Early 1970's rock: Name some of your favorites

Robin Trower,Rory Gallagher,Uriah Heep,Jethro Tull,NY Dolls.............Gee I feel old !!! lol

Would like to add a couple, Humble Pie and Trapeze. And for Tweakgeek, your Funk and Soul should include Glenn Hughes solo called Play Me Out from 1977.

SELLING ENGLAND BY THE POUND by Genesis,Ambrosias first self titled album(lose the rest),Camels Snow Goose.You could spend the next ten years of your life ransacking the golden years of rock and you would be better off than paying attention to todays corporate pap.

In addition to all of the above there is Humble Pie, Genesis, Atomic Rooster, Crabby Appleton, Sir Lord Baltimore, Starcastle, Cactus, Razzmatazz, Frigid Pink, Deep Purple, Mott the Hoople, Nectar, Tonto's...Headband, etc...have all on vinyl due to WNEW-FM (NYC) circa 1970-71 playing the whole albums/ or other songs that to me were better than their "hits".

I will give you one that was, in my opinion, the single greatest album from the mid 70s, and possibly STILL the greatest album... Heartsfield "Wonder of it all". It has recently been reissued on CD.

I litened to David Bowie, Yes, Jethro Tull.

Yeah, great thread! These were my high school and college days, and the era when I bought my first component system. Spinning on that, to me, high end Garrard turntable in the early 70's were:
Elton John, Yellow Brick Road
Art Garfunkel, that first solo album Angel Clare
Paul Simon, Rhymin' Simon, Still Crazy After All These Years (even then I thought so about myself, and I was only 18-19), and the self-titled album Paul Simon
Led Zep IV (?) with Stairway to Heaven of course
Beatles White Album and Let It Be and Abbey Road
Stones Goat's Head Soup
Lou Reed, Transformer
Steely Dan, Can't Buy a Thrill
Pure Prairie League, Bustin' Out
Marshall Tucker Band (I went to college in southern Va.), album with "Heard It in a Love Song"
Rod Stewart, album with "Maggie Mae" on it
Graham Nash, Songs for Beginners
Neil Young, After the Gold Rush and Harvest and Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
CSNY, Deju Vu and 4 Way Street
Steppenwolf, the album with the silver cover with Inna Gadda etc.
Joni Mitchell, everything out up to then
James Taylor, everything out up to then
Tracy Nelson, self-titled (available as import only CD now)
Bonnie Raitt, Give It Up and Home Plate
Van Morrison, Moondance and Tupelo Honey
Embarrassing confession: Loggins and Messina, Sittin' In
and Starland Vocal Band, Afternoon Delight

I could go on and on, the more I list, the more I picture myself in my various dorm rooms spinning vinyl with my friends. What a blast those days were! Will I ever be so carefree again--NO. Though many times, a new record or CD will make me just as happy as when my musicophile days were just beginning.

This is the list of the MOST favourite bands/albums that I never get bored to listen and always come back to them many many times.
King Crimson -- LIZARD and ISLANDS; Frank Zappa -- HOT RATS; Can MONSTER MOVIE, FUTURE DAYS and TAGO MAGO; Van Der Graaf Generator GODBLUF; Gentle Giant -- INTERVIEW.

You guys really know how to pick em'. Lot's of damn cool choices. You couldn't have gone to the same high school I went to. When the addiction to hit unused nerve endings really started to kick in, the following records paid off big:
Kraan/Andy Nogger
Good God/Good God (vinyl only)
Guru Guru/Guru Guru (pink beadwork cover)
Henry Cow/ Legend
Eloy/Floating
Embryo/Rocksession
Alquin/Mountain Queen
Van der Graaf Gen./Pawn Hearts
Darryl Way's Wolf/Saturation Point
Can/Future Days/Tago Mago/Ege Bamyasi
Coeur Magique/Wakan Tanka
New Trolls/UT
Most of these are surprisingly well recorded given their release period, and musically, (of course I'm totally objective!)they all have unique narcotic properties that seem to never stop growing.

Hallelujah!

