ROCK FAMILY TREE

CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF HARD ROCK!

info@rockfamilytree.co.uk

ROCK FAMILY TREE

Rock Family Tree, designed by Glenn Wellard, is the largest single fully connected rock family tree ever designed, presenting the musician line-ups of SEVENTY different hard rock bands! It tracks the line-up evolution of twenty one iconic bands and allows the musician line-up's of studio albums recorded by these bands to be identified directly from the poster.

For fourteen of these iconic bands (Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Uriah Heep, Scorpions, Thin Lizzy, Judas Priest, Rainbow, Motörhead, Gillan, Whitesnake, Def Leppard, Iron Maiden and Dio), the poster displays every line-up for every studio album produced to date by them (right up to the latest album release 'Invincible Shield' by Judas Priest), identifies the line-up of each album right there on the poster, and displays key links between their musicians and other bands.

In addition, there are seven other major bands for which this feature is also included, not for their entire catalogue, but for their most commercially successful period of time (these are Yes, UFO, AC/DC, Saxon, Gary Moore, Ozzy Osbourne and MSG). Find out more about the poster background and detail below.

Follow our Facebook ‘Rock Family Tree’ page where the complete tree can be viewed and you can get regular updates on the poster, and facts about the bands and the artists on it.

LATEST NEWS - We are now developing the individual band Studio Album Series, and have completed five to date (Deep Purple, UFO, Black Sabbath, Uriah Heep and Yes) - Click on the BUY link in the menu bar to see more details and a purchase link!!

BACKGROUND

I was born in 1962 and became interested in hard rock / heavy metal music, not unlike many teenagers, around 16 years of age, and have maintained that interest as I grew older.

Over the years I’d noticed that band members of my favourite bands from this era, seemed to move around from band to band, very much like the Premier League footballers of today seem to do!

I’d also seen a few band family tree’s over the years, most notably by Pete Frame (who is the 'daddy' of rock family trees, of course!). But many of these family trees are not now up to date and generally centre on a particular band.

Gradually, I became interested in bringing the evolution of major bands, and the migration of their musicians from band to band, up to date...in one big layout.

So in 2018, initially as a personal project, I decided to design one huge rock family tree that covered as many of the bands that I liked as possible that focused on the following criteria;

(a) had bands/band members that were connected in some way;

(b) told a story of the migration/

collaboration of musicians between bands over time;

(d) and was bang up to date!

In April 2018, my first rock family tree design was completed, celebrating the 50th anniversary year of the formation of Deep Purple.

Having been pleased with the results, I decided to share the design on a Facebook page and eBay, for those that wanted to own a copy.

However, there were still other top band favourites of mine that weren’t in this initial design. So, in 2019, I developed the layout further to create a more generic rock family tree, that includes pretty much every one of my own favourite bands (one exception is Rush, those guys never played in any other band, so no connections whatsoever!).

This expansion turned out to be a bigger redesign of the original layout than I thought! Trying to find a logical fit of all the band line-ups and their connections into a finite amount of space, that could be contained on an A1 size poster, was tricky.

But in February 2019, after months of work, the all new Rock Family Tree - 50 Years of Connections In The World Of Hard Rock, was released!

One of the objectives of the poster, was to maintain it as up to date for any line-up changes and new albums of the featured bands, and so the poster undergoes tweaks from time to time.

The design underwent changes in 2020 to improve it still further, coinciding with the release of Deep Purple's album 'Whoosh!'. More recently, it has been updated to include album releases by Iron Maiden, Scorpions and Deep Purple again!

I hope you enjoy perusing it!!

Glenn Wellard

ABOUT THE POSTER

50 Years of Connections in the World of Hard Rock

Rock Family Tree is the largest single, fully connected, rock family tree ever designed, presenting the musician line-ups of SEVENTY different hard rock bands! It tracks the line-up evolution of twenty one iconic bands and allows the musician line-up's of studio albums recorded by these bands to be identified directly from the poster.

21
iconic bands

For fourteen of these iconic bands (Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Uriah Heep, Scorpions, Thin Lizzy, Judas Priest, Rainbow, Motörhead, Gillan, Whitesnake, Def Leppard, Iron Maiden and Dio), the poster displays every line-up for every studio album produced to date by these bands, identifies the line-up of each album right there on the poster, and displays key links between those musicians and other bands.

In addition, there are seven other major bands for which this features is also included, not for their entire catalogue, but for their most commercially successful period. These are Yes, UFO, AC/DC, Saxon, Gary Moore, Ozzy Osbourne and MSG.

