The Seventies Belonged To.......

[Galactus]

Moreso then Bowie anyway. I love Bowie and there's simply no question that he's a much more accomplished artist but to be claim he ruled the seventies is a fallacy.

[rockysigman]

I wasn't arguing that Kiss's influence was necessarily a positive one, just that they were in fact very influential. I don't like much of what followed them at all, but I think it's pretty indisputable that they were important.

But no, they didn't own the '70s.

[Galactus]

Rocky, have you voted? Are you in the Bowie camp?

[rockysigman]

I haven't voted. Can't make my mind up. I was sort of hoping I'd be able to vote for the Osmonds.

[maarts]

ded said:

Rocky's right, I've said it before, I'd wager that Kiss started more bands in the seventies then any other. Solely might be alittle strong but it wouldn't have happened without them.

I'd venture Black Sabbath and Deep Purple being more influential on that front. Kiss might have a more direct influence on 80s metal because of opresence and show but if you talk music; Kiss didn't kick a dent in a pack of butter in Europe before I Was Made For Lovin You went number one everywhere.

[Kensterberg]

Kiss were big in the seventies, but they weren't THAT big. They were awfully influential, but they were also simply awful as well. But they didn't "own" the decade. If you want to talk about basic rock acts, Aerosmith have a better claim to "owning" the seventies than Kiss.

And now we come to that inevitable portion of the discussion where I point out that we need to define our terms. Does "own" (or "belong to") mean the artist who was most popular? most artistically succesful? broadest reach? most associated with the decade? IMO there has to be some combination of commercial success (you can't "own" the decade if the most common response you elicit from people on the street is "who?"), artistic success and reach, and a certain amount of that impossible to quantify quality of hipness. That's what I'm looking for when I talk about a decade-defining artist. Elvis had it for the fifties (so did Sinatra, BTW), the Beatles in the sixties, and after that it gets harder.

The artists who were most popular in the seventies worked almost solely within a single genre. The Bee Gees are forever linked to disco, Led Zep to a certain kind of hard rock, Barry Manilow to, well, sap ... to the point where none of the figures who were most dominant on the charts can really be said to adequately define the decade. Similarly, among the artists who covered a broader range, most found that their reach exceeded their grasp, often by an embarrassing amount.

So that means that, to reduce the decade to a single definitive figure, we need someone who was a stylistic gadfly, but who was able to convincingly perform those roles. We need someone who could fit into a hard rock FM station and be played at Studio 54 (or appear there him/her self), someone who could show up on the Bing Crosby Christmas Special and have every single pop culture watcher on the planet simultaneously going "cool" and "what the fuck?" In other words, no one better defines the totality of the seventies than David Bowie.

There were more popular artists, there were artists who went deeper into particular genres, there were artists who covered just as much territory, but there was no one as popular who covered so much territory so well. No one else will pop up in as many chapters of the Big Book of Seventies Pop/Rock Culture as Bowie, or be anywhere near as important in those chapters.

He wasn't the biggest star of the decade, but he was the most durable. And arguably the most interesting. From Major Tom to Ziggy to the soulful Thin White Duke and the Man Who Fell to Earth, David Bowie fucking owned the seventies. No one can touch his combination of commercial success and artistic reach and grasp.

Play that one damn song that could make me break down and cry ...

[Fuzznuts]

Nilsson.

[rockysigman]

Carl Douglas

[Kensterberg]

Oddly enough I remember hearing Casey Kasem counting down Billboard's top acts of the seventies ... and I think it was Elton John who wound up on top.

I think Paul McCartney (with or without Wings) came in at number three.

This was based on Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart, of course.

[Galactus]

I think the more we pick this apart we're going to find that no one "owned" the seventies either.

[Galactus]

fuzznuts said:

Nilsson.

Nilsson schmilsson.

[Galactus]

kenholzman said:

Oddly enough I remember hearing Casey Kasem counting down Billboard's top acts of the seventies ... and I think it was Elton John who wound up on top.

I think Paul McCartney (with or without Wings) came in at number three.

This was based on Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart, of course.

I'm comfortable giving this to Elton John.

[Kensterberg]

If it wasn't Bowie's, then it wasn't anyone's decade.

Maybe it was just the sixties that could be summed up concisely by one band.

[JACkory]

Excellent argument, Ken.
I'm voting for Bowie right now.
No doubt Kiss were influenced by him...maybe not musically, but you can't hear the term "glam" without thinking of Bowie...if there was ANY glam element to Kiss (and I do think there was) it came from Bowie (and maybe a little Alice Cooper).

[maarts]

Since Eno was a driving force in glam (Roxy Music), helped sonically create the glacial-styled Berlin Barbie Bowie and because of his involvement in the protopunk-movement (No New York), world music (Edikanfo, Talking Heads) and ambient (the Obscure-label), I'd venture his influence going a bit above and beyond Bowie who is a gifted performer but only represented (his own) one particular style in that time.
Thus, my vote's for Eno.