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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)