Lotsa directions to go here, Holly, to Hendrix, Morrison to Cobain to Biggie and Tupac, to Chris Cornell.
Lots of dead artists to choose from, hoping it makes for interesting debate.
Randy Rhoads - He took the Van Halen style, which obviously was in itself ground breaking, to new levels. The first Ozzy album is truly a great piece of art that honestly blew away everything Sabbath did. And I like Sabbath a lot. Not sure how he would have evolved from Ozzy, but it sure seemed like it could. Hard rock fell into a cocoon of shitty hair metal that would go away until G'N'R.
Stevie Ray Vaughn - He wasn't all that young, but he was hitting his stride and was becoming transformative when he died.
Steve Gaines/Ronnie Van Zant - Gaines brought fresh ideas and blood into Lynyrd Skynyrd and helped make their best album to date right before he died. Van Zant could make southern rebellious music both soulful and heartfelt, without ever being sappy. Southern rock never recovered. Street survivors showed that Gaines and Van Zant could have led it down a path that never got taken..
He continued to go in new directions that were way ahead of his time.
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The Plastic Ono Band.
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But in this era I'd go with Chris Cornell over Bennington. But I am curious why you chose him. Obviously both tragic.
The lyrics take on new meaning with his suicide. They have other good songs, of course.
My musical tastes are all over the place, though...from Beethoven to Bloodhound Gang.
BTW, Aaron Lewis is one of my favorite current artists. If you get a chance to see him in concert, don't hesitate he is fantastic live.
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He had so much more to give and music was changing rapidly during that time. A lot of people don’t realize just how short his career was.
I think Buddy Holly would have kept doing what he was doing (as great as it was). Cobain was a loss, but would he have evolved beyond Grunge? I don’t know. Could he have saved us all from the crap fest of music in the late 90s and early 2000s?
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