Don't you find it odd when some band members play in the band for a couple of decades or even more, but they (almost) never write any music?
Everybody's first thought is probably Ian Hill of Judas Priest, the guy who actually started the band, but besides a couple of co-writing credits on Rocka Rolla and one song on Stained Class he never wrote anything else for the past 5 decades. Another example are Steve Edmondson and Aaron Aedy of Paradise Lost. They have co-written two songs on Draconian Times and that's it for their 35-year long careers.

They don't even have any kind of side/solo projects. I find this kind of stuff really interesting.

Nicko McBrain has been in Iron Maiden since 1982 (according to his MA page), and he has only written one song on Dance of Death as far as I know. I guess he contributes with the arrangements when doing the drums, but no actual songwriting credits outside New Frontier.

Corpsegrinder doesnt write anything for Cannibal Corpse, and I dont think he's ever done so.

Songwriting credits are a weird thing. Arrangements don't count. Drum parts don't count. Just the lyrics and the musical core of the song.
Classic Slayer wouldn't be the same without Dave Lombardo's fills, but it's not technically songwriting...

This is one that has always blown my mind. Apparently it's to the point where he doesn't even write lyrics.

I've also heard that Ozzy can't play any instruments and doesn't even write lyrics on his solo albums.

He can clearly play the harmonica.

I don't find it odd at all. Especially when said band member is the vocalist. They are there to primarily be the voice of the band and the frontman. There's no expectation for them to be involved in the songwriting process and that doesn't diminish the spirit of collaboration that a band requires because at the end of the day they're still gonna embody the lyrics and melodies with their voice.

I think he also has a credit on Virus, and possibly a joke B-side on a single.


Aside from a line or two, he doesn't write many lyrics (at least that was the case whilst Daisley was on board) but he comes up with a lot of his vocal melodies. I've read stories of him singing random lines when working out the melody, then someone else will put lyrics to that melody.

Sabbath wise, I think in the very least he wrote lyrics to Who Are You, part of The Writ, and part of (or maybe even all of) Black Sabbath.

I am pretty sure Paulo Jr. of Sepultura didn't write any music for the band, with Max or with Derrick.

Alexi Laiho did a majority, if not all the 'writing' (composing and arranging) for most of his career basically laying down the parameters for the rest of the band.

That's the vast majority of people that play music, in great bands, bad bands, and people that just play at home alike. You'd be surprised.

Pretty sure that Ozzy wrote the basic melody and lyrics to Who Are You. He definitely wrote the entire lyrics for The Writ.

Fisher had some co-credits for lyrics with Webster on each his first two albums with CC: Vile (Disfigured, Puncture Wound Massacre) and Gallery of Suicide (Disposal of the Body, Blood Drenched Execution [with Mazurkiewicz]).

Do wonder if that was just a concession for a few small contributions/comments on the lyrics to give him some royalties and once he got established in the band it wasn't considered necessary anymore.

But of course the weird thing is that Barnes did write pretty much all of the lyrics beforehand.

I think he wrote some lyrics early on because he felt he had to contribute something to the writing process but after a couple of albums the band worked out a dynamic where Alex and Paul write the lyrics and Alex + whoever is on guitar at the time write the songs. It works for them.

It's really not unusual. Not everyone who plays can write and not everyone who writes is a good musician. Most bands aren't really collaborations, at least as far as songwriting goes. Also, as someone else mentioned, songwriting is kind of weird because it's really just the melody and the lyrics. Arranging is not counted as songwriting writing, so it doesn't matter if the bass player writes his own bass part or the drummer suggests a tempo change in a section or the lead guitarist comes up with a solo part.

I don't find it odd at all. Bands can have all sorts of different creative makeups, and musicians can have all manner of different levels of participation/engagement/involvement that satisfies them.

Did Tom Araya contribute to Slayer's songwriting? If he did, I'm unaware.

He's penned lyrics, but that was a duty he split between himself, Jeff, and Kerry. Unsurprisingly, he did "Silent Scream"; but he also happened to write the lyrics to my two favorite songs on Hell Awaits.

Jukka from Nightwish

Van Williams in Nevermore

Steve Di Giorgio has no songwriting credits despite being in a million bands.

And I believe Neil Peart wrote as much Rush music as Geddy and Alex wrote lyrics.

Eric Adams

Probably isn't allowed to, from his power tripping bandmate. Lucky his voice makes up for any songwriting shortcomings anyway.

Exactly. I think it is more unusual to name bands where EVERY single member always contributed to the actual songwriting. Outside of arranging parts and making suggestions, that is. With bands signed to big(ger) labels, credits were sometimes given to arranging and not just who formulated the music and lyrics to make sure everyone got a share.

Regardless of who writes though, when a good drummer gets behind the kit to execute a written drum part, they are still adding their particular feel and touch to it and not just being technical.

A good example would be Dream Theater. Ever since Portnoy left, the music is written by Petrucci and Rudess but Mike Mangini's drumming is still not directed down to the last note because he is a very talented and imaginative drummer. Portnoy being a key songwriter in the band was highly unusual to begin with in metal where drummers rarely helm the songwriting.

