The Cowboys 1974

In the golden age of the British R&B revival, few groups created as much excitement and controversy as the Pretty Things. They came up alongside the Rolling Stones in the early 1960s, but were deemed by critics and fans as wilder and bluesier than even Mick Jagger & co. When long-haired Phil May sang and shook his maracas with manic intensity, audiences and record buyers knew they were in for a wild ride.

Picking our list of the Top 100 '70s Rock Albums was no easy task, if only because that period boasted such sheer diversity. The decade saw rock branch into a series of intriguing new subgenres, beginning, at the dawn of the '70s, with heavy metal. Singer-songwriters came into their own; country-rock flourished. The era ended with the revitalizing energy of punk and New Wave. No list would be complete without climbing onto every one of those limbs. Here are the Top 100 '70s Rock Albums, presented chronologically from the start of the decade.

Okie is the third studio album by J. J. Cale, released in 1974. Several songs from the album were later covered by other artists, including "I Got the Same Old Blues", by Eric Clapton, Captain Beefheart, Bobby Bland, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Bryan Ferry; "Anyway the Wind Blows", by Brother Phelps in 1995 and Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings in 1999; and "Cajun Moon", by Herbie Mann on his 1976 album Surprises with vocals by Cissy Houston, by Poco on their album Cowboys & Englishmen, and by Randy Crawford in Naked and True (1995). "I'd Like to Love You, Baby" was covered by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers in 2003, appearing on their 2009 album, The Live Anthology.

The Pretty Things are an English rock band, formed in 1963 in London. They took their name from Willie Dixon's 1955 song Pretty Thing. A pure rhythm and blues band in their early years, with several singles charting in the United Kingdom, they later embraced other genres such as psychedelic rock in the late 1960s (with 1968 S.F. Sorrow being one of the first rock operas), hard rock in the early 1970s and new wave in the early 1980s.Despite this, they never managed to recapture the same level of commercial success of their very first releases.

Silk Torpedo provides an interesting glance into the glam era. Beginning with "Dream" - a ghostly instrumental prelude that the group's friends in Led Zeppelin would later cop for "In the Evening" - this album launches into "Joey," a superb combination of piano boogie, crashing drums, and melodramatic choruses draped in Hammond organ. Phil May's vocals on this piece run somewhere between Ian Hunter and Steve Tyler, and are every bit as effective. "Maybe You Tried" is a glittering slice of glam rock, all pouting and hip-thrusting, with a simply killer guitar hook from Pete Tolson. From this strong start, though, the album falters into a torpid sort of introspection. Still, "Belfast Cowboys" deserves kudos for taking on the Irish question long before U2 was taking its first music lessons. The CD reissue adds live versions of "Singapore Silk Torpedo" and "Dream/Joey," both recorded in 1974.