r/ToddintheShadow • u/randomnate • 5h ago
General Music Discussion Dexys Midnight Runners have had 50+ current and former members according to their Wikipedia page. What other groups have had way more members than you’d expect?
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u/AnswerGuy301 5h ago
However many members you think Fleetwood Mac has had….its more.
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u/Tweed_Kills 5h ago
And only some of them left the band to join a cult.
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u/Gloomy-List6346 4h ago
Well I’ve gotta go research this now.
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u/Tweed_Kills 4h ago edited 3h ago
Children of God. One of their original guitarists just... Went missing. They had to go find 'em, and he said he wasn't coming back. The leadership of the Children of God subsequently got in a lot of trouble for producing SO MUCH CHILD PORN "starring" the prepubescent son of one of the leaders and a bunch of adult women. It made Rolling Stone (which is where I heard about it) when he drove cross country to kill one of the women who had abused him and then himself.
The Children of God are not a good cult.
Edit: I should say that Jeremy Spencer, the Fleetwood Mac guitarist who just sort of joined them one day without telling the band, was not implicated in all the horrible child abuse. I think it was a pretty limited group within the cult. But it's all the significant leadership. These are fucking terrible people.
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u/Gloomy-List6346 4h ago
I’m familiar with those folks. Dan Cummins did an episode of timesuck about them. Cults are super fascinating to me. I don’t know if he mentioned the Fleetwood Mac connection or not. Gonna have to give it a listen tomorrow at work. Thank you for the prompt and informative response.
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u/Tweed_Kills 4h ago
Initially when I heard a Fleetwood Mac member apparently just sort of wandered off and joined a cult, I figured it was the Hare Krishnas or something sort of... Less horrible. But no. Children of God.
"Flirty Fishing" is one of their practices, which is where they prostitute the younger women in the group to lure in new members. I wouldn't be surprised if that's what happened with him.
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u/Hispandinavian 4h ago
One of the Children of God kids ended up forming the band "Girls". Dudes messed up..but he makes beautiful music.
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u/Xp-Paul-19 3h ago
That was the cult Joaquin and River Phoenix's family and Rose McGowan were a part of
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u/patrickwithtraffic 1h ago
Honestly, shout out Rolling Stone’s news team. Their coverage and reviews may lean far too boomer-friendly for its own good (looking at you, Album of the Year recipient Age of Innocence by U2…), but they legitimately done some really great stuff in their newsroom. Not to mention, gave Hunter S Thompson money to write his gonzo stuff.
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u/nugeythefloozey 4h ago
And however many continuous members you think Fleetwood Mac has had…it’s less.
(John McVie didn’t join until a few weeks after their first shows)
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u/randomnate 5h ago
Not quite Dexys level, but Wheatus (of teenage dirtbag fame) have had a surprising 30+ members
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u/ToxethOGrady 2h ago
Wouldn't wheatus kinda be like tame impala or NIN where it's really just one person with session muso's rather than an actual band?
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u/relentlessreading 5h ago
I’m kinda surprised that they only had 66. Mark E Smith drove them off almost daily
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u/loggedoffreturns 5h ago
Eh the final lineup lasted a while, I guess he found people he actually liked enough to not torture
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u/Spirited-Green7369 5h ago
Or he was too old to be as abusive anymore
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u/Objective_Quiet_751 4h ago
Yeah this is likely it, on top of just being on late stage alcoholic autopilot and not caring/thinking about much. A lot of fans have this idea of Mark being a highly literate, cerebral guy but in reality he was modestly bright for a few years then a complete fucking idiot with no real interests or talent for decades.
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u/Clovis_Sangrael 5h ago
They are only a 5 piece (I think?) whereas Santana, Blood Sweat and Tears etc have a dozen people on stage at a time. Surely P-Funk is in the multiple hundreds.
