Ya just get one as in the hanging forum.
Brian Jones is my choice.
I reckon he was a forunner of Peter Gabriel on the world music scene and we missed a lot of good music cus he got murdered.
Stones fell apart after he left anyway.
Oh and heres one never to revive. Jim fecking Morrison. "this is the end" what a relief when it came.
So there you are, one to revive and one to revile.

Murdered? By a swimming pool? Come on, you'll never prove that one.....

Hendrix, unquestionably. The quality and diversity of the stuff he had in the can when he died was phenomenal. It's a tragedy that he only got 4 years, whereas many of his contemporaries ended up spending 20+ years rehashing variations on their original, inferior themes.

May Mike Jefferies and Monika Dannemann rot in hell.

I never knew Hendrix was once in Can.

I did know that he was invited to join Emerson, Lake & Palmer, though, to form HELP. True, that!

John Bonham. Not only did his death put an end to Led Zep, but rock drumming, and rhythm generally, has gone rapidly downhill ever since.

Hendrix sounds obvious but, in his short recording career, there had already been a massive drop-off in quality by the time he died. Had he said what he had to say?

Can't agree with you about Hendrix Gille, he was evolving still at the time of his death, but much of his posthumous released work has been of a high standard. The thing is, had he lived, I am sure the music that he would have produced 25 years into his career would have born little resemblance to "Are You Experienced". Would his original rock audience have stayed with him? - I doubt it.

For me it has to Jerry Garcia, (but Jimi would not be far behind).

"From the corner of my eye I saw the sun explode
I didn't look directly 'cause it would have burned my soul
When the smoke and thunder cleared enough to look around
I heard a sweet guitar lick, an old familiar sound
I hear a laugh I recognised come rolling from the earth
Saw it rise into the sky like lightning giving birth
It sounded like Garcia but I couldn't see the face
Just the beard and glasses and a smile on empty space"

Alex Harvey. I haven't stopped missing the grizzled old f*cker and for me he's still Scotland's finest.

CD,
Hope you don't mean he would've gone jazz? That's libel!

Surely the Austrian rock god that was Falco deserves a second chance here. The faultless "Rock Me Amadeus" gave us a clue as to this mans potential. Who knows what could have followed, had his life not ended in a suspicious and mysterious car crash. Was it murder? Did Prince Philip have something to do with it? Or was it the CIA? Why has Mohamed Al Fayed kept so quiet about this? Does anyone care?.......Probably not

I'll agree with you there dP (even if your last sentence looks a little bit like you're taking the p*ss...and the one before that...and the one before that). Falco was a legend in his homeland (plus total eye candy for the ladies). 8 studio albums, contless singles, the first and so far, only, artist to score a U.S. no. 1 hit with a German language song.....and around 30 million worldwide single and album sales...not bad at all. Oh, and "Rock Me Amadeus" and "Vienna Calling" totally rock (but then I'm a bit of a sucker for dodgy 80s music).

I think there was a very good chance that he would have Gille, especially when you listen to numbers like "Pali Gap" which was jazz as far as I am concerned. Add to that Miles Davis and Keith Jarrett wanted to collaborate with him, who knows what would have happened?

One thing is certain, he was not standing still, and would have progressed to something totally different - he was too large a talent not to!

"If truth is impossible, so is the lie"

CD,
I fear you are right...in fact, that's exactly what I mean by a drop-off in quality.

Spot on, Deadhead. The key word here is 'evolving'.

Within his 3 years of lifetime releases, he'd evolved & diversified to the extent that he was already alienating the more blinkered elements of his original audience. 'Purple Haze', 'Bold As Love', '1983', 'Power of Soul', 'Drifting', 'Night Bird Flying'.....can't see any 'massive drop-off in quality' there, Gille - just an astonishing upward artistic trajectory, leading who knows where....jazz/fusion, I suspect, but he'd probably have handled it with considerably more aplomb than most of the witless clowns who populated the genre.

Tripmender,
I suppose it depends on whether you like jazz. For me, 'Axis' was his definitive statement, and everything I've heard post-Ladyland leaves me cold. Who knows what he'd have done if he'd lived? But if he'd gone jazz, you can count me with the 'blinkered' brigade.

Gille: much as Zep will probably always be my favourite band, I reckon they were pretty much finished when Bonham died. Their drop-off in quality after 1976 was heartbreakingly spectacular. I can't recall any bigger musical disappointment than 'Out Door', especially after the epic Knebworth gigs. Of course, it was all JP's fault, as he was allegedly too smacked-out to make any meaningful contribution to the album.

Would they have recovered? Not if JP's post-Zep output is anything to go by. Maybe he just didn't care anymore?

Charlie, by the way, I forgot to say "Raise 'em from the DEAD" most appropriate so far as I am concerned!

