The greatest rock band. ever.

Here's a little tidbit for you: How to create a great rock band.

First: You must identify the key elements that have to be present. You will need a singer, definitely a drummer, and a guitarist and bassist of some kind. Other rock bands have included keyboards, other percussion, saxophones and other horns, more than one guitarist, even more than one singer. It is up to you to decide. I'll run through all the possibilities here just to cover the bases.

Then you've got to get the whole band to gel together and have a unity that drives them not to just play these really amazingly written notes but to make music with each other - something alive and intangible and greater than the sum of the parts - something so elusive that only a dozen bands in a generation ever acheive it and it can't be measured in record sales or money earned although it almost always leads to those things. This is also paramount because when the band works together well they can write together well. A lead singer can't tell a guitarist what to play and expect it to be a very good guitar part. And the guitarist can't write his own part that might be very good unless he knows that it will fit with what the lead singer is doing. And the bassist and drummer are equally dependent on the others. So you want a band that can write an intricate and musical piece together in order to make a great song. James Hetfield is not the best singer in the world, Lars Ulrich is not the best drummer, Kirk Hammet is not the best guitarist, and they've been through three bassists, some better than others. But they were all near the top of their craft, and the writing was incredible in almost all of their songs. That is what makes them something that no one else could ever acheive. It's not hard to be a Metallica cover band and play the songs once they have been written - some talented people could definitely do that (Dream Theater, for example, once played through an entire Metallica album live on stage note-for-note). But to be the original Metallica is impossible for anyone else - because together they created something untoppable. They are the utmost example of this phenomenon that I can think of.

Ok so I'm not going to deal with keyboards and horns and other musicians right now. Heck you could have a violinist if you want. It's your thing, people - I've got you started, now you've got to finish the rock with your own personal style. But whatever you do, you've got to rock. Please America, we need rock 'n' roll.