Get your hands on an old issue of NME or CREEM from 1975, and you will find writers expressing a common belief that the popular music of the early 70’s was embarrassingly inferior to that of the 60’s. A more recent critical appraisal of that era holds that, in the early 70’s, we were actually in the midst of an under appreciated golden age.

This revisionist history is absolutely correct. I don’t know where to begin. David Bowie was making the best music of his life. Marc Bolan was churning out records that were just as good, if not better, that Bowie’s. For the love of Jehovah folks Raw Power by Iggy and the Stooges! Need I mention the first few Roxy Music albums, King Crimson, or the astonishingly great first four albums by Blue Oyster Cult (because BOC later became such a thoroughly crap band, these fine early albums are now largely forgotten.)
While I am on the subject, how about the birth of Heavy Metal? Has anybody really made better mindless hard rock albums than Black Sabbath did in the 70’s?

Remember folks; this was a time when Nashville made music with soul...before it became an assembly line churning out bland muzak for Reagan’s brain-dead America.

The early 70’s were also primetime for Soul and Funk. Curtis Mayfield began his solo career. In Philadelphia, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff were producing some the greatest pop singles I’ve ever heard (the output of Gamble and Huff is well represented on Rhino Records outstanding “Didn’t it Blow Your Mind!” compilation series). The outrageous records released by George Clinton & his cohorts are legendary among collectors and music lovers.

In Jamaica, there was the rise of “Roots” music (still, unfortunately, the only music from Jamaica to sell big to white boys in the US), and also the birth of dub, and the ascendancy of Lee Perry and his Black Ark studio.

Did I mention Tom Waits? For that matter, the records released by Van Morrison during this period were, as we have come to expect from the man, totally brilliant.

Now that I think of it, the Mick Taylor era Rolling Stones put out some albums that weren’t half bad either.

Put it this way: I’d trade the entire musical output of the 1980’s for that of just one year, I don’t care which, of the early 70’s.

1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, and 1975: I raise my overflowing glass of 100 proof Springbank to each and every one of you.

whoa, right in my power-band!

Captain Beyond
Eloy
Hawkwind
Rainbow / Elf / Deep Purple
Mountain
Uriah Heep
Nektar
Blue Cheer
Frank Marino / Mahogany Rush
Flamin Groovies
Iron Butterfly
Flower Travelin' Band

thanks for the thread - tends to be overlooked, but some of the most classic music ever.

What a great thread! As a child of the late 60's/early 70's I'll throw a few of my favorites out that are still on my turntable weekly:

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band - Dirt Silver and Gold
New Riders of the Purple Sage - NRPS
Roxy Music - Avalon
Allman Brothers Band - Fillmore East
The Who - Who's Next
Santana - Abraxis
Pink Floyd - Umma Gumma
Marshall Tucker Band - A New Life
Crosby, Stills and Nash - CSN (just bought 180g reissue from Acoustic Sounds)

The list could go on and on, but I'll leave space for other people...

Emerson, Lake & Palmer-Tarkus
Jeff Beck-Blow By Blow
Beck, Bogart & Appice
Mahavishnu Orchestra-Birds Of Fire
Camel
Billy Cobham-Spectrum
King Crimson-Red
Jethro Tull-Benefit
Yes-Close To The Edge
Who-Live At Leeds
Rush-Caress Of Steel
Ten Years After-Undead
Grand Funk Railroad-Closer To Home

A nice trip down memory lane.
Thanks for the question.

Favorites I STILL listen to even today:
1. Traffic "Low Spark.."
2. ELP "Brain Salad.."
3. CSNY "Deja Vu"
4. Yes: any, I know, really bad recordings, bad solid state
5. Chicago 1st album
6. George Harrison "All Things.."
and a few others..
What I remember from 70-71-72 as being popular but I do not listen to now: Black Sabbath Master of Reality, Deep Purple Machine Head, Zepplin I, II, III of course, Elton John's golden era (Honky Cat, Yellowbrick, etc.) and who can forget Tull's Aqualung?

