This question arises from time to time. usually it transgresses from the “best” to personal favorites.
The greatest rock and roll bands should be classified by their number of hits, their longevity, their influence on other groups or music trends and the ability to fill a stadium and bring down the house.
Thus there is no one comparable to the Stones. Put Led Zeppelin a close #2. Below them there are plenty of greats; Eagles, Who, Fleetwood Mac, Santana, ZZ Top Allman Bros and no list of pure talent rock and roll is complete without Little Feat even though Lowell George left us too soon.
Whats odd is that we are on the third page of this thread and no one has offered up Aerosmith or the Boss.
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Thank you. Hard to fit a one-hit wonder in here. OTOH, Zappa takes it all regarding ingenuity, depth, technical mastery of music and composition, technical mastery of guitar sound and improvisation, etc, etc, long (30?ish) discography, a number of pop hits. Extensive orchestral compositions. Too bad his idiosyncratic nature overtook the beauty of his work. Much was un-listenable, only due to sophmoric antics. And while he had the best players avalable, it was pretty much never the same band twice. Still like ZZ Top tho.
"Statistical Density" is what I named Zappa's genre on my Dudebox, to keep the spousal unit from punching it up randomly.