Talk:List of pre-fame band departures

Criteria
Current criteria for inclusion in List of artists who left right before their bands became famous is: Bennv3771 (talk) 02:48, 20 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Artist must have left band before the band's mainstream commercial breakthrough
 * Band they left must be notable (have their own wikipedia page)
 * As many of these artists are "famous for not being famous", they themselves need not meet wikipedia's notability requirement as per WP:LISTPEOPLE.
 * All entries must be reliably sourced.

Bob Welch?
Does anyone think that it's dubious to include Bob Welch in this list? The reason I state this is because Fleetwood Mac were already an established band prior to him joining in 1971 and the Peter Green-led Mac were hitmakers in their own right to the extent where by 1969 - this is well-documented - they were actually outselling The Beatles and The Rolling Stones' records combined. True, that none of the Welch-era output charted in England or Europe, both of whose markets and fans mourned the loss of Green except for a reissue of Albatross in 1973, but they all had varying levels of commercial impact in the American markets. 203.221.238.136 (talk) 02:55, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Exactly, and the sources for the inclusion of Welch are web lists of the kind you'd find on Buzzfeed, which incidentally is what this article amounts to.--humbledaisy (talk)


 * Fleetwood Mac became world-famous around 1972 at he latest. Probably much earlier than 1972, since their first album (released in 1968) was a hit, followed by a few interesting albums which weren't big sellers, and then they eventually released another hit album in 1972. The rest is history! The lineup changed several times during the early years. Welch was merely the last band member to leave before Lyndsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks arrived in 1975 to form the band's most popular lineup which stayed together for decades thereafter.  But the band itself was already well-known before Buckingham & Nicks. Welch doesn't belong on this list at all. Timothy Horrigan (talk) 00:31, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Why does this exist?
Sorry for the blunt sub-heading but surely this article isn't at all encyclopedic, and the topic feels more like a blog entry subject. Even the choice of English feels wrong ("List of artists who left right before"? Surely "immediately before" is better English). What's the justification for this whole article to exist? --TangoTizerWolfstone (talk) 01:57, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Agreed. I don't understand why this article is still here at all. --humbledaisy (talk)

Is nobody going to justify why this unencyclopedic, inaccurate and overly simplistic page should still exist and shouldn't be marked as a possible candidate for deletion? Humbledaisy (talk) 10:54, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I've renamed the article per WP:PRECISE. I say the list meets WP:LISTN, but perhaps this could benefit from a wider hearing at WP:AFD. You can do the honours.-- Laun chba ller 22:46, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

Red Hot Chili Peppers
The Red Hot Chili Peppers actually broke through to a significant amount of artistic and commercial success in 1984, although they became much more famous and sold lots more records after 1989. There were two band members who left right before the first album was recorded: guitarist Hillel Slovak (replaced by Jack Sherman) and drummer Jack Irons (replaced by Cliff Martinez.) Both Slovak and Irons returned within two or three years to the Chili Peppers and were even included when the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Ironically, Sherman was left out of the band's list of inductees (although Martinez made the cut.) Timothy Horrigan (talk) 06:11, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
 * Also, the two members who supposedly departed just before the band hit it big both turned out to be short-term replacements who lasted just a few months with the band. Dewayne McKnight played just 3 shows for the band, D.H. Peligro didn't last much longer.  Even if we accept 1989 (rather than 1984) as the date when the band became famous, Slovak & Irons would still be the members who left "pre-fame." (Although in Slovak's case, he left involuntarily: he died in 1988.) Timothy Horrigan (talk) 17:00, 3 January 2020 (UTC)