4 Most Underrated Classic Rock Bands

[westen44]

https://americansongwriter.com/no-music-snob-zone-these-are-the-4-most-underrated-classic-rock-bands-of-the-70s/

Subjective, of course, but these are some interesting choices.  I was, for example, just watching some Guess Who videos the other day and thinking that they had been underrated.  I've always liked all four of these bands mentioned in the article. 

[uwe]

They are all worthy, but I don't think any one of them is deeply underrated:

- Chicago morphed from 70ies horn rock to ballads and AOR - from rock to pop, but both eras have their fans. With Terry Kath they lost their major rock ingredient early on. There was no one to take his place. Looking at the whole of their career though, they had an impressive trajectory of success no matter what they did. Blood, Sweat & Tears' period of commercial relevance was much shorter.

- Kansas was a noteworthy American PROG band with Dust In The Wind as a freak hit and Carry On Wayward Son also being catchy, but their music was always overall too intricate for mass appeal like, say, Foreigner, REO, Journey or Styx.

- You can't really discuss the Guess Who without also discussing Bachman-Turner Overdrive - BTO were to the Guess Who what Bad Company was to Free. If you see them as one, they did reasonably well - for a time at least. BTO was never taken seriously by rock critics, true, but they did rule the airwaves for a while.

- I really like Nazareth, but they perhaps missed the boat a little: The Holy Trinity of Brit Heavy Rock were Zep - Purple - Sabbath. All of them were late 60ies bands that had their breakthrough at the beginning of the new decade, the 70ies. The Naz' were late starters, they only recorded commercially viable albums by 1973 - with Roger Glover as their producer on three consecutive albums spawning nearly all their hit singles. As the popularity of that type of music was however already on the wane again by the mid- to late 70ies, their time slot was too short to establish mega-stardom. Much like UFO, they remained a very good B league band, but never attained the Zep - Purple - Sabbath status. They toured extensively with DP as the headliner in the mid-70ies, much like Purple had done with The Faces in the early 70ies as the major draw. But while those lengthy Faces tours broke DP in the US, the same thing didn't happen for Nazareth opening for DP.

[westen44]

In the U.S., if you like the Guess Who, you might as well wear a sign that says you're a pop music fan, not rock, and shouldn't be taken seriously.  The same can be said for liking ABBA and a few others.  When I quit worrying about whether or not people considered me cool or not, stuff like this no longer mattered to me.  I just like what I like, and usually it's not considered mainstream or cool.  BTW, all those bands mentioned in the article had really good vocals.  That's something that can't be faked.  It's a lot easier to be a critic, though, than an artist. 

[uwe]

ABBA is pop, just very skillfully made pop, nothing wrong with that. In early ABBA, you heard quite a bit of glam pop era Elton John



and a lot of the later melodies are neoclassical.
 




As a Purple fan, I had never problems relating to ABBA's music, there was a common thread (conversely, Purple were huge in Scandinavia). Blackmore was a diehard ABBA fan and as for Jon Lord ...



A lot of Blackmore's Night echoes the Nordic folk influence in ABBA's music to this day. Not an ABBA song, but about as close as you can get:



It's a cover of the Rednex original who were - you guessed it - Swedes.



Hey, didn't we just mention Nazareth? Voilà!

[Ken]

I can totally understand, and agree, with the Chicago one.  Terry Kath totally blows me away.  Both his guitar playing and vocals.  Even Jimi Hendrix was in awe of him.  Yet most people don't know any of his stuff.  Just the cheesy '80s stuff.

[westen44]

One thing that got my attention for a while was Nordic Roots music.  I never knew much about it.  But I used to have a Nordic Roots CD which somehow I lost.  I used to listen to it a lot and was fascinated by it.  In this music you had a heavy Nordic folk influence merged with rock/metal.  There was a song by a Swedish band Hoven Droven which, unfortunately, I've never been able to find.  It was my favorite Nordic Roots song.  Whether the Nordic folk influence is found in melodic pop/rock like ABBA or Blackmore's Night or in hard rock/metal, it's a good thing. 

[Pilgrim]

Chicago is still going, albeit with one original member, but they still sound fantastic. Definitely one of the great bands of the era.

[uwe]

Yup, I saw them maybe 10 years ago (Jason Scheff was still with them) in Stuttgart and it was a great gig. He handled that Peter Cetera stuff real well and is no slouch on bass.

[lowend1]

I'm not sure what either classic rock or underrated means anymore, but I don't think any of the ones they mentioned were given short shrift by anyone but critics and journalists. However, I'd like to add some others...
Three Dog Night - The classic lineup was not to be trifled with, musically, vocally, or in terms of gold records yet they are all but ignored in these types of discussions.
Grand Funk Railroad - Loved by fans, hated by critics. Mark Farner is a f'ing legend.
Uriah Heep - Calling them "the poor man's Deep Purple" does them such a disservice. The live album is a tour de force and should be required listening for all bassists.
J. Geils Band - Overshadowed by their 80s product, but an incomparable live rock band.
Foghat - Nobody boogied better. Should have been American.

[westen44]

You don't exactly hear songs like this being released every day.

[uwe]

I'm not sure what either classic rock or underrated means anymore, but I don't think any of the ones they mentioned were given short shrift by anyone but critics and journalists. However, I'd like to add some others...
Three Dog Night - The classic lineup was not to be trifled with, musically, vocally, or in terms of gold records yet they are all but ignored in these types of discussions.
Grand Funk Railroad - Loved by fans, hated by critics. Mark Farner is a f'ing legend.
Uriah Heep - Calling them "the poor man's Deep Purple" does them such a disservice. The live album is a tour de force and should be required listening for all bassists.
J. Geils Band - Overshadowed by their 80s product, but an incomparable live rock band.
Foghat - Nobody boogied better. Should have been American.

