The Who, The Doors, and The Rolling Stones. There are others, but these are the top three and I wouldn't try to put any one of them above the other two.

What and Why are needless as it is obvious what songs/albums, and why, but I'll cover a few here.

The Who:
Behind Blue Eyes
Who Are You
Won't Get Fooled Again
Baba O'Reilly
Tommy (the whole freakin' Rock Opera)

The Doors:
Break On Through (To the Other Side)
Light My Fire
Love Me Two Times
People Are Strange
Hello, I Love You
Love Her Madly
L.A. Woman
Touch Me
Roadhouse Blues
and their best song ever - Riders on the Storm

Why - Jim Morrison. Simply an incredible singer. Musically, the Doors could do anything they wanted and it would turn out great.

The Stones:
Paint It Black
Sympathy for the Devil

Why - Those are my two all-time favorites of their songs, but there are many more I love. Their collective hits are simply undeniable.

@ denis - as much as I love Queen and think No More Tears is a simply incredible song, Freddie and Ozzie aren't quite up to Jim Morrison or Roger Daltry, although I would say Freddie could give Pete Townsend a run for his money and Ozzie challenges Mick Jagger. Queen is definitely in the top 10 and Ozzy/Black Sabbath fall in the top 25.

Road to Nowhere is my favorite by Ozzy with Mama I'm coming Home in a close second
Queen is just awesome in general =)

Very simple. Dave Grohl. Two megabands. Two completely different roles. Amazing talent

Pink Floyd
No comparison with all others
Simply 100 years ahead of their time

I suppose The Beatles are the obvious trump to all of these. Although I do love The Rolling Stones, I can't stand Queen or Pink Floyd and am skeptical about The Doors who I find dull. In fact, I always question why a band like The Kinks - who seem to have produced much better music than many of these groups - get sidelined next to groups like The Who, who while they are quite good at what they do, I can't say do anything terribly new or interesting, even for their time.

The Beatles are Rock & Roll, not Rock or Classic Rock. I don't consider them to be anywhere near the same thing.

hellalt is spot on with Pink Floyd. I forgot them and they definitely rank up there with The who, The Doors, and The Stones. I also almost mentioned Led Zeppelin, but they honestly have a few select songs that I know and consider great (Kashmir, Stairway to Heaven) but I don't know the majority of their work, I'm ashamed to admit.

The Beatles!
Everything!

Pink Floyd is damn awesome, too.

Zeppelin & Hendrix

@ Draugnar: Download/buy the box set and spend a month dedicated to listening to it a few times, and they will shoot straight to the top of your list.

Hey teacjer leave us kids alone!!!!
Pink Floyd is awesome and Zepplin is up there as far as Psychedelic/Progressive Rock goes.

RHCP for energy and punkadelic awesomeness. Frusciante is the best guitarist since Hendrix. Which also leads me to Jimmy. Aerosmith too.

John
Paul
George
Ringo

End of story.

All of the above are great. But I would have to say that Queen is generally underrated, they are one of the best.

I would add to the above Bruce Springsteen and Fleetwood Mac. As for one of the best vocalist I would add Rob Halford.

Bruce Springsteen and Fleetwood Mac aren't quite rock and roll...

@Draugnar - Insofar as "rock" refers to a denigration of the form into three chords and a distortion pedal, I'd agree. But by the same token, The Rolling Stones are really more white-boy blues than ROCK music.

But its really sort of silly to argue that The Beatles aren't a rock band. While their first few albums were mostly rock & roll nostalgia, albums like Let It Be and Abbey Road are both undeniable rock music and hugely influential on pretty much every other band that's been named here.

Queen is underrated, I'll give you that.

I really don't listen to a great deal of popular music (odd for an 18 year old eh? But then I am a VERY odd 18 year old... though aren't we all?) and so really the only three bands I know any more than a couple songs with and can talk about at all are Quee, The Rolling Stones, and The Beatles, whom I know the best... but still not nearly as much as my Beatlemaniac hippie friends. ;)

I listen to a lot of opera/musicals I like (ex. Into the Woods, Little Shop of Horros, Evita, and, the greatest of them all, Les Miserables.)

