Very subjective question: "Best" means: most influential? highest selling? sweetest smelling? etc....? Bands that change the direction of popular music stand out to me. Elvis changed the direction. The Beatles changed the direction. Kiss changed the direction. Van Halen changed the direction. Metallica changed the direction....
Purely subjective but since The Beatles weren't a rock band by any stretch of the imagination, Queen.
Hmmm Metallica, Journey - yes Journey, Aerosmith, Van Halen, and Pink Floyd are all worthy contenders. But the best rock band of the past 20 years is Oasis, and easily. Liam and Noel Gallagher were the last true rock stars.
Journey and Aerosmith, great bands, but they didn't change the music scene. Best ever? Has to be these guys........ https://youtu.be/gEPmA3USJdI
Saw them on tour with Aerosmith - they were the opening act. Unusual and talented, but Steve Tyler, Joe Perry and company wiped the stage with em once they went on up. The Rolling Stones in their prime put on a great show - anytime you see Mick Jagger or Steve Tyler on stage, you are actually watching the type of performance Janis Joplin gave. Beatles - great stuff, did some rock, but essentially they became a studio band because their music became so complicated after their initial innocent years that they couldn't go on tour and perform it without an entire orchestra. No denying their talent, they changed the music scene, led the British Invasion, etc., but, AC/DC? That type of excitement and originality together on stage, pretty difficult to put someone out there ahead of them, even "The Who" didn't accomplish that. I will stick with them as greatest rock band. Check the crowd reaction than watch them perform at the Grammy's in 2015 with their music industry peers. Wild stuff..........I put Michael Jackson as "King Of Pop" when it comes to performing live...........
Yes. I really don't know other than they were a band, so my answer to everything is Yes, at least until there is a band called No.
I don't think there's a definitive answer to "best" anything. Much of the discussion is going to be subjective. In my mind, there is little doubt as to the best rock band ever and that would be Pink Floyd. Not only were they pioneers of progressive rock's symphonic/experimental/electronic sound, they were pioneers in their stage perfomances as well; incorporating both audio and visual aspects to the show...the use of lasers for example. Progressive rock broke away from the cliche' "boy meets girl, boy loses girl" themes so entrenched in popular music...prog-rock artists incorporated classical literature, fantasy and folklore, and intellectual topics such as psychological theories. They challenged the listener with music that had a message...and Pink Floyd, along with bands like the Moody Blues, pioneered this musical genre. Prog-rock isn't as popular today as it was in the 70s & 80s, perhaps peaking with bands like Canadian rockers, Rush. Today's popular artists like Taylor Swift and Katy Perry stick to formulaic lyrical content typically centered on the more "teen-agey" themes of romance/love gone bad. They'll throw in a hip-hop artist as a collaborative player, but that's to give the song more "street credential" than anything else. Rinse repeat ...rinse repeat....cha ching banked another million. A band like Jethro Tull, for example, would never make it with today's younger listeners. They don't have the patience for it's lyrical content, or the sophistication in musical tastes.
The Beatles hands down; more covers have been done on their music and their impact on the rock music field was like no other band in the rock era.
A bit off topic..but I wanted to post this article. Scientists Just Discovered Why All Pop Music Sounds Exactly the Same Source: http://mic.com/articles/107896/scientists-finally-prove-why-pop-music-all-sounds-the-same This can be interpreted," the researchers write, "as music becoming increasingly formulaic in terms of instrumentation under increasing sales numbers due to a tendency to popularize music styles with low variety and musicians with similar skills." So...it's good and bad I suppose. We have websites like Youtube, Vimeo and Soundcloud that open up literal World's of music to a younger audience. Streaming content like Pandora, Spotify, I-tunes...I think Jay-Z threw his hat in the ring with a new streaming music site. Music is literally...EVERYWHERE! This is good, really good...not to sound old...I'm 50..."in my day" we had two choices...you bought a vinyl album or cassette, or you listened to FM radio and listened to whatever the DJ was playing. Today, almost any song ever recorded is literally at your fingertips. A really good thing. Now for the bad...the most popular music, songs with literally MILLIONS of listens are of the more formulaic variety. Despite a plethora of choices, I think younger audiences are sticking to simplistic levels of musical sophistication. They are not challenging themselves with the exploration of musical genres, and music is not challenging them.
The Bealtles overall were the greatest. The Stones used to be great, but havent done anything outstanding in over 30 years. Led Zepplin had the most raw talent for each band member. But AC/DC is the best hard rock band and still going.
I think Rush might do warm-up acts for AC/DC if they haven't already been put out to pasture. The bass player and drummer were/are very good. Seems like the last song they wrote I remember was "Roll the Bones" 25 years ago.
The Quarrymen, it's in the name of the band. http://ultimateclassicrock.com/55-years-ago-harrison-joins-quarry-men/ Do you get it ? Rock, quarry as in a rock quarry.
Yeah, Neil Peart is only the greatest rock drummer in the World... I think the only events AC/DC plays these days are funerals...their own.
Please, you pretty much have to go into Michael Bolton territory to find anything more gawdawful than ACDC.
[video=youtube;PJzPaxP75gA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJzPaxP75gA[/video] vs. [video=youtube;k_jCu_u28Ig]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_jCu_u28Ig[/video] I've provided two reasonable examples of the band's sound...their musical landscape. Rush and AC/DC Let those participating in the thread decide. As I say, this is all ultimately subjective. Some like the three chord, sort of standard approach to rock music and some like complexity. Depends what your ear is trained for. I have substantial hearing loss in one of my ears, so my days of really experiencing music are done; but even with that...I prefer Rush. Not to say at all that this means Rush is better...objectively. To me they are better...that's all that means and that's all any of this means. What you like, and if you like AC/DC...that's what you like. If that makes any sense.
Both Rush and Black Sabbath would be very high on my list. I don't think I could ever pick a true favorite though. There's too many genres out there that I listen to.
I'm really surprised to see AC/DC on anybody's "best" list. They're the embodiment of substanceless generic rock, in my opinion. Even Aerosmith seems inspired by comparison.