Rock Bands Who Lost Their Bassists To Mega-Successful Artists

In terms of recognition, rock bassists get the short end of the stick. It isn't Bill Wyman that comes to mind first when you think of The Rolling Stones. Even Paul McCartney — the world's richest bassist — was crestfallen when that assignment fell to him in the early Beatles days. "It's usually the fat guy who stands at the back," he told The Guardian. "So I was a bit unhappy when I got that job." Yet musicians know that bass players are load-bearing band members, and their lines are bridges between melodies, harmonies, and rhythms. And since guitars are far more popular and celebrated, there never seem to be enough bassists. Want to join a band? Learn the bass: The work will find you.

Given this short supply and distinct need, it's little wonder that time and again, smaller acts have lost their bass players to mega-successful bands or artists. In music as in any other business, bigger fish feed more mouths, and even rhythm musicians need to eat. In some cases, behemoth bands poached bassists from truly fledgling acts — who here has heard of Flotsam and Jetsam? In others, bassists left groups that stood on their own legs, like Argent and Suicidal Tendencies, to team up with bona fide rock icons. Whether these bassists bet on themselves or were pilfered by the promise of steady work and massive audiences, each band's loss became the rock world's gain.

The Zombies — the '60s British Invasion band that brought us the groovy "She's Not There" and the far-out "Time of the Season" — called it quits in 1968, but keyboardist Rod Argent wasn't done. He enlisted his cousin and bassist Jim Rodford in a new project simply called Argent. With Rodford's warm tones and tight playing, the prog and pop rock band scored a Billboard Hot 100 No. 5 with 1972's "Hold Your Head Up." But after guitarist and songwriter Russ Ballard left in 1974, momentum slowed, and Argent disbanded in 1976. The remaining members were soldiering on as Phoenix when Rodford got a phone call from the Kinks in 1978. 

Invited to fill in with the legendary band on a U.S. tour, the bassist had big shoes to fill. That back-and-forth bass line you hear beneath "You Really Got Me" was played by Peter Quaife, and it's John Dalton driving "Lola" forward. But after about a month on the road, lead singer Ray Davies invited him in full-time. His arrival on the roster coincided with a commercial resurgence for the band, and his presence was reinvigorating. "Yes, everything changed very quickly, practically overnight," he told Bass Player. "The band was great, and the crowds were picking up on it." As every good bassist must, Rodford fit right in, and his first album with the Kinks, "Low Budget," was one of the band's highest-charting. Holding the gig until the Kinks broke up in 1997, Rodford laid down his own legacy within the band's legendary canon.

While he'll always be most known as Metallica's second bassist, Jason Newsted emerged on the scene with the Pheonix, Arizona-based thrash metal band Flotsam and Jetsam. He helped found the group after moving from Battle Creek, Michigan in 1981, and it cycled through different names and line-ups before solidifying in 1985. Local shows and small tours in California, including performances with notable acts like Megadeth and Mercyful Fate, put the band on the map. After scoring a deal with independent label Metal Blade Records, Flotsam and Jetsam put out a self-titled debut in 1986. The band's trajectory, albeit gradual, was pointed upward.

The mother of all thrash metal job openings came from tragedy. On the road supporting the massive "Master of Puppets" album, Metallica's original bassist, Cliff Burton, died when the band's tour bus veered off the road in Sweden. Auditions for the thrash metal giants were held just weeks later, with Newsted remembering the shock still on their faces. But once he got the job, things changed quickly for the bassist. "October of 1986 on Halloween I played the last show with Flotsam and Jetsam," he recalled to Rolling Stone, "10 days later [I'm] onstage in Japan, sold out Budokan with Metallica."

During his nearly 15 years in the band, the thrash metal icons saw even greater commercial success, including 1991's "The Black Album," which was certified 20x platinum in 2025. Newsted had, in many ways, an impossible task — attempting to fill the hole left by Cliff Burton. But until his departure in 2001, he found a way to make it work.

