In a hundred years, who will be considered the best rock and roll band of all time, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, or Pink Floyd? And, no, no other bands will be considered.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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None of the above. In 100 years, rock and roll will be forgotten. All three bands will be known only by a handful of nostalgists.
Precisely.
Booman overrates his personal history. Nothing much to “remember.”
Bet on it.
AG
dude do you have a gambling problem, you end every post with “bet on it”?
Gambling problem? I suppose I gamble that at least a few people here will have enough sense to understand what I am saying.
Why do you ask? Do you object to what I write?
Which part?
The form? The content? The style? Any and/or all of the above?
Here’s the easy solution.
Don’t read it.
Have a nice day.
AG
P.S. Or as the newest lick in town goes, “Have a good one.” Stumble-bummed by almost every retail clerk and supermarket checkout person in NYC, no matter what the purchase.
Where did that come from?
“Habagoodun.” Lips and tongue barely moving. Too depressed, to distracted to make the effort. Too badly educated, too hypnomediaed-out to be able to talk.
It just appeared one day, maybe a month or two ago.
A symptom of cultural collapse. At the retail level.
And you’re worried about my little lick?
Habagoodun.
Because nobody today argues about the relative merits of Verdi and Rossini, or Beethoven and Mozart. Obviously.
The question assumes that the popular culture of the United States and western Europe will still be relevant a century from now. I have doubts.
It’s not so much that nobody today argues about the relative merits of great classical composers. It’s that it’s a bit of a challenge to decide which of a pre-selected group of three is the best of all time, when it never occurred to you that any of them was the best of all time.
I disagree.
two of the bands were heavily influenced/taught by American blues music.. which in turn was influenced/taught by African music/culture.
Thus there’s massive soul/culture backing the Stones and Led Zeppellin, they will still be around in 100 years.
what QITB said, but really the Stones.
Floyd, of course.
Floyd is art rock, the Stones are blues, but Zepplin perfectly synthesizes the grit of blues based rock with the over the top bombastic pretension of art rock to be the greatest rock and roll band ever.
But really, who knows what the future will hold, wouldn’t surprise me if Duran Duran takes top honors a century from now.
.
Good to see you around for musical entries and festivities. How are events in Dubai?
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Sandy and hot, as always. Regular reader, though too infrequent poster. Best wished to all the inhabitants of the pond 🙂
The future will hold many unpredictable things.
But not Duran Duran. Of this I am sure.
If rock is remembered, I gotta go with Zeppelin. The Stones & Floyd at their peaks are magnificent, and I’m probably a bigger fan of both, but the percentage of crap in their output (esp. the Stones) is a lot higher. And Zeppelin, believe it or not, is consistently much more versatile musically (the Stones did some remarkably edgy stuff in the 60s, but really, not since.) Floyd would be the answer to a trivia question were it not for their amazing four-album run in the ’70s.
Probably the ones that descend from the greatest Vaudeville performers of all time…
Metallica. End of story. 🙂
If we’re going to go along with the song, and “don’t believe in Beatles”, then the answer is clearly and undisputably Chuck Berry, Elvis, or Slayer.
The Beatles
A rock and roll band that doesn’t play live in concert cannot be the best rock band ever. Best studio band? The Beatles, no question. But they didn’t do a Sergeant Pepper Tour or a White Album Tour or a Abbey Road Tour or a Let it Be Tour.
The reason it’s down to three is because those three were all legendary in concert. Epic, actually, especially in the case of Floyd and Zep. I’d put david David Bowie’s band in the mix before the Beatles.
The Beatles were nothing but the Backstreet Boys of the ’60s.
Everybody will point at their later records when they became “serious” musicians making political statements and playing different styles. (I’d say they were just chasing trends.) But the vast majority of fans, I’d bet, got into them for “Hold Your Hand” and all the other early teenybopper sewage they put out.
These are not the right criteria. Or at any rate, maybe some of them are, but first you have to try to predict the criteria that whoever remembers rock music in 100 years will be using to decide which was the greatest rock band.
One thing that I will confidently predict is that live performances will be considerably less relevant when all the performers are dead. When people 100 years from now are assessing the relative merits of various rock bands, they will have access to concert footage, of course, but there’s plenty of live footage of the Beatles too.
More importantly, though, I think the Beatles’ choice to focus on studio albums is precisely why they will be remembered the longest. It’s still possible to see the Stones live, for instance, but it will never be 1969 again. Conversely, people for a long time to come will be able to put on Sgt. Pepper’s and have the exact same experience that listeners had in 1967.
