Where it started, where it went and how the hell did it end up there
Bon Jovi is one of the great rock bands of modern times, but it took Jon Bon Jovi’s hair turning grey, and the departure of songwriting partner Richie Sambora before critics were comfortable enough to admit it. Far from being a band that merely survived on good looks and hit singles, it’s the band’s deep cuts that show its greatest strengths.
Motörhead and its leader, Lemmy Kilmister, were created for just one purpose – to celebrate all that was good, nasty and vital about rock n’ roll. Some bands don’t make the same album twice. Motorhead, arguably, never made more than one kind of album.
Bob Marley was a revolutionary with a guitar. Together with The Wailers, he brought reggae and Jamaican music to the forefront of popular culture across the world. Years after his passing, Marley’s songs continue to resonate. He is as popular in Kingston as he is in Los Angeles or Cape Town.
Faces was the ultimate groove-rock band. The musicians were notorious party animals who never performed sober nor missed a note, and danced their way through their brief stint as band. They were blessed with a legendary line-up. These were musicians at the peak of their abilities and their most confident.
Creedence Clearwater Revival was akin to an athlete with a near-perfect record who says goodbye to the big time only a few years into their career having won everything. Behind, the group left a nearly incredible collection of simple, well-crafted and incredibly famous roots-rock numbers.
There isn’t much Led Zeppelin-stamped music that doesn’t routinely get played on the radio, isn’t learned by kids in bedrooms around the world, and isn’t immensely famous. Zep’s a rock institution. Still, even the mighty British rockers have their underrated gems, the songs buried deep in the bookcase behind the more popular volumes.
Cheap Trick became one of the coolest bands in rock history by getting rid of all the heavy, morbid stuff that was the obsession of most of their contemporaries. Funny, perpetually in a light disposition and capable of outperforming most, Cheap Trick is one of the greatest rock bands of all time.
Carlos Santana wasn’t the first guitar virtuoso. But of all of them, bar, perhaps, Jimmy Page, he was the only one who seemed to have been brought to the world by some magical voodoo ritual.
Bad Company was a self-confessed, Led Zep-assisted supergroup created to charge up 1970s charts dominated by loud hard-rock bands. The experiment worked better than even the biggest earlier expected. Ultimately, Bad Company turned into a decades-long affair and into one of the most beloved rock bands of all time.
Jeff Beck possessed in the fingers on his two arms the kind of musical tone that thousands worth of pedals and amps could not afford guitarists. And, in a world where each virtuoso is bound to, eventually be replaced by another, Jeff Beck was unlike anyone else.