To land most jobs, you need references: a strong recommendation. That's what got Melissa Auf der Maur to leave DIY band Tinker for a gig in Courtney Love's band Hole. When she first saw Smashing Pumpkins at a tiny club in her native Montreal, Canada in 1991, she was struck by the music. "That [was] when you captured my heart," Auf der Maur recalled on "The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan" (via Guitar World). Unfortunately (or fortunately), her friend drunkenly chucked a beer bottle at Billy Corgan, so she wrote him a letter to apologize, kicking off their friendship.

A lo-fi and gritty alternative rock trio, Tinker started performing around Montreal, and the band opened for the Pumpkins when the group returned in 1993. After Hole bassist Kristen Pfaff died of a heroin overdose in 1994 — just a few months after Kurt Cobain's tragic death — Corgan suggested Love try out his bassist friend from Montreal. Auf der Maur was studying photography at the time and passed at first, but Love's persistence won her over. As she recalls in "Even the Good Girls Will Cry: My '90s Rock Memoir," she boarded a plane to Seattle and "head[ed] into the eye of '90s-rock mythology in the making."

Getting the gig in time to tour in support of Hole's breakthrough album, "Live Through This," the bassist swapped small clubs for the Reading Festival stage. As Auf der Maur reflects in her memoir, "Hole was living under a dark cloud," exploding in popularity while coping with tragedy "These women needed me," she later added. "I had a role to play, for them and for others."

Prog rock band Trapeze's bassist, Glenn Hughes, also sang lead vocals, a relative rarity for the time. Formed in 1968 in Cannock, England, the band signed to the Moody Blues' Threshold Records label, putting out both a self-titled debut and a follow-up called "Medusa" in 1970. The group toured extensively, including a U.S. run playing to tens of thousands of Moody Blues fans as an opener. "That's when the rocket ship lifted off," Hughes recalled to Louder. But while Trapeze's funky sounds earned pockets of fans, it never actually filled pockets.

And so it was as a working band — a medium fish in the mucky pond of the rock 'n' roll industry — that its bassist and frontman was hooked by the fishermen in the iconic heavy metal band Deep Purple. Ritchie Blackmore was among members who caught Hughes and Trapeze during a four-night stand in LA in late 1972. The band reeled Hughes into the fold in May of the following year, offering him the job after a show at Madison Square Garden. Hughes bit.

You'd need charts, spreadsheets, and an atlas to fully grasp Deep Purple's ever-shifting lineups (as of the time of this writing, it's in its ninth incarnation). Hughes and singer David Coverdale filled out the band's mid-'70s third and fourth groupings, often called Deep Purple Mark III and IV. Though Hughes' was a short tenure — he'd bounce back to Trapeze in 1976 — his basslines and lush vocal harmonies on "Burn" helped that album hit No. 9 on the Billboard 200 in 1974. With Trapeze as a springboard, Hughes caught serious air.

By the time Robert Trujillo joined Venice, California-based hardcore thrash metal band Suicidal Tendencies in 1989, it had already made a mark. Since the group's self-titled debut in 1983, its sound has shifted from hardcore roots toward thrash metal, scoring a die-hard mix of punk, hardcore, and metal fans. On the first album with Trujillo, "Lights ... Camera ... Revolution!," the bass added a funky dimension to the music, helping to kick off Suicidal Tendencies' '90s heyday. But if he earned skate park cred with this band, his next assignment with Ozzy Osbourne took him to whole new plateaus.

After the thrash group drew down its first run following 1994's "Suicidal for Life" album, Trujillo kept working with Tendencies' frontman (and only constant member) Mike Muir in their funk metal side project Infectious Grooves. Ozzy and that project crossed paths when they were recording in the same studio, and Trujillo landed the gig in the Prince of Darkness' band in 1996. For the bassist, it was a chance to work with a hero and play songs he used to cover in backyard parties when he was 16. "I'm playing in his band, you know, and I'm in front of the guy," he recalled in an interview with Dunlop. "And I'm like, 'Wait a minute, am I dreaming?'"

Trujillo made another big move — sliding over to Metallica in 2003 — but he'll always be a part of Suicidal Tendencies' legacy. At the time of this writing, his son Tye is manning the bass for the legendary thrash band going strong well into its fourth decade.