Which of the greatest bands of all time suddenly fell apart when their leaders died young?
What band basically invented punk rock a decade before it broke out? Keep watching to find out.
The Ramones and The Sex Pistols are frequently cited as pioneers
of punk rock. But The Stooges, led by often-shirtless wildman Iggy Pop,
were among the first bands to truly capture the essence of the genre.
Judy Berman argues as much for Pitchfork, saying that Iggy's live performances were
full of uncontainable, furious energy. He wore dog collars, cut himself with glass,
and gyrated across the stage in a way that many hard rock frontmen would study in decades to come.
Other bands years later would further develop the sneering attitude and rapid power chords we
typically associate with old school punk, but the spiritual foundations of the genre were hammered
into the beer-covered ground of seedy clubs by the Stooges. It wouldn't be particularly out
of the ordinary in 1979 or 1983. But for the late '60s, it was nothing short of revolutionary, even
if the world had no idea what to do with these guys, costing them deserved commercial success.
But they've only gained respect in the years since,
as their influence has become increasingly difficult to ignore. In 2010,
after seven consecutive rejections, Iggy and the Stooges were finally inducted into
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Iggy said to the crowd during their performance, quote,
"Come on, rich people! Show us you're not too rich to be cool!"
What's more punk than that?
It's common knowledge that the mid to late '60s were a time of countercultural revolution,
often expressed through rock music. But rock
music was still a man's world - at least until Janis Joplin showed up.
As lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company,
Joplin shook up the rock 'n' roll patriarchy, coming out of the San Francisco scene to become
a worldwide phenomenon. Joplin's signature wail and gravelly voice defined a new movement
in sound that combined the blues with psychedelic rock to create sonic magic
Tragically, Joplin died of an overdose in 1970 at the age of 27,
not long after leaving Big Brother and the Holding Company to embark on a successful solo career.
But the "Queen of Rock" had already established herself as a rock legend by this point.
By necessity, she did it by overcoming institutional barriers of sexism.
Singer-songwriter Tracy Nelson, who appeared on a bill with Joplin in 1966, told NPR,
"I had to follow Janis Joplin, and I'm standing out there listening to her,
and I'm just thinking, 'Man this is a force of nature.'"
"Force of nature" might be the closest words can come to describing Joplin's
voice to the majority of us, who never had the privilege of hearing it live.
For Rolling Stone, one of the elements that made the Doors so important was their recognition that,
amidst all the flower power hippie sentimentality that dominated mid '60s mainstream rock,
the decade had a dark side. Drugs, Vietnam, fierce national divisions. In that sense,
The Doors were the embodiment of that era. Their music wasn't angry or particularly heavy.
In fact, the band didn't even have a bass player, opting instead for organist Ray
Manzarek to hold down the low end of the songs. And like other bands of their era,
the guys in The Doors looked like anyone you'd run into on the street.
But it was all dark and mysterious and rebellious and exciting in its own way.
Perhaps frontman Jim Morrison indulged in that darkness because he was intimately
familiar with the hedonism and drug abuse his music channeled the energy of.
"The Lizard King" was something of a rebel without a cause, whose behavior stemmed from personal pain
rather than an organized political viewpoint, and whose untimely death
has both rehabilitated and immortalized his music as a symbol of youthful rebellion.
In a tribute to The Doors for Rolling Stone, Marilyn Manson wrote,
"They didn't sound anything like punk rock, but Morrison outshined everyone
else when it came to rebellion and not playing by anyone else's rules."
The Velvet Underground, led by Lou Reed, is one of those bands you always hear
about but rarely hear on the radio. Julian Casablancas wrote in Rolling
Stone that their music is almost nonexistent on classic rock radio.
"Why is it always Boston and Led Zeppelin? [...] And why are
the Rolling Stones so much more popular than the Velvets? [...] There is also a
part of me that has always felt that it should have been the other way around."
There's an argument to be made for that. Casablancas goes on to say
the "Velvets" were ahead of their time and just plain weird and that
their experimental music could transport you and teach you how to be yourself.
High praise. But how influential were they really? The BBC asks a provocative question:
are they as important to music history as the Beatles? It claims that the Velvet's first four
studio albums contained the DNA of everything from indie and alternative rock to nearly all
forms of punk. Then it lists some artists who cite the Velvets as a foundational influence. The names
are impressive: U2. The Sex Pistols. R.E.M. The Talking Heads. Sonic Youth. Even David Bowie.
"There were elements of what Lou was doing that I thought were just
unavoidably right, for both the times, and for where music was going."
You're unlikely to stumble across Velvet Underground tunes on your
morning commute. But if you like any alternative bands at all,
you owe it to them to check out the '60s group that made it all possible.
Any conversation about the origins of hard rock simply must include a proper
tribute to The Who. As Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder wrote for Rolling Stone,
"They wanted to be louder, so they had Jim Marshall invent the 100-watt amp.
Needed more volume, so they began stacking them. It is said that the first guitar
feedback ever to make it to record was on 'Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere,' in 1965."
They also set the standard for rock excesses. As all rock fans know,
late drummer Keith Moon was famous for trashing hotel rooms, which so many later rock groups
copied. And Pete Townshend pioneered the art of smashing your guitar on stage,
another staple of rock royalty excess copied by generations.
