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Tempted to put this under the 'Poor Reporting" thread but thought I should not be so narrow minded.


http://www.toronto.com/blog/post/706579--are-guns-n-roses-the-best-u-s-rock-band-ever

It's official, Guns N' Roses are in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. So one big honour has already been given to them. Allow me to take this one step further: are the Gunners - the vintage-era lineup with Slash - the best American rock band ever?

It's an easier case to make than you'd imagine at first blush. America has all of rock's founders and an armload of creative, often insane solo giants that came afterward, from Little Richard to Roy Orbison to Beck. But from the Beatles on, a whole lot of the best bands were British. The Beach Boys really wanted to knock the Beatles off their perch, but they didn't, quite; only the Rolling Stones could.

This is the highest tier a rock ensemble can dream of; an inner circle within the Hall of Fame. If we define the question narrowly as acts with no claims to anything besides rock 'n' roll - which means no soul acts like the Jackson 5, no rap, no blues - then near as I can tell, the Gunners are, at the very least, in the final baker's dozen.

The other 12 contenders, in rough chronological order:

•Buddy Holly and the Crickets: the first modern rock band, anywhere; two guitars-bass-drums, wrote their own songs. If we're measuring influence, they have to win.


•The Beach Boys: As per above, the only U.S. act that was creatively and commercially going toe-to-toe with those troublemakers from Liverpool.


•The Doors: I'll be frank, I never cared for them. The lyrical ambitions have aged well, but the sound hasn't. Millions of older rock-radio listeners disagree, of course, and their legacy seems to have retreated only slightly.


•The Grateful Dead: Shocking longevity, genuine creativity at  work and the accidental parents of an entire subculture of Deadheaddery - truly a way to make a rock band the absolute centre of one's very life. Respect must be paid, even to dirty old hippies.


•The Stooges. Here's where the alternative rock that has owned the genre commercially for 20 years got its inspiration. Can you imagine Nirvana covering "No Fun"? Sure. The Beach Boys' "Surfer Girl"? Not so much.

•The Ramones. Maybe the saviours of the whole genre, if you believe the logic that rock was drowning in prog and album-rock ambitions that stripped the ease and fun out. Without them, no punk - and no restoration of rock's grit that re-established its relevance in the unhappy 1970s. Songs about sniffing glue and lobotomies were all too meaningful in a troubled time.


•The Eagles. Eighty kajillion sold and countless hummable songs familiar to everyone around the world, pretty much. Undeniable. How big a footprint do they leave? Let's put it this way: it's been 30 years since they stopped and I'm still sick of them.


•Aerosmith. Sure, they're derivative of the Stones and Led Zeppelin. But for a while there (with Toys in the Attic and Rocks, natch), they might've actually doing the job better. No other imitator could say the same.


•Van Halen. The sound of a party, for about a decade there. Billy Corgan put it this way: they were the best of the era because "Van Halen were for everybody." Considering the botched recent reunion, maybe amend that to "everybody except each other."


•R.E.M. Jangle-pop didn't quite change the world, but it tried.

•Metallica. In time we will all forget Lulu. Oh, you already had?.

•Nirvana. I'm not so convinced that their legacy will be so sympathetically championed once everyone's singer is dead, but for modern taste-makers, no ill can be spoken. At least not yet.

Against it all, the Gunners must rest their claim on Appetite for Destruction. It's just one album. It may be enough.

God no.

The Beach Boys all the way; not being biased:

I Get Around, Surfin' USA, Surfin Safari, Help Me Rhonda, California Girls, Barbara Ann, Kokomo (cringe), Good Vibrations, WIBN, Don't Worry Baby - EVERY American has heard and loved most of these songs.

Everyone loves The Beach Boys - you go to a party and if a BBs song comes on everyone starts dancing/singing.

Between the sheer number of top-ten chart hits The Beach Boys had, the different intellectual layers Brian's music has, and the volume of people that love them to this day, it's a no brainer that The Beach Boys are America's best band ever.

That's stupid. why would they pick Surfer Girl as an example? there's some Beach Boys songs I could see Nirvana covering... Girl Don't Tell Me, for instance.

