitive baser backbeat & its rebellious & even more baser lyrics. It was still mainly a black audience, but just like Rock-n-Roll’s early days, that wouldn’t last long.

In the early 90s, like most fads, Hair Metal received a backlash from musicians who didn’t look good enough to be in a Hair Metal band, and whose outlook on life & lyrics was less about partying and more about personal angst. They preferred Punk & heavier Heavy Metal & didn’t like short Pop songs, proficient guitar solos or anything very proficient at all, or the coiffed look. Grunge destroyed Hair Metal quickly in 1991 as Pearl Jam & Nirvana released their albums that year, and Rock took a long drive downhill from a talent perspective. Some 90s artists were playing what was called Alternative Rock, which simply meant that it was more rootsy & didn’t fit into the definition of Rock or Pop as it was known then & was typically more Pop than Grunge. Grunge & Alt Rock were in the same plane & some bands switched back & forth between the styles.

Rap also moved forward in leaps & bounds in the 90s in tandem with Hip Hop, and so did Electronic Pop. Grunge & Alt Rock starting taking a back seat to them by the mid 90’s & so did Post-Grunge by the 2000s. Most of Pop music now is permeated with electronic instruments that are programmed rather than played, and even vocals are “cleaned up” using computer programs such as Auto Tune. The need for talent & proficiency has now flown out the window.

Now to the point — By the 90s & 2000s, many Classic Rock acts from previous decades are no longer selling or even making records, but are selling out concert tours in record numbers, selling more tickets than the hottest current acts of the day. Turns out the older segment of the public still wanted to hear music proficiency & the sounds of their own heyday from bands like Pink Floyd, Bruce Springsteen, U2, REM, Aerosmith, Styx, Chicago, Def Leppard, Boston, Eagles and a number of other 70s & 80s acts who sold out concert tours regularly. Even some 50s & 60s acts are getting in the nostalgia craze and selling out smaller venues & playing casinos & themed cruises.

The problem is, as of the 2020s, these Classic Rock musicians from the 1960s & 1970s are in their 70s & 80s, and even those from the 1980s are in their 60s & 70s, and many of the 1950s & 1960s musicians have either long passed away or are dying off ever year as a new hero fades away.

Just since 2015, among many other artists, we’ve lost some whose loss has impacted current or recently touring bands or their own solo touring career, such as Glenn Frey of the Eagles, David Bowie, Eddie Van Halen, Neil Peart of Rush, Walter Becker of Steely Dan, Michael Nesmith of The Monkees, Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead, Chris Squire of Yes, Cory Wells of Three Dog Night, Robbie Steinhardt of Kansas, Chris Cornell of Soundgarden/Audioslave, Vinnie Paul of Pantera, Dusty Hill of ZZ Top, Gary Rossington & Ed King of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac, Dolores O’Riordan of the Cranberries, Frankie Banali of Quiet Riot, Taylor Hawkins of Foo Fighters, and Brian Wilson, the mastermind of The Beach Boys. Although no longer touring, we also lost key members of Classic Rock/Pop such as Ozzy Osbourne, Ric Ocasek of The Cars, Rick Derringer, Peter Yarrow of Peter Paul & Mary, Garth Hudson who was the last surviving member of The Band, and Joey Molland who was the last surviving member of Badfinger.

We’ve lost solo acts whose music will never be represented again by themselves in concert, such as Tom Petty, Prince, Meat Loaf, Eddie Money, Gregg Allman, Jeff Beck, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Withers, Olivia Newton-John, Burt Bacharach, David Crosby (can’t have CSN or CSNY without the C), composer Jim Steinman (Meat Loaf’s writer/producer, among others), and Jimmy Buffett. But the demand for their music continues.

Many of these acts have strong hits catalogs and people still want to see them in concert. As a result, the bands who’ve lost members have had to bring in new members who had nothing to do with their hit-making days, but can faithfully fill in and recreate those parts just like the original.

Many of these Classic Rock bands have only 1 or 2 original members, and some have none. Even worse, some of the bands who still tour are legally fighting the original members who made the band name popular in the first place as they come back & try to reclaim their audience after selling out their stakes in the band to others who in many cases had nothing to do with the original band, but legally own the name.

Cases in point:

