I personally go weak at the knees for The Eagles, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Nirvana, and Guns N’ fukin’ Roses. Every time I want to rock out to some US music*, they are the bands I’ll choose first. I might go on a tangent, via YouTube, to plenty of other groups but I’ll almost always go #1:those four.
*Americana might also include Blues, Funk or Jazz, but mostly will be rock
Heh heh. You said “go #1.” Heh heh.
First, no band after the 60s is allowed to be an answer.
You all should know how I feel about Becker and Fagan since I worship them in every music thread. They’re beyond wonderful as songwriters and producers. A band? No. They’re good but not great musicians and they dismissed their backups after two albums. Did they rock? They could. Listen to “Boddhisatva.”
That made me think of Jefferson Airplane. I played Surrealistic Pillow and Crown of Creation today and their music was terrific. They’re also not known for cooking as a band, but take a listen to “If You Feel.” It rocks as hard as “Boddhisatva.” (And Carlos Santana did the beautiful guitar work on “Pretty As You Feel” from Bark.)
The Eagles managed to bring in that much money touring because they know people will pay several hundred dollars a ticket to see them. :dubious:
As for their “Greatest Hits” album, I never owned it, but I did get “The Long Run” for Christmas from my brother when I was in high school. Good album, although I don’t know what made him think I would like it. Oh, well. Around that same time (1980-ish), I rang up tons of that “Greatest Hits” album at Target, the one with the blue cover, and since we’re on the topic of the Allman Brothers, Target later sold boxes of cutout LPs at 99 cents each. “Enlightened Rogues” probably sold more copies that way, from that store alone, than it sold elsewhere all put together.
My point is that looking backwards through a backwards telescope is limited and makes it smaller. It has nada to do with the reality.
I wasn’t referring to self-consciousness. It was a total paradigm shift.You must not have been there. The punks were very self conscious, and they (said they) hated the older bands. It was like the biggest change ever and it took the bands a long time to get over it. It took years before anyone would admit to liking Zeppelin, have long hair again, play guitar solos. Meanwhile most cities got “scenes” where there had only been cover bands before. That wasn’t a pivot point? Where were you?
I’m not proud of being there. But “Bupkiss”? So much for fighting ignorance eh?
The point is older bands sound slower and have less production at their disposal, not to mention less marketing strategy (in the production) (!) , and are way less monomaniacal about “ROCKING”. They had other things to say that made them great artists. That’s rock too. But their music must be better whether it rocked or not because most of the great bands cited here are prepunk and pre NWOBHM. If you are only looking backwards through a small lens you won’t see it.
To judge them against each other for booty scooting is not informational. “How much they rocked” is very much a function of their mini-era, and not their quality.
Our local “alternative” paper a couple years ago did a survey to determine the all-time greatest American rock band. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers finished #1 followed by the Ramones. Creedence, the Doors and the Allman Brothers join those two in my top five, although I should probably include Chuck Berry and whoever was backing him up at the time.
I want to use this opportunity to say I really missed the boat. I should have put Steely Dan up in the top 3. I apologize. That is what rock means to me. The band held for 3 LPs, and it has two geniuses. Then three more brilliant Lps with the two. That’s enough for me. Plus Denny Dias came back for the solo on Aja.
What does it mean “To Rock”? Can you rock and suck too? Can you rock without a drummer? I really like it when the band rocks when they have a rocking thing to say. That usually is a function of melody. If the melody is not there I couldn’t see it rocking me. IMHO. It’s like breathing.
I think the essential components of rock are a backbeat groove and danger. If you aren’t putting something at risk with your music, your image, your challenge, I am likely not going to think its rock n’ roll or rock.
Steely Dan are wonderful, but didn’t cast nearly the shadow that the Ramones have, to cite one example.
Well, the point about the Dan is that they’re sui generis. They were an antithesis to every other style of the 70s, which they had open contempt for. More so even than the Ramones in some ways.
I want to reiterate Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. I’m a huge fan of that band (and they are a band), though they maybe are a bit too derivative of the Byrds and other bands from that era, but I’d argue that they managed to encapsulate the true sound of American rock perfectly.
I don’t know if they are the greatest american rock band but I think they are vastly underrated
Here’s a happy thought: what if the Greatest American Rock Band of All Time hasn’t come along yet? After all, we’ve still got part of “all time” ahead of us. If we’re really lucky, there’s still good rock waiting to be made.
Rock is definitely in a slump. The Black Keys are about the only good and popular band right now. In the last 10 years add the White Stripes. Hopefully it bounces back.
I’m trying to figure out where the above story might have been true. Maybe England?
I was there, and in the U.S., we punks were vastly outnumbered while long-haired bands dominated the charts. See how many true punk bands you can find among the Billboard Top 100 albums for any year of the 70’s or 80’s, and report back.
As for the OP, I have no problem if Van Halen wants to bill themselves as the Greatest - I guess they have as much a claim as anybody else.
What city did you live ( in or near)?
What was your rock station(s)?
Charts weren’t a good reflection of anything then in the culture. Punk was fairly quickly adapted into new wave and was all over the place. Was it in the Billboard charts? No. Was it on burgeoning video outlets and eventually MTV etc.? Of course.
You quoted me out of context: The scenes that sprang up were not hard rock long hair scenes where you were, were they?
Maybe I’m talking about my experience in an urban area with Colleges, and you aren’t?
Meat Loaf - solo artist. Although I guess he’s big enough to be confused for a band. 
Two things:
When I got to Washington DC in '80, it already had one of the best Punk scenes in the country and one of the best radio stations in WHFS, but if you drove 20 minutes outside the city, not a punk rocker to be seen; nothing to be heard but bad, bad music.
Yes, New Wave had a non-negligible cultural impact, but I guess you think it caused a paradigm shift while I think it was absorbed.
Are you talking about “Free Fallin’” here?
I’m sorry, I didn’t realise this was the “Greatest American dinosaur band of all time” thread.