Going by the OP, I think Frank Zappa has to win hands down. Despite the turnover of who he worked with, and despite my not liking about 75% of what he did, he did produce fairly distinctive music in VERY wide variety of genres. A lot of bands mentioned have been said to produce 10 different kinds of rock (although to be honest a lot of these sub-genre classifications seem like extremely narrow distinctions), but Zappa has actually leapt from major genre to major genre. I don’t think anyone else has produced full-fledged efforts in classical, jazz, and rock, and certainly not to the level that Zappa achieved. I don’t like his classical efforts much at all, but classical musicians I know at least give him credit for complex, layered, and interesting pieces. And even within the rock genre, he straddles a ton of different sub-genres, and while a lot of it was juvenile and (IMHO) stupid, it was certainly infused with his own fresh off-kilter style.
Much as I love the Beatles, they don’t even come close in eclecticness.
Well, if we’re starting to include individuals, I’ll have to vote for Jack White. So far, he’s done straight-up blues, every flavor of rock, twangy country, bluegrass (the Cold Mountain soundtrack), and been excellent at all of them. I can hardly wait for his symphony, 'cause he’ll probably do one of those too.
I’ll nominate another artist, Steve Morse. The guy has done an enormous amount of work and covers a ton of different styles and he does them all extremely well. He is presently in Deep Purple, so that covers metal. He has done tours or recorded with:
Manuel Barrueco-Classical guitarist
Liza Minelli
Steve Walsh
Triumph
Lynyrd Skynyrd
Marcel Dadi-Country guitarist
Fifth Baby’s All Stars-Eddie VH, Albert Lee, others
Michael Manring
Liona Boyd-Classical guitarist
Kansas
Pavarotti
Jordan Rudess-keyboards, jazz fusion
Peter Frampton
Albert Lee
London Symphony Orchestra (with Deep Purple)
There are more.
The bands that Steve has formed, The Dixie Dregs and the Steve Morse Band, cover a wide range of styles on every album. They do country, rock, jazz, fusion, folk, classical and other stuff. About the only things that he hasn’t done are rap (for the obvious reasons, not much guitar work) and straight blues, though he does appear on Stevie Ray Vaughn tribute. The only other musician I can think of who has done more is Zappa
I would say he has done 4 albums of blues inspired rock (The 4 first), 1 experimental album (Get Behind Me Satan), and one power pop album (Broken Boy Soldiers).
Good post.
This particular quote is not really true though. Taylor didn’t “write the harder stuff”, in fact I can only think of Tenement Funster that he wrote. And May wrote in a variety of styles from the folky guitar stuff, to hard metal, to weird stuff like the prophet song.
I gotta nominate Queen, hands down, for the reasons Jonathan Chance and others stated – they routinely mixed country, folk, disco, opera, and heavy metal songs on any given album, sometimes the same song! No other band comes close to that level of versatility.
Plus producing, co-writing, and performing on Loretta Lynn’s best album in 30 years, doing several songs on the Cold Mountain soundtrack, and playing killer covers from many genres, such as Dolly Parton’s Jolene.
Taylor did, in fact, write a lot of the harder stuff. "Sheer Heart Attack, " “Fight from the Inside,” “Modern Times Rock and Roll,” “Fun It,” “Prime Jive,” and my favorite of the Taylor written/sung, “I’m in Love with My Car.” Listen to his first solo album, fun in space, to hear him at his best. (The second and third are awful; I have not heard the fourth.)
That said, it’s true that until The Game, all four guys took turns singing lead; it was almost like 4 solo acts that shared vinyl space and backed each other up. Freddy’s head got too big, though, if you ask me, and the band suffered for it. Don’t get me wrong; I like a lot of the later stuff too–Hot Space is, some days, my favorite Queen album–but I think overall the earlier albums are the ones I think of in relation to the OP.
Another Jack White partisan checking in! He’s covered more musical ground than
bands who have been around a lot longer, and now that he isn’t exclusive with Meg, we’ll be seeing a lot more variety from him.
Really, I can’t think of another popular musician to try Shape Note music (Cold Mountain soundtrack)! And was “Little Ghost” a Sandman reference?