THE 30 BEST ALBUMS OF THE 70:s

30. The Stooges - Funhouse, 1970.
The Stooges tend to be pigeonholed, some half a century later, by the limiting epithet of the "progenitors of punk." It's surely true that without their holistic rebellion and under-decorated arrangements, the teenagers of the mid 1970s might have crafted a slightly different vision of themselves. But where New York and London punk bands embraced minimalist writing, The Stooges were far more open-minded. Their true masterpiece saw them play with ideas that, at the time, were percolating through the avant-garde: repetition, formlessness, drone. Two of the seven tracks on Fun House run past the seven-minute mark, reveling in their own chaos, striving for enlightenment among the disorder. Iggy Pop is at his most rabid, not yet affirmed in his fury by outside approval, still punching upward and outward. Heck, downwards too. The Asheton brothers built monoliths just to knock them down and Steve Mackay's saxophone lent a freewheeling momentum that tips the mix into white-knuckle territory. Still today, one of the great statements of musical anarchy.

29. Sex Pistols - Never mind the bollocks, 1977.
The Sex Pistols and their sole release is often in danger of being remembered for everything but the music. They didn't so much court controversy as take it for a weekend to Paris, propose at the top of the Eiffel Tower and get married two weeks later. From the mocking of British royalty to the taboo and ultimately censored use of the word 'bollocks' to the culturally prohibited content of the songs, the release can feel like a study in notoriety breeding fame as easily as quality. But within the surrounding whirlwind was a record that was truly unlike anything that came before it. Johnny Rotten's sneering, irreverent 'anti-singing' and the raucous and abrasive nature of the music is not only a thrilling listen, but seemed to give permission for true punk to emerge. From The Stone Roses to Nirvana to Radiohead, Never Mind the Bollocks has seen its quality and influence on music ultimately be the thing that lasts.

28. Alice Cooper - Billion Dollar Babies, 1973.
The album's title comes from the fact that the five members of Alice Cooper were surprised about their success. Cooper related: "How could we, this band that two years ago was living in the Chambers Brothers' basement in Watts, be the Number One band in the world, with people throwing money at us?" The title was also later used as the name of the group Neal Smith, Dennis Dunaway, and Michael Bruce formed after Alice Cooper group had split up.[6] Cooper said, "The whole idea behind the Billion Dollar Babies album was exploiting the idea that people do have sick perversions." Alice Cooper, who wrote the majority of the album's lyrics, cited Chuck Berry as a key influence on his writing. "Hello Hooray", the album's opening track, was written by Canadian singer/songwriter Rolf Kempf and was previously recorded by Judy Collins. The band wanted their version of the song to sound like "Alice Cooper meets Cabaret". .

27. Pink Floyd - The Wall
As the '70s wound down, the tensions between Roger Waters and David Gilmour were reaching the breaking point. Waters wanted grander concepts and heavier themes, and thought the band's music should flow from their broader ideas; Gilmour thought about music first, how songs were constructed and played. The Wall was the last time Gilmour and Waters found a compromise. While it's definitely Waters' show and he wrote the lyrics and the bulk of the music-"Mother" and "Nobody Home" are particularly affecting- the album contains some of Gilmour's most iconic guitar work ("Comfortably Numb," "Run Like Hell") and his most impassioned singing ("Goodbye Blue Sky," "Hey You"). The melodic largesse was such that the album even had a smash hit single that completely owned the radio: "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)." The album also felt like an ending, even if everyone involved had a lot more music left in front of them. Roger Waters' reach would far exceed his grasp in the next decade. The Wall as the moment where he was able to realize his craziest dreams. 

26. Ramones - Ramones, 1976.
The Ramones' self-titled debut album, released in 1976, birthed not just punk, but the modern rock uprising; it set the rubric for grunge, indie rock, and all other movements that stripped the bombast of its predecessors and made them look instantly, hopelessly stuffy. Ramones reclaimed the base elements of rock and pared them down to three chords and a breakneck new pace. From their merrily boorish, messy opening chants of "Hey ho! Let's go"-a prescient rallying cry for a global sports team clad in black leather-to its terse yet satisfying songs that barely eclipsed two minutes, the Ramones captured the outsider's urgency. (It took some stones for Joey Ramone to jab at his own rudimentary lyricism, hooting "second verse, same as the first!" seconds into "Judy Is a Punk.") 

