Top 3 Most Overrated Artists contest in R&R.

If G&R get rid of Axel Rose, they'll be very descent indeed taken into consideration skillful Slash.

Metallica stepped into era of the tasteless, plain and 'rectangular'(imho) southern rock and did things different with presence of talent, skills, workmanship and shows.

Not knowing that RS crowd is sooo defensive towards their beloved maestros Keith Richard, Mick Jagger, Ronnie Wood, Mick Taylor, I can only imagine how southern rock crowd would be defensive towards Alman Brothers, Boston, Aerosmith, Kansas etc!

06-29-14: Kb54
I would like to know who the people who feel that the stones and springsteen don't belong in the ROCK AND ROLL hall of fame feel should be there. You are taking issue with two of the most influential live and recorded artists of all time.

So where those imbeciles and heretics should be including me?

1.- Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan (head to head)

2.- Bruce Springsteen

Dylan, maybe overrated. Mostly because so many including myself tend to hold him in highest regard over many years, not because he does not deserve it.

No mention of The Grateful Dead yet?

I'd hold them in higher regard overall if they spent more time innovating like with Terrapin Station and less time doodling mindlessly while someone left the mike on.

As it is I do respect them and like a lot of their stuff, but yeah, maybe overrated from my perspective.

Jerry Garcia did also design some nice ties though!

On teh flip side, New Riders of the Purple Sage and The Outlaws are underrated. :^)

Czarivey,

For the record, I wasn't being defensive when I pointed out that Keith Richards, Charlie, Watts and Ron Wood all display far more technical skill than their counterparts in The Velvet Underground, which you cited as a more skilled group of musicians in your original post.

Of the Velvets, only John Cale can reasonably be deemed as technically proficient relative to their RS counterpart. None of Sterling Morrison, Lou Reed, and Mo Tucker ever demonstrated much technical skill, probably because it was not remotely important for them to do so, given the music that they wanted to play.

You can certainly prefer the Velvet's songwriting (if that's your cup of tea) vis a vis The Stones. For better or worse (maybe better and worse), the VU really abstracted the rock n roll rhythmic conceit into something very different and spawned a major branch of rock music that included Brian Eno, David Byrne, and many prog rock luminaries. No question that they were creative and innovative, but it would be very tough to make a case for their playing.

In the end, I think much of the response here was anything but defensive, it was simply an attempt to address the misinformation in your original post regarding the technical skills of The RS as instrumentalists.

Incidentally, none of this means that The Rolling Stones are/are not underrated. In my view, that's just a function of personal taste.