"He's dead, he's dead, you know he's dead"

Tripmender:
Maybe; maybe they too had had their day. But I prefer to think of Outdoor as a transitional album - to what, we'll never know. Bob Plant has certainly produced some worthwhile stuff since, even if Page hasn't. But I just think, when Bonham died, the link between black R&B and rock was lost, apparently forever. Rock lost its groove.

Gille: I may be getting into tricky territory here, as I'm no drummer and I suspect you might be! That said, I'd argue that there's been more black R&B/'groove' in rock since 1980 than before. RHCP's 'Blood Sugar' springs to mind. To me, this is the epitome of rock groove.

Gosh Martin, I thought everyone knew that Brian Jones was murdered by Mick Jagger who disguised himself as a builder and drowned him in the swimming pool because he realised that once Brian got his muse back the Stones would be forever in his shadow.
Bit like Take That and Robbie Wiliams only without the revival and reunion.
None of the rock stars of the sixties and beyond died of drink, drugs or both. They were all murdered by jealous bandmates or the establishment.
I hope you relise that I am putting myself at considerable risk by telling you this. The last thing I want is Mick Jagger turning up on my doorstep. A SWAT team, fair enough, as long as they clean up after them but I really couldn't cope with being whined at. Shudder.

How about Roy Orbison? He was having a career revival, as a member of the Wilburys and with his own album produced by Jeff Lynne

Just to go back to gille and Cornishes exchanges..........I used to be involved in the obsessive tape trading scene that existed many years ago and got to hear loads of outtakes etc....hours and hours of Hendrix, Zep, the Stones chiseling away in the studios. As far as Hendrix goes I would reckon he was one of the most prolific producers of material that I have encountered. I was once sent a dozen C90s, remember them??, of Hendrix noodling away in the studios. In the midst of all of this, mainly unimpressive, stuff would be buried the odd gem or three. So he seemed to literally just let it all flow out onto tape and then be able to remember how he had done it in the first place, take it away and polish it up. I do not know what would have happened in the long run with Jimi. I reckon he was burning himself out and was at a point where he had hit a wall musically speaking and could not seem to find a way around it, which is why he was getting involved with jazz musicians.

Miles Davis was so impressed with Jimi that he got, at one point three in the live lineup, guitar players to augment his band from Silent Way onwards.

Jimmy Page definitely shows a decline in quality of performance in the live end of Zeps output as far back as '73. After that the band could play some real duff gigs. The nights they were on form were amazing, but the bad nights were appalling. Jimmys solo spots just got longer and more tedious as the years rolled by. Even the legendary "Listen to this Eddie" boot contains a mind numbing Pagean solo of brobgdanian(sp?) proportions. The rest of the band were able to cover his mistakes most of the time. The studio output was fine as he could redo it as often as was required. I have no problems with any of the studio albums at all.

As for Bonham being the last great rock drummer, well!!!!!!!!!!! He was truly amazing and always played well. He is always 100% on the groove in any boot I have heard. However there have been other great drummers Chad Smith RHCP, Bobby Previte(jazz/rock/funk), Micheal Lee(a great loss), and others who could make rock swing.

Ok, now to answer the thread call...................................John Bonham. This is a close call with Frank Zappa. I have gone for John Bonham after thinking about his contribution to Zeppelin. The man was like a musical nail gun. He never dropped a beat. There is a great Bonham fill near the start of Dazed and Confused on the How The West Was Won album that sums up his freewheeling approach, power with style. On a bootleg of a show in Germany 73, can't recall the exact one of the top of my head, he does these machine gun like rolls on the snare behind Plants oooohing and aaaaaahing until Plant gives up and then the music really kicks off. The Crunge is a good example of his rock tinged r'nb Motown funky playing, not a great song, but great drumming IMHO.

I find this discussion very irresponsible.
Any educated person knows that a plague of the undead will lead to a breakdown of civilisation.
Sure, they may be your favourite musicians, but they will still carry and spread the zombie virus.
I don't particularly relish living in an anbandoned missile silo under martial law.

I admire Kieth Moons drumming and personality, but if he were to come shuffling to my front door as the walking dead, trying to eat the wife and kids, I would cut his legs off with a chainsaw and then shoot him in the head.

John Bonham was a soul fan, so possibly the precision of his playing came from being influenced by great drummers such as Uriel Jones and Clyde Stubblefield. Twin this with the physical strength gained from being a steel worker in his youth and playing a 5-piece kit where the drums were larger than most being used at the time (26" bass drum etc.) and you have a drummer who brought a deceptively simple approach to hard rock but still sounded like nothing heard before. Little wonder that quite a lot of his playing is featured as samples on hip-hop and rap recordings.

If the zombie Bonham had unnatural strength I would take him out with a flame thrower. Then finish it off with a shot to the head. You have to sure.
There is no room for complacency when you are dealing with the undead.