Whereas solo singers frequently got away with performing songs by outside writers, rock bands of the late 60s-present usually wrote their own words and music. Can you name any bands of the rock era that relied solely on cover tunes or outside songwriters? (As suggested above, I’d like to focus on bands of the rock era and exclude Motown and vocal groups who usually relied on the likes of Lieber/Stoller, Goffin/King, Holland-Dozier-Holland etc. If you understand what I mean)
The Buckinghams wrote some album songs but they had five top 20 twenty singles, none of them written by band members.
Garcia, Weir (and sometimes Mydland, Lesh Hart) did write the music so I don’t think the Dead really apply. And don’t forget that Hunter did get inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the band. Lyricists like Hunter and Keith Reid of Procol Harum are frequent collaborators of bands so they really can’t be considered outsiders if you know what I mean
Well, I just looked At Wikipedia, and according to that out of their first twelve singles (through January 1965), the Rolling Stones only wrote two of them . It’s interesting to me then, that once Mick and Keith got writing, they ended up writing a streak of ten or twelve of my favorite singles by anyone . As I mentioned in a different thread, it’s a good thing they got going writing, because doing just blues or R&B covers would have only taken them so far.
The Monkees - at least they did not write any of their significant hits, and only Nez was the sole writer of a significant number of songs they did at all
Pentangle wrote some, but probably a majority of their non-instrumentals were arrangements of traditional songs. Not sure they could be called a rock band.
