10 Greatest American Rock Bands of all Time (do you agree?)

**wvwvw** · 02-20-2014, 10:24 PM

10. The Band

OK, technically The Band are four fifths Canadian, but their beautiful blend of US blues, folk and country with contemporary rock makes them the founding fathers and all-time finest exemplars of what we now call Americana. Comprising virtuoso yet innately soulful multi-instrumentalists Robbie Robertson, Garth Hudson and the late Richie Manual, Rick Danko and Levon Helm (the only American), this was a definitive group; five extraordinary individual talents coming together to concoct a rich stew of music. In the late Sixties, they all lived and recorded together in a Woodstock house known as the Big Pink, underneath which jam sessions with Bob Dylan turned into the legendary Basement Tapes.

9. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

First inspired to form a band by The Beatles, Tom Petty has retained an anglophile bent that values smart, concise songwriting, preferring understatement to excess, and never straying too far from the classic virtues of verse, bridge, chorus. The Heartbreakers are a fantastic band with killer musicianship, sleek and energetic, who know when to hold back and when to really let rip. It took the dynamism of new wave to bring Petty into fashion but he has risen to become one of America’s most trusted performers, a rock ‘n’ roll hero of rare class, integrity and intelligence.

8. The Ramones

Possibly the least gifted band of musicians to be universally hailed as all-time greats. The Ramones played fast and loud, with a relentless, tom-tom dominated rhythm, buzzsaw guitars, basic melodies and repetitive lyrics. Most of their songs were indistinguishable from each other, a fact not helped by Joey Ramones’s peculiar enunciation, words strung together by syllables alone, all consonants jettisoned in the frenzy. The Ramones boiled rock music down to its very essence: leather jackets, ripped jeans, three chords and an attitude. Their first three stunning albums reset rock’s dial, serving as catalyst and inspiration for hundreds of emerging bands.

7. Metallica

The name says it all. Metallica are the ultimate heavy metal band, genuine monsters of rock, undisputed lords of a musical genre so sonically and lyrically aggressive that only its devoted followers think of it as music at all. With its doom-laden imagery and emphasis on technique and sheer volume, heavy metal has a tendency towards fantasy pantomime, but Metallica brought to it a seriously venomous spirit blacker than punk. Over the years, they have broadened and deepened their sensibility without sacrificing intensity. “They are as powerful as you can get,” according to collaborator Lou Reed.

6. Aerosmith

America’s longest running rock soap opera, Aerosmith have notched up hits across five decades, surved drugs and debauchery on a gargantuan scale, and become the nation’s biggest-selling rock band in the process. The two-guitar attack (led by fast fingered Joe Perry) with Steve Tyler’s drawling, yelling vocals may have obvious origins in The Rolling Stones but Aerosmith invest rock 'n' roll with their own sense of southern grooves, flamboyant posturing and steaming pop hooks. If you like it slick, crass and packed with clichés about attractive women, Aerosmith are US rock royalty.

5. R.E.M.

R.E.M. were the great outsiders who came to define a whole new spirit of alternative American rock. These unlikely global superstars from Atlanta, Georgia began in the early-Eighties as an off-beat indie ensemble with folk leanings, fronted by a strange asexual singer with a goatee beard and a way with cryptic lyrics. Their slow rise to become one of the biggest stadium bands in the world was achieved, remarkably, without losing their sense of intimacy and artistic eclecticism. For three decades, R.E.M. were beacons of a kind of rock idealism, exhibiting a bold, adventurous approach to music, underpinned by melodic pop instincts and a focus on the inner strife rather than the high life.

4. Nirvana

Nirvana were a perfectly balanced power trio who delivered primal, almost monochrome rock. Much was made of the group’s loud / quiet dynamic, but their simple template embodied a world of contrasts: intimate and expansive, melancholic and furious, deep and meaningless. Kurt Cobain carried us through his complex interior world like a spirit guide, with elusive truths located in the sound and the fury of his playing, the hurting tone of his voice, the alternately deadpan introversion and raw rage of his delivery. Addressing (and rebelling against) generational despair, Nirvana performed as if it is a matter of life and death, which retrospect tells us it really was.

3. The Doors

In their visceral, intense, improvisational mix of blues, jazz and poetry, The Doors used rock music as a vehicle for spiritual exploration, to “break on through to the other side”. They played open ended, constantly mutating grooves that attempted to suck the audience into a vortex of sound, releasing us from self-consciousness and into the freedom of the moment. Singer Jim Morrison’s self-destruction ensured their immortality as symbols of rock’s dangerous power.

**wvwvw** · 02-20-2014, 10:25 PM

2. The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Jimi Hendrix was surely the greatest rock star who ever lived. Supernaturally gifted and outrageously cool, he looked and sounded like he was born with an electric guitar in his hands and fire in his blood. His band, The Experience, was made up of an English drummer and Irish bassist, but their sexually-charged grooves were all wrapped around the swaggering black American guitar slinger who seemed to actually be a part of the music he made. A raw, primitive and a audacious futurist, in just four years as a recording artist, the man burned as brightly as any musical genius ever. Dead in 1970 at the age of 27, his ghost has haunted every rock 'n' roll solo since.

1. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

In the rock 'n' roll pantheon, Bruce Springsteen is The Boss. There are no regal aspirations in this modest title. A global superstar for nigh on forty years, Bruce is content to be perceived as friendly foreman of his E Street crew, a loyal workforce of dedicated musical mechanics. For all that, there is nothing workmanlike about Springsteen. He is an incomparable master of rock 'n' roll dynamics. In terms of the intelligence, insight, empathy, spirit and emotion of his writing, and the structure, pacing, passion and sheer, unquantifiable charisma of his performance, time and again he justifies his reputation as rock's head honcho. The essence of Springsteen is to say this is real life, it’s hard sometime, but it can be fun, and we are all in it together. To see and hear Springsteen is to believe in the power of music.