Top 5 - Greatest Supergroups of All Time

What is a Supergroup? Take one part hit band, grab a lead singer from over there, sprinkle in a really good session drummer…ta da! Supergroup! Really, it is grabbing famous or in demand musicians from multiple sources and them putting out an album or just rocking live in different places, usually not just a one-off kind of thing too.

Look at the Hollywood Vampires. Not the greatest output, but fun because it has Johnny Depp (the actor and sometimes musician), Alice Cooper, Joe Perry and includes sometimes members Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum.

Here is my Top 5 Supergroups of all time:

5. Temple of the Dog - The first grunge supergroup with members of a pre-Pearl Jam Mookie Blaylock (Eddie Vedder, Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament and Mike McCready) and Soundgarden (Matt Cameron and Chris Cornell). This is a tribute album that Cornell mostly wrote for his friend and musician (Mother Love Bone), Andy Wood who’d recently died. Gossard and Ament had been a part of Mother Love Bone. The album had a delayed success for about a year and hit big after Pearl Jam’s Ten and Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger came out and the “Seattle scene” blew up. It is a really well put together collaboration and some great songwriting.

(See also Mad Season, another grunge supergroup with Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam and Screaming Trees.)

4. The Traveling Wilburys - It’s the late 80’s and you take some of the biggest all time names in rock n roll: Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty. Slip in a little Jim Keltner on drums and you’ve got something really cool. All of them took Wilbury stage names (Keltner as Buster Sideburn) and managed two albums. Sadly, before the second album, Roy Orbinson would die of a heart attack. Both albums would help revitalize careers and go platinum.

3. Blind Faith - Ginger Baker, Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood and Ric Grech felt like a who’s who of English rock stars, but only managed one album before splitting. All of them seemed to be moving in a bunch of different directions slowing down to record one gem of a self-titled album.

2. Neurotic Outsiders - One part Sex Pistols. One part Duran Duran. Two parts Guns N Roses. It all equates to one fantastic self titled album. Originally including Billy Idol and his Guitarist Steve Stevens, the band started out as a jam session amongst friends. The album line-up is Steve Jones, John Taylor, Matt Sorum and Duff McKagan (who shows up in a lot of supergroups!)

1. Cream - Ginger Baker and Eric Clapton make this list again, along with bassist Jack Bruce. They lasted three years and four albums (the most on this list) in the late 60’s and created some heavy and heavy rotated classic rock songs like: White Room, Sunshine of Your Love, Wrapping Paper, Spoonful and I Feel Free. Disreali Gears is one of my top 10 albums of all time. Sadly, tensions in the band, specifically between Bruce and Baker, doomed the band, but the music carries on.

What’s on your list of top supergroups. Could it be on of Sammy Hagars multitude of awesome groups like Chickenfoot? Maybe The Power Station with Robert Palmer and Duran Duran? How about Velvet Revolver, Asia or Them Crooked Vultures with Dave Grohl, Josh Homme and John Paul Jones!? Let us know!