Regarding Bruce, that's exactly the way I saw it go down. And what the hell was Springsteen trying to do what that 'Tom Joad' album?? Man, talk about the Titanic...
But as to the 76-80 era, the music as a whole was more than enough a smorgasbord of style and spectrum to satisfy nearly every mood.
Sabbath and AC/DC were at one end of the hardness spectrum; Zep and Floyd that "ethereal" stoned-out sound; Springsteen/Cougar/Petty/Seger/Costello carried a flavor of a rock-jazz sound and story-telling; Allman Bros and Clapton bluesy; Pat Benatar, Blonde, and the Cars punkish (btw, Benatar's band was excellent); And then as I opined in an earlier post, I thought Foreigner, Boston and Fleetwood Mac were solid. And then there were the carry-overs from the early 70s like the Doobs, Robin Trower, ELP, Deep Purple, Eagles, etal...
And hey -- were the Bee-Gees really that bad? ;-)