History
The term took its name from the 1968 album Super Session with Al Kooper, Mike Bloomfield, and Stephen Stills. The coalition of Crosby, Stills & Nash (later Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) is another early example, given the success of their prior bands (The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and The Hollies respectively). In 1969, Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner credited Cream with being the first supergroup. Music writers have also applied the term, wrongly in the context of this article, to bands or vocal groups that sold huge numbers of albums, headlined massive concerts or have a high celebrity or media status, regardless of the previous (or even subsequently acquired) fame of their individual members, such as the band Led Zeppelin, wherein only Jimmy Page was well known at the time the group formed. The term is also used to describe existing bands whose members achieved individual fame after the band's founding, such as The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Queen, Genesis and Yes.
There are also instances in which an existing band added a prominent new member or members, where the resulting group might have been considered a supergroup had it not kept its original band name, such as Van Halen after recruiting Sammy Hagar and Gary Cherone, and the Eagles after hiring Joe Walsh and Timothy B. Schmit, and Styx, hiring Lawrence Gowan, and Ricky Phillips.
Read more about this topic: Supergroup (music)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The custard is setting; meanwhile
I not only have my own history to worry about
But am forced to fret over insufficient details related to large
Unfinished concepts that can never bring themselves to the point
Of being, with or without my help, if any were forthcoming.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“The history of this country was made largely by people who wanted to be left alone. Those who could not thrive when left to themselves never felt at ease in America.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)