‘Electric Ladyland’ – Jimi Hendrix

There was no escaping how good a live performer Jimi Hendrix was, as everybody who went to see him was blown away by his magnitude. The way he dressed, his improvisational style of guitar playing, his animalistic nature and the overall energy of his gigs meant that there were very few people who went to his shows and didn’t leave enamoured with the best to ever do it.

However, it’s one thing to be a great live performer, but another thing entirely to immortalise that energy on an album. Hendrix’s previous studio releases certainly weren’t bad, but Electric Ladyland was the record where the guitarist worked out how to bundle his infectious live shows into something people could listen to whenever they wanted. Not to mention that album was littered with classics, such as ‘All Along the Watchtower’, ‘Voodoo Child’ and ‘Crosstown Traffic’, such that it’s difficult calling the LP anything other than a 20th century masterpiece.

‘Physical Graffiti’ – Led Zeppelin

When Jimmy Page first put together Led Zeppelin, borrowing from his time in The Yardbirds and his stint as a session musician, he intended to bring a range of different styles to the band that they could keep under the same umbrella. He succeeded with this, but it makes picking their best album incredibly difficult. 

Each record brings with it a new way that Led Zeppelin proved themselves as innovators, with different genres, intensities and themes covered on every one. That being said, their hardest-hitting, most experimental, and true to rock record has to be their 1975 offering with Physical Graffiti. When an album contains songs like ‘Kashmir’, ‘Custard Pie’ and ‘In My Time of Dying’, you can’t consider it anything other than one of the best rock records ever made.

‘Horses’ – Patti Smith

While maybe not classic rock in the sense that a lot of people know it, you can’t escape the fact that Patti Smith is one of the truest rock stars there is, and her album Horses is one of the greatest ever made. The combination of excellent musicianship, intricate songwriting, catchy choruses and straight-up poetry makes this a listening experience unlike any other. 

For its 50th anniversary last year, Far Out put together a piece where we asked modern artists how much they were influenced by the album, and it was surprising how easy it was to get responses. Artists everywhere came forward to share kind words about the record, and when one album has its claws in so much of rock music, how could you consider it anything less than the very best?

“Patti is a wordsmith. and that’s what inspires me about her most,” said Katherine Parlour from Picture Parlour, providing one example out of many, “She fuses poetry and rock, and reminds us as artists that raw emotion and fearless honesty can be just as powerful as a roaring melody. In fact, it makes it all the more rock n roll. Her book M Train is one of my all-time favourites.”

‘Born to Run’ – Bruce Springsteen

A fun fact for you is that Bruce Springsteen hated this album when he finished it. “After it was finished? I hated it! I couldn’t stand to listen to it,” commented ‘The Boss’, “I thought it was the worst piece of garbage I’d ever heard. I told Columbia I wouldn’t release it. I told ‘em I’d just go down to the Bottom Line gig and do all the new songs and make it a live album.”

Realistically, the reason Springsteen was so against it was because of how much time he had spent trying to perfect it. Stay that close to one body of music long enough, and you’re going to resent it. However, his overwhelming perfectionism certainly paid off, as he managed to put together an album which wasn’t just loaded with rock songs but also one of the most revealing, humbling, and fun pieces of music ever made.

‘Paranoid’ – Black Sabbath

While Black Sabbath’s debut album, Black Sabbath, was the first time listeners around the world heard them, Paranoid was the first time that people heard them with a proper budget and enough time to be perfect, and the results were astounding. This wasn’t just rock but was a new style of the genre, heavier, more pained, and one which would eventually lead to the development of heavy metal.

Even listening now, decades later, the layers to this album are inspired. The variety on the LP when you compare tracks like ‘War Pigs’ to ‘Planet Caravan’, or ‘Paranoid’ to ‘Electric Funeral’, means that there’s no escaping that this is rock music at its very best. When your album isn’t just enjoyed by people, but inspires them to start their brand new subsection of music committed to what you’ve just done, the dominance of an album like this speaks for itself.