But The Who's legacy stretches beyond power chords and partying until dawn. Vedder wrote,
"The Who told stories within the confines of a song and, over the course of an entire album,
pushed boundaries. [...] The Who quite possibly remain the greatest live band ever."
On "My Generation," Pete Townshend famously wrote, "I hope I die before I get old!" Luckily
for everyone, it didn't happen. He and frontman Roger Daltry, who still has that golden voice,
are now in their '70s, and they are still rocking out as hard as ever.
Nothing you'll likely notice about The Beach Boys on the surface — from the five members
smiling as they played, to their often matching, bright uniforms and harmless, nice guy haircuts,
to the infectious earworm hooks and gorgeous harmonies on songs like "Good Vibrations"
and albums like "Pet Sounds" that were seemingly designed in a lab to put a smile on
your face — betrays the darkness and turmoil that defined their story. Rough upbringings, conflicts,
firings, untimely deaths, and the tumultuous mental health journey of frontman Brian Wilson
all took their toll on The Beach Boys and derailed them at the height of their popularity, though not
before they also inspired other bands to create some of the greatest works in music history.
"We heard 'Pet Sounds' and thought,
right, well we've got to do something better than that. So we did 'Sgt. Pepper.'"
But as Fleetwood Mac frontman Lindsey Buckingham writes for Rolling Stone,
the group's legacy will never not be the magic of their music.
"I remember hearing 'Surfin' Safari' first when I was in sixth grade. It had the beat,
the sense of joy, that explosion rock & roll gave to a lot of us. But it also had this incredible
lift, this amazing kind of chemical reaction that seemed to happen inside you when you heard it."
The thing is, It doesn't really matter where you are when you hear a Beach Boys song — the bus,
the office, in traffic. When those harmonies on "Pet Sounds" hit, you're simply transported:
flying down a coastal California highway with the windows down and your arm out the window.
Few people in history have changed the way an instrument is played more than Jimi Hendrix,
Leader of The Jimi Hendrix Experience. He changed rock guitar forever. When he first arrived,
the guitar was played with little distortion and only the simplest,
most reserved solos. Hendrix reverse engineered it, unlocking entirely new forms of playing,
and arguably becoming the first true guitar hero.
And Hendrix never seemed to break a sweat doing any of this. Playing the guitar appeared to
come as easily and as naturally to Hendrix as breathing and speaking does for the rest of us.
He experimented with distortion, shredding, whammy bars, and a funky tone
in a psychedelic way that revolutionized music moving forward. The "Purple Haze" and "All
Along The Watchtower" rocker's performance at Woodstock is the stuff of rock n' roll legend.
But Glider Magazine argues that the virtuoso's influence stretched far beyond the guitar,
and he ultimately impacted everything from funk to '90s Seattle grunge rock to even hip hop music,
due to him being frequently sampled and lyrically referenced. It all goes to show that the best way
to leave a truly immortal legacy isn't just to write music that's still listened to years later,
but to influence countless other artists, across multiple genres,
who will carry your ideas and your creative spirit to new generations.
You've probably heard it said a million times that classic rock bands and artists had their stylistic
roots in the blues. And so did the Rolling Stones, of course. According to U Discover Music,
the blues is such an intimate part of their sonic DNA that they even took their name
from a Muddy Waters song. Then they went on to bring blues to a wider audience.
But the influence of the Rolling Stones didn't come close to stopping there.
Their songs — "Satisfaction," "Paint It Black," "Get Off Of My Cloud,"
"Sympathy For The Devil," "You Can't Always Get What You Want," "Jumpin' Jack Flash," and
so on — are timeless hits and still some of the most commonly heard tunes on classic rock radio.
They also made iconic album covers and even influenced fashion,
playing a huge role in replacing the suits-and-bowl-cuts look of old school
'50s artists with the longer hair and wilder colors we more typically associate with rock
stars. And it's worth noting that in a recent poll, their "tongue and lip" logo
beat out the Nike swoosh and the Batman symbol to become the most iconic T-shirt logo ever.
But perhaps the Stones' greatest legacy to the world of rock was their attitude.
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards still embody the sneering, rebellious spirit of rock n' roll,
despite somehow surviving long enough to become respected elder statesmen of the genre at large.
It hardly needs to be said: The Beatles aren't just the greatest band of the 1960s,
but are in the running for the most important musical act of all time. Fittingly, Rolling
Stone named The Beatles number one on their list of the top 100 artists in pop music history.
It's one of those lists where fans can argue themselves to death over who should outrank who,
or be included at all. But few would argue with the
placement of The Beatles at the top of the pile.
Elvis Costello wrote a tribute for Rolling Stone, highlighting the fact that unlike
many rock and pop groups that came before them, The Beatles created their own songs.
"Every record was a shock when it came out. [...] They made writing
your own material expected, rather than exceptional."
This was a band that seemed to know it wouldn't stick together forever, and it set out to
revolutionize music as much as possible in just a few years in the late '60s. What's strange is that
they weren't even performing live for a good chunk of that short span. NME says that they
stopped doing concerts well before their split, because the crowds drowned out their playing.
As Costello eloquently put it,
"The songs weren't theirs anymore. They were everybody's."
"I'm amazed at the audience reaction and stuff, because, it's like, I still don't believe it."
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