In these fan testimonials, indie rockers pay tribute to world-beating rappers (Vampire Weekends Ezra Koenig on Jay-Z), young pop stars honor stylistic godmothers (Britney Spears on Madonna) and Billy Joel admits that Elton John kicks my ass on piano. Rock & roll is now a music with a rich past. The list has been growing daily. He would get down on the floor, crawl like a wolf and sing in that voice: "I'm a tail dragger." When I first heard Howlin' Wolf's records, I thought that deep, scratchy voice was a fake voice, just the way he sang until I met him. Studio Recording: Keyboardist: The Rolling Stones (1964) Ian Stewart, Gene Pitney: 12 x5 (1964 . Especially Dark Side of the Moon. As far as the bass player goes, I don't think it was necessarily a mistake to replace Glen Matlock with Sid Vicious. It's, like, from 1982.". Joni had an edginess that not many women expressed then. When he soloed, he wrote wonderful symphonies from classic blues licks in that fantastic tone, with all of the resonance that comes from distortion. There are bands out there still trying to sound like the Sex Pistols and can't, because they were great players. I was initially skeptical, but I agreed to give it a shot. The things that Lydon wrote about back in '76 and '77 are totally relevant to what's going on right now. The Rolling Stones are postponing tours due to the pandemic. Through it all, the Drifters always had this exquisite vocal blend. I was like, "Man, we don't go there." The next time I saw them was when they got back together six years later, and they were amazing. Tom had the same influences we had the Byrds, Neil Young, Crosby, Stills and Nash but he dropped in lots of serious old blues. In the Sixties, I was in a band called Chain Reaction. He was the focus of everything. Like Nick Rhodes, Greg Phillinganes bestrode the '80s and '90s like a keyboard colossus, playing on all of Michael Jackson's albums from Off The Wall through to Dangerous, while also finding time to jam with Eric Clapton, Chaka Khan, Mick Jagger and well, pretty much everyone else. You can think that it's all been written, but it hasn't. Clapton was so moved by Johnson's music that he wanted to write and sing with the same passion, clarity and truth. Stewart Copeland is a great drummer you have to be to give songs like "Roxanne" and "So Lonely" their drive and also throw that reggae in there. We all used to sing on the corners, at school functions and at house parties. I didn't really expect the reaction I got, which was, "No, I won't. His dancing was spellbinding twists and splits that left me in total disbelief. Formula 1 driver Charles Leclerc reveals his love of the piano and shows you how he recorded his first track in Ableton Live, How a song written in 1974 turned up on Bowie's Let's Dance and unwittingly kicked off a controversy. But if it were only that, I wouldn't go back and listen to those records again and again. After that, Pink Floyd started to go professional, and we would run into Cream on the road. The places he played were so tough that he hired a wrestler, Cannonball Nichols, to be his bass player. It still sounds incredible today. I was in my third year of classes at a place in London called the Regent Street Polytechnic School of Architecture, which is where I met Nick Mason and Rick Wright. But he didn't. This is for real." He's got some serious babymaking music. She was gorgeous and skinny and this was back in the Twiggy days, when skinny was new and she had that big, beautiful hair. They may have had three guitar players, but they understood restraint. He speaks languages through his music that people can understand in any country, any language. An infinite well of sadness, a hell of a lot of pain and anger, but mostly, a lot of love for the process of releasing this stuff. fan, happy to venture beyond the pale of the radio singles, was a rare thing. Go look back at those TRL charts and it's not hard to tell why a generation of musicians, critics and fans became so deeply connected to the lyrics of a dude who, supposedly, was describing a world that at least 50 percent of his fans "couldn't relate to.". But they had 8-tracks. The guitar player suddenly became the most important guy in the band. They have become a household name with music that is anything but mainstream. Her music is a healing thing. And he was a great harmonica player. It was sold out. He was a dynamic performer right up until he was disabled in an accident onstage in New York in 1990. He shared abo. Paul Cook was an amazing drummer with a distinct sound, right up there with Keith Moon or Charlie Watts. And Ginger