6 Bands That Split Up and Then Resurrected Using Fraud

6 Fleetwood Mac

Fleetwood Mac appears to no longer be a group right now, though it’s hard to tell. Its roster has changed so many times over the years that we can’t definitively declare the band done just because Stevie Nicks or Lindsey Buckingham aren’t currently with them or because several members recently died. But today, we’re not going to lay out a history of all the changes the group ever went through. We just want to highlight what happened in 1974.

That summer, the group Fleetwood Mac went on tour. But this group didn’t contain anyone who’d performed on any of the albums. This collection of unrelated musicians did this tour without the permission of any of the real members. But they did have the authorization of Clifford Davis, the band’s manager, who said he owned the rights to the concept of Fleetwood Mac. 

“Theoretically, he can put anybody there,” said the (real) band’s Bob Welch at the time. “He can put four dogs barking on a leash and call it Fleetwood Mac.” But when that tour was done, they went on to sue the guy and fire him. And now that their enemy was defeated, they could move on to the far more interesting task of fighting each other. 

5 Alice Cooper

Alice Cooper, the band, was together from 1968 to 1975. Alice Cooper is also the name of that band’s lead singer. But the band wasn’t named for the guy. At the time, Alice Cooper the man went by his birth name of Vincent Furnier, and “Alice Cooper” was just a wholesome name they came up with that they thought would make for a hilariously ironic name for a shock rock band. 

Furnier later changed his name legally to “Alice Cooper” — and not so he could take the band to greater heights. He changed it as the band was coming to an end. That way, he’d be the one to retain ownership over the name “Alice Cooper” because it was now his legal name. 

So, “Alice Cooper” was his. But then, 40 years later, the surviving guys all got together and decided to perform as Alice Cooper again because who could even remember why they’d broken up, after so long?

4 Bill Haley & His Comets

Bill Haley & His Comets formed at the very dawn of rock ’n’ roll, and their name hearkened back the big band era, when groups would have names like “Ass McGoo and His Orchestra.” Who were the various members of the orchestra? You probably didn’t know, but you knew Ass McGoo. 

Haley died in 1981. Afterward, some of his former bandmates went on performing as the Comets. Other bandmates of his went on performing as The Original Comets. In fact, at least seven different groups went on to call themselves the surviving Comets, because a whole lot of different musicians had played with Haley as part of his band over the years. 

They do have to adapt a little to changing times. For instance, one of the Comets groups released a song called “The Viagra Rock”:

This adapted to the times in that it’s about being old. They weren’t adapting by being more salacious. The original “Rock Around the Clock” was already about having sex all night. “Rock” was originally a slang term for sex, as was “rock ’n’ roll.” 

3 The Temptations

Otis Williams has sung with the Temptations since 1958. He’s 83 years old now and has been with the group for 66 years. The other members have kept changing; to that end, there have been dozens of different Temptations. 

Most of the churn was a simple matter of members moving on, dying, etc. Slightly more complicated was what happened with David Ruffin, the lead vocalist on some of the group’s biggest songs, including “My Girl”:

The group began to see Ruffin as unreliable for several reasons, including his substance abuse issues, his cocaine habit, the way he kept showing up high and also the fact that he was an addict. There were other factors as well (drugs, for example), and in 1968, the band fired him.

Ruffin responded by showing up at concerts anyway. He’d wait for one of the songs where he sang lead, and he’d hop on the stage uninvited, stealing the mic. This led to some happy audiences but not to him rejoining the group permanently as he’d hoped. 

2 Yes

The British band Yes broke up in 1981, after 13 years together. Two of the members, Chris Squire and Alan White, now joined up with Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and formed a new group called XYZ, whose name meant “ex-Yes, and also Zeppelin.” That group lasted roughly as long as you could expect a venture like that to possibly last, after which Squire and White formed a new band called Cinema, with a South African guitarist named Trevor Rabin. 

Soon, Cinema was joined by a new member: Tony Kaye, who used to do keyboards for Yes. Then the four of them were joined by Jon Anderson, the old Yes lead singer. This now meant the entirety of Yes had reassembled, save for a couple late arrivals to that band that they were happy to be rid of. So, was the old band back together? And what would they call themselves? 

That’s right, they went right back to being Yes again. The only person angry about this was Rabin, who’d had great expectations of founding a new band and no desire to get roped into this old one, but they made him go with the plan. They turned him into a Yes man. 

1 The Ink Spots

The Ink Spots are the oldest of the groups we’re looking at today, since they were big all the way back in the 1930s. They became popular with a later generation many decades later, thanks to the video game Fallout, and then with a generation even later than that one, thanks to the TV show Fallout.

When the group broke up, two different members — Charlie Fuqua and Billy Kenny — each tried to form their own new group called the Ink Spots. The matter went to court, where a judge said Kenny could use that name, while Fuqua now went with “The Original Ink Spots,” most misleadingly. But then other nomad members of the group started their own bands, also calling them the Ink Spots. Then people who had no connection with the original band at all started calling themselves the Ink Spots, too.

In 1955, the matter again reached a judge, who ruled that the original partnership that defined the Ink Spots ended with the death of member Hoppy Jones. That meant no one was now allowed to call themselves the Ink Spots. But trademarks don’t really work like that, so by invalidating the trademark, what the judge actually did was say anyone can use the name.

And today, anyone does use that name. You, too, can put on a concert, announcing, “This is a reunion of the Ink Spots” and no one can stop you. True, when the time comes for you to take the stage, everyone will discover it’s just you, and you can’t sing. But by that point, it will be too late. 

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