Well, to me, rock and roll is ALL about live performances. When I think about a rock star, I picture them on the road, in hotels, backstage, and on stage. I picture them in outrageous outfits surrounded by groupies and roadies.
I do not picture them in a studio with headphones on.
Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, Rod Stewart, Mick and Keith, Robert Plant and Roger Daltrey, Pete Townsend, those are rockers. John Lennon is not a rocker. Paul McCartney is definitely not a rocker.
Now, who is the greatest innovator, the best songwriter (or tandem), or whatever?
Lennon and McCartney are in a league of their own.
One last thing. I first heard Sgt, Peppers when I was about seven years old. I played it over and over and over and over again until I could anticipate every single sound of it. But I don’t think my experience was ANYTHING like was it was for someone to hear it in 1967.
Why?
Because I had heard a lot of music that was inspired by Sgt. Pepper’s and other late Beatles albums before I heard Sgt. Peppers. It blew my mind, but it didn’t blow it as much as if I’d never heard anything remotely like it before.
Well, that’s true about Sgt Pepper’s. I appear to be taking the question more literally than most of your other readers, but this issue of how reputations rise and fall through history has always fascinated me. To me it’s separate from the question of who I think is the greatest band. I had started a comment making a case for the Clash being remembered 100 years from now, but then I hit the wrong button and lost it. Oh well.
You can’t blame the Beatles for not playing live after their last US tour–they couldn’t hear themselves onstage over all the screaming. It got to be a joke. So what did they do then? They went to the studio and produced revolutionary music that changed everything. 1962-1972 turned everything upside down, and the lions’ share of it is due to the Beatles’ influence.
The Stones may have had better live shows, but how many songs did they write for the Beatles to play (btw there’s an anecdote that watching Paul and John write I Wanna Be Your Man actually inspired Keith and Mick to start writing their own material)?
If future generations are taught 20th century rock and roll in some Bill-n-Ted’s Professor Carlin manner at all, they’ll be talking about the Beatles first. They’ll probably have a bit to say about Zeppelin, too.
So they never played live?
they never played 90% of what people think is great in a live performance.
Here’s the setlist of their last arena concert.
Aug. 29, 1966 Candlestick Park, San Francisco, CA, USA
Rock and Roll Music (Chuck Berry cover)
She’s a Woman
If I Needed Someone
Day Tripper
Baby’s in Black
I Feel Fine
Yesterday
I Wanna Be Your Man
Nowhere Man
Paperback Writer
Long Tall Sally
There’s a couple of good songs there, but nothing that would put them above Heartbreaker and How Many More Times or Wild Horses and Sister Morphine or Meddle and Dogs.
I mean, come on!
Compare…
…and contrast.
Which would you consider rock and roll legends?
Amen.
And, no, no other bands will be considered.
Well, then that’s not a serious question.
‘Cause you left out out a lot.
James Brown, Elvis, Dylan, Hendrix, Richard, Berry, Haley, Domino, The Who, Diddly, Lewis, and there are others.
And yeah, you said band, well they all had bands, with musicians that often stuck with them for decades.
The Crickets
it’s gotta be the Stones
The Stones. It’s not even really close. Been around forever, catchy tunes, didn’t take themselves too seriously, etc. The quintessential rock band.
Zeppelin wasn’t around long enough, peaked with their second record, and their first four records are the only ones worth owning.
Pink Floyd is one of the most overrated bands in history. Only occasionally played rock music. Thought much too highly of their own riffs, given the lack of vocals and guitar at so many parts. Pink Floyd is what it sounds like when a bunch of talentless disco players produce an abomination of psychedelic and classical.
“Pink Floyd is overrated”.
HUH? Tens of millions of people don’t agree.
Dark Side of the Moon was on the Billboard chart for fifteen consecutive years.
Roger Waters has reprised the incredible The Wall and is currently playing to packed sports stadiums around the world. And it’s not just old stoners attending, there’s new generations of fans.
60 Minutes did a segment on Waters a few weeks ago. I don’t see them covering Diddy, Green Day, etc.
Floyd is overrated… what a load.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Side_of_the_Moon
http://tour.rogerwaters.com/
hey, for once we agree!!
Hey! yes… music, the great leveler.
A hundred million in this country alone believe an invisible sky wizard created the world 6,000 years ago. So what?
One record makes you one of the three best bands of all time? Johnny Mathis has two records with 10- and 20-year runs respectively. Clearly he’s the best thing ever.
I’m not sure I’d hang my hat on being able to fill the Amway Center in Orlando. A lot of bands can do that. If it were the Stones, it’d probably be in the Citrus Bowl.
