Chuck Leavell, legendary keyboardist for The Rolling Stones, The Allman Bros, Eric Clapton, John Mayer, and more. I love all those other groups but with Pink Floyd I understand the emotion. I had to suffer the philistines stealing my band silently. For the people who give it up and get rocked by Metallica, the world is a less lonely place. But he wasn't light-skinned at all. Our first cut writing for the Drifters was "Ruby Baby," which Nesuhi Ertegun produced and Johnny Moore sang lead on, in 1955. When I got home from holiday, I immediately bought Wish It Would Rain. The three living members of the group Shirley, Beverly Lee and Doris Jackson were at the awards ceremony. Amen to that. Back then the Four Tops were called the Four Aims. They have a phase one, a phase two, maybe even a phase three and four. His music hits right to the pump right to the heart. At the same time, everything they did was really smart and worked on a few levels; you could love a particular song, then realize a year later that you had totally missed the meaning. I first met Dre in December of 2003. What else was there? Freddie's songs are just so much fun to sing, and he had such stamina. Behind him was this incredible band. Then there's the producer who does it all. Do yourself a favor, and don't debate me on this. Al Green's voice will always remind me of driving the back roads of Memphis with my parents, listening to cassette tapes. Those first three albums Santana, Abraxas, Santana III are really special to me. Jerry Lee Lewis 2. But she influenced people who became stars. We used Brian May amps and wrote songs with different movements. When I played his songs early on, I used to get really sick of everyone in the crowd yelling "yee-haw" all the way through. Even Elvis Presley knew why Wilson was called "Mr. His first big records, like "Moanin' at Midnight" and "How Many More Years" I'd hear them on the radio when I was still in Louisiana, on WLAC out of Nashville. Everybody knows that they're going to die. Who is your favorite rock piano player? I had this picture of a gorgeous vista when it's really a kind of grimy area. He catches us at our tricks, and that's always thrilling. The Dead are like that too. She describes smells and sounds and uses fewer words to transmit more feeling. Ray Manzarek (The Doors) 5. On tracks like "Blue Suede Shoes" and "Honey Don't!" They were always great singers and great guys. And so, that year, I heard Lynyrd Skynyrd making their Atlanta debut at a very dangerous club on Peachtree Street called Funocchio's. And I don't hear that today. She also didn't play it up although many of her songs are about sex. Apart from being a great blues band, Cream had a real good go at so many other styles, even if some of it sounds a little silly now. was more melody-driven I'm sure he wrote his shit without a pen, and over the music but 'Pac was just hashing out his life. He's pretty much a recluse. Their melodies and harmonies have always been instantly familiar. I first saw Clapton with Cream, at the Cafe Au Go Go in New York in 1967 sort of. I had the honor of inducting Jackie Wilson into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The Rolling Stones' Studio Keyboard Players. I read that an interviewer once asked Dave if he thought the Kinks had gone heavy metal in the Eighties. My big awakening happened when I was 14 years old. James' accuracy of pitch is like a trader's honesty. We all know that she faced some rough times in her life. Artists like Eminem who use their free speech to get a point across are vitally important. The Police matured really quickly. As a kid, I used to sit at home after school and just bang out those songs on the piano. In Jane's Addiction, we were into a groove that was very repetitive, riff-oriented and hypnotic similar in a lot of ways to a song like "War Pigs," off of Paranoid (my favorite Sabbath album). The shame is, I know how great the Yardbirds were. By that standard, the Police were a huge success. Pain and hurt can be a muse for great art. Greatest Rock Keyboardists 1. He knew his stuff before he met us. You know when I did "Shaft," with those 16th notes on the high-hat? But they must have liked us a lot, because they put us on the bill anyway, and I've known them ever since. Since we were involved in the Drifters' career, it's probably not our place to declare their music immortal. At 78, he's still in the game, releasing the appropriately titled Juno to Jupiter - inspired by NASA's mission to send the Juno space probe to Jupiter - only last year. The Shirelles were given some of the all-time greatest songs to sing: "Will You Love Me Tomorrow," "Soldier Boy," "Tonight's the Night," "Mama Said." That man was the natural stuff. When we played the Reading and Leeds festivals, we had to follow Slayer, and got bottles of piss thrown at us. I really related to that, because I never had a big, boisterous, American Idol showstopping voice. We wrote songs for the Drifters, but we also put the call out to all the best songwriters in our world. I stood outside. But we didn't try to make another "Bohemian Rhapsody." Rolling Stones Mick and KeithAnd Chuck: The Rolling Stones' Essential, Unsung Rock-and-Roll Hero Chuck Leavell, the Stones' piano player and road musical director, keeps the musical peace. What about those people we done forgot about, like Wolf? I'd been trying to get into this older girl's pants for a while, and she finally let me come over to her house. Yes, in technical terms, he's not the greatest player on this list - though he's in pretty exalted company, to be fair - but if you're looking for a pop star keyboard hero with great hair and an ability to make '80s teenagers swoon, Duran Duran's Nick Rhodes is your go-to guy. In the MGs, Steve Cropper and Donald "Duck" Dunn were the rock & rollers, but they also had the country thing covered, as well as the blues. But I loved AC/DC. Whenever someone tries to do that, they fail. His guitar has a very distinctive sound it's like a fingerprint. This week's traditional Wednesday Question saw the people of UG community discussing the matter of the best keyboard players of all time. Chess Records is a landmark. I'd heard he was mean. They could take those great songs and give them sound. In these fan testimonials, indie rockers pay tribute to world-beating rappers (Vampire Weekend's Ezra. It was sold out. Eminem lives, sleeps and breathes music he's a bit like me in that respect. The truth is that when Tina came back in the Eighties, she became much bigger than she was the first time around. Every Cliff Burton-based solo I've ever heard is a soulful, psychedelic, headbanging expression that rocks your world, trips your brain out and gets the house rockin'. When I was just starting to learn how to play guitar, Aerosmith gave me the shove I needed. They rapped about shit they knew about: skateboarding, going to White Castle, angel dust and television. And his music always has that rhythm. Of all the bands I'd come across in my life, they were the finest arrangers. All rights reserved. I'm still coming up with stuff that is a complete and blatant rip-off. They didn't play emotional songs. When I first met him, he was very young, sleeping on the couch at the Atlantic Records offices and using the switchboard after hours. There's no point where Jonny Greenwood or Ed O'Brien will suddenly look up and say, "Where the fuck are we?" But if it were only that, I wouldn't go back and listen to those records again and again. It presented this facade that everything around us is solid and real and going to be here forever, even though we know we created it. We've reached the end - find out who'll be taking their place in our fantasy GOAT band. Obviously, he had great musicians on those albums: Bootsy Collins on the bass; Bernie Worrell, the best keyboard player I've ever heard. Add to that Ozzy's amazing voice and one of the greatest rock guitarists of all time, Tony Iommi, and it's an unstoppable force. We'd spend hours and hours at the piano, swapping ideas. The riff in "Walk This Way" is just us trying to explore the blues in the Yardbirds model. I was on holiday with my parents in the late Sixties when I heard "I Wish It Would Rain." It's probably the most beautiful piece of jewelry a man has ever given me, ever. Run-DMC gave "Slow and Low" to the Beastie Boys. They survived in a world where survival didn't seem possible. At first I was star-struck, but within 30 minutes I was begging him to mix my next album. Carlos isn't the lead singer, but he is the maestro. He's got some serious babymaking music. After that he was front and center, singing the lead about a "Gypsy Woman" in an exotic brew of castanets and dark minor chords. Just write some great songs that's what you do." There was nothing else I could do. As a guitar player, that is the thing I strive for: the distinct, recognizable personality that comes out in every note. All of us are lucky to have heard songs as good as "Message in a Bottle," "Walking on the Moon" and "King of Pain" on the radio. I listened to Chronic Town procured on a recent family vacation to Los Angeles on my Walkman backstage during rehearsal for the school production of Guys and Dolls, rehearsing the conversation