Besides the big 12 listed you could add...The Byrds, The Monkees, Mothers of Invention, Velvet Underground, Allman Brothers, CSNY, Doobie Brothers, The Sonics, Buffalo Springfield, The Raiders, The Rascals, Love, Jefferson Airplane, 13th Floor Elevators, Sly and the Family Stone, Chicago, Lovin Spoonful, and a bunch more...IMO there's gotta be 30 or 40 U.S. bands more important than Guns and Roses....and I was a fan who used to go see them all the time back in '86 and '87.

The first two on that list should be The Beach Boys and The Byrds.

GnR are like the day time soap operas of music. To even compare them to the beach Boys, the Doors, Nirvana, etc.. is a huge disservice.

Add the Electric Light Orchestra to that list. It's a travesty that some of those bands listed above aren't in it. Eagles, Doobs, Byrds, Chicago, CSNY, The Dead, and The Doors, no brainer. And Buddy shoulda been in a long time ago. If Elvis and Chuck are in, Buddy's in. Orbison too.

Reading for Comprehension:  I was under the impression this was all about American bands.

On the strength of Eight Miles High alone, the Byrds should be in the top two.

Who else could marry Coltrane with rock and make it work?  I doubt the Beatles could have.  I'm not even sure Brian Wilson could have.

Granted, the Byrds fell apart early.  But it's an insult to music in general to put Guns N' Roses in the same universe as them.

Read at face value:  I made up ELO.  All those bands should be in the R&R Hall.  I made that up too.  Go with it.

Mikie, I'm reporting you to the moderator.

I'm reporting me to the moderator too, Jonas.

I agree with Mr. Stebbins, The Mothers should DEFINITELY be on the list, as with Capt. Beefheart And The Magic Band.

It is my opinion that from the years 1985 to 1993, Guns N Roses were the greatest rock band in the world at that particular time. In those eight years I don't think there was any rock band that could top them. Sure, there are other older bands to NEED to be in the Hall Of Fame(Chicago, Three Dog Night, ect), but I agree with Guns N' Roses being in the Hall Of Fame too. You have to admit that Appetite For Destruction has become a classic hard rock album.

Wait a minute, are Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison not in the R&R Hall of Fame??   That can't possibly be.  Now I am gonna have to go look up a list of all unductees, cause that just can't be right.   I knew the Hall of Fame was was crap anyway, but they can't not have those two at the very least.  WTF?!

Nah, Buddy, Chuck, and Elvis went in the first year. Roy went in the second. Beatles and Beach Boys went in the third year.

It's still a travesty that some of these bands aren't in.

The Byrds were really the "hippest" US band going for a couple years there. And they actually had greater longevity than many bands listed... nearly a decade. How many bands can lay claim to creating mutiple genres within rock? Folk-rock, jazz-rock, country-rock... not to mention "jangle pop" which that writer seems to think was invented by REM. The Byrds had Gene Clark, Gram Parsons, and Clarence White. Three of the greatest musical figures of all-time, household names or not.

He certainly missed a whole bunch of worthy contenders. I'll add Steely Dan to the pile. And Ween because they're incredibly good and multi-faceted.



Not everyone loves the Beach Boys unfortunately. Some people have a real aversion to those golden harmonies, but those people have serious issues.

unlike me.  :p

Despite being 4/5 Canadian, I would have to add The Band. Their career was pretty much all U.S of A.



...and if the writer of the original story doesn't agree, I'll remind him Slash is a brit!

Why hasn't Creedence Clearwater Revival been mentioned yet ? Seriously there aren't much bands that can hold up to them in terms of authenticity and quality material. And they too were outselling the Beatles during that short period of co-existence.



And although I love Buddy and the Crickets, I disagree with this claim :

Creedence is another no brainer. They've already been inducted in Cleveland.

This thread makes a nice bookend with the thread last week, where I think blame was convincingly placed on Jann Wenner and his various grudges, biases, and stubbornness as he sits on his high horse holding the scepter and deciding who is "worthy" of induction.

Check out that thread, many of the same points were made there as here, with the same bands and artists named as getting a raw deal.

And by all means, do a few Google searches and find the backstory of how Jann Wenner ignored the Dave Clark 5 who had won more committee votes that year in favor of a group he chose. Not that I'm for or against the DC5, but damn it if they got more votes than Wenner's choice it should have been the end of the story.

That, right there, is grounds enough for me to have written off the whole R&R HOF deal as a farce. If any other of the various Halls-Of-Fame who rely on voting membership to nominate and induct people into the hall had pulled a stunt like this, they'd most likely be put out of business.