• CCR is actually now Creedence Clearwater REVISITED, not Revival. That because John Fogerty left the band in the 70s and has never looked back, but the original bassist & drummer saw an opportunity to move forward & make a living by refurbishing the band name, hiring somewhat-soundalike musicians & continue touring even though John still tours solo & is the de facto CCR concert to see.
• Boston is simply Tom Scholz, which coincidentally played virtually all the instruments in the first place in the studio. The original “band” before they got their record deal with Jim Masdea on drums, Brad Delp doing all vocals, and Tom Scholz playing everything else & producing & engineering it. He put together a band simply out of necessity. To this day, he’s the only one left, and the new singer not only sounds very close to Brad Delp, he even looks like him. Tom found the singer Tommy DeCarlo when Tommy was working at Home Depot in NC & posting his vocals on My Space.
• Foreigner is a true zombie band as it currently has NO original members left who played on any of the recordings in the 70s or 80s. The band is owned by the man who started it, original guitarist Mick Jones, and he quit playing full-time with them in 2012 following heart surgery. He now does one-off appearances with the band. They’ve recently announced their farewell tour, but we’ve seen more than once that the term “farewell tour” is just a fraudulent marketing ploy to sell more tickets.
• Styx is led by James “JY” Young, who is the only original member, though Styx really took off when Tommy Shaw was added in 1975 and who has been in the band now for 48 years (as of 2023). The originial bassist Chuck Panozzo left the band in 1999 & sits in with them from time to time at certain gigs, though he’s listed as a current member who shares bass duties with the other bassist Ricky Phillips who is essentially the “first chair” bassist.
• Blood Sweat & Tears is a true zombie band as well. The band name is owned by the original drummer Bobby Colomby, and well over 100 musicians have played in the band to-date. American Idol runner-up Bo Bice toured with them as lead singer for about 5 years in their best incarnation since the 60s.
• Chicago managed to retain 4 original members for 50 years until the recent retiring of Walt Parazaider on sax in 2018. However, latter-day members Bill Champlin (28 years) & Jason Scheff (31 years) managed to hang there quite a long time & appeared on their 80s hits (Scheff took over for Peter Cetera in 1985). They’re now a 9-piece act with 3 original members, and that’s great compared to the others on this list.
• The Grass Roots still exists with all new members after the death of singer Rob Grill in 2011, but in many cases it’s just 2 of the 4 current guys and they perform with the Happy Together tour band backing them up from time to time. However, they were a zombie band from way back as the entire band was changed out for new members right before their heyday in the late 60s.
• Lynyrd Skynyrd had 1 original member left in Gary Rossington for the longest time & he’s recently died here in 2023. At least they have the brother of the original singer, but they’ve stopped touring and just do the occasional gig, but why? Just keep the band going with new members as it’s a cash cow, which we know since the original singer’s wife has been fighting with the band over money & performing rights issues for 35 years now including a dispute over a film about the band as recently as 2016. The band pays her & the wife of another band member who died in the plane crash when they earn revenue, so why stop that ATM from working?
• The Little River Band is one of the more litigious zombie bands out there. In the latter days of their recording history, they brought in Wayne Nelson on bass (who sang “Night Owls”) and guitarist Stephen Housden, who is a smart man to at least some degree. As the band fell apart and lost its record deal, the grind of touring was too much and the reminaing original members sold their stakes to Housden in what was a shrew business move, thinking the name & group would mean nothing in the future, but the band continues to tour to this day with a lineup that consists of hired musicians including Nelson on bass, who is also a hired member actually by Housden. The 3 main singers/members (as “BSG” – Birtles, Shorrock & Goble) have tried suing Housden & getting court orders against him to no avail, and they can’t seem to keep their own newer act together probably due to logistics since Birtles has lived in the USA for 30 years now and maybe other problems older musicians tend to have. 1970s band Player singer/guitarist Barry Beckett is a former “hired gun” as well for them at times.
• The Guess Who is technically not a zombie band, but close enough when all that’s left is your drummer who sang none of the hit songs. In 1972, original bassist Jim Kale was even smarter than Housden (see above) and found out that the band name had never even been trademarked, which he did promptly thereafter at very little cost, and for 50 years he’s been the sole owner of the band name. Everybody has quit the band at one point or another including Kale himself before he trademarked the name, but Kale hired all new musicians & hit the road as The Guess Who and has done so for the last 50 years to this day. Kale got back together with original drummer Garry Peterson in 1987, and now that Kale himself has retired as of 2016, only Garry Peterson is left, but Kale still owns the name & the band still tours. They got back together with Bachman & Cummings for a short while, then went back out as the zombie band, which screwed up the value of the reunion band, which had to stop playing together as Kale made the band’s value too small. You can’t ask $50,000+ if you’re playing $5,000 to $10,000 gigs elsewhere under the same name. UPDATE: In 2024, Burton Cummings figured out a way to stop the zombie band by withdrawing the performing rights of his songs. He lost quite a bit of revenue for a few months, but it forced the zombie band to stop doing his songs, which means they couldn’t play concerts, which meant they had to break up. Cummings was able to purchase the rights back relatively cheaply after that. This is a tactic that the former members of the Little River Band may employ soon.
  
  Imagine a future where every band is like Foreigner, Blood Sweat & Tears or Little River Band and lives forever with all new members. Essentially official tribute bands. What about bands where the original members are all dead or have no interest in touring?:
  
• The Cars tried to revive themselves without their 2 main singers, you know, the 2 guys who had been friends since high school who started the band together. At the time, bassist Ben Orr had been dead for a few years from cancer, and Ric Ocasek & drummer David Robinson had no interest in touring, so guitarist Elliot Easton & keyboardist Greg Hawkes brought in Todd Rundgren on vocals & guitar, plus his musical often-partner Kasim Sultan on vocals & bass who was in Utopia with Todd, and The Tubes drummer Prairie Prince, and they called it The New Cars. It only lasted 1 year. Why couldn’t they simply get some nobody guys who sound like Ocasek & Orr & go on tour again? Lots of people want to hear The Cars.
• The Knack is another act that could go forward if they would replace Doug Fieger & Bruce Gary who both died. Who doesn’t like My Sharona?
• Badfinger still exists as Joey Molland’s Badfinger, but why not keep the band moving forward with new blood as Joey’s getting long in the tooth? The other 3 orignal members are long gone, so who’s going to complain?
  
  This list could go on & on & on . . .