Any that have come close?
Foreigner
Are any original Gwar members still there?
Balsac has been consistent. Debatable depending on your definition of original but it’s been the same guy for a long time.
Complicated question. They rotate OG, later members. Sometimes it’s all nonOG members. I think Gwar is meant to be an ensemble performance art experience rather than, say, Foreigner. NotCSB I played a show with Gwar in 2000. Didn’t wear a costume, just lame very 90s appropriate attire. We were HAMMERED. And no one took anything seriously.
Menudo? Journey?
I think they still have one member who’s been there from the beginning (Neal Schon). But they are getting really close to meeting OP’s criteria.
Journey was the one that prompted this question 😆
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Journey_band_members
Neal Schon has been around through their history no?
The Boston Philharmonic Orchestra
Any Orchestra then really (of any substantial age).
If we are going that route:
Royal Danish Orchestra: The orchestra traces its origins back to 1448
Naw, I think a few of the original members are still there
A quick web search revealed there are far more than I imagined.
I’m outing myself, but La Bottine Souriante is a Quebec/French Canadian folk band who’s founding member are all no longer current members.
Journey?
Any originals left in that band?
Steve Perry wasn’t even the first vocalist.
Richmond, VA has a few of these. the most famous one is GWAR
there’s a metal band called Zao that’s been around for ages and have had all members replaced. they wrote a song (called ship of Theseus) about it.
Does Skid Row count? The original band saw people come and go all the time, to the point that nobody really knew who was a member at that point. In 1987, Gary Moore, who hadn’t been a member anymore, actually “sold” the name to a US band. The last original member still disputes the sale. So, you have two bands with the same name, with the original band had members replaced multiple times, with even the last remaining original member leaving and rejoining twice.
ELO is an interesting case. Pinning down the original members is already a bit tricky, because the first album was really just a side project of The Move, before Roy Wood left to start Wizzard in the middle of doing their second album. If we’re generous and say their third album was really their first as a seperate band, we end up with a group that’s fairly static throughout the 70s and that most fans would call the classic lineup. the only two truly original members, though, were Jeff Lynne and Bev Bevan, and everyone else in the and was technically considered an employee, which you can imagine led to all sorts of legal chaos
in the late 80s Jeff decided to shutter the band. Bev Bevan wanted to continue but Jeff considered himself synonymous with ELO being their writer, so eventually the two of them agreed to let Bev tour under the name ELO Part II with a lot of the members of the classic lineup. In the early 2000s, Jeff wanted in again but the “employees” thing and some legal trouble between him and Part II left him wanting to start fresh. No one knows the full story, but Bev, who was seemingly still enthusiastic about touring, suddenly decided to retire. Part II had to rebrand to The Orchestra, no longer having a The Move representative, but kept touring. Meanwhile Jeff did an album and a short tour with his new ELO, which had their classic keyboard player but The Orchestra had basically everyone else from the classic lineup. Jeff’s ELO went dormant until 2015 where it went by the literal name of Jeff Lynne’s ELO. Keyboard player Richard Tandy recently passed away, and with violinist Mik Kaminski retiring this year from the Orchestra, ELO has not one but two ships, one of which has been completely and thoroughly Theseused and the other just one plank away.
Velvet Underground’s last album Sqeeze is basically a Doug Yule solo album and made without any original members. Yule joined the band about halfway through its existence. For that reason many don’t consider it part of the band’s catalog. Personally, I think the album gets unfairly judged. It’s pretty good, just not on par with Lou Reed’s work, but what is?
Blood Sweat & Tears had like 200 members, my dad knew one of the founding members and went to one of their concerts a couple years back. Got to talk to them after the show and not one of them had even heard of the guy. Feels like the ultimate example of this
Dr Feelgood was a band where this happened
Tangential, but I this made me realize I honestly don’t know the member names of most of the bands I listen to. I kinda know their faces if they have videos.