My two cents (and I like all those bands):

Three Dog Night: They have been - regrettably so - consigned to oblivion because they never wrote their own songs, all their hits were (very good) covers. I wrote about this a while back: That inevitably costs you recognition with longevity.

Grand Funk Railroad: I believe rock critics were hung up on The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Cream as being the original and therefore only worthwhile guitar-led trios of the late 60ies, all others that followed (West, Bruce & Laing too) were viewed as pale imitators. No, Mark Farner was neither Jimi Hendrix nor Eric Clapton indeed, but GFR were an extremely organic outfit with a timeless groove - that aspect fell by the wayside as critics judged them. If Led Zep kicks you off a tour for going down too well, you must be doing something right. Irrespective of the music, Terry Knight's management of the band rubbed a lot of critics the wrong way too.

Uriah Heep: With that overly loud organ and a tenor/falsetto singer they did indeed follow the Deep Purple blueprint quite a bit (both bands shared adjacent rehearsal spaces for a few months in 1969, legend has it that the Purple guys would sometimes come back from the pub only to hear Uriah Heep jam on something they had been working on before  ). For a time (1971-73), Heep were huge in Germany, bigger than Led Zep or Sabbath, but not quite as popular as Purple. They lacked that virtuoso image Jon Lord & Ritchie Blackmore had (Ken Hensley was a self-taught piano and organ player as well as a guitarist, Mick Box essentially a rhythm guitarist) and didn't excessively celebrate that jammy improvisational frenzy of DP live, but their mostly Hensley-penned songs were catchier, they had more singles in the charts and the prominent harmony vocals (said to have left a lasting imprint on early Queen) gave them a radio-friendly sheen mostly missing with DP. I think they suffered by putting out too much product too quick - six studio albums within the first three years of their existence (+ the Live album)! Hensley was creative, yes, but not THAT creative. Their escapist, often fantasy lyrics did them no favors with critics either, they were not seen as sociologically relevant spokesmen of their time.

J. Geils Band: I'm extremely partial to them! Among my top ten live rock experiences ever was a gig of theirs in a club in Wiesbaden around the Love Stinks album. I thought Peter Wolf was one of the great American frontmen, as good as Steven Tyler, but a lot cooler. Cooler than Jagger too (there were a lot of comparisons, especially when the J. Geils Band opened for the Stones on their Still Life World Tour). From what was originally a white RnB covers band, Seth Justman and Peter Wolf really evolved into a good songwriting team. I even liked Freeze-Frame (the album); too bad that they split up at the peak of their commercial success, Wolf should have endured Justman's blossoming pop leanings a while longer. Criminal that they haven't been inducted into the RRHoF yet.

Foghat: They single-handedly prevented the success of Status Quo in the US of A!  You already had Foghat (which conversely meant nothing in either the UK or Continental Europe).    But I'm afraid that (i) being heroes of the Midwest rather than an established East Coast or West Coast draw plus (i) a not very pronounced sociological message in their lyrics either did nothing to endear them to the critics caste.

[Ken]

That Uriah Heep live album is so good, even if only for Gary Thain's playing.

[TBird1958]

 Nazareth.....

 When I saw them it was about the time "Rampant" came out, "Silver Dollar Forger" just kicked ass! I really preferred them and UFO to LZ, PF etc that was so dominant on Seattle FM. "Razamanaz and "Loud n Proud were already staples in my collection, "This Flight Tonight" being my intro to the band, The Paramount in Seattle was "the place" to see a band, Nazareth was on their game that night, Pete Agnew played an EB-3 through Marshalls, Charelton, Sweet, and McCafferty were on fire, still one of the very best hard rock shows I've ever seen.
 I've always liked The Guess Who, even they saw fit to record a live album in Seattle, "Runnin' back to Sasktoon" anyone? I saw them in '76 and with a high school sweetheart, fun show!
 For me, Chicago without Terry Kath is a non starter, even though at the time I really didn't recognize what a brilliant player he was, Kath made their early efforts interesting and there was no "pop" label to them.
 I would add UFO to this, mostly because I think Michael Schenker was at a creative high point at the time, his playing style is precise, his solos are well conceived and the rest of the band (notably Phil Mogg) support him well, with his departure they were never the same.     





     

[uwe]

My introduction to Nazareth was Razamanaz (the album), a friend gave me a tape of that record and I was transfixed.





All the songs were immediately catchy to me.

[godofthunder]

   Classic rock has been distilled down to Led Zeppelin and Journey in the non musician public consciousness. Some of the bands listed are some of my favorites. 
   BTO, a great rock'n roll outfit they could write a great tune and slather it with distinctive vocals and rip'n guitar work. Bass could have been brought up a bit on the mix though   
   Foghat, Lonesome Dave Preverett easily one of the best voices in rock, Dave and Rod Price a great guitar combination and ton out the wazoo, some of the best sounding guitars of my young recollection. I loved bothe version of the band Craig McGregor and Tony Stevens Energized and Foghat Live are still favorites.
  Uriah Heep, While I love Heep some of thier material I find ponderous and a little trippy. Give me the hits like Stealing and Easy Living. Heep did have a big impact for a short while and are in part along with Deep Purple the reason bands al over the USA were lugging Hammond B3s into venues large and small.