As for new generations of fans, there’s always been a small segment of teenagers who love old music their parents were into. Call me when they’re 40 and their kids’ ideas about old people music include Green Day and Pearl Jam.
Yep, that’s true, putting Pink Floyd in the company of such legendary names as Eminem and Adele.
Eminem?
There’s another load.
Last I checked, Eminem didn’t have an album on Billboard for fifteen consecutive years.
I like Eminem, not enough to buy his records- but his music is not remotely comparable to Pink Floyd.
You brought up 60 Minutes appearances as some kind of indicator of importance, not me.
Of course Eminem hasn’t been on the charts for 15 years. No one even heard of Slim Shady until 13 years ago.
And no he’s not like Floyd, but I guess he has gotten a 60 Minutes segment.
…adding:
I’ll give you Dark Side and The Wall. I’ll even throw in Wish You Were Here — the song, not the shitty record — and the last two tracks of Division Bell.
Two records and a couple songs. That’s pretty pathetic for a band supposedly among the best of all time.
Did you ever have a chance to see any of these three bands in concert?
I never saw Zeppelin, but I used to have bootlegs of the concerts. Unbelievable stuff.
Pink Floyd live is beyond anything. And you know, you could see them two nights in a row and not a single note would be different between the two shows. Total perfection. That was actually a reason not to do someone like become a touring Floydhead. If you saw the show in Boston, you saw the show. It wasn’t going to be any differing in New York or Richmond.
The Stones perform on an extremely high level in concert even today.
Which says more than I could ever say about Pink Floyd’s lack of talent. Great rock bands can improvise. Going to a concert to hear everything note-for-note is a waste of money. I go to concerts to hear new takes on great music.
I like improvisation, too. But being able to execute your plan to complete perfection is not a sign of lack of talent.
I’d say it shows a lack of imagination and attachment to the underlying music. Too mechanical, no soul. Soul is what makes great rock music. From Little Richard to Chris Cornell and everything in between and after.
Great concerts have bands playing around with the melodies to see where else they could’ve gone with the track. Otherwise you might as well just lip-sync.
But, again, that’s one of my major criticisms of Pink Floyd’s inclusion here: Pink Floyd’s not really a rock band.
Plus, who the hell wants bootlegs of a band that plays everything the same note-for-note across a tour? That’s a lot of fun to cut out in the name of “perfection”.
I once offered to trade my entire record collection (at least 200 records at the time) for a three-record album of The Flying Abdabs.
The Flying Abdabs was the pseudonym used by bootleggers who had pressed a soundboard quality recording of a concert in Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here/Animals tour.
My friend refused my offer, preferring to retain possession of that recording to getting 200 free records.
I’d probably pay $1000 for that recording if I had the money to spend. On vinyl, of course.
In 1976 I went to Bill Graham’s Day on the Green with The Who and the Grateful Dead. First time I had seen either band, and I loved them both. I enjoyed it so much I bought a ticket to see it again the next day.
The Dead did a completely different set of songs, without repeating a single one. The Who did the exact same set of songs, in the same order.. with the very same between-song patter.
Feeling cheated, we howled for an encore until Bill Graham, reportedly, promised the Who an entire set of Fillmore posters if they’d just come out and do one more song (which they rarely did).
Anyway, that’s when I suspected there was something extra special about the Dead. I suspect 22nd century scholars will have a few things to say about them as well.
Channeling Republicans again, Booman? I wouldn’t rate those 3 in the top tem … well maybe the Stones based on longevity and “Sympathy for the Devil” but that’s it.
They won’t be asking who was “the best” — whatever that means. A century from now they should properly be asking Who had the most influence musically, socially. Who had the greatest impact in their time?
And secondly they will note whose music is still being listened to and appreciated for the rich melodies and interesting, varying evolving styles a hundred tears from now — The Fab Four, hands down. Despite the rather slight objection that they didn’t tour in their final three years, something mostly out of their control as they tended to attract far too much crowd and media insanity during their tours. Lennon, Harrison and Starr had good reason to retreat to the studio. I think Mac’s ego missed all the gulls screaming and fainting over him.
The three nominated bands are not the ones you submitted, BooMan. They are:
And the winner will be the Kinks.
I liked Who’s Next and played it a lot. There is some cool stuff on Quadrophenia. And a good song here or there on other albums. But I never really got into The Who.
The Kinks are a band I enjoyed a lot as a middle school kid. But that’s how I think of them. They were rock and roll for pre-teenagers. Very good at it, too.