25. Iggy Pop - Lust for life, 1977.
After the split of the Stooges and a stint in a mental institution, Iggy Pop had beaten back his demons and escaped to Berlin with David Bowie, where he was suddenly releasing the best solo music of his career. Pop was as spry as his heyday with the Stooges, celebrating his debaucherous past now with a more skeptical eye; "The Passenger" and "Some Weird Sin" acknowledged the loneliness and myriad vices he was barely keeping at bay, with a wistful tinge to his bawdy yelp. And it didn't take Trainspotting to make the title track iconic; it was the peak of informed depravity. Pop was still years away from getting clean, but Lust for Life was a mission statement for the ages. 

24. Bruce Springsteen - Born to run, 1975.
This is not the best album the Boss would release in the 1970s, but it's definitely the best-known, the best-loved and can reasonably be argued as the most capital-i Important record of Springsteen's golden age. Born to Run is a produced-within-an-inch-of-its-life album that somehow sounds thoroughly spontaneous, an ode to teenage rebellion that's painfully aware of such a stance's futility, a collection of elaborate rock 'n' roll greaser fables that disguise crime stories and nightmares. The leap Bruce Springsteen made from his previous work to this album is Monument Valley-sized: replacing freewheeling beatnik tunes with complex rockabilly- and R&B-indebted songs that are both diamond-sharp and operatic in scope. The title track will likely define Springsteen forever. It's a whirlwind trip around a whole universe in three-and-a-half heartstopping minutes.

23. Black Sabbath - Master of reality, 1971.
Black Sabbath's music was slow as sludge, but the speed with which the band invented, perfected, and mutated heavy metal was astonishing. On Master of Reality, their third straight masterpiece, the still-budding genre was warped and reshaped like the text on the album's cover, forming new subgenres: look no further than "Sweet Leaf," which planted the seeds of stoner metal, or "Into the Void," both doom metal's Big Bang and the black hole at its center. Master of Reality didn't master one reality-besides, Black Sabbath already did that on Paranoid-so much as it created entirely new ones.

22. Lynyrd Skynyrd - Pronounced
'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd, 1973.
Lynyrd Skynyrd burst onto the national scene with their 1973 debut Pronounced 'lĕh-'nérd 'skin-'nérd, which not only featured many of the band's most popular songs but also defined the genre of "Southern Rock" more than any other album. This six-piece group out of Jacksonville, Florida fused blues, country, and straight-forward rock to forge an edge that is totally unpretentious and unassuming. Produced by Al Kooper, there are few debut records which express such confidence and drive, with a balanced diversity between upbeat honky-tonk rock and the delicate jam songs, which would Be the prime templates for the "power ballads" which proliferated a decade or more later.

21. Van Halen - Van Halen, 1978.
It's amazing that the Sammy Hagar v. Diamond Dave debates even take place. One look at Van Hagar's idiotic robotic choreographed should settle the argument once and for all. Dave infused the best of Van Halen's music, a time when he would use "rock and roll" as an adjective and it all still seemed somehow engaging and mythical. Eddie Van Halen did more than his share to prop up the myth, of course, making "Eruption" the amateur axeman's white whale and becoming the closest thing that my generation had to a guitar god. Never mind punk-here's "Atomic Punk." And "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love." And "Jaime's Cryin.'" And "Runnin' With the Devil"

20. David Bowie - Aladdin Sane, 1973.
Tiring of glam's cliches and having just penned the album that was arguably the genre's magnum opus, Bowie found himself between styles at a time when he most needed to capitalize on his nascent superstardom. Rather than release a transparent Stardust Redux, a desperation to build upon his reputation for the avant-garde led Bowie to strike out-seemingly at random-in search of newer, more fertile ground. Jazz, rock, lounge, glam, cabaret, pop, and anything else Bowie and the Spiders could bring to the table is incorporated here. Bowie revels, if only briefly, in the freedom afforded him by forsaking any overarching contemporary style. Aladdin Sane's only defining characteristic is its carelessly brilliant, gleefully schizophrenic style-hopping. Many artists wallow in limbo for a time, only to have that period rightfully forgotten-but few have ever made artistic purgatory sound this good.

19. Led Zeppelin - In Through the out door, 1979.
Hearing John Bonham play the drums is the aural equivalent of watching Clint Eastwood club eight bad guys over the head with a two-by-four while driving a derailed locomotive through their hideout. Either you are horrified by all that blood on the floor, or you wish you could do it yourself. No one's ever going to accuse Bonham of subtlety, but everyone should give him credit for consistency. Even on Led Zeppelin's worst effort (Houses of the Holy), he flails with so much exuberance that I find myself hoping that thugs from strange foreign countries will attack me on the street so I can play "Moby Dick" on their strange foreign heads. Sadly, Bonham's exuberance on In through the Out Door is matched only by Robert Plant's appetite for inanity. Never a power as a lyric writer, Plant has followed a simple pattern in his singing: when Jimmy Page gave him great guitar riffs to phrase around, Plant was great. When Page didn't, Plant wasn't. On their masterpiece, "Dazed and Confused," for example, Plant made the same old misogyny sound like profound insight, while Page thundered through his orchestral guitar rumble.

