Top 10 70 Music Bands

One of the most popular 70 music bands was Steely Dan, who blended genres like blues and jazz to create their unique sound. Their songs have become timeless classics.

Despite being rooted in punk rock, Talking Heads added an enigmatic veneer of art-school experimentation to their musical style. The band’s ’70s albums were the pinnacle of their success, featuring tight songs that balanced structure and lightning.

Lyrnd Skynrd

The Southern rockers who spawned an entire genre with Free Bird were also among music’s unluckiest bands. Only days after their 1976 album Street Survivors was released, the band’s plane crashed killing Ronnie Van Zant and other members.

Produced by Al Kooper (who later worked with Blood, Sweat and Tears) for his Sounds of the South label, this album features a mix of two-chord mid-tempo rockers, lazy countryish shuffles and power ballads. Even though this is a live album, the performances are surprisingly strong and well-rounded for such an erratic group.

The Eagles

These guys leveraged hard rock to become one of the most popular 70s bands. Their songs charted a thin line between tender lonesomeness and hopeful naiveté.

They sailed through the Seventies like a mighty ship, their songs distilling changing social mores into keenly observed lyrics that everyone came to know by heart. From Hotel California to Take It Easy, this band had it all.

Former members of Woodstock’s Jefferson Airplane, these guys blended psychedelic and hard rock to create their signature sound. Their textured guitar chords and rich vocal harmonies set them apart from other groups.

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan blew onto the music scene at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 with electric instruments in hand, violating folk dogma, and drawing boos from purists. But a year later he produced Blonde on Blonde, an album that earned him a Grammy and catapulted him to superstardom.

Combining a hint of Delta blues with hometown roots, the gregarious British hard rockers Motorhead were chart toppers and icons for a generation.

Journey

Whether you enjoy it for its awe-inspiring graphics or its quiet narrative, Journey is a defiant bridge between art and gaming. Its creator, thatgamecompany’s Jenova Chen, has created a world that feels like a real place and allows you to experience it through its music, images and play.

A game of simple control, it lets you trundle through powdery sand dunes, surf down them in the fading light and cower in underground ruins as you slowly uncover what could have been a lost civilization.

Bruce Springsteen

Few rockers in the ’70s put as much care into constructing fully fleshed-out characters. Geoffrey Himes’s Bloomsbury 33 1/3 series on Springsteen explores his underlying philosophies in the making of two essential albums, 1982’s Nebraska and 1984’s labored Born in the U.S.A.

BTO straddled the line between tender lonesomeness and hopeful naivety, crafting radio hits with wit and verve. They remain a band that old fans and new listeners can rally around.

Pink Floyd

Psychedelic rock band Pink Floyd was one of the most innovative acts of the 1970s. Their long, suitlike compositions touched on hard rock, blues, country, folk and classical music.

The band had a flair for visuals as well. They released albums with striking sleeve artwork and stage shows with crashing aeroplanes, circular projection screens and flaming gongs.

They were masters of stadium rock and incorporated themes like philosophy, mysticism and political commentary. Their greatest works, Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, are among the best-selling albums in history.

Steely Dan

While this album may not be their best – it features singer-songwriter Michael McDonald on two songs, and the idiosyncratic keyboard work of jazz pensioner Victor Feldman is a little muddled – it’s still a solid effort.

Steely Dan emerged at a time when pop music had begun to take on a darker, more serious tone. They interpreted that trend with admirable skill, marrying hummable tunes to probing lyrics that took in drifters, losers and forgotten jazz players.

Crosby, Nash & Stills

Former members of the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and the Hollies, Crosby, Stills, and Nash formed the first true supergroup of the rock era. Their dulcet three-part harmonies made them an essential part of American culture.

Their 1970 album Deja Vu dominated the charts for 97 weeks and went quadruple platinum. But egos and drug problems soon started to erode the group’s dynamic. CSNY broke up in 1977, but returned in 1982 with the release of Daylight Again.

Renaissance

The unique 70’s band Renaissance pioneered a blend of folk rock, medieval music and classical themes with the integration of a full symphonic orchestra. This was topped off by the remarkable voice of Annie Haslam who boasted a five-octave range.

Their first three albums in a symphonic-rock vein – Turn of the Cards, Scheherazade and Novella – were followed by the folk-oriented A Song for All Seasons which spawned the UK Top 10 hit “Northern Lights.” After drummer Terence Sullivan and keyboardist John Tout left, Renaissance continued as an augmented trio with Haslam and newcomer Michael Dunford.

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