The Clash are, of course, amazing. But I wouldn’t classify them in the rock and roll genre.
Wow. To me, the Kinks are the embodiment of maturity and intelligence in rock and roll, especially if you focus on the records they made between 1967 and 1971 (when, ironically, nobody was buying them). “Waterloo Sunset” by itself would be a resume that very few bands could match. Songs like “Days,” “This Time Tomorrow,” and “Oklahoma USA” are hauntingly beautiful. Their uptempo stuff from that period, like “David Watts,” “Picture Book,” and “Arthur” are all catchy and incisive and wry. Even Ray’s paeans to the failing British Empire are touching: “Victoria,” “The Village Green Preservation Society.”
Even the minor songs from that period are poignant. “Shangri-La:”
…and I’m not even looking at their great earlier work, like “A Well-Respected Man.” I can’t think of another songwriter in the history of rock who could do pathos like Ray Davies.
The Kinks definitely are underappreciated, and I prefer them to the slightly overrated Who, who in fact set out originally to be as cool as the Kinks. Also the Kinks were perhaps set back when they were banned from US tv for years in the latter half of the Sixties, during their prime.
Quality melodies, biting social commentary with a musical edginess that said they were not out to please the masses with pretty empty tunes. Victoria is one of the most underappreciated rock masterpieces. Sunday Afternoon is a superior anti tax record compared to Harrison’s more famous Taxman. Social commentary and anti-conformity were brilliantly on display in A Well Respected Man. And so on.
Maybe if Ray Davies had a little more creative input from his bandmates instead of largely having to do it alone, or if he hadn’t had the personal demons, maybe the Kinks would get more respect.
Doubtless, future scholars of 20th century popular music will be discussing the Kinks, along with Booman’s triad, the Liverpudlians, the Who, Bob, and… the Beach Boys.
Just as with the Kinks, the deeper I go into their back catalogue, the more undiscovered gems I find. Undiscovered by me, anyway…
Led Zeppelin. Great as the other bands were, Zep just had more musical virtuosity and raw power.
But jeez, what a choice! They’re all great.
And, no, no other bands will be considered.
Well then I’m sorry, but it’s a meaningless question. It’s a bit like asking who is the greatest US president and immediately declaring that Washington and Lincoln will not be considered.
But it’s a serious question, so I will answer it: the Beatles.
It’s more like asking who the greatest president was: Washington, Lincoln, or FDR.
Sure, you can make a case for Teddy Roosevelt or Thomas Jefferson or even Ronald Reagan if you’re so inclined. But you’d be wrong.
Yeah, but you gave us Eisenhower, Polk and Wilson to choose from!
Exactly. So in that sense, I will say that the Stones are the Woodrow Wilson of rock and roll.
What passes for religious controversy among progressives, eh.
this is vitally important stuff.
Rolling Stones.
I never saw Zep or Floyd in concert, but I saw the Stones 3 times 72, 94, 05. And I plan to see them again. This could be the last time.
This is like a Rock, Paper, Scissors game.
I am trying to answer this question with my son. I say-well what song can compete with When the Levee Breaks–he replies Gimme Shelter.
He says Whole Lotta Love, I reply Time. He says Brown Sugar. I say Heartbreaker (BBC Sessions!) He says Wild Horses. I say Wish you were here. My younger son chimes in with Kashmir. But what about Sweet Virginia? And we haven’t even touched on The Wall.
EFF IT–Bob Dylan!
As others have noted, the way the question is framed limits the possible answers. But I’ll just quote Bob Dylan: “Rock and Roll is dead. It went out with Little Anthony and the Imperials.”
By which he meant that it had been replaced with something called “Rock,” something he and the Beatles helped create. And in that sense, the Stones are the only one of that triad that can be properly called a “Rock and Roll” band. Zep and Floyd were Rock bands, and two of the finest ever, no doubt.
But the Stones, for the entire half-century span of their existence, have kept one foot in the “Rock and Roll” camp as it sprung from the collective forehead of its founders. Berry and Lewis were not just an inspiration, but contemporaries, just a few years their elders, and even collaborators at various points.
Moreover, the classic work of Floyd and Zep spanned only a few years, whereas the Stones output is entering its sixth decade. Longevity itself is not a virtue, but the breadth of the Jagger/Richards songbook is unrivaled within the framing of the query.
To the inevitable objection regarding the Stones’ decline, we’re really only talking about the six albums that followed Tattoo You. And to paraphrase Mark Twain about Wagner: three of them are really not as bad as they sound.