Being the third member - honorary job or not?

One of the advantages of blogging is that you can talk about things that the forum members are afraid to speak of, or something that might get deleted from Facebook. So, let's have a look at the position of "the third member".
As we all knwo, this position is currently fulfilled by Michael Simon - but how long to go? Will he leave the band for good, like the others did, or will he stay 'till Scooter's end? Good question.

We'll probably never get an answer to the mechanism of the band, but it's nice to have some speculation. When Ferris left, the official news were that he wanted to concentrate on solo stuff - and then 12 years later, we got to know that he was kicked out for being a depressive person. I haven't had the chance to talk about this with Ferris, so I don't know what to believe. Anyways, it really is an interesting twist to the story.

Axel also left for solo career. When I asked him about this 3 years ago, he said he is still in good relationship with the guys, it just "didn't work out with them in the end", and yes, he wanted to do own things. That's clean sheet for me.

I can't really remember what was the tagline of Jay's leaving the band, but back then, there were some gossip about he having a contract for 4 years which simply expired. In 2007 we had a nice long chat together with a coupla' fans, and he answered all of our questions regarding this subject. He denied having a contract, he said he wanted "harder sounds", and Rick and H.P. refused to go into that direction. The weird part is: look at Jay's music back then, it's not even close to "hard", while Scooter's jumpstyle stuff is much more like it. Strange, innit? Jay also told me he was working all alone on a lot of Scooter tracks (including all b-sides, clubmixes and several album tracks) - while Rick stated a few days ago on Facebook that every single track is made in teamwork. Okay, 4 years passed between the two statements, but I doubt they would change a well-working scheme on making the tracks.

And here we are now with Michael. It's useless to choose between him leaving or staying. I still think that the third member alone can't do anything to change the overall sounding of the band. No need to judge by personal experiences either; I only spoke with Michael 3 times, and he's a really great and friendly guy. But that doesn't change my opinion about him being just a "pawn" on stage, without major influence in the sound. And if that's the truth, that's pretty sad. I do hope time proves me wrong.