Ultimate Classic Rock's 100 Top Rock Albums of the 70's

[VAisForEagleLovers]

They are represented chronologically from the start of the decade.

Hotel California is the only Eagles album that makes the list, which is ridiculous when you see some of the crap that does make the list.

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/70s-rock-albums/?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=newsletter_4572276

[sodascouts]

Those lists always annoy me! Is there a written version? I'm not going to click through 100 images to see their other picks when it sounds like most of them are unworthy.

[VAisForEagleLovers]

I didn't see a written version. I was able to click through rather quickly. FM had two, Fleetwood Mac and Rumors. At least, that's all I remember seeing.

[Funk 50]

My favourite album of the 70s, Barnstorm didn't even make the top 100 when it was released so, until it's rediscovered by the darlings of the chic, only a privileged few of us can indulge in it's awesomeness. :nahnah:

[Freypower]

I thought most of it was fair enough, but the first Dire Straits album missed out.

[chaim]

I'm a Queen fan. They were the second band I "found" when I was a teenager. I still adore them. So don't get me wrong here...

Whenever (and that is often) I see A Night At The Opera on these lists - or praised anywhere else as one of the greatest albums ever - the following comes to my mind:

Could this by any chance have anything to do with the fact that "Bohemian rhapsody" is on this album? If I gave the following list of songs to all the people who praise this as one of the greatest albums ever, how many of these people would recognize all the songs - and love them?

Death on two legs
Lazing on a Sunday afternoon
I'm in love of my car
You're my best friend
'39
Sweet lady
Seaside rendezvous
The prophet's song
Love of my life
Good company
God save the queen

It's a fine album, but A Day At The Races is a fine album too. Yet nobody ever mentions it.
To me it's like (and I'm a 10cc fan too!) calling Original Soundtrack one of the greatest rock/pop albums ever because "I'm not in love" is on it.

[UndertheWire]

I guess Desperado is a little too country for Classic Rock. I'm surprised that some artists have multiple albums on the list, like Kiss and Black Sabbath. The big omission is Wishbone Ash and Argus. However, I have quite a few of those listed and my husband has a lot more.

[thelastresort]

I'm surprised that some artists have multiple albums on the list, like ... Black Sabbath.

Really? One of the greatest and most influential hard rocks bands ever at their absolute zenith.

[UndertheWire]

I'm not surprised they have an album on the list but three? If it was a "heavy rock", then maybe. And where's Deep Purple in Rock?

[Freypower]

I'm a Queen fan. They were the second band I "found" when I was a teenager. I still adore them. So don't get me wrong here...

Whenever (and that is often) I see A Night At The Opera on these lists - or praised anywhere else as one of the greatest albums ever - the following comes to my mind:

Could this by any chance have anything to do with the fact that "Bohemian rhapsody" is on this album? If I gave the following list of songs to all the people who praise this as one of the greatest albums ever, how many of these people would recognize all the songs - and love them?

Death on two legs
Lazing on a Sunday afternoon
I'm in love of my car
You're my best friend
'39
Sweet lady
Seaside rendezvous
The prophet's song
Love of my life
Good company
God save the queen

It's a fine album, but A Day At The Races is a fine album too. Yet nobody ever mentions it.
To me it's like (and I'm a 10cc fan too!) calling Original Soundtrack one of the greatest rock/pop albums ever because "I'm not in love" is on it.

I will talk to you about both Opera & Races as well as News Of The World & The Works as often as you like. Opera is in my Top 10 favourite albums - that's all of it, not just Rhapsody. Races includes Somebody To Love, White Man & Teo Torriatte (Let Us Cling Together), for heaven's sake.

[chaim]

I love pretty much every song on ADATR except Somebody To Love. Drowse is a big favorite, as I've always loved Roger's voice and his early Queen songs. Tenement Funster is one of my favorite songs ever, and Sheer Heart Attack is my favorite Queen album. But I guess this is not the right thread for this stuff.

[Ive always been a dreamer]

Yeah, these list generally annoy me as well so I didn't even bother checking it out after reading all of your comments here. It seems like most of time only hard rock qualifies for these lists. To me, it doesn't have to be hard rock to be rock and roll - there's some really good quality pop, soft rock, and country rock that just gets totally overlooked.

