Monday, June 7, 2010

Greatest Band Of All Time According To The British


As reported by Telegraph.co.uk:

"According to BBC2 viewers and Radio 2 listeners, Led Zeppelin are the best band ever. A live poll conducted at the finale of the BBC 2 series ‘I’m In A Rock And Roll Band!’ crowned the Seventies rock gods, after boiling it down to a short list of three: Zep, Queen and The Beatles.

"All good choices, of course, coming from a long list of The Clash, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Joy Division, Nirvana, Radiohead, The Rolling Stones & The Smiths. Presumably a lot of names got weeded out along the way but it’s hard to argue with Led Zeppelin, an incredible coming together of great musicians who pushed and pulled rock music in a host of new directions while essentially defining what it meant to be a hard, heavy, sexy rock band.

"But personally, I would put them third on the list. The Beatles and The Rolling Stones are the bands who set almost the entire parameters for rock music in the Sixties. They remain the quintessential rock bands, and everything that followed is a kind of offshoot, either by reacting against them, or following through on their inspiration. Led Zeppelin certainly took up the baton and charged into the Seventies, but by that time the core of what it meant to be a rock band had already been defined.

"For me, there is something undeniable about a triumvirate of Beatles, Stones and Led Zeppelin as the best bands ever, that makes every other possible choice seem merely subjective."

For anyone who has read my book, you know that I sit squarely in the Led Zeppelin camp, holding them up as the greatest rock band of all time (in other words I agree with the voters in England). And with the British voters having also recently voted "Stairway to Heaven" as greatest Rock song of all time, I certainly find myself in kinship with those of the Mother Country (not so much that I believe "Stairway" to be the greatest Rock song, but that a Zeppelin song is the choice). Granted, these sorts of "polls" are subjective. But, they are also often influenced by present trends and points-of-view, making this choice all the more authentic as the choice is a band who have not officially existed in 30 years. So, I say, "Thanks, Mates! You have great taste over there on the other side of the pond!"

 http://www.amazon.com/Back-Schoolin-Zeppelin-Taught-About/dp/1615790454/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1361939337&sr=1-1&keywords=Kevin+Courtright

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