The Greatest American Rock Band Bracket!
Final Four, Match 2
Prince and the Revolution (4) vs. Van Halen (4)
Eighties genre-benders versus the guitar god and company
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Prince and the Revolution:
"No other artist of the rock & roll era compares to Prince. He was the rare combination of a visionary pop conceptualist and master musician who could capture the sounds he imagined, a quality that fueled his remarkable success in the 1980s. Ideas came to Prince so quickly, they couldn't be contained on his own records, either with or without his backing band the Revolution. Prince and the Revolution existed in a formal capacity from only 1984 through 1986, but the origin of the diverse band dates back to 1979, when Prince assembled a team of musicians to help him tour in support of his self-titled second album. There wasn't an area of pop music in the '80s that didn't bear [their] influence: it could be heard in freaky funk and R&B slow jams, in thick electro-techno and neo-psychedelic rock, and right at the top of the pop charts." --Allmusic.com Popularity
Influence:
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Van Halen:
"Van Halen simultaneously rewrote the rules of rock guitar and hard rock in general. Guitarist Eddie Van Halen redefined what the electric guitar could do, developing a blindingly fast technique with a variety of self-taught two-handed tapping, hammer-ons, pull-offs, and effects that mimicked the sounds of machines and animals. It was wildly inventive and over the top, equaled only by vocalist David Lee Roth, who brought the role of a metal singer to near-performance art standards with a flair for showmanship derived as much from lounge performers as Robert Plant. Together, they made Van Halen set the template for 80s hard rock and heavy metal." --AllMusic.com Popularity
Influence:
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