Identifying albums line-ups

In total, the poster displays the line-ups of bands that have produced, between them, a massive 366 studio albums* (of which the line-ups of 260 of them can be identified directly from the layout), together with the years those line-ups were active.

For example, want to know who played on Black Sabbath's 'Mob Rules' album? Find the album in the album panel on the left. You’ll see this was produced by the 2nd iteration of the Black Sabbath #2 line-up (denoted by the (ii) album group), and the layout will tell you this was Ronnie James Dio (vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar), Geezer Butler (bass), Geoff Nicholls (keyboards) and Vinny Appice (drums), having replaced Bill Ward from the (i) iteration.

You can do this for any one of 266 albums featured on the poster, in some cases with the help of the notes that are dotted around the poster too.

Over 330 different musicians

The total number of different musicians that are featured on the poster reaches over three hundred and fifty (many of whom are sadly no longer with us). All fine musicians in their own right, and sharing their place in the history of music making in the world of hard rock.

How those musicians moved from band to band, within the scope of the poster, is illustrated by the path and tunnel guides, so that the route of an individual musician’s work, featured on the poster, can be tracked.

For example, if you wanted to follow the work produced by John Sykes, you can follow his path through the poster, linking it to the studio albums he played on by reference to the album panel on the left hand side.

In some cases, a musician’s path might be through, what we’ve termed, ‘tunnels’. These are denoted by the outgoing and incoming arrows to a bands line-up, as opposed to direct line paths. So, for John Sykes, the outgoing arrow from Thin Lizzy #5 indicates his next progression through the poster is to join Whitesnake #3, where there is a corresponding incoming arrow from ‘TL#5’ to indicate this.

And after all that, the poster design itself is an eye-catching piece of artwork and a conversation piece. It looks great on my ‘den’ wall, and it could do on yours too!!

If you’ve bought a copy (or even if you haven’t!) follow the Facebook ‘Rock Family Tree’ page where the complete tree can be viewed and for regular updates on the poster, and facts about the bands and the artists on it.

Note * The poster doesn’t include band line-ups for live shows or live albums, this would have been just toooo tricky! Many bands used other musicians who played on live albums that did not appear on studio albums, because of sackings, illnesses, injuries and other reasons that a band might have needed a replacement for a period of time. Sticking to studio albums gave me a well defined set of parameters to work with of who played on what album. Nor have I generally included solo albums, even by the featured band artists. The poster is really about bands and their line-up migration over time.

Why these 70 bands?

There are thousands of hard rock / heavy metal bands out there of course. It would be impossible to cover every one in a single diagram. The bands that I have included are favourites of mine of course, but they also happen to be bands that have had this higher level of musician migration from band to band over the years, which was the point of the start of the project.

However, I figured that if these are my favourite bands, they’re probably lots of other people’s favourites too. So, I’ve done a bit of research. There are lots of Top 100 Hard Rock / Heavy Metal album lists out there on the internet, and from those I’ve looked at, my poster generally includes about 60-70% of the top 100 albums in most of them!! (A good source here was filtering ‘Metal Storms’ album rating lists).

Not a bad hit rate then, and generally the artists that produced the missing albums in these lists do not connect with the bands on the poster, and so would not suit its connected nature. These include bands from the likes of Queen, Pink Floyd, Aerosmith and Van Halen, to Guns ‘n’ Roses and Metallica.

All in all then, I think the poster is as optimised as it can be.

THE PRODUCT

50 Years in the World of Hard Rock - A1 size Poster with colour background £35.00 plus P&P

If you’re a fan of any of the bands featured on the poster and want to own a physical copy Of Rock Family Tree to hang on your wall, you can!

To purchase, click the Buy Now button below to take you to my e-Bay listing

Buy Now

50 Years in the World of Hard Rock (A1 size Poster without Background) £35.00 plus P&P

If you’re a fan of any of the bands featured on the poster and want to own a physical copy Of Rock Family Tree to hang on your wall, you can!

If you prefer a plain black and white poster, this version removes the colour background image.

To purchase, click the Buy Now button below to take you to my e-Bay listing

Buy Now

A2 Folded Rock Family Tree

INTRODUCING the A2 sized, folded Rock Family Tree!! 🎸🥳😍 By reducing the size to A2 we can reduce printing costs and by folding the poster to A4 for transit, we can significantly reduce the UK postage and packing costs (we will have to charge more for international orders) so that you can have a copy of Rock Family Tree for just £15.00 for UK customers ..... delivered!!

Wow!! Just think, you could have a copy of the brand new 2024 Rock Family Tree for just £15.00!!

Buy Now