in my head: "Yeah," I'd reply casually, "I'm not really into that song this is their first EP. Al Kooper (Blood Sweat & Tears) 11. In 2011, our very own Keyboard Magazine called him a "keyboard hero for a new generation," and his reputation is such that guitarists such as Slash, Yngwie Marmsteen, Steve Lukather, Joe Bonamassa and Zakk Wylde have all wanted to work with him. Mr. There's a mystique about him. I'm too frightened. The Yardbirds' music is a gold mine waiting to be stumbled upon. Every instrument had its role to play, and it was all prefigured. We'd play cards and shoot pool together into the early hours. The arrangements are always so unpredictable: high-pitched synthesizer sounds you never heard before, followed by straight-up beautiful music. Even his messes are beautiful. There is a great air of sadness in those songs. I've never said more than a casual hello to Eric, so none of this is inside information. "When I was young and full of grace/And spirited, a rattlesnake/When I was young and fever fell/My spirit? I remember Ginger Baker was insane back then, and I'm sure he still is. Basically, we hung around together, like musicians do. Especially Dark Side of the Moon. He was always wonderful to work with, and we had a truly great run together. My favorite characters were Star Child and Sir Nose, even though Sir Nose was a sucker who didn't swim and didn't like the funk. We carried each other's gear in, because back then, that's what you did. I first heard R.E.M. There were songwriter-producers before him, but no one did the whole thing like Phil. But we can't know what his full impact could have been. And got encores! The 30 greatest synth players of all time: keyboard wizards, programming gurus and sound design legends By Scot Solida ( Computer Music, Future Music, emusician, Keyboard Magazine ) last updated 30 October 2020 Your votes have been counted, so who came out on top? It's amazing how one band could take all those influences country and rock, of course, but also soul, R&B and folk and still sound so distinctive. She smiled shyly probably more embarrassed at my gaping than anything and walked by. No one else has had that kind of impact with one album. I'll go on record as saying they're the greatest rock & roll band of all time. They had an eclecticism the Gregorian chant-ness of the vocals, the melodic diversity, the way they used guitar feedback. Then Iggy turned to the side of the stage, where the elite were standing Sonic Youth, Queens of the Stone Age, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the other all-access rock stars and he gave us the jerk-off motion. Admittedly, I was reading a lot about peak oil at the time, but c'mon, who else can inspire a crowd of 100,000 to throw their arms in the air while offering each individual brain in that crowd the opportunity to think critically about language and the state of the world today? At an early age I looked to music to take me out of my reality, and Sabbath does that better than any hard-rock act I know. The way he would squeeze out a note can't be trained and can't be imitated. And here's a single for you. One of the things I learned from Joni: If you can tell the story and keep things moving, you don't need to return to the chorus on time. It's a myth that these guys couldn't play their instruments. We went to their manager's hotel room, and while he was in the bathroom we ordered $1,500 worth of room service and trashed the place. They sounded fantastic. It was the lineup with Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, who was playing bass on that tour. Rick Wakeman (Yes) 3. That combination just ripped my head off. Thank you, Creedence, for being popular and timeless enough to be on CD jukeboxes. But you could see them the band was right in the window. I bought a 10-song Hank Williams collection on vinyl for $4.99. We waited all day for them to arrive. I was 11 when I first heard Sabbath. A lot of the magic in the Dead's music came from Phil and Jerry learning how to play together, combining Phil's approach with Jerry's unique blend of influences. There is an illuminating love of living things all of them here on earth that lies within the tenderness of his line readings (listen to his song "Gaia," from Hourglass). James is so fine. In 1976, I'd been in Fleetwood Mac for about a year when I heard Tom Petty's debut. You hear it in every song the way they could take the blues and turn it into a pop song like "For Your Love," then something psychedelic like "Shapes of Things," which has that weird middle. I loved them because they reminded me of cartoons, but