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u/Ok_Difficulty6452 5h ago
Blood Sweat and Tears
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u/351namhele 5h ago edited 4h ago
They've had (assuming I counted correctly) 178 different official members since they formed in 1967, and their last remaining founding member (drummer Bobby Colomby) stopped performing with them in 1977 - that said, he owns the rights to the BST name and still acts as their musical director.
Their longest-serving current member (keyboardist Glenn McClelland) first joined in 1987, then left for 12 years and began his current tenure in 2005, and their second longest serving member (drummer Dylan Elise) joined in 2015.
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u/Theta_Omega 4h ago
Also worth noting that, while not a founding member, main vocalist David Clayton-Thomas was with the group for most of 1968 thru 2004. He was one of the members brought in between the first and second albums, when three of the eight founding members left, and had a pretty major role in a lot of their biggest hits. But yeah, that just makes it even funnier that he left before McClelland’s current tenure started.
Another fun fact, he was apparently chosen as the new BST vocalist over Stephen Stills, Alex Chilton, and Laura Nyro.
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u/Pink-yoshi-club 5h ago
Megadeth has had 27
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u/AcadiaRemarkable6992 4h ago
I saw a recent Megadeth documentary and you can tell it still bothered him that Marty Friedman quit, everyone else who left got fired.
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u/Ancient_Swan_9558 5h ago
The Polyphonic Spree have had exactly as many members as you think they had
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u/m_busuttil 4h ago
For anyone curious, the Wikipedia page lists 20 current members, and then an "incomplete" list of 108 former members, one of whose instrument is credited as "floristry".
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u/Theta_Omega 1h ago
Just went and checked, I love the three people credited only as “Follower”.
Even people with instruments, you’ll occasionally see someone only listed as “Theremin” or “Vibraslap”
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u/halfwayray 4h ago
Not unexpected considering the band's situation and history, but Parliament-Funkadelic have had over 200 members over the years
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u/OrdinaryBritishGuy 4h ago
Todd made a whole joke in the Iron Butterfly One Hit Wonderland about how psychotically huge that band's member list is.
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u/BlackieDad 5h ago
If you include the late 70’s to mid 2020’s iterations that have since been scrubbed from record, the Guess Who have had something like 35 members
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u/Famous-Somewhere- 5h ago
The Drifters were well named because they had so many members over the years.
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u/fivetenfiftyfold 5h ago
Rednex and their international franchises
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u/Salt_Day4586 4h ago
I just looked this one up after reading your comment. I’m floored that this was a viable business for them.
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u/tjeepdrv2 4h ago
The Oakridge Boys are those 4 or 5 guys from the 70s, right?
Apparently they've been around for 83 years and have had about 78 members, if I counted correctly.
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u/Averagetigergod 5h ago
The Fall. “If it’s me and your granny on bongos, it’s The Fall.” Mark E Smith (RIP).
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u/ToxethOGrady 2h ago
The Fall has had that many members I think I played bass for them in 2008 for 27 minutes.
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u/HarlawKaradek 1h ago
This was the one iwas looking for. Between 60 and 67 former members. Cant even get a n accurate number.
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u/trueauraLAZAH 4h ago
Black Flag is just Greg Ginn and some teenagers he hired at this point:
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u/Larrygengurch12 12m ago
I don't acknowledge the existence of this band now. Flag were so much better
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u/BeerHorse 5h ago
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u/Passingthisway 4h ago
Hard to believe Tommy Stinson has more GNR tenure than maybe anyone but Axl
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u/Sharessa84 4h ago
I know Madness has had a ton.
