While the 1980s Los Angeles rock scene will forever be associated with pretty-boy glam metal, it also spawned Guns N' Roses, one of the most in-your-face, streetwise, and controversial bands of the era. Axl Rose & company's roots lay in The Stones, A…

Queen embodied 1970s glam rock--mixing heavy riffs and intricate vocal harmonies with a gender-bending image. Freddie Mercury's operatic voice and Brian May's guitar were multi-tracked ad infinitum to create pomp-rock in the grandest sense. In the '8…

From the youthful arrogance of their early 1960s recordings to their ambitious rock operas and the more introspective FM rock staples of their mid-1970s albums, the Who raged like a rock-&-roll inferno. Pete Townshend's guitar fireworks and Keith Moo…

A hard-rocking, no-holds-barred American group fronted by the wiry Steven Tyler, Aerosmith plays heavy riffs with a blues underpinning. After huge hits and sold-out tours in the 1970s, the band sank into oblivion for the first half of the '80s. They …

From their first Syd Barrett-led psych-pop record to their concept albums and elaborately presented live shows of the 1970s, these space-rock pioneers reached unprecedented heights of commercial and aesthetic success. Their '73 opus, DARK SIDE OF THE…

Of all the artists to emerge in the late 1960s, none inspired greater awe than Jimi Hendrix. After touring with numerous R&B bands, the guitarist moved to London in 1966 and assembled the Jimi Hendrix Experience. His U.S. return at the Monterey Pop F…

Originally part of the early 1960s British blues/R&B scene, the Rolling Stones rapidly ascended the heights of fame with a perfect combination of hit singles and media-grabbing scandals. By the '70s, Keith Richards had become a bona fide guitar hero,…

Masterminded by songwriter/guitarist Tom Scholz, Boston became one of the biggest bands of the 1970s with their immaculately produced brand of classic rock. By combining the epic scale of prog-rock with the immediate impact of killer pop hooks, Bosto…

Throughout the 1970s, the Eagles couldn't lose. Each record was bigger than the last; each single seemed to play all summer long. At the forefront of the country-rock movement, the Eagles also typified so-called soft-rock and album rock. Their master…

Van Halen rode the crest of 1970s riff-rock into 1980s abandon. Always able to produce a smile and a killer hook, their songs captured a West Coast attitude that combined Eddie Van Halen's guitar gymnastics and the high-energy antics of vocalist Davi…

Over the course of four decades, Eric Clapton has carried the British blues legacy into the mainstream of pop music. From his mid-1960s days with the Yardbirds and John Mayall, through his years as guitar god with Cream and Blind Faith, and eventuall…

Getting his start with one of heavy metal monolith Black Sabbath, singer Ozzy Osbourne split from the band in 1979, and forged a highly successful solo career that quickly eclipsed his former outfit. While Osbourne's strange antics sometimes overshad…

Led by German-born/Canada-bred singer/songwriter John Kay, Steppenwolf evolved from its beginnings as the folk/blues-influenced Sparrow to become seminal late-1960s heavy rockers. Steppenwolf's signature song, "Born to Be Wild," has remained the ulti…

Blues-rock has rarely gotten more down and dirty than with Texas's famous long-bearded trio ZZ Top. Billy Gibbons, Frank Beard, and Dusty Hill are responsible for some of the greatest party anthems of all time. They produced a number of 1970s rock cl…

One of the longest running and most prolific of hard rock/proto-heavy-metal bands, Deep Purple appeared in the wake of the psychedelic era, sporting a harder sound than anything that had come before. The classic 1970s lineup (featuring virtuoso guita…

Like Styx and Queen, Kansas found fame in the '70s with a mixture of prog-rock complexity, hard-rock riffs, and pop hooks. But the group's early albums--marked by Robby Steinhardt's violin work--were much closer to real progressive rock than to the "…

A theatrical rock band formed in the 1970s heyday of glitter, Kiss brought to life a cast of cartoonish figures sustained by heavy riffs and an endless supply of face paint. With each band member assuming an alter-ego (Gene Simmons, demon; Paul Stanl…

Like a trippier, more mystical, West Coast equivalent of the Velvet Underground, the Doors went against the 1960s flower-power grain, taking an uncompromising look at the underbelly of the American psyche. Jim Morrison's dark, surreal poetry gave the…

Creedence Clearwater Revival seemed like something of an anomaly in the psychedelic 1960s. Far removed from the mind-expanding, flower-power explorations of their California contemporaries, they were a gritty, hard-hitting band respectful of their bl…

They're known as the founding fathers of Southern rock, but the Allman Brothers were actually much more progressive than the musical school they inspired. They reclaimed the US-influenced blues-rock of Cream et al. and brought it back to America, add…