they were crazy and psychedelic, and the superheroes were black men. Every rapper who grew up in the Nineties owes something to Tupac. When we did a long stand at the Fillmore in the late Nineties, I talked Carl into sitting in with us. That would signify for you to show your shit. When we started to do the song and Eminem made his entrance, I got goose bumps, the likes of which I have not felt since I first saw Jimi Hendrix, Mick Jagger, James Brown and Aretha Franklin. p.s. Finally, Elvis is the definition of a career artist he's always coming up with a different sound, always challenging himself. Laurence Fishburne told me once that he didn't like Tupac. I've got pretty much every note the Kinks recorded on my iPod certainly everything through 1980. They did "Shapes of Things," "Beck's Boogie," among other songs. I'd hear the man's voice and try to picture what he looked like. There was a real tradition of great singers in the group: Clyde McPhatter, Johnny Moore, Ben E. King and Rudy Lewis. Iggy believed what he was doing was important this self-reliant, anti-establishment art form. But when I saw them at Blazes with Gram, I could see this was a radical turn. He expanded his sound during the '80s, particularly during his time with Whitesnake, and was working almost up to his death, in 2012. They were writing songs we wished we had written, like "No Sleep Till Brooklyn." I think he's enthralled with what he's doing; he's intimately involved with his art. On "Public Service Announcement," he described himself as being like "Che Guevara with bling on." The Chronic is still the hip-hop equivalent of Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life. It's such a lonely album not in the "I don't have any friends" sense but in the sense that you're a little bit removed, and always watching. I'm sure people told them it was too long or had too many movements. He was never short of a song. Most guitar players like to go crazy, but Steve picked his spots, and when he spoke, it was profound. Guns n' Roses played as a gang, which is just what you want. I went backstage, and we hooked up. It was well-rehearsed, but it never actually happened. It's the ultimate fuck-off. Songs like "You Enjoy Myself" and "Split Open and Melt" were completely charted out because he had shown me it was possible. Queen fell in and out of being cool, maybe because they were so sincere. I became such a fan that if I hadn't been in a band myself, I would have joined that one. The Four Tops will always be one of the best groups ever. Talking Heads was the first band I remember telling my punk friends about, saying, "Yo, check this out! started out, Dave's solo on that song was the only solo I knew how to play. Because of stuff like Pro Tools, they figure they can fix it all in the studio. List of famous female keyboard players, listed by their level of prominence with photos when available. They weren't always complex, either there's some stuff where it's just bare-bones essentials. You can think that it's all been written, but it hasn't. Many of us first heard him as backing vocalist in the Impressions behind Jerry Butler, singing "For Your Precious Love." People are born to do certain things, and Al was born to make us smile. Ray Manzarek 3. We had never met or really spoken, so I was a little intimidated. They were professionals who came up during the punk era and found their messages later on. So, who fucking cares what they say? I first met Tom in the studio, and he was pretty much what I expected. And in that world, people weren't wearing Nehru jackets, smoking pot and jamming for 24 hours a day. We're all crammed into our van, with all our equipment. It's outsider music. The most spectacular Jackie Wilson show I ever saw was at Harlem's famed Apollo Theater, around 1960. But all the groups in the neighborhood knew that if the Four Aims were going to be there, you were going to be singing for second place at best. The Allmans were the great Southern-rock band, but they were more than that. He's one of the greatest players who ever lived. He produced a terrific debut album called Pretty Hate Machine. Ray Manzarek 3. But when R.E.M. His melodies weave in and out and all over the place, and you can tell they just spring out of him. George Clinton showed me that anything goes: You do what you feel. I wonder if it's even possible for them to be bad on record. I keep it on my black velvet top hat. Excitement": I heard that seeing Wilson perform made the King want to hide under the table. I remember a friend in high school playing me "A Case of You," from Blue. When I'm producing a rock