It's funny, but the big rock bands are pretty much all gone, or reduced to just touring now to rake in the bucks. The entire creativity of rock and roll has been reduced to small scale stuff. It's the result of file sharing killing the market and the internet and access to information altering the way young people listen to music. And frankly, changing times and attitudes toward music. Most young people are into the mass marketed stuff that is just meaningless drivel to me. (Kind of reminds me of the disco era, without the funky clothes.) I keep waiting for the next Dylan or Beatles or U2 or REM, but it's just not happening.
Music is to diverse to compare the creativity of one generation to that of the next.
A lot of bands in my youth were the typical classic bands of today or even yesterday - Floyd, Zepplin, Sabbath, Hendrix, Beatles, etc. They were all creative bands on their own merit and if you watch any of the "making of or history of" videos associated with these bands, they all have one thing in common - They were influenced by someone before them. Which means a prior generation of fans that have said the exact same thing you wrote.
The late 70's featured numerous hard rock bands and it continued through the 80's with the addition of metal hair bands. I think rock and roll went back to it's 70's roots with the grunge scene. With grunge, there were a lot of bands that were heavily influenced by the bands I used to listen to as a kid and their music and creativity was as high as the bands that paved the road before them. If you are bored and want to crank it up a notch there are other levels of rock and roll that take it to the extreme (metal, thrash metal, speed metal, death metal, etc.). These bands are also highly creative and actually made their own roads for future bands to go down.
There are bands from all periods of time who made a special impact on the world that will never be forgotten. However there is still much more music that will be created and a few of them will be added to those lists of timeless composers.