hit them in a rhythmic style all his own that was extraordinary. Everything is so canned and sliced up now. Ian Stewart 7. Jerry Lee Lewis 2. The title song of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath has all of the stuff I'm talking about: It's rebellious and dark and wicked, but it's also gorgeous. We were always looking for the next heart-tugger, looking to pull that extra heartstring. And people expected the Wolf, because he was such a big guy, to just sit in a chair and belt it out. Her influence on me is so obvious. The other thing that separates AC/DC as a hard-rock band is that you can dance to their music. Most guitar players like to go crazy, but Steve picked his spots, and when he spoke, it was profound. There are very few artists who can depict a woman's life, her thoughts and desires and her failings, like he can. They were always great singers and great guys. People have said that "There Goes My Baby" was a very influential record because it helped set the stage for the Wall of Sound and Motown. When I did my first sessions at Stax, I learned everything about record production from those guys. That stuck with me. And his music always has that rhythm. I don't know if massive stardom and selling a zillion records were on their minds when they were getting the ball rolling. The self congratulatory backslapping associated with the mindless bashing of "Rolling Stone's" greatest lists speaks more to "my favorite is not on it!" whining than anything else. When everyone was writing song cycles about Eastern mysticism, Ray Davies was writing about a two-up/two-down flat in some English suburb. Metallica's career is a huge, dynamic thing, and they have done it all. Greatest Rock Keyboardists 1. With players from each era in the mix, this was a tough one. Vol. It's a myth that these guys couldn't play their instruments. Even the way he casually held his hands while singing was hypnotic. And they achieved that. From his records, it sounded like he was projecting from a completely different place in his body. He started singing the opening notes of his song "Doggin' Around." He was always wonderful to work with, and we had a truly great run together. That said, there's nothing romantic about being addicted to heroin. : players like Remi/mygh69 excluded due to suspicious activity. And always lifted, at the most needy moment, by a tantalizing melody. It is an inexplicable, awesome thing, and I bow down to it. At the same time, Mick was listening to what Gram was doing. When you're up on that stage or when you record, you want to be a tool that light shines through to everybody.". When I played his songs early on, I used to get really sick of everyone in the crowd yelling "yee-haw" all the way through. I have never seen another man who could make hardened old waitresses at the Palomino Club in Los Angeles shed tears the way he did. 50. Their melodies and harmonies have always been instantly familiar. It wasn't punk rock. Please comment below and let us know who your favorite is. At the same time, everything they did was really smart and worked on a few levels; you could love a particular song, then realize a year later that you had totally missed the meaning. Richard Wright (Pink Floyd) 6. The audience broke into screams. It might have been the best purchase I ever made. Anyway, these are our 100 Keyboard classicslet's hear what you think should be included. I didn't grow up a Deadhead. This was back when a band was a band. Listen to "Somebody," a song I wrote for Aerosmith's first album: It's all from the Yardbirds. As a kid, I used to sit at home after school and just bang out those songs on the piano. When I'm with the Allman Brothers, the band always leaves it up to me how much of Duane's influence I should show. Duff McKagan is like the bass player in AC/DC: His parts were fairly simple, but they made the band an unstoppable force. Page 2 of 11: The best blues guitarists of all time He was a white boy who pushed it to the max. He was sweating it looked like glitter sweat and he had a chipped tooth. So whenever I had to do a solo, I would just play that. That East Coast/West Coast feud was just personal beef. The fact that Metallica connected with the world in the way that they have is phenomenal. The song is simple, but when you look at all the elements and how they're put together and where the downbeat is, it's kind of clever is not even really the word. We loved what they did with the song. But he also had intelligence and honesty. He had a tone and a style that were uniquely his. Notorious B.I.G. I first saw Clapton with Cream, at the Cafe