band, I try to create albums that sound as powerful as Highway to Hell. Tony Banks 5. If Talking Heads were around a cool idea, they would make it their own. It is unbelievable! Creedence was the one I took. The list presented was compiled based on input from musicians, writers, and industry figures and is focused on the rock & roll era.. There was a "cotton curtain" back in the Sixties: Bands were all segregated in Memphis. The first song I really liked was "Once in a Lifetime." They were the best of all of us. He remained in that state for eight years, as the people around him fought over his estate, before he died in 1984. Known these days as much for his sardonic wit as his musicianship, it's easy to forget that Rick Wakeman is, first an foremost, a bonafide keyboard legend. Take a song like "Fat Old Sun," from Atom Heart Mother. But all the guys were very, very close. Top 10 Greatest Rock Keyboardists and Pianists Keyboardists were chosen for their skill, creativity, influence, impact, musical depth & expression, and lasting popularity in 'Rock' music. Oh, and he played at Live Aid, and you didn't. After all this time, he's still at war. Don't be influenced by anything. I was singin' along with it by the end, though it certainly wasn't using any conventional pop-song pattern that I had ever heard. Back in the '70s, Jon Lord's full-on rock style was a refreshing antidote to the prog peddled by the likes of Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman, with his overdriven Hammond organ sound becoming a true sonic signature during his Deep Purple days. My favorite Tupac album is The Don Killuminati. There are three kinds of record producers. Jimmy Page must have looked at Cream and thought, "Fuck me, I think I'll do that," and then put together Led Zeppelin. Every time I buy a Radiohead album, I have a moment where I say to myself, "Maybe this is the one that will suck." When R.E.M. On The Stooges and Fun House, while his brother Ron, the guitarist, was playing these loud bar-chord progressions, Scott was making the band rev and swing. There is a whole generation of musicians coming up who can't play their instruments. Dickey was remarkable in his own right. Hargus "Pig" Robbins, a member of Nashville's A-team of session players who added keyboards and piano to albums by Dolly Parton, Bob Dylan, Kenny Rogers, Miranda Lambert, Ween, and many more,. The songs are great. Hence began the rumor that I was a roadie for the Yardbirds. And they weren't. You have swamp-boogie numbers of varying length ("Green River," "Born on the Bayou"), catchy energy bursts ("Fortunate Son," "Sinister Purpose"), pop ("Have You Ever Seen the Rain," et al.) They followed their most critically acclaimed record, OK Computer, with their most radical change, Kid A. went to England in 1985, I drove through Muswell Hill and it certainly wasn't romantic-looking. The resulting list of 100 artists, published in two issues of Rolling Stone in 2004 and 2005, and updated in 2011, is a broad survey of rock history, spanning Sixties heroes (the Beatles) and modern insurgents (Eminem), and touching on early pioneers (Chuck Berry) and the bluesmen who made it all possible (Howlin Wolf). It was like they were weaving a beautiful piece of cloth. And to me, that's what the best music is made of. Tony Banks 5. Let's just say this wasn't necessarily a situation where guys were getting rich off the royalties. Hank lived what would have been a rock star's life full of touring, drinking and woman troubles. Somewhere between LOL and FML there was "TRL." Our waiter, Blixa Bargeld, leaned in to me and whispered, "The music is a birthday surprise for Lou. At 15 minutes, it was so long and so good, it made you feel like now was the time. Gram and I both loved the songs of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant the Everly Brothers stuff they wrote. Joni Mitchell is a bigger icon than she is a star. After the survivors all healed, they miraculously reassembled. When Chick Corea died earlier this year, the world lost a true pioneer - one of the greatest jazz pianists of the second half of the 20th century, and one of the innovators of jazz fusion. 1. Nicky Hopkins 9. Compared to the prog-rock groups they get thrown in with King Crimson or Yes or Genesis their music is actually very simple. The Supremes were the epitome of the Motown sound. Every time you listen to them you hear something new. He did this guitar solo in "City of Tiny Lites" where everybody in the band dropped out except drummer Chad Wackerman. David Byrne's parents lived there for a while. Make the guitar parts more rhythmic.