Captain Beyond - S/T
Ten Years After - Cricklewood Green
Mountain - Nantucket Sleighride
James Gang - Rides Again
Blue Oyster Cult - Secret Treaties

Must be nice to still have the brain cells to remember those times so well - it's all just a "purple haze" to me...
(As an aside, somebody's auctioning "Tangerine Dream" - one of the first albums I ever bought, and I just figured I had the only copy - along w/ "The Elephant's Memory")

Cheers,
Tom

I might have to go upstairs and spin some of this vinyl again:

Bowie's Aladdin Sane
Springsteen's Greetings From Asbury Park
Zappa'a Apostrophe
Traffic Welcome to the Canteen
Bonnie Raitt's Give It Up
Tull Stand Up
Jackson Brown's Saturate Before Using
Santana Moonflower

While I'm no rock journalist (Loved the movie "Almost Famous");As a really old guy,this is my favorite time period. Music is no different than clothing styles,lingo, /fads, what have you./ In that each generation has its own.---All taking things to a different level.---We've all heard the expression: "Standing on the shoulders of giants"( see Jimmy Hendricks)For these are the things that identify each generation. I go back to the big bands;Was a fan of rhythm and blues before Elvis came along. Music has been through many phases. I think there were a few down times along the way;but there was always somebody coming along.-----Oh, BTW I think by '75, the Eagles were on their 3rd or 4th album.

Iggy & Stooges, New York Dolls, Modern Lovers, Alice Cooper, T. Rex, Sweet, Slade, MC5, Big Star, Badfinger, Faces, Wings, JLPOB, Rod Stewart (only in the 1st 1/2 of 70's!), Beach Boys (yes, even through 1st 1/2 of 70's!), Blue Ash (first record - good luck finding this), Flamin' Groovies, Neil Young, Raspberries, Derek & the Dominos, plus of course the ones Sean mentions above (and the everpresent Led Zep, Who, Aerosmith, Allmans, etc.), and I'm sure others I haven't thought of at this moment, but overall this is not a big period in rock history for me. It was a time of countryish soft rock, boring hard rock, pompous progressive rock, keyboard players, jazz-rock fusion, horn sections, and stoner jam music that you couldn't dance to, but which wasn't psychedelic anymore. Almost without exception, when it comes to bands from the 60's who were big in the 70's, I prefer their 60's work (there were also plenty of great bands that straddled the decade's divide, such as Creedence, The Band, Sly & the Family Stone, etc., plus The Dead only begin to be occasionally tolerable for me starting in the early 70's). About the best thing going at this time, other than Detroit-style 'proto-punk' and British glam-rock, was all the James Brown inspired funk that preceeded disco, foremost among which (other than the man himself and various JB spinoffs) were The Meters, Parliament/Funkadelic, early Kool & the Gang, The Ohio Players, and about a million other lesser lights, plus such singular soul talents as Al Green , Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, and Curtis Mayfield. Stretch a bit to '75, and the first New York punk is released by The Dictators, then on to The Ramones and The Cramps in '76, and things begin to look up again for guitar-based R&R where the songs don't come in 'movements' and last for a whole album side, and aren't played by bands that you need more than the fingers of one hand to count all the members of.

Anything by T Rex...especially the remastered "Electric Warrior" album...this album just reeks of kinky sex...a must!

The opportunity to revisit my high school days (class of '75) ... as eclectic as they come ...

David Bowie (Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust; 1972 or Pinups; 1973)
Crosby Stills Nash & Young (DeJaVu; 1970 or 4 Way Street; 1971)
Stephen Stills (First Solo Album; 1970)
Bob Dylan (Blood on the Tracks; 1975)
Kinks (Everybody's in Show Biz; 1972)
Emerson Lake & Palmer (Tarkus; 1971)
Frank Zappa (Waka Jawaka; 1972)
Procol Harum (Live in Concert; 1972)
Alan Price (Between Today and Yesterday; 1974)
Neil Diamond (Tap Root Manuscript; 1970)

Enjoy the visit to Tower. Rich