Au Go Go in New York in 1967 sort of. Al, he was a crooner. It wasn't just about the fact that Duane and Gregg Allman had the same parents. We went to their manager's hotel room, and while he was in the bathroom we ordered $1,500 worth of room service and trashed the place. It was warm and round and full and dripping with chocolate. And in that world, people weren't wearing Nehru jackets, smoking pot and jamming for 24 hours a day. If Buddy Holly hadn't gotten on that plane, or Eddie Cochran hadn't turned the wrong corner, think of what stuff we could have looked forward to, and be hearing now. Compared to the prog-rock groups they get thrown in with King Crimson or Yes or Genesis their music is actually very simple. A million people can program beats, but can they put together an entire album like it's a movie? He may have had a larger than life stage persona, but when Emerson died, in 2016, former bandmate Carl Palmer wrote: "Keith was a gentle soul whose love for music and passion for his performance as a keyboard player will remain unmatched for many years to come." There was a humanity in Jerry's guitar work as well as his singing that drew you in. But all of them talked bad about each other, calling everyone "motherfucker." But I still gave him a look like he was bugging. Including all the ones in storage, I reckon its about 50 or 60. It was on this song that the group combined doo-wop with very accessible pop melodies: It began with the whole group singing, "Doo ron, day ron, day ron day papa, doo ron," then one of them would sing, "Well, I met him on a Sunday." People look at Ross and say she had great songs, she was a good-looking girl, behind her she had Berry Gordy who, in my book, is the greatest record man who ever lived she had all these things. Go home and turn off the radio. I see more and more people getting into his music today. But when R.E.M. As you looked deeper into their music, everything you find out leads to something interesting. So far, no one has. They weren't concerned with clothes or looks or hit singles. He gets inside your head, and he doesn't let go. I wonder if it's even possible for them to be bad on record. They were writing songs we wished we had written, like "No Sleep Till Brooklyn." Steve Winwood (Traffic) 10. Greg Allman Perhaps Stevie Wonder, or John Paul Jones, or Benny Andersson or even Goldy McJohn might sneak in. Zappa was a huge influence on how I wrote music for Phish. I had never seen or heard anything like it before. There would be this moment this collective breath from the audience as he walked over, picked it up and started playing the most ripping, beautiful solo. The Beatles covered five of Carl's songs on record. We all know that she faced some rough times in her life. I've made the imaginary "Top Ten Keyboard Players" list that RS might print. "A filmmaker called Eric Hamburg, who was a co-producer on two Oliver Stone films, Nixon and Any Given Sunday, came to me a few years ago and told me that there should be a documentary about me. He once told me, "Tom, I like you so much if I lived by you, I'd cut your grass." Carl was the real deal a true rockabilly cat. They had so many things going on. I'd pay a great amount of money to audit a course taught by him. The Allmans were without question the first great jam band, and they took the jam to heights that it had not previously reached. Oh, and he played at Live Aid, and you didn't. She also didn't play it up although many of her songs are about sex. He was capable of playing his instrument, but he was too fucked up to do it. He takes artists with great potential and makes them even better. They performed some of the most dramatic records ever written: "Standing in the Shadows of Love," "Bernadette," "Reach Out I'll Be There," "I Can't Help Myself" and "Baby I Need Your Loving." And Tom is such a great singer and so charismatic onstage. It's always, "Do what you think is right.". Two extraordinary artists were giving me the gift of their vocals and guitar parts for my album, Watermark. They didn't write emotional lyrics. I know the "folk music" he must have listened to (I, too, had been wand'ring early and late). Seeing the Stooges in reunion with Mike Watt from the Minutemen on bass was awesome. Could it have been anyone else? All the compelling themes are on Black Sabbath's records: beauty, atrocity, the seven deadly sins. When you heard him play, you knew it couldn't be anyone else. When Aerosmith are in the groove, they're just rock-solid. Ronnie's kid brother Johnny took over, and you had to rub your eyes to make sure it wasn't Ronnie. Richard Wright 4.