R.E.M. proclaimed by many (myself included) as the best rock band of the 80s-to-early-90s.
Oh, and The Smiths deserve a mention.
Here’s a slightly different spin: on any given night, a band is playing the best show that someone has ever seen. I think the “greatest rock band” honorific is a fleeting thing that allows a great many performers a seat on the throne.
If Bob Dylan, Neil Young And Bruce Springsteen belong on this list (and I certainly agree on Dylan and Neil Young, and am on the fence with Springsteen) then Van Morrison is surely deserving…
I think he is as esteemed by other musicians as anyone but Bob Dylan—one of the the ultimate “musicians’ musician”.
As far as I can see, none of the band on the OP list would even have a band if it wasn’t for Elvis Presley. (Not certain about The Who, but everybody else is certainly documented to acknowledge this, together with a lot of others mentioned.) - So, perhaps Atomic Elvis should get an honorary mention, at least?
They must have been amazingly high at the time. I listened to countless hours of Zeppelin when I was a long-haired young pothead about a zillion years ago. After being (reluctantly) weed-free for a few years, I revisited some of my old Zeppelin records and had a serious old man-ish “…I used to listen to that crap?!” moment.
I think Led Zeppelin being “great” is a self-perpetuating myth that myself and my friends (and some of our older, but still quite high, friends) started when we were oh-so-young and oh-so-stoned.
Depending on which story Pete is telling, *“Real Good Looking Boy” *is about wanting to look like Elvis when he was growing up. The song incorporates the intro and lyrics from “(I Can’t Help) Falling in Love With You”.
Define “rock.”
It’s what you do before you roll.
No, that’s swallow an ecstasy tablet.
That’s a good point actually. The OP asks about “bands,” and early Elvis wasn’t just Elvis alone. Elvis performed with Scotty Moore and Bill Black, both of whom helped define the “rockabilly” sound that brought rock and roll to the fore. It’s a shame those guys aren’t appreciated more as a band.
So I nominate “Hillbilly Cat and the Blue Moon Boys” (Elvis, Scotty and Bill’s original billing name) as the “greatest band” of their era.
The ones most universally listed as ‘the best’ would probably be:
The Beatles
The Rolling Stones
The Who
I’ll bet if you did a meta-survey of all the ‘best rock band’ lists that have been compiled over the decades, those three bands would be ahead of the pack by a pretty good margin.
Then you get down to the second tier, which includes the best bands in certain genres:
The Clash
Led Zeppelin
AC/DC
Pink Floyd
Van Halen
Eagles
Guns N’ Roses
The Pixies
Queen
The Police
Bob Marley and the Wailers
Lynyrd Skynyrd
…And about a hundred other bands.
So the thing is that there really is a very rarified group of bands at the top that are almost universally considered among the greatest, then the field gets very big, very fast.
I vote for
Dylan
Chicago
Santana
The Who
Elvis
I did not like the Beach Boys at all.
VH1 had Zeppelin as the top Heavy Metal band of all time, not the top Rock and Roll band. R&R is really too broad of a category, and each person’s definition of rock is different. I tend to put the Beatles more in the pop category, Stones more in rock and roll, Zep more in Heavy metal, Elvis more in rockabilly, etc…
And by best, what are the defined criteria? Staying power, influence, critical acclaim, sales, etc?
This was probably too vague a topic in retrospect. **Sam Stone **got my intent, but I see how it could be interpreted many ways.
But there’s no criteria at all that would allow Chicago to be on the list… 
LOL
Anyone that doesn’t have Zep and the Beatles somewhere in their all-time top 10 rock bands is a little out of touch on this topic.
Top 10 is being generous. It would take a lot of persuasion (and pot) to argue for 8 bands ahead of either of those two.