Was Bowie the Greatest Artist of the 70s?

Yes

 

Classic albums? I'll admit there is a few like 'Ram' and 'Band On The Run'. Otherwise, there isn't any with 'classic' status, unless you're a McCartney dead-head. And compared to what Bowie did in the seventies, McCartney wasn't doing any 'groundbreaking' music at all. He did repeat his formulas of the groundbreaking work he made in that other Fab band. That's not to put him down, because like very much of the seventies McCartney.
Bowie did, at least, make 'Honky Dory', 'Ziggy Stardust', 'Aladdin' Sane', 'Station To Station', 'Low' and "Heroes", which are all very highly regarded as grundbreaking albums in terms of rock music. Besides the two aforementioned McCartney albums, I can't think of any albums of his, that are highly regarded. Ok, maybe, 'Venus And Mars' - and that's a stretch...

 

Was this before or after Elton did the Hunky Cat?

 

I'd rank him higher than anyone mentioned on this thread so far.

 

McCartney scholars will point out that McCartney II was recorded in the 70s.

 

Yes.

But only if you insert the words, 'one of' between Bowie and The

 

It does seem that every release was a fully developed art piece with multimedia presentation and live shows, etc. and he pulled off that neat trick of making art that was challenging while also being very popular. That is a very tough thing to do. I think a case could be made...

 

No, just one of the most popular.

 

I guess I am a McCartney Deadhead. I find Bowie to be a bit boring, and I have tried both on vinyl and cd to listen to him. I do like Under Pressure and Fame - surprised? Oh yeah, his cover of Try Some Buy Some is cool .

 

He was certainly one of them. I don´t think one person can carry all that weight, though. (Though I´m sure Mr. Bowie would be more than happy to offer to carry it.) The music world is too big for one person to be "it". and I´m glad that it´s so.

 

I was shocked to see how many albums the Partridge Family had actually made. Eight albums in four years! Who knew?

 

Scary Monsters is not a 70's album and should have never entered this discussion.

 

If you consider a musical artist as one who makes recordings, when it comes to studio albums, the best of the 70’s for me were Bowie and Yes.

Bowie made 11 albums during the 70’s:
The Man Who Sold The World
Hunky Dory
Ziggy Stardust
Aladdin Sane
Pin Ups
Diamond Dogs
Young Americans
Station To Station
Low
Heroes
Lodger

To me, 5 of those are good and 5 of them are great.
The other is all covers and so does not count to me.

Yes made 8 albums during the 70’s:
Time And A Word
The Yes Album
Fragile
Close To The Edge
Tales From Topographic Oceans
Relayer
Going For The One
Tormato

To me, 2 of those are crap and 6 of them are great.

I find the next artist in line, the Stones and Steely Dan, only made 4 great albums each during the 70’s.
This means Yes and Bowie made more great albums than any other artist made during that period and so for me it is roughly a tie between those two.

 

No. While Ziggy, Hunky Dory, Station to Station and the Berlin trilogy are among my all-time favorite records, Bowie's 70s work is eclipsed for me by Parliament - Funkadelic (and their many offshoots) and (especially) Miles Davis.

As toweringly influential as Bowie's 70s records are, Miles' On The Corner spawned whole schools of thought. And I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that the Berlin trilogy would have had a much different character without the influence of Miles' "He Loved Him Madly" (from Get Up With It).

 

Yes? No.

David Bowie and Neil Young can share the honor.

 

I'd include him in the top 100, more or less. But it depends what kind of music you're looking for.

 

Genesis is number 1 for me. But Bowie is a sure second!

10/10 albums by Genesis:

A: Tresspass, Nursery Cryme, Foxtrot, Selling England, A Trick of A Tail.

10/10 albums by Bowie?

A: Station To Station, Aladdin Sane.

The Man Who Sold The World, Heroes and Ziggy Stardust are 9s. Maybe Heroes should be a 10, but I'm not a big fan of Neukoln.

 

Bowie certainly made some interesting albums in the 70s but other than Hunly Dory, Ziggy and possibly AS i don't see any other real classics.

Diamond Dogs, Heroes and others sure have their moments but contrast them to true classics from Stevie Wonder, Led Zep, Rod/ Faces, Elton and they are not up there. All those mentioned acts had more than 3 real classics in the 70s.

Even the Stones had three absolute classics in the 70s and each one, arguably, superior to Bowie's best 3.

 

Yes, for the following reasons:

-Writing and performing a series of exceptional albums
-Choosing and leading various bands for recording/touring
-His unique sense of fashion and style
-His production and collaborations (Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Mott the Hoople, Eno, Fripp, Visconti, Alomar, etc.)
-His acting in film, theater, video

 

Using that metric I would put Jethro Tull above all:
Benefit
Aqualung
Thick As A Brick
A Passion Play
Warchild
Mistrel In The Gallery
Too Old To Rock and Roll, Too Young to Die
Songs From The Wood
Heavy Horses
Stormwatch

6 Great, 2 good and 2 O.K albums for a great decade run.

 

Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Miles Davis, Santana, Queen, T. Rex, Yes, The Rolling Stones, Rush, Genesis, James Brown, WAR, Herbie Hancock, Commodores, EW&F, Parliament/Funkadelic....... (a few more)........ and Bowie too.

 

I was to busy enjoying the 70's to have a top ten list, there was so much great music filling the air waves, a truly magical time to be in your teens!

 

I'm afraid that title might just belong to Led Zeppelin rather than Bowie. It's just that these days, people don't think of LZ as a '70's band anymore. Hard to believe all of those classic tracks are that old, if you know what I mean... They still sound fresh now.

 

Zeppelin

 

The use of the word "artist" is important- and maybe Bowie was the greatest as his body of work was challenging,innovative,influential and consistent.His persona was also ever changing and affected the culture of the times,too.