According to Classic Rock

[Robert Mugabe]

There's an excellent reason they never played songs from Revolver during concerts.

Most of the big songs on Revolver were virtually impossible for the four of them to recreate on stage. Got To Get You Into My Life, For No One, Eleanor Rigby -- these songs all required horns and strings. No bands at the time brought back-up performers with them.

Songs like Tomorrow Never Knows requires use effects that they couldn't reproduce on stage. Remember, it was just four guys playing guitars, bass and drums -- that's it.

Revolver was a super complicated album for its time.

Their best album up to that time. I guess they topped it later. But only just. I just heard Elanor Rigby on the car radio today. It was overplayed at the time and there was such an inundation of Beatles then, that one sort of shrugged it off. But after not hearing it for years, it is diabolically brilliant to me. The string arrangement courtesy of George Martin really illustrates what serious musicianship means. McCartney's other flops like Hey Jude and Fool on the hill are inspired. He must have made a deal with the Devil to come up with that stuff. Obviously broke the deal after the Beatles broke up.
Rolling Stones fans take note.

 

[JeanGary Diablo]

Don't get me wrong, I love Pearl Jam, Tool, Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Bon Jovi, Springsteen....but I really don't consider any of them 'classic' rock. Classic rock in my eyes is 60s and 70s. Maybe I'm just splitting hairs because that list made me feel like a geezer

Totally agree! I get into this argument all the time with people. Friends of mine will say "but, but, but, the definition of 'classic rock' keeps broadening with years!!"

Nope. it doesn't. And I'll be fucked if I ever consider Green Day, Nickelback or GnR classic rock.

To me, "classic rock" is the rock era before rock started branching off into umpteen-million different directions.

I even have a solid definition of what constitutes the classic rock era: I say it was born 9th February 1964 when the Beatles went on the Ed Sullivan Show -- this also launched the British Invasion -- and it died 16th August 1977, which marks the death of Elvis as well as the rise of Disco and Punk that summer.

Sure, there's some room for flexibility -- I would still consider Rush's Moving Pictures from 1981 a classic rock album by virtue of the fact Rush was around for nearly a decade prior. But more or less, the classic rock era is 1964-1977.

 

[JeanGary Diablo]

My heart wants this:

1.Rush
2.Van Halen
3.Def Leppard
4.Queen
5.Ozzy Osbourne
6.Dio
7.Tragically Hip
8.Triumph
9.Bad Company
10.Kiss

...but as for musical impact

1.The Beatles
2.The Rolling Stones
3.Black Sabbath
4.Led Zeppelin
5.Free
6.Jimi Hendrix
7.The Who
8.ELP
9.The Doors
10.Queen

I know Rush is your favourite band, and you would not be out of order putting Rush an objective Top 10 list of the greatest. Nearly every big band that came out of the '80s and '90s will list Rush as an influence -- either wholly or by individual members.

 

[Sonic Temple]

How the fuck did Slade end up on anyone's Top 50 Rock bands list???!?!?!?!

I actually liked them - tbh - I was hooked after this:

played the Kamikaze record to death and then they released Rogues and I was done after hearing:

then they released You Boyz and how the hell can you not clap your hands and stomp your foot along with:

 

[JeanGary Diablo]

Their best album up to that time. I guess they topped it later. But only just. I just heard Elanor Rigby on the car radio today. It was overplayed at the time and there was such an inundation of Beatles then, that one sort of shrugged it off. But after not hearing it for years, it is diabolically brilliant to me. The string arrangement courtesy of George Martin really illustrates what serious musicianship means. McCartney's other flops like Hey Jude and Fool on the hill are inspired. He must have made a deal with the Devil to come up with that stuff. Obviously broke the deal after the Beatles broke up.
Rolling Stones fans take note.

Totally agree -- Revolver is their best collection of songs, I think. Also glad you mentioned George Martin. He gets lots of deserved credit but never quite enough. He was the visionary when it came to directing the band and serving as their "editor" as it were. The Beatles wrote the songs and played the instruments, but he drove the album-making process, introduced ideas to them and kept them on course in the studio. The fact that Martin's forte was classical music, not rock, strongly worked in the Beatles' favour by 1966 when they started introducing strings and horns.

 

[jeff2]

My heart wants this:

1.Rush
2.Van Halen
3.Def Leppard
4.Queen
5.Ozzy Osbourne
6.Dio
7.Tragically Hip
8.Triumph
9.Bad Company
10.Kiss

...but as for musical impact

1.The Beatles
2.The Rolling Stones
3.Black Sabbath
4.Led Zeppelin
5.Free
6.Jimi Hendrix
7.The Who
8.ELP
9.The Doors
10.Queen

Saw Rush in the early eighties. My older brother had a friend with connections at Maple Leaf Gardens and ended up getting 6th row floors. Was really there just for their 70s material at the time. What I liked was how clean and precise it sounded. Generally, I do not like bands that change their songs when playing live as few can do it well. One exception could be Deep Purple Made in Japan.

