(Credits: Far Out / NASA / Uwe Conrad)
Sun 7 December 2025 17:15, UK
The 1970s were an incredibly interesting time for classic rock, as the genre had been well and truly established and artists were free to experiment with it.
In the ‘60s, rock music really found its feet. You had bands such as The Rolling Stones, Cream and The Yardbirds who were steadily establishing the foundation of rock music. It consisted of styles like the blues and R&B, but it merged them with other pop elements to create something adjacent to that which came before but still sounded new.
When the ‘60s ended, people knew exactly what rock music was, and it was time for them to start experimenting. This ushered in two different subgenres, which are now considered classics of the genre: prog rock and psychedelic rock. Both of these sounds took time to perfect, but the foundation laid in the ‘60s meant that there was plenty of room for bands to experiment.
Pink Floyd were one of those bands that started out experimenting, so much so that Roger Waters said he hated their early material. “I don’t want to go back to those times at all,” he said when talking about Piper at the Gates of Dawn. “There wasn’t anything ‘grand’ about it’. We were laughable. We were useless. We couldn’t play at all, so we had to do something stupid and ‘experimental’.”
Prog rock was also growing. Ian Anderson, the mind behind Jethro Tull, credited Cream and The Graham Bond Organisation’s album The Sound of ‘65 with kicking things off and allowing bands from the ‘70s the chance to run with the idea of prog.
“That was the seminal album for anyone in the UK nurturing early jazz-rock pretensions,” said Anderson. “Two pre-Cream members plus the renegade jazzman Bond give sturdy renditions of classic jazz, blues, and home-grown compositions which fired a generation of Brit bands of the late 1960s, early ‘70s.”
That said, even with rock shifting so much throughout the ’70s, the song that spent the longest at the top of the charts near the end of the decade came from a band who first made their name back in the ’60s. Sure, people already knew who they were – but the track that hit big marked a whole new sound for them. So, who was it?
So, what song was number one for the longest?
To get straight to the point, it was ‘Hotel California’ by the Eagles. It seems obvious now that you’ve seen it, doesn’t it? Even in the face of an evolving rock scene, the familiarity of The Eagles with a new edge in their guitar playing was enough to truly capture the hearts of all lovers of the genre. Their secret weapon when it came to putting a song together so well was the guitar stylings of Joe Walsh.
By introducing Walsh into the fray, The Eagles moved away slightly from their country roots and relied more on a heavy rock ‘n’ roll sound. It led to the creation of their most successful album, Hotel California, and the titular single from that record made itself comfortable at the top of the charts for eight weeks.
“They wanted respect as rock and rollers,” said Irving Azoff, “And Joe brought that respect.”
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