Favorite Classic Rock Band?

Everyone has, or should have, a favorite classic rock band. No matter what music you really are into, classic rock just seems to embed itself into the most mundane situations and can easily make it awesome. For me, it's probably Boston. They were wizards at producing their sounds, and basically created "arena rock." If you have a favorite classic rock band, what's yours?

Boston is definitely up there. I've got a couple posters of them hanging around the room.

Other than that, I'm putting my money on Electric Light Orchestra.

Metallica I guess.

Oasis.

The Clash, if they count.

@jdh5153 said:

That's not Classic Rock.

My "favorite" varies, but it's usually:

Rush (mainly Moving Pictures and earlier), Led Zeppelin, Chicago (CTA, II, III, V [before Terry Kath's death and Labels/ Peter Cetera led the band towards sappy power ballads])

Classic is a tough genre because most of them still make music. ;p

But if you mean older stuff.

Skid Row
Motley Crue
AC/DC
Dire Straits ( not sure if they're rock but I like them.)
Judas Priest
WASP
Twisted Sister
Dio

The classic-rock dungeon master accepts this.

@ravelle said:

Yeah, they're considered rock.

I fell in love with Foreigner a few years back and they are my favorite Classic Rock band. But I still believe Boston's Self Title is the greatest classic rock album and one my top 3 favorite albums of all time. Foreplay/Long Time also my second favorite song ever. Boston for me just had the one album where Foreigner was good for 10 years or so, that is why I prefer them over all.

I dont have the one fav classic rock I like many songs from many bands (but I dont like many of the songs from each band to classify them as a favorite) ..... er I dunno , I´ll have to go with Jethro Tull , is the one i have most records from anyway , or the Doors if JT doesnt qualify.

That's kind of my wheelhouse musically, so I can't really pick out a single band to call my favorite. I've been pretty fond of David Bowie for the last year or so.

Pink Floyd.

@nightriff: Looks like someone is looking for a serious HIGH FIVE.

I could just say the totally unique choice of The Who

I really like Yes and Boston.

Wow...some of the answers in here make me feel old as dirt. Metallica and Oasis aren't at all what I would consider to be in the "classic rock" genre.

For my money, it doesn't get any more classic rock than The Who. Even though they've maybe gotten run into the ground a bit in recent decades (fuck you CSI), I still really love this band.

I went to a Who concert in the Spring for their Quadrophobia tour. They still kick as much ass now as they did back then.

This thread is boggling my mind.

How old are you people, and when did classic rock start applying to bands from the 80's and 90's? Did that one guy actually say Oasis? What the heck?

I'm not music oracle, but I do like music, and "classic rock" applies to the "Era" of classic rock, which is to say the 60's and 70's. Metallica isn't classic rock, it's 80's metal. Oasis is 90's Britpop.

80's rock is a little iffy when it comes to categorizing it as 'Classic Rock,' but there have definitely been cases now and then where it's true. Problem is most of the examples of 80's music in this particular thread has been 80's metal. So it's really a bad representation. 90's Rock... Yeah that's not even close.

Skynyrd that is everything. I guess the Who still kick ass for only having two memebers left. Pete Townsend said "Once you buy a ticket I have your money, I dont give fuck if you come to my show." Oasis sucks. Wait I got more E.L.O. Gerry Rafferty. Manfred Mann.

@jazgalaxy: enjoy it when your kids one day refer to Linkin Park as Classic Rock

It's why I generally dislike the term classic for describing a genre - it implies a length of time, and that is obviously then dependent upon the age of the person in question.

@rick_fingers: Next up on Golden Oldies Radio, we've got that old timey feel good hit, Crawling by Linkin Park. Then at the top of the hour we've got a double dose of Foo Fighters to help get you through your work day.

Probably Led Zeppelin, though I still have an intense fondness for The Who.

Well, I'm old so I'm going to go ahead and say The Beatles. My favorite albums are The White Album, Abby Road, Rubber Soul and Revolver. A Hard Day's Night is one of my all-time favorite movies. Of course, I like other classic rock bands such as the Stones, Cream, The Who, Santana and Jimi Hendrix. As I said I am old and I have a hard time classifying 80's music as "classic". That was stuff I listened to while in high school. Bon Jovi and Def Leppard just don't rate along side Neil Young or Led Zeppelin, but that isn't to say I don't like their music from that decade. I'm a big Bruce Springsteen fan and while I could slot Greetings From Asbury Park on a "classic rock" album list, I'd have trouble allowing Born in the USA in, as well.

Oh and my favorite album of all-time is The Allman Brothers Live at Fillmore East (1971). That's some classic rock.

