Choosing the top five most important rock songs ever is always going to be a subjective exercise in futility. Nobody will agree. Remember, this is “most important”, not best or favourite, which should narrow the candidates down somewhat and negate personal opinion.

I have approached my top five from a certain perspective which I believe ennobles a song and gives it the right to be considered as “important”. To make my top five a song must have made a lasting impression and served as inspiration to a new generation. After all, what is the point of music if not to push the boundaries and create something new? Glorified karaoke singers will not make the list; true innovators will and do.

Sometimes an artist or band just happens to be in the right place at the right time. They may have little or no musical talent. To be truly inspirational it is often about the whole package and not just the music. As you will see, not all in my top five would be credited as being ‘great’ musicians but they all had something different & inspirational, and they were all in the right place at the right time.

Whether they put themselves there or fate simply decided it is a moot point. All five brought a new sound and attitude to the masses and all five inspired a generation to follow them.

I have spread my list over six decades following some of the major milestones in the evolution of popular rock music since the 1950’s. John Lennon once said “Before Elvis, there was nothing” and it is indeed The King, not The Beatles, who has the first of my top five most important rock songs of all time.

Elvis Presley – Hound Dog (1956) [US #1, US Country #1, UK #2]
How much Elvis did actually influence The Beatles has been argued for decades but George Harrison’s quote that “seeing Elvis was like seeing the messiah arrive” indicates an inspiration at the very least.

Of course, before Elvis there was something – there was gospel and blues and rockabilly; black music. Elvis brought these styles to the masses and called it Rock and Roll. Cited by the likes of Al Green and Little Richard as “opening the door for black music”, Elvis was the touchstone for popular acceptance of black musical styles and had become The King of Rock and Roll by the age of 21.

He was also the catalyst for a cultural revolution that effectively invented the teenager. Before Elvis there were kids who became adults. As Elvis’s shaking hips exploded into the public consciousness, a new transient adolescent period emerged – the teens.

With the arrival of teenagers everything changed – music, clothes, language, and most importantly attitude. A new rebellious outlook led to kids challenging the status quo and refusing to be pushed around or dumbed down. With a new voice screaming to be heard, kids turned to music as an outlet, picking up instruments and forming bands that would change the musical landscape forever. Bob Dylan said that the sensation of first hearing Elvis was “like busting out of jail” and it all really started with Hound Dog.

Released in July 1956 it was backed by Don’t Be Cruel and both sides achieved the unique feat of topping the US charts independently. It also became the first song to top the three US Billboard charts of pop, country and R&B. Heartbreak Hotel had been Elvis’s first number one in January of the same year but it was the live performances of Hound Dog that sealed Elvis’s notoriety and placed him at the helm of the good ship rebellion.

These days It is difficult to appreciate the controversy that ‘Elvis the Pelvis’ caused when gyrating through Hound Dog to 60 million American viewers in 1956. Public outrage caused the TV stations to be inundated with letters and phone calls condemning the “nonsensical lyrics” and accusing Elvis of “influencing juvenile delinquency”. Subsequent TV performances would raise the camera to hide Elvis’s grinding hips and shield shocked viewers from the ‘grotesque spectacle’.

The sensation surrounding Hound Dog led to global recognition for Elvis and the popularity of Elvis enabled artists like Chuck Berry & Little Richard to taste their own success. Johnny B. Goode would not B. a hit if it wasn’t for Elvis. Indeed Hound Dog is not even an Elvis song. Originally written by Lieber & Stoller it was a 12-bar blues song recorded by Big Mama Thornton in 1952. Elvis shook it up, turned it into rock and roll, and threw it into the mainstream, dragging black music along with it.

Youth culture effectively started with Hound Dog and Elvis went on to influence a social revolution that would lead to the Swinging Sixties, the next stop on our journey.

The Who – My Generation (1965) [US #74, UK #2]
The Beatles don’t make this list (I Want To Hold Your Hand) and neither do The Rolling Stones (Satisfaction) or Bob Dylan (Like A Rolling Stone). It’s a difficult period from which to select just one song; the sixties were arguably the most influential decade of modern musical history. You will have you own “can’t believe you forgot about” songs from this era but I will make a case for Theeyoo.

The theme you will notice coursing through this list is one of teenage rebellion; it’s the crux of new music and tomorrow’s bands need an influence today. Finding a voice for your frustrations, passions or beliefs isn’t easy and if you can’t become a politician have a go at rock and roll. Throughout the sixties many great artists emerged but few influenced British teenage culture like The Who.

The new phenomenon of teen culture was firmly established in the fifties and by the mid sixties had become a way of life, splintering into differing sub-cultures – mods, rockers, teds. Through bands like The Who they found the voice for a generation.

Formed in 1964, The Who’s reputation was built on wild, energetic live performances which often ended with the trashing of equipment. Pete Townshend was the first guitar-smashing rock artist. Rolling Stone magazine included his guitar smashing at the Railway Hotel, Harrow in September of 1964 in their list of ‘50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock & Roll’.