[Jonny Come Lately]

Frankly I can't be bothered reading the list, not due to lack of interest but simply because my computer does not like having to go through 100s of image-laden pages in quick succession meaning that wading through the list would be cause of unnecessary aggravation to me. If it was 10 albums per page or something similar I'd read it.

Based on the comments by most other people in this thread so far my overall view on this list has to be... :unimpressed: :yawn: :unimpressed: ... in other words, a big meh. Nothing I've heard has remotely surprised me so far - Fleetwood Mac having more albums than the Eagles, with our guys having only Hotel California on the list, are things that I could have seen a mile off. Having said that I am pleased that the self-titled Fleetwood Mac album made the list, which is better than Tusk which while containing some excellent material I am finding is becoming increasingly ballyhooed in certain quarters. I agree with UndertheWire in regarding Wishbone Ash's Argus, a brilliant album, to a be a major omission. However that album and band never seem to get much recognition from the US rock press so again, I am not surprised. Same for the Dire Straits debut album - I wish it had been included but am not shocked that it wasn't.

The one thing I did see on the front page of this article was that several album covers, presumably from the list, were shown and I noticed that the cover of Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti was included. While not surprising I certainly think this is a worthy inclusion, however this is quite interesting considering that according to another recent Ultimate Classic Rock list, it isn't as good as the unheralded Presence:

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/led-zeppelin-albums-ranked/

Their reasoning there isn't too convincing either - I'm not quite sure how Boogie With Stu or Black Country Woman take anything away from Kashmir and Trampled Underfoot when on the CD edition they are on different discs, and therefore I'm not quite sure how they can act as speed bumps. I personally like those songs in any case and can think of many worse 'filler' tracks. Presence is a good album but I think is ultimately limited by Plant's unusually flat sounding vocal performances, a much bigger issue than a couple of less impressive songs on a double album as far as I'm concerned.

[Freypower]

Boogie With Stu & Black Country Woman are not filler tracks. I adore both of them.

[Jonny Come Lately]

I agree that neither of those tracks are filler. I've always enjoyed Boogie With Stu, and although it took me a couple of listens to get into Black Country Woman I definitely like it now. The only track on Physical Graffiti that I consider to be a bit filler-ish is Night Flight, that one doesn't do all that much for me although it's hardly terrible and one such track out of fifteen is not bad going either.

By contrast, Presence I feel has one classic which wouldn't have sounded out of place on PG (Achilles' Last Stand) and three other strong songs - Nobody's Fault But Mine, the underrated For Your Life and Tea For One (even though it's an inferior rewrite of Since I've Been Loving You). Royal Orleans is amusing but a lightweight, and I feel 'meh' about Candy Store Rock and Hots On For Nowhere (the latter is a bit of a missed opportunity I think, it's a shame that a song which I believe about the tensions between Robert Plant and Jimmy Page was executed in comparatively mediocre fashion).

Anyway, returning to the topic at hand, I recently shared my rankings of my top 25 albums in the 'Share The Music You Love' thread. As many of these albums are from the 1970s, I thought it would be interesting to see how many of these made the UCR list:

Judging by the album covers shown in the image on the front page of this article, and the other comments in the thread, I'm finding:

1. Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd - Yes
2. The Dark Side Of The Moon - Pink Floyd - Yes
3= Hotel California - Yes
3= Led Zeppelin IV - Yes
5. Blood On The Tracks - Bob Dylan - Yes, slightly surprised it's been included even though it is a seminal album (probably the best breakup album ever written), it's mostly acoustic folk IMO, not rock.
7. Rumours - Fleetwood Mac - Yes
8. Argus - Wishbone Ash - No, a great rock album so a regrettable omission in my view. As said earlier, I think this doesn't quite get the respect it deserves from critics, especially in the US.
9. Rust Never Sleeps - Neil Young - Yes
10. Desperado - No, I can see why some think it may have been seen as too country to be included but I can also think of albums that rock less from the list, I therefore fear the Eagles' early masterpiece was simply ignored...
11= Animals - Pink Floyd - Yes
11= Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd - Lynyrd Skynyrd - Yes
17. Meddle - Pink Floyd - No, can't see the album cover for this one on the front page. Shame, because the majority of the album is great - One Of These Days, A Pillow Of Winds, Fearless and above all the magnificent Echoes.
19. Physical Graffiti - Led Zeppelin - Yes
21. Dire Straits - No, Dire Straits get ignored again... Their only other 70s album, Communique isn't quite good enough for a Top 100 of the decade list but I feel that this one is.
22. After The Gold Rush - Neil Young - No, most of it isn't rock but it is a better album IMO than Harvest which does appear to have made the list, and it does have Southern Rock and When You Dance I Can Really Love.
23. Houses of the Holy - Led Zeppelin - Yes
24. On The Border - No, I'd have liked to have seen it there but it was never likely to make the list, it is underrated outside the Eagles fanbase I think.
25. Fleetwood Mac - Yes