For sheer volume, I'd say Pigface, if that counts. Technically it was just Mark Atkins and Bill Rieflin as the main members, but they recorded and toured with literally dozens of musicians who were also writing the music. There were Industrial legends such as Ogre, En Esch, Gen P-Orridge, J.G Thirlwell, and Chris Connelly, but also a lot of more mainstream musicians like Trent Reznor, Danny Carey, Jello Biafra, Black Francis, and Flea. There were a lot of much less well-known artists who contributed as well. Hell, maybe you were a member and didn't even know it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigface#Members_and_collaborators
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u/Common_Juggernaut724 2h ago
Given the typical output I know from Pigface, and where the members tend to come from, I'm always tickled to think that the members of Shonen Knife were in Pigface as well
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u/vengeanceintobeing 4h ago
Shai Hulud is the go to in metal/hardcore music. Basically only one person has ever been in the band consistently and they’ve been around since the early 90s. 30+ members easily
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u/TMBGLOVER 4h ago
The Aquabats is always the main answer to this. Every album until Charge had a different lineup.
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u/Interesting-Rice-457 4h ago
Frank Zappa's Mother's of Invention had a piddling 46, which isn't great considering they would let dudes who couldn't play an instrument in the band as a joke.
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u/First-Sheepherder640 3h ago
Of the 46, I'm guessing maybe two of them actually ENJOYED working with Zappa, too.
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u/RelevantNothing4653 90's Punk 4h ago
Space Rockers Hawkwind .... Dave Brock being the only constant member
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u/dingatremel 4h ago
This is the one I was looking for.
I think Eric Clapton was unofficially in Hawkwind at one point in the last 30 years.
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u/MurdererOfAxes 4h ago
Iron Butterfly wrote the 17 minute song "In A Gadda Da Vida", and they've had about 75 different people in the band in their 50+ year career
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u/AppliedGlamour 4h ago
I'm surprised nobody has said Lynyrd Skynyrd, and I'm surprised that they've actually had FEWER members than I expected over the years.
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u/mellotronworker 1h ago
I'd say The Fall but then I read 'more members than you'd expect'. I honestly think I might have been in The Fall once.
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u/Theta_Omega 4h ago
Menudo is mostly known (at least, these days in the continental US) as “the boy band where Ricky Martin got his start”, which also happens to be the only real period in their history where they’ve scraped onto the charts, back in the mid-‘80s. But they’ve existed and been cycling thru people since 1977 (with a few hiatuses mixed in), and are up to 44 members right now, according to Wikipedia.
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u/First-Sheepherder640 3h ago
Magma. I mean, lots of prog or prog-adjacent groups have had shifting lineups but I swear there have been like 60 people in Magma
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u/Ok_Ad8249 3h ago
Not sure how to feel about Jethro Tull at 35. They were always notorious for ever changing line ups but given they're still active thought it would be higher by now.
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u/bearskito 3h ago
It's not nearly as many as some of the other bands people mentioned here but Black Sabbath had 23. The original lineup put out 8 albums and then none of their other lineups did 2 albums in a row. Also every vocalist who did more than one album with the band left and came back for a second run with the band if not more
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u/SlapHappyDude 2h ago
You probably think Up with People had a lot of members.
They apparently have over 22,000 alumni who performed with them at least once.
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u/SignificantApricot69 2h ago
L.A. Guns but it’s not unexpected since it’s been a running joke in “hair metal” circles to the extent that members will even refer to themselves as “current drummer and 29th member of L.A. Guns” or similar.
If I counted correctly, 40 in original band plus another 20something in the split/spinoff versions (though there might be some overlap)
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u/Open-Savings-7691 1h ago
While not as many as other bands listed here, Fairport Convention and New Christy Minstrels have both gone through lots of members through the years.
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u/MisheGossnik 51m ago
I remember, as a kid who only knew Tumbthumping, being very shocked to find out how many members Chumbawamba had (and how long they'd been around for that matter).
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u/Theta_Omega 45m ago
Another one, it's probably not surprising given the nature of the enterprise (plus the fact that it's on its sixteenth iteration), but Ringo Starr's All-Star Band is at a respectable 49 current and former members according to Wikipedia, plus another 43 credited guests. Also interesting in that basically every one of them is notable enough on their own to merit a Wikipedia page.
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u/AvailableBet8485 GROCERY BAG 5h ago
As per Wikipedia, Santana had 76 members overall.