As you might guess from my moniker, I totally agree. And if that teacher in the future needs one photo to illustrate to his students what rock music was, he couldn't go wrong with this.
Posted on 05/25/2016 7:20:38 AM PDT by Borges
Classifying anyone as the “most successful” at anything tends to reflect more on the source than the subject. So keep that in mind when I make the following statement: John Philip Sousa is the most successful American musician of all time.
Marching music is a maddeningly durable genre, recognizable to pretty much everyone who has lived in the United States for any period. It works as a sonic shorthand for any filmmaker hoping to evoke the late 19th century and serves as the auditory backdrop for national holidays, the circus and college football. It’s not “popular” music, but it’s entrenched within the popular experience. It will be no less fashionable tomorrow than it is today.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Dylan is older than Keith.
I could easily see adding the Rolling Stones and Elton John, but the BeeGees and Abba were very specific and focused groups with much less yearly distribution than the others. In America, we might know those names, but Chinese listeners, Hindi enthusiasts, even in Africa, they all know Elvis, they all know Michael and they all know the Beatles. I am not sure about the Rolling Stones and Elton John. I think they would recognize many of the songs and tunes, but not necessarily know the artist. They KNOW the others.
Dylan of course.
Jim Morrison. American poet.
But most likely none.
You know whats funy I grew up in the 60 s and 70s and still listen to the same 100 or so songs from back then very little new stuff thrills me I must be turning into my folks
Well, as a historian who has written a little on rock music (”You Keep Me Hangin’ On,” with Mark Stein of Vanilla Fudge about three years ago, for example), I would say:
1. Without question, the Beatles transformed music. American rock was moribund and in a valley when the Beatles came along. Presley had stopped doing real rock hits, Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens died in the plane crash, the Beach Boys were just starting, Little Richard had found Jesus, and Jerry Lee Lewis was in legal trouble.
Even if they had little talent, the freshness of the Beatles would have produced a major change in American music, but they had lots of talent. As a group, the Beatles were far more talented than any one of them, and I think that bothered a couple of them.
2. Probably the Stones, though not for any particular song as much as for their counter-Beatle sound.
3. Cream and Hendrix, both because of the virtuosity of the performers.
4. Maybe the Doors/Morrison and Janis Joplin because, well, they died early.
As much as I like the Allman Brothers, you can make the argument that Skynard is THE great American rock band.
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An argument I would reject, largely because I don’t think such a thing exists, but secondarily (IMOO) they’re just not all that.
"Who's the c**t who said that?"
Similarly, the notion of a Hall Of Fame for rock and roll strikes me as missing the point entirely. The formal recognition, the plaster busts, the pomp, the ceremony, (the thousand-dollar tickets); all of that is profoundly antithetical to what rock and roll is, which is a rejection of all of those things. And selecting a single exemplar of the genre is pretty much doomed from the outset: if you could do that, it wouldn't be rock and roll. For example, should this exemplar be famous? It isn't required of a rock and roll musician, in fact, with fame comes the accusation of selling out (Tool recorded a lovely song about that entitled "Hooker with a" and I forget the rest). Technically competent? Well, the requirements for Louie Louie are very far from those of something laid down by Petrucci or Satriani or the like. Sell a lot of records? Nope. Near as I can tell, the perfect exemplar of rock is a musician with a serious drink/drug problem who has an undefinable gut appeal and dies tragically at a young age (27 is about right) of some sort of overdose or especially an air transportation accident. Somewhere in there music may or may not be involved. Hmm...we've defined ourselves right out of the game.
Don't over-intellectualize rock. Just enjoy it.
Something that always impressed me about him was that despite his talent and success he never embraced the "rock star" persona.
The Bee Gees had two advantages over the other two. The songwriting catalog of the Gibb Brothers exceeded that of the other two acts. In addition, the Bee Gees were a solid, well-known band before they reinvented themselves in the disco mode and shot to the top of the music world. This evidences more versatility and longevity than the other two.
At the height of the Saturday Night Fever craze, the Bee Gees would have been at least as recognizable world-wide as Michael Jackson. Of course, that has faded now but then so have the Beatles, to some degree.
Exactly. I occasionally tune in to "Classic Vinyl" on Sirius XM and check out what they're playing. If Dusty Street's on, I'll stay for a while - unless she's playing Elton John (meh). Other than that, I like her selections.
Go to Japan or South Korea and look at what they have in karaoke places. Then reassess how far the reach of Abba was - both in terms of geography and longevity.
John, Paul, George and Ringo. But mostly John and Paul.
Elvis
Little Richard
Bo Diddly
The Platters
The Beatles
Rolling Stones
Cream
Jimi Hendrix
Bob Dylan
Anybody who got into Woodstock Movie (will still be shown for the foreseeable future)
AC/DC? (Only good band from the mid to late 70’s and 80’s)
Sitting in a church service in Sierra Leone and the Guinean pastor talked about how he hated modern music and the children doing the “Michael Jackson” when the music was playing.
This was not an old congregation and he was in his 30’s. Really impacted me on how every single person there knew exactly what he was talking about.
“A bunch of us old goats were reminiscing this past summer and groused how loosely the term superstar gets tossed about. So of course we decided to determine who was worthy of that designation during “our” era of music (approximately 1950 to mid 1980s). We all agreed on seven: the three above, The Rolling Stones, Elton John, Abba, and the BeeGees. We had to keep reminding each other that our personal like or dislike of the acts was an irrelevant factor. It would be hard to write even a short history of popular music during that span without mentioning these acts as each was, for at least a reasonable period of time, the top musical act in the world.”
Thank you for including the Bee Gees & Abba on your list. Many people dismiss them as “bubblegum” or “fluff”, which is simply untrue. Their music was much deeper than people think.
For example: Abba’s “The Visitors” LP. With the exception of a couple of songs, it’s a pretty “dark” album.
"I ride a GS scooter with my hair cut neat.........".
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