When you’re huge,
you’re huge, and after you’ve been around a while, your entire body of work
tends to morph into one, uh, huge, thing.
So it begs the
question, who would we still view – years later - as huge if they had
stopped after only one album? Hendrix,
Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, The Cars, Buddy Holly …
After that, I
dunno. Adele? The Band?
The Byrds? Crosby Stills and
Nash? Dire Straits? Eagles?
Elvis? Jeff Beck? Steely Dan?
Maybe.
There are a lot
of names from the rock pantheon missing, a lot of acts that took a couple or
three albums to really establish a place in music history. The Beatles, The Stones, The Who, U2, Pink
Floyd, Chuck Berry, AC/DC …
Maybe we’d
remember them all, but more as flashes in the pan than big influencers. But not many artists nailed it the first time
out.