With My Generation ‘Power Pop’ was born and immediately embraced by a generation of teenagers ready to rage against the machine. Released in November 1965 it is The Who’s highest charting UK single, reaching number 2. It features near the top of every list of most influential or best rock songs of all time and is a true timeless classic.

The style of the song and the lyrics are its genius; Townshend penned it aged just twenty. The bouncy tone of the music was punk way ahead of its time (listen to MC5, The Stooges or The Ramones and the influence is clear) and the lyrics are a cutting stab at the older generation trying put the kids down. “I hope I die before I get old” is one of rocks enduring lyrics and the call & response nature of the song also made it a sing-along anthem.

Roger Daltrey’s stuttered delivery was one of frustrated anger; a frontman almost spitting his words out. Some radio stations initially refused to play My Generation for fear of offending listeners who had a stutter, however this only reinforced the assertion that “things they do look awful c c cold” and the song soon made it onto their playlists. Pretty much forever.

My Generation inspired a generation to pick up (and then smash) a guitar and set The Who on the way to becoming one of the great rock bands. Their rebellious attitude and aggressive live shows undoubtedly made them the forefathers of punk rock and Planet Punk is where we visit next on our rock history tour.

Sex Pistols – God Save The Queen (1977) [UK #2]
Between the sixties and mid seventies there wasn’t a great deal going on; rock was sliding inexorably towards twiddly wankdom. Sure we got Led Zep and Black Sabbath and Deep Purple; these bands were great in their own right but the emphasis was becoming more and more focused on technical proficiency.

This trend ultimately led to Yes and ELP and Genesis. It led to 27 minute ‘epics’ and capes and seven-storey keyboard stacks. It led to stagnation, and the house of rebellious rock that had been built by The Who a decade before was desperate for somebody to come and blow the bloody doors off. Enter Sex Pistols.

For an in depth expose on the birth of punk and the chaotic journey of Sex Pistols, Jon Savage’s peerless England’s Dreaming is a must read; suffice to say the day John Lydon walked into Vivien Westwood’s SEX shop on the Kings Road goes down as a seismic moment in music. Malcolm McLaren persuaded the rotten-toothed Lydon to join Sex Pistols – Johnny Rotten was born and punk was about to change music forever.

The two legendary Sex Pistols gigs at the Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall in 1976 are cited as one of the most important events in music. If all the tales of supposed attendees are to be believed then these gigs directly inspired Factory Records (Tony Wilson was in attendance), Buzzcocks, Joy Division, The Fall, The Smiths, Frantic Elevators (later to become Simply Red), music writer Paul Morley, and indirectly inspired a legion more.

Once again kids believed that anybody could form a band; if Sex Pistols can do it so can we came the cry and the result was the punk and new wave explosion that endured through the early eighties.

The Damned’s New Rose was the first punk single in October 1976 and the Pistols’ Anarchy In The UK followed a month later; its notoriety sealed following the Grundy Incident. The band along with their Bromley Contingent appeared on Thames Television’s Today program and kicked up a storm by swearing in an exchange with the host Bill Grundy. It dominated the following day’s front pages and as Grundy’s career took a terminal nosedive, punk was taking off. Two other major events lit the touchpaper.

First, bassist Glen Matlock was replaced by Lydon’s mate and the Pistols’ biggest fan, Sid Vicious, in February 1977. Sid could not play bass and was recruited solely for his looks and his attitude. He was a true punk and his impact on the band and the punk scene was immense.

The second major event was the release of God Save The Queen in the Silver Jubilee year of 1977. Everything about the single was designed to offend, and offend it did. Only kept off the top spot by Rod Stewart and some dubious rigging of the charts, it is the pinnacle of the punk movement and put Sex Pistols on the map.

The single artwork, showing a defaced picture of Queen Elizabeth II, was a form of treason (Contempt of the Sovereign) and the lyrics were a scathing attack on the monarchy. The planned publicity stunt of playing the song on a boat on the River Thames on Jubilee Day itself ended in arrests and violence and more front page headlines. All this publicity worked wonders for Sex Pistols as punk revolutionised music.

By January 1978 the band had split and the punk star that had burned so brightly for two years was beginning to dim. However, the legacy that was left inspired a whole host of bands to pick up their instruments and that legacy was still having an affect more than ten years later when grunge emerged.

Nirvana – Smells Like Teen Spirit (1991) [US #7, US Alt #1, UK #7]
Kurt Cobain was quoted as saying “I hope I die before I turn into Pete Townshend.” This is as close to a compliment as you would get from Cobain and proves that The Who’s influence was still being felt in the nineties.

With the eighties whizzing by in a cloud of MTV Pop, Stock, Aitken & Waterman and Acieeed, once again rock was desperate for a new saviour. Punk and New Wave had long since died and Hair Metal & Glam Rock were not filling the void.

Few would have predicted that a small independent label in Seattle would play such an important role in filling the void and continuing the evolution of music, but Sub Pop is where grunge started going large.