So that's 12 out of 18 albums from my list which I had in common with the UCR one, exactly two thirds of the eligible top 25. I do have other albums which made their top 100 of the decade but not my overall top 25, notably The Wall, Harvest and Led Zeppelin III, although these did make my top 30 IIRC so not too far behind.

[Jonny Come Lately]

I've just noticed UCR have done a follow up of sorts to the original top 100 rock albums list of the 1970s, with a follow up list of their top 100 rock albums of the 1980s. I felt it difficult to justify a new topic for this so have put it in this thread. Unlike with the 1970s list (where I could straightaway question the absences of the likes of Deep Purple In Rock, Meddle or Desperado), I am not quite so opinionated on this decade so in some way it was actually more enjoyable to look through from my perspective. I've provided a link below.

http://ultimateclassicrock.com/80s-rock-albums/

A few comments of mine on the list:

No Eagles albums, although that's not exactly a major shock given the decade... I was delighted however to see The End Of The Innocence make the list. This album is special to me as it was the first Eagles related album I ever heard and I think the hits and the deeper tracks complement each other well (I love EOTI and HOTM as much as anybody, but I also really like Gimme What You Got and If Dirt Were Dollars). I wouldn't have complained if Building The Perfect Beast had been on there instead. Nothing by any of the other Eagles though (perhaps not surprising given that Joe did not have a single album on the 1970s list - would have been odd to include him on the 80s list if they didn't acknowledge The Smoker You Drink... or But Seriously Folks...).

I was quite pleased to see that Dire Straits had two albums on the list, Making Movies and Brothers In Arms. Both of these albums are well worthy of their place although I would have liked to have seen Love Over Gold too, as that is my favourite of their albums (I really like all the songs, but I especially love Telegraph Road, the band's single finest achievement in my book). Reading the comments on Brothers In Arms though, one thing I don't quite get though is why So Far Away and Walk Of Life are so widely seen as career peaks for the band though. As much as I love Dire Straits and Mark I can't help but feel their talents are wasted on songs that straightforward. They are both enjoyable, but I'd rather listen to the superb title track which has some of Mark's greatest, most moving guitar work and lyrics, yet the hits tend to get the praise (Money For Nothing, by contrast, I think is a classic and justifies its reputation).

I was slightly surprised that there was only one U2 album on the list. I approve of choice though, given that it was The Joshua Tree, the only album of theirs that I own and the one which contains IMO their three best songs (the three hit singles). I have to be honest and admit that I am not much of a fan of them apart from Joshua Tree but I wouldn't have begrudged giving a place for The Unforgettable Fire on the list. I think they were right to leave out War though - the album is overly dependent on Sunday Bloody Sunday and New Year's Day and would be weak without those two IMO.

One album I was somewhat surprised to see on the list was Mirage. It has some definite highlights, especially Gypsy, but I'm not quite sure it's good enough to make a top list for the decade - it's decent enough, but I think Fleetwood Mac did better (although it is better than Tango In The Night, which they are right not to include - it is a pop album rather than a rock one in my view. I also find it has little depth beyond its singles).

I went back and checked the 1970s list and discovered that I own 17 of the albums on the list - 4 apiece by Floyd, Zeppelin and Neil Young and the two Fleetwood Mac albums, plus Blood On The Tracks, Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd and of course Hotel California. A couple of the others are on my wish list, most notably Deep Purple's Machine Head (I have had some difficulties finding a copy of this and will probably have to order it).

[Freypower]

I was very happy to see Face Value (see signature), Abacab, So & Gabriel 4 (Security) there. Otherwise there was far too much heavy metal for my liking. A couple of my other favourites are also there - Sentimental Hygiene, my favourite Warren Zevon album, and Now & Zen, my favourite Robert Plant album.

The only even vaguely 'jazzy' song on Making Movies is Les Boys & frankly that is cabaret, not jazz. Did they perhaps mean Your Latest Trick from BIA?