Four Huge Bands That Started as Backup Bands
You know them all
Blood Sweat and Tears
Musical renaissance man Al Cooper wrote an album named Child is Father to the Man and hired a bunch of session musicians to record it. It is an outstanding album. If you are not familiar, you should definitely look it up.
But Al had some trouble with his musicians — they wanted to have creative input to the songs. Al said, No, I hired you to play my arrangements, period. The band mutinied. So Al finished the album and said, Fine, do what you like, I am outa here!
What the band liked was to recruit singer David Clayton-Thomas and record a mega-hit, Spinning Wheel, and another one, You Made Me So Very Happy, on their 4x platinum debut (for this band configuration) album. Al Cooper had named the band Blood Sweat and Tears for Child is Father to the Man, and that is the name the band kept as they continued on to great commercial success.
The Band
Folk singer Bob Dylan created quite a stir at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 when he “went electric”. After that tour, his backup band, then known as “The Hawks”, decided to stay together. They christened themselves as simply “The Band” and went on to release such mega-hits as Up on Cripple Creek, The Night The Drove Old Dixie Down, and The Weight (“And.. and.. and.. You put the load right on me”). A cover version of their song This Wheel’s On Fire became the theme song for the hilarious BBC television series, Absolutely Fabulous. You might think I Shall Be Released is an old negro spiritual, but it was actually written by Dylan and recorded on the first album from the band, umm, I mean The Band, Music from the Big Pink.
The Eagles
When the little girl with the huge voice came out to California from Arizona, her producer made her dump her band The Stone Ponies and record with a bunch of session musicians. The little girl with the huge voice was, of course, Linda Ronstadt. The pick-up band worked so well they decided to stick together for a while. They renamed themselves The Eagles. The rest is history.
Toto
In San Francisco, there lives a blues singer named Boz Skaggs who has had a long and productive, low-key career. But for a bright shining moment in the late seventies he was a superstar! His 1976 album Silk Degrees broke the charts with hits like Lowdown, The Lido Shuffle, and Harbor Lights. The group of session musicians he got together to record Silk Degrees decided to stay together. They formed the band Toto. Only three Toto hits come to my mind, Hold the Line, Rosanna, and Africa, but the band nevertheless is considered a rock-and-roll A-lister.