Dream Theater are pretty collaborative though outside of The Astonishing. They only credit lyricists because evidently they write as a group a lot of the time, like for instance I know at least as recently as Distance Over Time Myung was writing key riffs to songs too (Untethered Angel is an example).

Oh yeah, I'm sure they are very collaborative. But they did have specific members helming the songwriting which is what I was referring to; like Mike Portnoy with his 12 Steps Suite, and pushing them into more groove/thrash metal territory in the 2000's. And they did "write" the drum parts for A Dramatic Turn of Events sans Mangini while they searched for a drummer but he clearly added his touch.

Fans begged to have Myung be a chief songwriter again after not contributing much for so long, so it's great if he is more involved now.

This topic makes me think of something that I also find interesting. Band members who came in with the band already established and still took over creative and songwriting control. A quick example that comes to mind is Mortuus in Marduk, to the point where, if I'm not mistaken, he has been the main songwriter of the last album.

Kragen Lum wrote just about all of Heathen's most recent album and he's only been in the band since 2007.

Pretty sure the Hoffmans barely wrote anything after Legion when they were in Deicide. As Glen put it, Steve wrote 90% of those albums.

He's written the lyrics to 3 CC songs:

-Disfigured (Vile)
-Puncture Wound Massacre (Vile)
-Blood Drenched Execution (Gallery of Suicide)

Outside of this, he only contributes vocals to the band.

Eh. Most of the drummers I know can play some guitar or even a lot, but most of the guitarists I know can't drum. Drummer/songwriters are far from unheard of- for a classic example, Dismember and Entombed both had songwriter-drummers.

Same with L-G in Entombed, he wrote only one song (the piano interlude on To Ride Shoot Straight which I'm pretty sure he stole from somewhere) and exactly one lyric line of one song.

Maybe that's the reason they are long time members? No egos or conflict of interests, just a guy doing his job.
I saw a bts from a Dream Theater recording session where James LaBrie arrived to the studio, was given the lyric sheet from Petrucci, sang his part and left. When the writers in the band writes the songs they now what they want it to sound like and what's within that musicians capacity, and said musician trust the writers to come up with something that suits them and will work.
How many bands have broken up because of "musical differences"? How many bands have turned to shit because one member wanted to have more influence over the songwriting?

You make an excellent point.

I was under the impression that Mortuus and Morgan both split songwriting between the two of them...?

According to his page here in the archives, Emppu Vuorinen's last writing credits in Nightwish were for "Dark Passion Play", sixteen years ago, and it was only one track. Can't tell if the guy just gave up butting heads with Holopainen, or if he prefers playing parts that were written for him instead of coming up with his own material.

Matias Kupiainen in Stratovarius. He hasn't exactly taken full control of their songwriting, but he surely makes a hell of a contribution ever since he joined the band.

What's even more mindblowing is that he formed his own side project, named it after himself, and didn't write anything for it either.

The Rush part is backward, Neil wrote all their lyrics, Geddy and Alex wrote the music.

DiGiorgio is a hired gun, so he's brought in as a player, not a writer (I don't remember if he wrote for Sadus, which was his band as opposed to a job).

Some other long time band members who don't write:

Joey Belladonna has never written for Anthrax. Scott wrote all the words after Turbin was fired and until Bush was hired (he split duties with Scott). I believe that during his first run in the band, they actually told Joey HOW to sing the songs (allegedly, he's give more freedom now).

Cliff Williams has never written for AC/DC and Brian Johnson has not written since 1988, although in the latter case, he was excluded from writing by the Young brothers, it wasn't because he wasn't willing to contribute. Meanwhile, Malcolm is still getting credit on every song despite his death.

Even though they split credits amongst the band, it's been said that neither Alex Van Halen nor Michael Anthony never contributed to the songwriting of Van Halen (they eventually stripped Michael Anthony of his credits on 1984). Eddie claimed that he even wrote Michael Anthony's live bass solo and had to show him how to play it.

Leif Edling has always written everything for Candlemass, the others guys do not write.

I might be wrong about this, as I don't follow his career closely, but I believe that Tim "Ripper" Owens also does not write, or rarely does.

Bad Religion bassist Jay Bentley has mostly been in the band since 1980 (he left for a few years in the mid 80s when they were not particularly active) but only has like 5 or 6 songwriting credits total. According to their biography, the band never attempted to write songs together, Greg and Brett always wrote separately.

He wrote a couple for Iced Earth, and he has his own solo stuff and Beyond Fear where he was the main writer, but I don't think he's done anything else in the last 10 years or so

Didn't Gorgoroth have an entire court case centered around this? I'm not a huge fan so I don't know the timeline of people joining but iirc Gaahl and King copyrighted the band name and tried to "steal" it from Infernus, who is an original/founding member. I think the argument at the time was "I started this band and have been here since day one" versus "Yeah but you haven't written a song in decades and we do all the work".

Is it even "his" side project at that point? I thought the self-titled album from that project was pretty good, but it was basically a session musician album. It's not "Corpsegrinder's album" if someone else is doing all the songwriting.