AC 
DC
That’s congruent with my understanding of the heavy metal / hard rock distinction. By comparison, AC/DC’s lyrics are more about the classic themes of sex, drugs/alcohol, and rock & roll. 
When I think Blues Rock - I think George Thorogood
With all this semantic fun I’ll slot Foghat right in there with Zed Zed Top under “Boogie Rock”.
Yeah I’d consider AC 
DC and Priest significantly different bands.
OK me the bands that best typifies:
Classic Hard Rock/Heavy Metal(This would be to me any band formed before 1970)—Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Iron Butterfly
Hard Rock----AC/DC , Aerosmith, KISS
Southern Rock–Lynyrd Skynyrd, ZZ Top, The Black Crowes
British Heavy Metal—Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Motörhead
American Heavy Metal–Metallica(at least up to The Black Album) and Megadeath, Anthrax,and Slayer,
Hair Metal—Motley Crue, Skid Row, Def Lepard and Warrant
Grunge–Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden
Guns N Roses skirts the line between Hard Rock, Hair Metal and Heavy Metal.
Van Halen is hard to classify overall—with David Lee Roth they more of glam/hair metal band and with Sammy Hagar they were more of hard rock/blues band.
I’m surprised so few people have listed Guns n’ Roses. To me, they are the prototypical hard rock band.
What is it about GnR that makes them slide under the radar? They were also one of the biggest bands of their era.
I have to say that IMO you have a pretty solid list there: nary a band out of place.
Part of it might be their relatively short window of “big” (four albums over four years, 1987-91), followed by years of infighting, departures, and long-delayed albums.
What could be be more hard rock than that? (-:
It’s like excluding someone from the hard rock category because they trashed their hotel room and drove a Rolls into a fountain.
Apologies if I wasn’t clear in my hypothesis: they certainly were as “hard rock” offstage as on. You asked why GnR “slides under the radar,” and I hypothesize that a comparatively small body of work, and a relatively short timeframe of popularity/visibility, is why they haven’t been getting mentioned as much in this thread, compared to bands which were around for longer, and recorded more. That’s all.
Also, I think that they were probably the last big hard rock band, before grunge, alt-rock, hip-hop, and a bunch of other genres took over.
Yes. And there was a distinct punk influence from early on, which makes them less prototypically Hard Rock. Nevertheless I agree, they should be on the list.
I too endorse Dorvann’s typology, and dodge tons of pointless arguing over stuff like ZZ Top being hard rock, jeez.
That works too.
Way too late to be prototypical.
I think also they had a whiff of “hair” that, say, the fan favourite Oz-Scots never had. Axl was just too damn pretty. For all of 15 minutes.
That, plus the ballads, man. The damn ballads.
Hmm. Well I guess I define “hard rock” as rock music that just seems… loud. And one of the early “loud” rock bands was Blue Cheer. So I think Blue Cheer is hard rock.
I cannot argue with that. I would buy your newsletter. Also, points docked from GnR for Axl’s plastic surgery. That is anti-rock. You’re supposed to wind up either dead or dessicated like Keith Richards.
Still… Appetite for Destruction has to be one of the great hard rock albums.
By that standard, My Bloody Valentine would be “hard rock”. Which they are not.
Man, when you go into a concerts and they give you earplugs at the door … I’ve only been to one show, right after the mbv album came out, and it was easily the loudest show I’ve been to. During the Holocaust section of “You Made Me Realize,” I think I even had to cup my ears even though I was wearing plugs. How the idiots in front of me managed to listen to it without earplugs, I don’t know. The ignorance of youth, I guess.
What we really need is to adapt the Mohs hard rock scale to rock music. We need an examplar song for each level of hardness, from 1 to 10. Then we can rate any song, and by looking at a band’s entire body of work, their hardness.
Guns N Roses is definitely hard rock more than they’re hair metal. They were definitely a transition stage , and are not easily categorized.
To my mind it’s AC/DC. There was hard rock before them, and hard rock after them, and BETTER hard rock, but no one is more purely hard rock. They didn’t do other stuff the way Zep did. They did hard rock. That’s it.
Ok, then the thread is over, cause Spinal Tap are settled at 11.