I think the problem comes with the title. Classic Rock doesn't necessarily mean that it's rock that is classic. Kind of like how "Modern Furniture" doesn't necessarily mean it was made recently. Or "Chinese Food" doesn't necessarily mean it was made in China or by Chinese people, and isn't what people in china eat.

Pink Floyd!

It's a really hard decision for me, though. Boston, Journey, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, Fleetwood Mac, AC/DC, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Kansas, Frank Zappa, Heart...

I'm open to and enjoy all genres to varying degrees, but I'm not sure rock will ever recapture the awesomeness of these bands.

@jazgalaxy: oh yeah, that's exactly it, but it's just one of those issues of perception that I don't think gets solved unless someone in charge comes out and says "bands that sound like this from this decade are classic rock, no others"

Then we can all argue a out how wrong and out of touch they are :P

Jethro Tull. Queen a close second(First 3 albums).

I'd say 'Black Sabbath' but that's more of a proto-metal/doom type of genre anyway.

Come on, son...

@jdh5153 Metallica's genre is in their name. It's not classic rock

I would just like to say that the other day I heard Change by Blind Mellon on my local classic rock radio station, and the oldies station that I grew up listening to '50s and '60s music on, they're now playing '60s and '70s music. I'm starting to feel old.

For the actual answer, I'm going to have to go with The Beatles, if for no other reason than their consistency. Just about everything they did was great. I really like Boston, and REO Speedwagon, and a lot of other bands on this list, but they made some really uneven albums. Queen was fucking amazing, but they were also really inconsistent.

If that's too early for you, I'd have to say that my personal favorite is probably Supertramp or Fleetwood Mac, both of which had several really strong albums. Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, and Zeppelin are also pretty darn great.

My solo pick would be Elton John, Billy Joel, Cat Stevens, and Randy Newman. And Meatloaf is a god of classic rock, if you ignore every album of his that doesn't have "bat" or "hell" in the title.

Queen is just about the only classic rock I enjoy.

Motley Crue and Guns N' Roses will always be favorites of mine. It's music purely dedicated to excess and indulgence and self destruction and I love it.

Too many to list, duder.

It took 25 comments to get to the Beatles? What's wrong with the world?

My answer (the correct answer). The Beatles and Led Zeppelin. They're all you really need.

Queen and Helloween.

The only two reasonable answers are The Beatles and Led Zeppelin. The only correct answer is Led Zeppelin. No disrespect to the other great bands mentioned in this thread.

@nekroskop: Is there a problem, officer?

Fuck the specific genre shit, Oasis is classic. Best band in the world!

Well that 'specific genre shit' is sort of the topic of this thread.

http://www.classicrockmagazine.com/tag/metallica/

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/tags/metallica/

http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n%3A67204%2Cp_lbr_music_artists_browse-bin%3AMetallica

@jdh5153: I think the very fact that they're listing an album from 2008 as classic rock should be a good indicator that's probably not an accurate listing.

But yeah. Metallica is metal. Huge difference.

Classic rock is a radio format which developed from the album-oriented rock (AOR) format in the early 1980s. In the United States, the classic rock format features music ranging generally from the late 1960s to the late 1980s,

Metallica is classic rock.

Just because it was released in the 80's doesn't make it classic rock. Again, it's not even rock. It's metal.

Like I mean, not to cite wikipedia as a perfectly credible source, but

Whatever, they're played on Classic Rock radio stations, they're classic rock.

Hold on, you tried to defend Metallica as being classic rock because they were in the 80's, but now Nickelback who didn't exist in the 80's and no matter how much time passes will never have existed in that time span by which classic rock is defined, will somehow meet that specification.

Not to be an ass, but holy crap that is the stupidest thing I've read in a while.

And once again. Metal. It's in the band's name for christ's sake.

That's ridiculous. They played Britney Spears "Hit Me Baby One More Time" on my local rock station when it was popular in 97. That doesn't mean Britney Spears is rock music. Similarly, they played a few crossover rap tracks in the early 2000's when there wasn't any rock music to speak of coming out. That doesn't mean those rap acts were "rock music".

So Black Sabbath is metal, they're not classic rock? They also put an album out in 2013, guess they can't be. Neither can AC/DC....

One, Black Sabbath is metal. AC/DC is arguably metal, could be hard rock depending on how you look at it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_sabbath

Two, the album that they released in 2013 would not be classic rock. The albums that were released from the 60's to 80's would. I mean assuming Black Sabbath or Metallica were Classic Rock to begin with. Spoilers, they're not.

Van Halen from the David Lee Roth era. All their albums from Van Halen I to 1984 were outstanding

Metallica is a well classic yet not rock band imo.

It's still a better response than

And I guess I'll say Boston. Does Rush count? Rush is usually classified as "progressive rock/metal", but they were around in the '70's.