Melissa Etheridge made waves in 1988 as one of the few female rockers on the scene; in 1993, she made headlines by coming out as a lesbian. Etheridge's confessional lyrics and raspy voice earned her comparisons to Springsteen and Janis Joplin; she br…

Known worldwide as the embodiment of heavy metal, England's Black Sabbath enveloped the 1970s in a dense fog of apocalyptic imagery, monolithic guitar riffs, and horror-movie lyrics. When frontman Ozzy Osbourne left the band in 1979 for a highly succ…

Former Deep Purple vocalist David Coverdale formed the hard-rock/metal outfit Whitesnake in 1978. While the band's macho rock sound and "whats-wrong-with-being-sexy?" sexist aesthetic garnered them a respectable amount of commercial success in the U.…

Phil Collins's frontman talents lay dormant for many years when he was the drummer for prog-rockers Genesis, taking a back seat to Peter Gabriel. When Gabriel quit in 1975, Collins stepped out from behind the drums and made Genesis a hit-making machi…

"Before Elvis, there was nothing," John Lennon once said. An overstatement, of course, but Elvis Presley's ascendance to superstardom in the mid-1950s kicked off a musical and social revolution whose impact has yet to abate. After the charming young …

A master of the sitar as well as a famous experimenter with its classical forms, Ravi Shankar is probably the world's best-known Indian musician. First recorded in 1936, he has had a rich career spanning seven decades. His mentoring of the Beatles du…

A fusion of Soul, R&B and modern Pop/Rock.

As the swinging 1960s turned into the '70s, UK mod/psych-pop heroes the Small Faces splintered into different directions, one of which was the Faces. Fronted by future Stones guitarist Ron Wood and future superstar Rod Stewart, the Faces were one of …

pop/classic rock with piano, guitar, earthy angelic vocals and emotive lyrics.