As long as we stretched it to the 70s I think it’s right to include Robyn Hitchcock, a world treasure who is the pablo picasso of great rock, with over 40 years spanned between great world class work.
Robbie Robertson obviously had the bulk of his success with The Band in the late 1960s, but made a powerhouse comeback with his 1987 self-titled solo album.
Albert, I was going to mention Van Morrison – I swear! – but I decided that, while his 80s stuff like No Guru… is good, creative, reflective, important music, it didn’t quite measure up to his early 70s output overall, so he just missed the cut (IMHO) for this particular thread.
The J Geils band formed in 1968 and had a few minor hits in the 70s (Give It to Me, Must’ve Got Lost, Come Back, Love Stinks), but never had a Top 10 song until they released the album Freeze Frame in 1982. Peter Wolf left to go solo and the band broke up soon after finally hitting the big time.
However, if you’re not aware of Broadsword and the Beast as the best Tull album of the 80’s, and IMHO, of all of Tulls album, then change this. It’s the one I’d hold up as an 80’s triumph. Different style from early Tull, but still wonderful.
Rock Island is also a superb album, which would be known more, except Broadsword was so good. I always thought that was the one which stole the Grammy from Metallica…
Crest of a Knave, while ok, is them pretending to be Dire Straits. Ironic, really that is was the least deserving (well, apart from Under Wraps) is the one which wins the award.
Really? More so than Toys in the Attic?
Gosh.
And the first being?
I might have to double-secret-gosh this.
Elaborate?
Regardless of the critics, I think The Blue Mask was his best, more so than Transformer, even.:eek:
agree with:
(I’ll say excellent albums, and agree they weren’t as good as their earlier stuff.)
(for the 80’s, yeah)
The Blue Mask is a great album, no doubt one of his best, but rather introspective (and of course also Transformers, but that’s very much a product of its time), but what made *New York *so strong was its in-the-face clutter-less production combined with the topical, but also prophetical lyrics:
“Give me your hungry, your tired your poor I’ll piss on 'em
that’s what the Statue of Bigotry says
Your poor huddled masses, let’s club 'em to death
and get it over with and just dump 'em on the boulevard”
from Dirty Boulevard
or
“Well Americans don’t care for much of anything
land and water the least
And animal life is low on the totem pole
with human life not worth much more than infected yeast
Americans don’t care too much for beauty
They’ll shit in a river, dump battery acid in a stream
They’ll watch dead rats wash up on the beach
and complain if they can’t swim”
from Last Great American Whale.
Couldn’t be more topical now with the current president, who also got dissed on the album when he was merely a shady business tycoon.
Well said. This was the last Neil Young record I really loved.
Absolutely.
But I think it’s sort of a “special circumstance,” since RT went on to release several very powerful albums in the 80s as a solo act (though he continued to use many of the same backing musicians). His first solo album was in the 70s. Therefore I vote for BOTH RT/LT and RT (solo) as entries in this category.
As was the self-titled album from 1983.
As I’ve said many times, the greatest rock album yet made is Refused’s The Shape of Punk to Come.
Let’s Dance has already been mentioned, and it’s certainly Bowie’s most commercially successful album, but it was preceded by 1980’s Scary Monsters…and Super Creeps, a better all-around album though not nearly as successful. The less said about the rest of his 1980s catalogue the better, though there are some outstanding individual songs (Loving the Alien, especially).
Can you really call Van Halen a “60s-70s rock band?”
Yes, the band formed in '72 and release two albums in the 70s, but the bulk of their work came out of the 80s. According to this site, they only made $25 million in worldwide sales for those two albums, whereas they raked in $47 million for their 80s albums, and another $13 million for post-80s work.
I graduated from high school in 1988 and I consider VH to be very much an 80s band.
Per the criteria given in the OP:
Van Halen is a rock band that originated in the 1970s. 1984 is a record they put out in the '80s that is arguably their best record, thus not only living up to their past work but possibly exceeding it.
Yes, I think they ft the criteria given in the OP.