But when I DO listen to popular music...

I'm sorry- it's the Beatles. Their music just seems to mean more both historically and symbolically- two qualities I treasure in a good opera (Carmen, HMS Pinafore) or musical... the other two fit in, to be sure, and the Stones were sure a part of the 1960s.

But the Beatles are as indispensible to the 1960s and the birth of post-WWII/1950s America, and, indeed, the Western world.

JFK, the Cold War, Muhammad Ali, MLK, the three big assasinations, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam...

And the Beatles. You just can't have that decade, the birth of, at least, Modern America without the Fab Four.

More than the Stones or Queen can say- though I do like Paint it Black/Gimme Shelter or We Are the Champions/We Will Rock You (both songs in both sets need to be listened to back to back, of course...)

And on a musical level, I'd go as far as to say the Fab Four have an arguement at being the Musicians of the Century, and Lennon-McCartney is the modern equivalent to a Mozart or a Beethoven- different genres, but the same impact and beauty.

And the SONGS. How many can you name off the top of your head- I can think of at least 30 right now, and I don't even own a CD of them...

And then the content of the songs, from just happy to just sad to the druggie-songs to the peace ones... brilliant.

And then there's the one song I'd say at LEAST 90 percent of the whole Western World could sing together all at once in chorus, the greatet chorus of the 20th Century...

NA, NA NA, NA NA NA NA, NA NA NA NA-

HEY JUDE! :D

I can't stand the Doors.

My favourite rock bands are:

Rainbow
UFO
Thin Lizzy
Judas Priest
Led Zeppelin
Journey
Boston
Bad Company
Dio
Y & T

Meat Loaf

I have few songs by meatloaf and Journey is one of the best. I like that they incorparate blues/jazz into rock, genius.

How about all of above plus several others like Styx, Kansas, Eagles, America. It all depends on the mood.

Pink Floyd, The Doors and the Grateful Dead. Garcia, Morrison - unreal talents.
Trouble is ... being a 60's / 70's child in musical development none of these are really classic rock - there were / are so many labels .... but those 3 bands for me any day although as I get older I find myself listening to jazz and electric blues more and more.
Hell - I nearly forgot Janis Joplin another stupendous talent!

bump

@denis - Are you kidding? Do you think Journey is the first, the second, the thousandth or even one of the better bands to incorporate jazz and the blues into rock and roll?

Rock CAME from the blues, and jazz as a close second. Every rock band, to some extent, must incorporate them and The Rolling Stones would be the screaming, obvious example of a much earlier, much better job of it.

id have to say Third Day. Mack Powell is a plain guy with a unique sounding voice but the band as a whole is amazing.

although we could go beyond him to one of his inspirations Rich Mullins.

@ lulzworth: I'd choose to listen to Journey over the stones any day.

Clearly a generation gap going on here, but Journey over the Stones? Really? The Stones still tour and produce albums 40 years in, what does Journey do? Oh wait, they and Air Supply both do late night infomercials pimping Time Life Records soungs of (insert decade here)!

Rush?

Ah Rush... Moving Pictures, Fly By Night, Hemispheres. I remember when they were a new band... And Neil Peart is one of the best drummers *ever*!

Bump
I would also take Journey over The Stones anyday, my point was thati find their interpritation of the style very good.

Nice thread. As much as a bunch of bands mentioned are awesome. I really think that KISS tops them all. And by KISS, I mean KISS in the 70s. They are only a shadow of their former selves now =/

Has nobody mentioned Boston? I guess I will give them some love.