The roots of grunge can be traced further back into the eighties with bands like Sonic Youth, The Pixies, Dinosaur Jr, and Husker Du providing a huge influence to Nirvana and Sub Pop stablemates, Mudhoney. Earlier influences can be traced back through Black Flag, New York Dolls, MC5, and Neil Young’s ‘Rust’ period all the way back to back to Black Sabbath. If Neil Young is the Godfather of Grunge then Tony Iommi is the Daddy.

The ‘grunge’ term was supposedly coined by Mudhoney’s lead scream merchant, Mark Arm, sometime in the 1980’s and was a bastardisation of ‘grungy’. He meant it as a descriptor, not a genre, but it is the term that was fixed to the Sub Pop bands coming out of Seattle, headed by a troubled Cobain and Nirvana.

The release of Nirvana’s third single Smells Like Teen Spirit in September 1991 brought attention to the Grunge scene like never before and made a reluctant star of Cobain. I saw Nirvana play Reading in 1991 when they were fourth from bottom on Friday’s bill. One year later I saw them again when they headlined on Sunday. That is a meteoric rise for a band and something that Cobain never came to terms with – within three years he was dead, his legacy sealed, and the rock landscape altered permanently once again.

Smells Like Teen Spirit is the opening track of the immense Nevermind album, Nirvana’s second release after the rawer and punkier Bleach. It was the lead single and the song that broke both Nirvana and grunge in general. Before this moment, alternative rock was underground. Following the success of Smells and Nevermind, along with Pearl Jam’s equally astonishing debut album from this period, Ten, alternative rock went mainstream and forged a success path for a multitude of alternative bands to follow – Bush, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Screaming Trees, Green Day, Radiohead, even, perversely, Oasis and Blur (bands who were actually raging against grunge and its pessimistic nature).

Cobain was a complex and disturbed character and it was this that endeared him to his following. Simultaneously appalled by fame and fortune and yet striving for the perfect song in the mould of his heroes. He described the writing of Smells to Rolling Stone magazine in 1994: “I was trying to write the ultimate pop song. I was basically trying to rip off the Pixies. I have to admit it.” This fragile and contradictory nature was a crutch for confused teenagers the world over.

There is a great comment from Fugazi’s Guy Picciotto who said: “It was like our record could have been a hobo pissing in the forest for the amount of impact it had. It felt like we were playing ukuleles all of a sudden because of the disparity of the impact of what they did”. Go and listen to some Fugazi and you will appreciate the depth of this praise.

The biggest element to the success of Nirvana and Smells Like Teen Spirit was the unexpectedness of it. Suddenly, once again, anybody thought they could be in a band and anybody already in a band believed that their turn might be next. It was a welcome shot in the arm for music, the pity being that Cobain was not around to see through his legacy and witness the change. A change that would run through the nineties, through Brit Pop and Stereophonics and Coldplay and Travis and Keane, and into the noughties where R&B and TV made insta-groups were dominating music.

The embers of Sub Pop, grunge and Nirvana had dimmed and rock was again wallowing in self pity, waiting for somebody to grab it by the scruff of the neck and kick it off the sofa. It was a bunch lads from Sheffield who surfed the crest of the online social networking explosion to make DIY bands successful again.

Arctic Monkeys – I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor (2005) [US Alt #7, UK #1]
Arctic Monkeys had built up a large following before they had even released anything. Dancefloor was their first single, from the stunning Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not debut album, and went straight to number one on the back of huge internet hype.

They went from playing pubs to selling out arenas almost overnight; a rise that mirrored Nivrana’s meteoric ascent almost 15 years earlier. Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not is still the UK’s fastest selling debut album of all time.

The impact of the single, the album, and the band in particular was hugely significant for music as the hype wave that Arctic Monkeys rode as they broke through to the mainstream was forged online on the MySpace website – a social networking site that connects users all over the internet enabling them to share anything and everything – especially music.

MySpace, and others like it, gives unsigned bands a platform to hawk their wares to huge potential audiences and once something catches the proliferation through the network runs like wildfire.

This is precisely what happened with Arctic Monkeys and before they had even been picked up by a record label they had a good collection of songs, a large underground following, and were playing to sizeable crowds that knew all the words!

The effect that Arctic Monkeys’ success had on promotion and marketing of bands was considerable; no longer was it the sole jurisdiction of the record company or promoter to pull in the fans, bands could do it themselves. This has since led to a deluge of wannabes flooding sites like MySpace, YouTube & Facebook with lifeless drivel, making it very difficult to sift through the ocean to find the pearls, but the impact of the internet on music cannot be dismissed.

It also put digital music back to the top of the musical agenda and finally had the record companies waking up to the fact that MP3’s were fast taking over from CD’s. The narrow minded bullying and handling of the Napster debacle was in the past and record companies were finally learning to embrace digital music, rather than outlaw it.

The online digital musical revolution that had started with Napster now gathered pace and Arctic Monkeys blazed the first trail. With little or no marketing or advertising, they had a number one album, two number one singles, and went on to headline Leeds-Reading festival a year later.

We wait to see how their legacy endures and how it influences the future of music. For the moment Arctic Monkeys are the last in an important lineage of bands who have contributed some of the most influential moments in the evolution of rock.