18. Jimi Hendrix - Band of Gypsys, 1970.
The Experience's psychedelic maelstrom encouraged Hendrix's attention-grabbing antics, but Buddy Miles and Billy Cox supplied the funky, backbeat-driven rhythm section he sought at the turn of the decade. "Who Knows," "Power of Soul," and "Message to Love" blister with the deep funk rock sound Hendrix was turning towards.And then there's "Machine Gun." Quite possibly the most wildly explosive and painfully vivid musical statement ever caught live on tape, Hendrix's 12-minute psychedelic soul mindbender surged from the tragic violence at Altamont to the chaos and devastation of Vietnam.

17. T-Rex - Electric Warrior, 1971.
Electric Warrior served as the blueprint for glam and-filtered through the filth of New York Dolls and the Sex Pistols-the genesis of punk's attitude, if not its sound. Essential to T. Rex's junkie-vaudeville was producer Tony Visconti (also a key contributor to Bowie's Young Americans and Berlin Trilogy). Every noise-from the symphony of "Cosmic Dancer" to the grimy warbling of "Lean Woman Blues"-is lobbed out of some dank echo chamber where hobos and supermodels unite for the sake of their zombie heroin. And whether or not you buy into T. Rex's brand of fashionable sleaze, they are directly responsible for Ziggy Stardust, Mott the Hoople, and-for better or really, really worse-Poison, Whitesnake, and L.A. Guns.

16. Led Zeppelin - Presence, 1976.
Led Zeppelin's seventh album confirms this quartet's status as heavy-metal champions of the known universe. Presence takes up where last season's monumentally molten Physical Graffiti left off - few melodies, a preoccupation with hard-rock rhythm, lengthy echoing moans gushing from Robert Plant and a general lyrical slant toward the cosmos. (Give an Englishman 50,000 watts, a chartered jet, a little cocaine and some groupies and he thinks he's a god. It's getting to be an old story.)

15. David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, 1972. 
Bowie would eventually live to rue his Ziggy Stardust character to some degree, but the icon remains his gender-bent guitar-rock po-mo Hamlet. In its church of man, squawking pink monkey birds give the alien writer's block until Mick Ronson freaks out; epic dead-father daydreams portend Earth's five-year expiration date; "Lady Stardust" is just a dolled-up Marc Bolan, but count the entendres when Bowie demands he "Get some pussy now..." All told, it's a disfigured sci-fi autobiography strewn with decadent ego-victims and brilliant tracks that don't fit the plot-all held together by hook after indelible Bowie hook. The Spiders from Mars played a gripping hard-rock/doo-wop with grandiose raygun strings and metallic crunch chords. 

14. Creedence Clearwater Revival - Cosmo´s Factory, 1970.
Creedence's last great album. By 1970, rock and pop were becoming ever more electronic or fixated on progression. In stark contrast, Creedence felt timeless. John Fogerty's perpetually doomed histrionics and ragged blues were played at the speed of ignorant, adolescent rage and at the depth of a dying man's last words. Although no one listens to Creedence for diversity, Cosmo's Factory-with the blustering, Sabbath stairmaster riffs of "Ramble Tamble" and the voodoo handclaps of "Run Through the Jungle"-is as "experimental" as the band ever got. And the 11-minute "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" is simultaneously Creedence's most menacing, torrid, soulful, and yes, monotonous song. Finally, "Lookin' Out My Back Door" features one of the best single rock verses. Lyrics drowning in hermetic blues, teeny-bopping idiocy, psychedelic sophistication, and self-reflexive nostalgia: "There's a giant doing cartwheels/ A statue wearin' high heels/ Look at all the happy creatures dancin' on the lawn/ A dinosaur Victrola listenin' to Buck Owens/ Doo, doo, doo."

13. Sparks - Kimono my house, 1974.
Sparks' best album, 1974's Kimono My House finds the brothers Mael (Ron wrote most the songs and played keyboards, while Russell was the singing frontman) ingeniously playing their guitar- and keyboard-heavy pop mix on 12 consistently fine tracks. Adding a touch of bubblegum, and even some of Zappa's own song-centric experimentalism to the menu, the Maels spruce up a sleazy Sunset Strip with a bevy of Broadway-worthy performances here: as the band expertly revs up the glam rock-meets-Andrew Lloyd Webber backdrops, Russell sends things into space with his operatic vocals and ever-clever lyrics. And besides two of their breakthrough hits (the English chart-toppers "This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us" and "Amateur Hour"), the album features one of their often-overlooked stunners, "Here in Heaven." Essential.

