The Big Three of pre-'80s Hard Rock / Heavy Metal

I think that the choices listed by you are in collision/collusion with the idea of what you originally posted.

By the time that Houses of the Holy came out, LZ was very much more polished and not the heavy/hardcore band that they originally showed on stage. BS 4 is a few years later, and not even close to the first two albums and the incredible attention that they got. After those first 2 albums, I think that BS went down hill some. By the time I caught them in Hollywood with Rare Earth (good) and Nazareth (made BS sound like stoned kids!!!) they were no longer an important band for me ... too much pop stuff and simple redo's.

DP suffered from their early days, and perhaps they had replaced their strength with LOUDNESS, and their show was one I walked out of (Leon Russell was the other half) ... because it was poor and was not tuned right. substituting "loudness" for "quality" is a different ball game ... when you don't have a lot of value in what you do, then you use "loudness" to make sure the kids get impressed and buy more tickets.

There is a massive difference in all 3 of these bands after the first 2 or 3 albums of theirs. I'm not sure that you can see that, and how they changed from the start. LZ matured, BS went "pop" (generally speaking with a loon at the front!) and DP just went loud, not better and some of their folks leaving hurt the band. One can at the very least say that BS and LZ stuck to their folks to the "end", though Ozzie did not do badly on his own.

Nogbad_The_Bad wrote: MC5 were being fairly noisy around then.

Hi,

I have to look at them some more ... I have ignored them for too long, but their loudness was well known in the Chicago/Madison/Milwaukee area.

Anyway, if it should be Big Four, I would consider The Who as the best candidate.