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:
“There are two great unknown forces to-day, electricity and woman, but men can reckon much better on electricity than they can on woman.”
—Josephine K. Henry, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 15, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“It may be well to remember that the highest level of moral aspiration recorded in history was reached by a few ancient Jews—Micah, Isaiah, and the rest—who took no count whatever of what might not happen to them after death. It is not obvious to me why the same point should not by and by be reached by the Gentiles.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“The steps toward the emancipation of women are first intellectual, then industrial, lastly legal and political. Great strides in the first two of these stages already have been made of millions of women who do not yet perceive that it is surely carrying them towards the last.”
—Ellen Battelle Dietrick, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)