This Band Was Your Band, This Band Is My Band By JEFF LEEDS
MEMBERS of the British rock band Queen thought they'd never tour again after Freddie Mercury, their flamboyant lead singer, died of an AIDS-related illness in November 1991. Big hits like the camp opera "Bohemian Rhapsody" and the rock-swing "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" seemed uniquely suited to Mercury, who carried them with just the proper mix of kitsch and bluster.
But Queen's fortunes did not die with Mercury after all. The band has been selling out arenas across Europe, and they've been doing it with a singer who sounds nothing like their late star: Paul Rodgers, singer of 1970's hits like "Feel Like Makin' Love" and "Ready for Love" with the rock band Bad Company, who has given Queen's catalog a bluesy tinge.
Queen isn't alone. Today many well-known rock bands are pursuing second acts with new lead singers, raising questions not only about just how far the trend can go, but about where a band's identity truly lies. The Cars are the latest major band reported to be considering a new lead singer (the rocker Todd Rundgren in place of Ric Ocasek, who since leaving the band has built a reputation as a record producer, and Ben Orr, who died five years ago.) Foreigner hired a new frontman, Kelly Hansen, in March after the exit of Lou Gramm, following the examples in recent years of reconstituted bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Van Halen.
And as prime-time television viewers know, the Australian rock band INXS and pop stylists TLC, both of which lost their lead singers some years ago, are going everyone one better. On reality television shows (on CBS and UPN respectively) the surviving members of each outfit turned their loss into an asset, making their auditions with a variety of singers a form of entertainment in their own right. With the exposure, they've increased their chances of turning misfortune into a comeback. (Last Tuesday J. D. Fortune was named on the show as the INXS singer. He will sing on the band's next album, "Switch," which has not been completed yet, but for which music company executives have already selected the first single.)
Music executives say a band's ability to outlive its singer usually depends on which was more influential: the songs or the cult of personality. In the case of Motown ensembles on the oldies circuit, the songs win out every time. The same is true for a relatively faceless band like Styx: on its own and as part of packages with other bands it has generated more than $90 million in box office sales since 1999, when it parted company with Dennis DeYoung, its singer and keyboardist, hiring Lawrence Gowan to fill in. Tommy Shaw, guitarist for the band, notes that anonymity was part of the formula from the start. "All you've got to do," he said "is look at our album covers" - thematic artwork rather than glamorous head shots.
For bands strongly identified with a lead vocalist, things are tougher. Not all Queen fans are happy with the arrival of Mr. Rodgers, who also sang for the bands Free, of which he was a founder in 1968, and the Firm, a short-lived 1980's outfit. On the message board at queenzone.com, one poster who goes by the name KingMercury echoed a common feeling toward Queen + Paul Rodgers, as the act is now known. "I will not complain about the current tour, and if its right to tour under the name of Queen," the message said, "but, Queen, that fabulous and giant band, died with Freddie, in 1991."
Still, for the casual fan, a sound-alike singer belting out a proven hit often is good enough, says John Kalodner, the artist-and-repertory scout who is credited with developing acts like Foreigner and Aerosmith. "If a performer can pull off a song 75, 80 percent, people will have the rest in their head," he said.
Daniel Nester, an English professor at the College of St. Rose in Albany who has written two books about the band - even though he never saw the original Queen - dismisses the purists.
"Legacy, schmegacy," he said, "From my end, it's like, 'Milk it all you want.' I want to see them play."
For bands considering a new lineup, it helps that the hits of the 1970's and early 1980's are still in rotation on classic rock stations, and that the defining works still sell. Queen's 1992 greatest-hits album, for instance, still sells roughly 7,000 copies a week. But that's the old lineup. Soldiering on behind a new singer usually means selling fewer CD's and playing to smaller audiences, in venues like casinos and nightclubs instead of sold-out arenas and stadiums. And no one really thinks that these band's new songs will return them to their commercial peaks. Journey, for one, has been giving its latest album free to fans who bought tickets to its recent tour.
If a band's facelessness can become an asset in preserving its identity, then today's crop of revivalists may be in the right place at the right time - a moment in pop music when the form of the song itself seems to trump any band's imagery or personality. Online, music fans are displaying a preference for individual songs over albums by a ratio of more than a 20 to 1. (It's called iTunes, after all, not iAlbums.) Some say this is also a moment when the rock warhorses of the 1970's and 80's face scant competition.
"We live in a hip-hop nation," said David Goffin, executive producer of "Rock Star: INXS." And the relative dearth of major rock acts, he added, provides an opening for bands like INXS and others to re-emerge.
Still, cautionary tales abound. Van Halen touched off a civil war among its fans when it replaced David Lee Roth with Sammy Hagar, though it continued to crank out commercial hits (and its dynamic lead guitarist Eddie Van Halen gave some continuity to the band's identity). A subsequent decision to hire Gary Cherone to take Mr. Hagar's place proved disastrous at record stores and the box office. Nor did the former Cult singer Ian Astbury do much for the reconstituted Doors, when he toured with them three decades after Jim Morrison's death.
"Jim Morrison wasn't just some yahoo singing for the Doors, he was a personality," said Shane Roeschlein, editor in chief of an online music magazine, themusicedge.com. "Morrison was much like a limb on a body. So in that aspect, if you lost your arm you'd get a prosthetic and it could be a really good and realistic prosthetic arm but it'd never be your arm." For fans familiar with a band's original identity, he added, there would be "a cycle of diminishing returns - always eyeballing that slightly plastic looking appendage."
EVEN INXS has had its troubles with this formula - before agreeing to find a new singer on "Rock Star," it toured with a series of performers poorly matched to the band, including Terence Trent D'Arby, the soul singer.
INXS still must emerge from the shadow of Michael Hutchence, the lead singer who died in an apparent suicide hanging in 1997. Mr. Kalodner said Hutchence had been so integral to the band that it may never record successfully again. Mr. Kalodner recently pulled out of plans to work with the newly formed INXS on its new album, which is scheduled for release on Nov. 29.
"I just didn't fell good about trying to replace Michael," he said. "A band is never the same when they replace a singer, ever. It loses something both in the voice and in the whole dynamic of the band. Obviously it can be done, but the more and more I saw of it the less I felt good about it."
Mr. Goffin of "Rock Star," while careful to pay respect to Mr. Hutchence, said that the band had a lot going for it. "They have eight years between what happened and now. And they have a television show, which is a week-to-week transformation, where everyone can see what the band can be. They lost one of their instruments. You're replacing a significant part of the band. You really have a chance to regenerate a band."
Doc McGhee, who represents the rockers KISS, has another twist on the idea altogether: he has been toying with the idea of recruiting an entire band to replace the original KISS and don the band's famous makeup.
"KISS is more like Doritos or Pepsi, as far as a brand name is concerned," he said. "They're more characters than the individual person. I think they have a legitimate chance to carry the franchise."
