Aerosmith

From suburban Massachusetts, Aerosmith ripped open the '70s rock scene with loud, violent and lurid tunes built on a foundation of riffs lifted directly from the blues in the time-honored tradition of musical colonialists like Led Zeppelin and the Stones. Joe Perry's long-haired riffs perfectly complement lead singer Steve Tyler's sleazoid Jaggerisms in songs that run the gamut from girl group covers ("Walkin' in the Sand") to angry-robot Bowie funk ("Last Child"). A well-documented descent into drugs threatened to end their careers, but they returned clean, sober and completely digitized in the mid-1980s and continue to achieve an astonishing level of success.