 

[onomatopoeia]

There's an excellent reason they never played songs from Revolver during concerts.

Most of the big songs on Revolver were virtually impossible for the four of them to recreate on stage. Got To Get You Into My Life, For No One, Eleanor Rigby -- these songs all required horns and strings. No bands at the time brought back-up performers with them.

Songs like Tomorrow Never Knows requires use effects that they couldn't reproduce on stage. Remember, it was just four guys playing guitars, bass and drums -- that's it.

Revolver was a super complicated album for its time.

These are exactly the reasons why I can't consider The Beatles to be a great Rock band. They also didn't play anything from the Rubber Soul album at their last concert; it was all material released on Help! or earlier.

One of the reasons why the British Classic Rock bands were often better live performers than American bands related to broadcasting laws in the UK. The live musician's union in the UK was very strong, and many of them were tight with Members of Parliament and the upper management at the BBC. There was a strict limit on how many times a recorded song could be played on radio in a week; less than five times. This is also why the biggest UK acts of the day would stoop to miming their hits on Top of the Pops - that was considered a 'live' performance.

Top of the Pops was recorded around 5:00 PM on Thursday nights, and aired that day at 7:30. The UK is small enough that most bands who had a gig that night could 'do the show' and also be fashionably late for a real live performance later that evening.

There were no restrictions for live music played on radio, and the BBC, which had a monopoly on radio in the UK, (their only local competition was from off-shore pirate stations like Radio Caroline.

The solution for bands to receive more radio airplay was to perform live on air in the BBC studios, usually on John Peel's show, from 1967 -. They had to be able to reasonably recreate their recordings, in one take. We're fortunate today that many of the Peel sessions have received official releases; for decades, most of them circulated only in bootleg form, recorded from the radio broadcast by someone at home onto cassette tape.

List of John Peel Sessions

The TV equivalent was The Old Grey Whistle Test, (OGWT), which had a few mimed performances, but mostly it was bands performing live in the BBC studios, often with no audience other than the camera, sound and lighting crew present.

@JeanGary Diablo : I don't presume to think that any or much of THIS post is news to YOU, but I do think that a lot of people following this thread don't know a lot of this.

 

[onomatopoeia]

How the fuck did Slade end up on anyone's Top 50 Rock bands list???!?!?!?!

Slade was huge everywhere except in North America. Many of the Classic Rock bands who topped the UK charts but tanked in the States had the same thing in common: They were a bunch of ugly fuckers. If a bloke wanted to make time with the birds, but he wasn't much to look at, (or wasn't one of the Queen's cousins), he either had to be really good at sports, or he needed to be in a band. Once music videos became popular, there was more of an emphasis on what a band looked like as opposed to what they sounded like, but that's after the Classic Rock era. Everybody looks the same on radio.

In North America, music was often promoted with magazines aimed at teenage girls, so the British bands who made it stateside always had at least one 'cute one', by 1960's/ 70's standards, at least.

 

[JeanGary Diablo]

These are exactly the reasons why I can't consider The Beatles to be a great Rock band. They also didn't play anything from the Rubber Soul album at their last concert; it was all material released on Help! or earlier.

One of the reasons why the British Classic Rock bands were often better live performers than American bands related to broadcasting laws in the UK. The live musician's union in the UK was very strong, and many of them were tight with Members of Parliament and the upper management at the BBC. There was a strict limit on how many times a recorded song could be played on radio in a week; less than five times. This is also why the biggest UK acts of the day would stoop to miming their hits on Top of the Pops - that was considered a 'live' performance.

Top of the Pops was recorded around 5:00 PM on Thursday nights, and aired that day at 7:30. The UK is small enough that most bands who had a gig that night could 'do the show' and also be fashionably late for a real live performance later that evening.

There were no restrictions for live music played on radio, and the BBC, which had a monopoly on radio in the UK, (their only local competition was from off-shore pirate stations like Radio Caroline.

The solution for bands to receive more radio airplay was to perform live on air in the BBC studios, usually on John Peel's show, from 1967 -. They had to be able to reasonably recreate their recordings, in one take. We're fortunate today that many of the Peel sessions have received official releases; for decades, most of them circulated only in bootleg form, recorded from the radio broadcast by someone at home onto cassette tape.

List of John Peel Sessions

The TV equivalent was The Old Grey Whistle Test, (OGWT), which had a few mimed performances, but mostly it was bands performing live in the BBC studios, often with no audience other than the camera, sound and lighting crew present.