12. Bob Dylan - Blood on the tracks, 1975.
Blood on the Tracks was famously re-recorded in two deviant sessions-first in New York, and then in Minneapolis. The New York sessions (widely available as the Blood on the Tapes bootleg) saw Dylan acting especially protective of his new material, refusing to explain his unusual open-tunings to Deliverance, his backing band. Deliverance guitarist/banjoist Eric Weissberg later noted that Dylan was not particularly concerned with "correcting obvious mistakes" (check Dylan's fingernails and coat buttons scraping against his guitar strings on both New York versions of "Tangled Up in Blue"), and plainly admitted that "if it was anybody else," he "would have walked out." Unsurprisingly, Deliverance can only be heard, in their entirety, on "Meet Me in the Morning." 

11. Eagles - Hotel California, 1976.
Hotel California came pretty close to being a true concept album by The Eagles. The songs each loosely share the themes of paradise lost or squandered and the album is bookmarked by geographical locations of such. As the band's fifth album, it was transitional in several ways including music and personnel wise. Guitarist Bernie Leadon, a strong influence on the band's country sound of the early years was replaced by funk-rock guitarist Joe Walsh, who had previously fronted the groups James Gang and Barnstorm. As a result, the band's sound got a bit heavier while never abandoning its mainstream pop sensibilities. The album was produced by Bill Szymczyk, who had produced the Eagles previous two albums as well. The band took 18 months between releases of their previous album One of These Night and Hotel California, with eight of those months in the studio recording.

10. Pink Floyd - Wish you were here, 1975.
Flush and exhausted from the unexpected success of Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd resolved to shake things up a bit. For the follow-up, they entered the studio with no conventional instruments, intent on recording a new record comprised entirely of ostensibly normal songs composed on common household objects. Thankfully, they realized after a couple of weeks that it wasn't working out. One of their experiments with wine glasses is audible under the initial surge from Rick Wright's magisterial synthesizer, but the rest of the album finds the band spinning road-tested material into studio magic. They bookended three of their finest songs with an epic tribute to Syd Barrett, who himself made a tragically confused appearance at the studio during the sessions. Despite its cinematic sweep and cosmic jamming, Wish You Were Here is ultimately the sound of four men caught in the grinding of a wheel much larger than themselves and striving to understand it, only to find that they know its machinations all too well.

9. Blondie - Parallel lines, 1978.
Close your eyes and think of Blondie now and you probably conjure the clean, ringing chime of Chris Stein's guitar and the sliding, seductive siren of Debbie Harry's vocal. Such is the impact of the transition the band made on this third album, away from the far pricklier, abrasive scratch that they had developed during their come-up at CBGB. It is partly the change of producer to Mike Chapman, the pop glam master, but it is also the shift to a more confidently major league songwriting style: "Heart of Glass," "Picture This," "Sunday Girl," "One Way or Another" and "Pretty Baby" is a titanic haul of bangers for any one album, no matter the era. Their new wave credentials were already established, but after Parallel Lines, Blondie were destined for the pop stratosphere. 

8. Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge over troubled water, 1970.
Somehow, it's fitting that the title track of this record-Simon & Garfunkel's last, and the only one they released in the 1970s-is an ode to devotion, and to friendship. Because even the acrimonious split that followed Bridge can't obscure the fact that Simon knew how to write songs for them, knew how to maximize Garfunkel's gifts; even as they're about to part, their voices are inextricable from one another. This is their knowing, fond farewell; Simon's articulate, sentimental songs lovingly rendered and elevated by Garfunkel's ethereal, inimitable voice. The moment, for what it's worth, that sticks with me the most, is in "The Only Living Boy in New York"; Simon sounds so lonely, so apart from all things, and there's Garfunkel: "Here I am."

7. Mountain - Flowers of evil, 1971.
Side one (studio) opens with the title cut. Reeking of Black Sabbath, Mountain has taken a simple chord change structure and repeated it over and over while Lester West moans a set of lyrics straight from the Grand Funk school of relevance. Oh can you tell me/ how the joy passed from his childhood./ That's not my boy./ We never dreamed when he was leavin'/ that he would taste the flowers of evil. The next two songs, "Crossroader" and "One Last Cold Kiss" are of the same feel with little variation in guitar work. The lyrics rival even the title cut for triteness (triteness?). By now it is quite evident that the lyrics are not the most dazzling feature Mountain has to offer, yet, surprisingly enough, the arrangements are built around the lyrics rather than the usual opposite. Verses are piled on top of each other leaving no room for the band to actually work. Not until the final cut of Side One do the inane lyrics magically part for a disappointing solo by West.

6. Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin III, 1970.
Ever since Coda plodded onto American shores, Led Zeppelin have been forcibly reduced to the sum of their merch: More an archetype (see the scrawny white kid kicking dirt off the high school steps, sporting black sneakers, black jeans, a three-hair mustache, and a faded Led Zeppelin t-shirt) than an entity, Led Zeppelin were quickly swallowed up by their own dark mythology. Which makes the quiet grace of 1970's III all the more touching. Largely acoustic and presumably inspired by British folk contemporaries, III sees Led Zeppelin channeling their snarled, black-magic ferocity into sweet, vaguely melancholic bits. Without penning maudlin power ballads or mimicking folk sentimentality, III proved that Led Zeppelin were capable of far more than just their then-trademark raucous reinterpretation of American blues.

5. Led Zeppelin - Physical Graffiti, 1975.
Physical Graffiti is not the hardest or most influential Zeppelin album. It's not even their best. But it's arguably the most essential. At 80 minutes, it's as insurmountable, grimy, intimidating, and flat-out awesome as the monolithic tenement building on its cover. And it's about to collapse on all your friends. The tracklist is like the Ten Commandments of hard rock, wielding "Custard Pie," "The Wanton Song," "Trampled Under Foot," "Ten Years Gone," and "Kashmir." Some of the most popular bands of the 1980s and '90s did nothing but rip off those five songs over and over again.

4. Led Zeppelin - Houses of the holy, 1973.
More playful than IV but still bubbling with the arcane Middle-Earth folklore that irritated critics, Houses of the Holy is both artistically sophisticated and cloyingly juvenile. It's the soundtrack to my teenage years of partying. In my mind "No Quarter", "The Ocean", "D'yer Maker,"  and the epic "Rain Song" are hugely significant moments in my musical development.  And beyond that, they're some truly original, incomparable compositions.

3. The Beatles - Let it be, 1970.
Often overlooked among the rest of the Beatles discography, Let It Be rings with more than a handful of truly charming, memorable moments. Though recorded prior to Abbey Road, it was released a year later and could be considered a more fitting coda to the Beatles' long, winding road. Even as John and Paul were reportedly at each other's wing-collared throats during the recording sessions, they manage to sound positively infatuated on the tender, Dylan-esque "Two of Us" and the gutsy blues-rocker "I've Got a Feeling." But even though they're still jointly credited, it's their solo contributions that most stand out-John's glistening, Eastern-accented "Across the Universe" and Paul's anthemic title track burned themselves into the collective unconscious on sheer songwriting muscle. Outside influences probably played a factor, but by the time Let It Be hit the racks, the Fab Four had little collective patience left. With their demise, the world lamented the true "end of the '60s," and Let It Be became a mantra for moving on.

2. Pink Floyd - Dark side of the moon, 1973.
The Dark Side of the Moon confronts only One-Word Subjects-Time, Madness, War, Religion ("softly spoken magic spells")-while redefining British psychedelia, space rock, and the concept album concept itself. A great and terrible rainbow of blackness behind the curtain of prog, Dark Side of the Moon blots out the Big Lamp, but puts everything under the sun into tune. The best thing about synching Dark Side with The Wizard of Oz: "Eclipse" bookends the record with rhythmic cardiac pulses just as director Victor Fleming's camera tracks slowly up a rusted woodsman's hollow metal body. Thus Dark Side awards its listener their very own heart of sound: "I hear a beat/ Thump, thump/ How sweet..."  

1. Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV, 1971.
There is no way this album should not be #1. Robert Plant asking, "Does anybody remember laughter?"-and hear IV again for the first time, it would be at the very top of this list. Because when the riff from "Black Dog" hits you for the first time, you come face to face with God. Nothing is bigger than Led Zeppelin IV. It tears your skin and grinds away your doubt and self-hatred, freeing the rage and lust and anger of cockblocked adolescence. Listening to this album is like fucking the Grand Canyon. Some people call "When the Levee Breaks" the album's true epic, because it sounds like the blues while "Stairway to Heaven" sounds like druids. But that was the fucking point. Zeppelin understood that you spend your days under the weight of shit, so they show you the way out with a moronized stewpot of myth, Tolkien and California daydreaming, a place where you can pray for greatness from battles you'll never fight. Zeppelin spanned it all, because they knew sometimes you wield the Hammer of the Gods and sometimes you just get the shaft.