10 Hard Rock Bands Who Kept The Same Lineup

A band is like being in a marriage. Across a career's worth of music, these members have to depend on each other, get along with each other, and remain faithful to their significant others til death do you part. While many bands have called up divorce lawyers more than a few times, there's something to be said about groups that have stayed the course.

When it comes to hard rock bands, it's almost expected that a band have a few hiccups in their internal relationships. For as great as the bands are, there's always that band member who drinks too much, betrays the rest of the group, or just can't take the pressure of the lifestyle. On the other hand, there have more than a few bands who have soldiered on with their original lineup regardless of what obstacles lay in front of them.

Have there been a few bumps in the road? Sure, but what band doesn't have that. Even through the roughest times, these bands have found a way to come back together until they physically couldn't do it anymore. It's easy to just fire the stick in the mud, but every single one of these acts have members who are in it for the long haul.

By the mid-60's, the British rock scene was bursting with some of the best blues musicians of the era. While the sound was usually coming from the muddy banks of the American South, these guys from England were studying the gospel of Robert Johnson and Howlin Wolf and putting their own spin to it. The blues may have been a good starting point, but Cream took the blues sound and dipped it in acid.

For as much noise as the band makes on record, it all came down to only three people to create their fury. Eric Clapton is normally pegged as the muscle behind the band thanks to his fiery lead work, but the tunes wouldn't be half as heavy without Ginger Baker delivering one of the most ferocious back beats in hard rock. Just right of center was Jack Bruce, whose broad musical palette and soulful vocal delivery gave the band just the right amount of accessibility to make their tunes irresistible on radio.

It seemed like a three-piece would give everyone equal footing, but the tension between the band members led to them calling it quits in the late '60s, with Clapton moving on to a stellar solo career. Though Clapton has had a handful of Cream classics pop up in his live catalog, what these three created as a unit is impossible to reproduce.