@JeanGary Diablo : I don't presume to think that any or much of THIS post is news to YOU, but I do think that a lot of people following this thread don't know a lot of this.

Some of this I knew, some of this I did not know, but I agree with every one of your points here -- no argument whatsoever ... save for your point about the Beatles not being a great band, lol. We might just have to agree to disagree on that one.

Now, that said, and maybe this even furthers your point, in 1967 Pink Floyd were on John Peel playing tracks from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Like the Beatles, Pink Floyd were using sounds effects on their studio music, but unlike the Beatles, they were still able to recreate their sound on stage live. And compared to the Beatles in 1967, Pink Floyd were essentially unknown nobodies with a relatively tiny record contract.

 

[mandrill]

Slade was huge everywhere except in North America. Many of the Classic Rock bands who topped the UK charts but tanked in the States had the same thing in common: They were a bunch of ugly fuckers. If a bloke wanted to make time with the birds, but he wasn't much to look at, (or wasn't one of the Queen's cousins), he either had to be really good at sports, or he needed to be in a band. Once music videos became popular, there was more of an emphasis on what a band looked like as opposed to what they sounded like, but that's after the Classic Rock era. Everybody looks the same on radio.

In North America, music was often promoted with magazines aimed at teenage girls, so the British bands who made it stateside always had at least one 'cute one', by 1960's/ 70's standards, at least.

I was in the UK when Slade was big there. They were still awful. Typical TotP garbage.

Now T.Rex might make a top 50 list based on "Get It On", which really rocked.

 

[onomatopoeia]

Some of this I knew, some of this I did not know, but I agree with every one of your points here -- no argument whatsoever ... save for your point about the Beatles not being a great band, lol. We might just have to agree to disagree on that one.

Now, that said, and maybe this even furthers your point, in 1967 Pink Floyd were on John Peel playing tracks from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Like the Beatles, Pink Floyd were using sounds effects on their studio music, but unlike the Beatles, they were still able to recreate their sound on stage live. And compared to the Beatles in 1967, Pink Floyd were essentially unknown nobodies with a relatively tiny record contract.

I said that The Beatles weren't a great Rock band. As a Pop band, they were unquestionably the best.

 

[JeanGary Diablo]

I was in the UK when Slade was big there. They were still awful. Typical TotP garbage.

I believe Slade were also a skinhead band for a very brief time, right around the time when a portion of the Mods were developing into skins, probably around 1970/71.

I do still remember them as a kid growing up in Canada, particularly the really funny looking guy.

 

[onomatopoeia]

I believe Slade were also a skinhead band for a very brief time, right around the time when a portion of the Mods were developing into skins, probably around 1970/71.

I do still remember them as a kid growing up in Canada, particularly the really funny looking guy.

Female skinheads



are often called 'Chelseas'.

 

[shack]

In January, 1977, I saw Thin Lizzy, opening for Queen. Both bands were, arguably, at or near their peaks artistically, if not commercially. Lizzy's set was better.

I may have been there because I remember seeing Thin Lizzy as an opening act.

 

[shack]

1. AC/DC
2. Tool
3. Metallica
4. Motley Crue
5. Phil Collins

Which one of these is not like the others?

 

[shack]

Where are The Sex Pistols, The Velvet Underground, The Guess Who, The Allman Brothers Band, etc., etc.

Yeah, it's preposterous that they had Lynyrd Skynyrd but not the Allmans.

BTW, The Guess Who were superstars only in Canada and maybe 1 other country.

 

[shack]

My heart wants this:

9.Bad Company

Paul Rodgers had one of the all-time greatest rock voices (along with Roger Daltrey).

 

[ogibowt]

for my entire adult life including my teenage years ive been a huge fan of Soul R&B..from the 50,s 60,s and into the 70,s....Blues and Doowop.........i have very little knowledge or interest in Classic Rock....but i have read throughout this thread with great interest....and im impressed with the passion and knowledge of the Genre clearly on display here....a genuine conversation without insults and name calling................carry on..................

 

[shack]

I can't consider The Beatles to be a great Rock band.

They mostly ceased to be a Rock band about half way through Rubber Soul, and they were a Pop band after that.

I have to respectfully disagree.

They were a pop "boy band" to start. Their music matured at an accelerated rate. They experimented and changed rock music completely. They created styles and trends that other bands emulated. They are the most influential band of all time. Pop bands don't do that.

One might argue that they were the 1st prog rock band. (Days of Future Passed--Moody Blues was released in 1967)

 

[shack]

for my entire adult life including my teenage years ive been a huge fan of Soul R&B..from the 50,s 60,s and into the 70,s....

Do you have the Stax Collection?