10 Amazing Musicians Everyone Forgets About In Legendary Bands

For every great band that lights up the stage, there are normally those handful of musicians that are able to really draw the crowds. No matter if you act like a band of brothers off the stage, it’s these people who like to mug for the camera and tend to be the mouthpiece for the band wherever they go. There’s more to bands than just the camera friendly faces though, and some of the most important people tend to fall by the wayside.

That’s not to say that everyone on this list is flying under the radar all the time. Most of the time you do hear these people front and center on the recordings…it just takes a while to actually figure out how much of a hand they have in the group.

From suggesting the odd lyric here and there to working on entire songs that would go onto become classics, every one of these musicians have an ace up their sleeve in some capacity that puts them on the same level as the more starstudded members of the group. Hell, if you look past some of the gory details, some of these people even have the potential to work outside the confines of their band if they wanted to. It’s nice to have the spotlight every once in a while, but it’s people like this that show you that the glamorous life isn’t always for the VIPs of the band.

Being in a band with two guitar players is always a bit of a double edged sword. Although you have a partner in crime to help push the song forward with a wall of guitars, there are only a few bands that are known for both of the guitar players having their time in the spotlight. The Young Brothers may have gotten to the top together, but when you have someone like Joe Perry in your band, it's easy for Brad Whitford to get overshadowed just a little bit.

Since he was the last to join Aerosmith, Brad was almost more of a session player when they first got things going, playing second fiddle to Joe's guitar licks half the time. When you uncover the real credits behind the classics though, Brad actually has a hand in a lot more of the face melting stuff than you probably realize. Whereas Joe is the riff wizard who came up with stuff like Walk This Way, Brad's nasty edge was always a lot more interesting, like the crunch behind Nobody's Fault or the chaotic solo that he plays at the breakdown of Last Child.

This wasn't just something he had to come into either. If you listen to One Way Street off of their first record, both Joe and Brad basically have a guitar duel in the middle of the song, and Brad might actually outshine his partner in crime, writing the kind of fluid licks that you would have heard out of someone like Clapton. Everything comes back to the blues for Aerosmith, and Brad Whitford has certainly made the most out of doing his homework back in the day.