I tend to like one or two tracks by an artist or group and that's it. Here, in no particular order (except that Meat Loaf is first of course) is a sampling:-

For crying out loud,
Bat Out of Hell,
Alive,
Bad for Good (Meat Loaf),
Bad for Good (Steinman),
Original Sin,
I don't like Mondays,
Who wants to live for ever,
Faster than the Speed of Night,
Total Eclipse of the Heart,
Holding Out for a Hero,
Goodbye to love,
The Tide is High,
Space Oddity,
Seasons in the Sun (Terry Jacks),
Wuthering Heights,
God is a Girl,
Seven Years and fifty Days,
The House of the Rising Sun (Animals),
Lady Eleanor (Lindisfarne),
Vienna,
The Trees,
I Wanna know What Love Is,
Alone,
I'm not in Love,
Fighter,
Tubular Bells,
Take on me,
China in your Hand,
Its a Mystery,
I want to be free,
Orinoco Flow,
Bohemian Rhapsody,
Poison (Alice Cooper),
Eternal Flame,
Hotel California,
Telestar.

Boston was already mentioned. By me.

Well, Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield is not Classic Rock in any way nor is Orinoco Flow by Enya. The former is part of the minimalist movement and the latter part of the New Age movement, or at least that is what she got her Grammies for.

Draug is right, SpeakerToAliens. Quite a few of your picks are not rock and have no place in this thread:

Tubular Bells, Take On Me, Orinoco Flow, The Tide Is High leap out at me, and probably a few of the others but I can't really tell because you don't name all the bands.

Hey, let's all pick 10 tracks that sum up the rock music we like...

Here are mine (in no particular order of preference)

1. Cheap Trick: "Gonna Raise Hell"
2. Judas Priest: "Painkiller"
3. Black Sabbath: "Black Sabbath"
4. UFO: "Rock Bottom"
5. Wishbone Ash: "Sometime World"
6. AC/DC: "Riff Raff"
7. Van Halen: "Ain't Talking 'bout Love"
8. Rainbow: "Stargazer"
9. Yngwie Malmsteen: "Far Beyond The Sun"
10. Motley Crue: "Kickstart My Heart"

I'll try to make a bit more commentary and a bit more of a list when i get the chance (got some work to get done!), but I'll just add The Velvet Underground to the list here and say I think they were better than, and much more innovative than... most of the bands mentioned so far.

I'm not sure how I missed this topic, but I'm reviving it anyway.

I'm a fan of:
Queen
Journey
Styx
Boston
Don McLean (the only one I didn't see mentioned)
etc.

I also wanted to say to Draugnar, that I don't see why it would make a difference whether the Stones still tour and Journey doesn't. The quality of music is what matters. Not that they don't have good music, but I'd prefer a band where the lead singer's voice doesn't grate against my ears.

It's not about touring, but about *new* music. Journey had a few hit albums with a few hit songs and a lot of crap over the span of maybe a decade. The Stones have more hits and/or albums than the total number of songs Journey put on all their albums combined and they have been doing *new* music since the 60s, 40+ years worth of *new* music.

Ah classic rock! Who doesn't love to rock out to a good classic rock tune!

There are a lot of these bands that I really like, especially The Stones, AC/DC (up to Back in Black), Pick Floyd (up to The Wall), Led Zeppelin, Hendrix (surprised he hasn't got more mentions), Kiss, Springsteen (I'd say he can do rock) and The Doors. I'd probably put The Stones at the top of the list I guess.

There are some Australian bands also that I love in the classic rock genre. Especially Cold Chisel, The Divinyls, early Midnight Oil, Paul Kelly, Billy Thorpe & the Aztecs, the Easybeats, The Sports, Australian Crawl, Rose Tattoo, INXS, Sunnyboys and the Hoodoo Gurus to name a few if any of you classic rock fans have perhaps not heard them and want something new for your ears...

AC/DC is Australian, right? They kick ass.

AC/DC is the best in my book. They have maintained widespread popularity for decades.

Yardbirds and Cream

I gotta say poeple love them some AC/DC but I just don't get it. I think they have a few fun songs but they consistently show up on lists of bands that are (to me) obviously WAY better. There must just be something I'm missing when I listen to them...