Paul McCartney is ****. GG Allin is superior to him in every measure. GG was proficient with all rock instruments, and he refused to be restricted by musical genres. He played power pop, punk, hardcore, country and everything in between. His live performances often held more in common with performance art than your typical bull**** rock & roll posturing. For him music wasn't a job, but a way of life.

GG Allin is, without a doubt, the 20th century's best rock musician.

^Are you ****ing serious?

McCartney isn't exactly limited to one genre either:

Rock-I Saw Her Standing There
Metal-Helter Skelter
Dance Hall/20s and 30s music-Your Mother Should Know
Classical-Ecce Cor Meum album
Reggae? (Ob la di, ob la da)?
Country:Rocky Racoon

x2

When I first read this thread I thought 'Paul McCartney'

Paul McCartney would never get my vote for this. Sure, he's a great musician, but definitely not the greatest. In my opinion he writes songs (even if they aren't my type) and sings better than he plays any instrument.

I'm going to say Edgar Winter is the best musician all around. He was a great keyboardist and sax player, plus he could pull off other instruments well. However, I always thought that all three members of ELP were amazing, though they were kind of limited to one or two main instruments. If I was more familiar with Zappa I'd probably throw him in too.

Tom Waits...perhaps.

you're trying to hard.

GG Allin was what Alice Cooper 'would' have been if he couldn't keep a clear distinction between performance and personal lives and abused every substance he got his hands on.

there are PLENTY of artists for whom music is far more than a job and very much their lives, the vast majority of those don't resort to acting like a caged monkey and flinging their feces at the crowd to cover up the very real fact that they had virtually nothing of note to say.



as for McCartney 'playing' every style under the sun, gimme a freaking break. a slightly homogenized twist on another style does not make it a reproduction of that style. 'helter skelter' is about as metal as 'i wanna be your man' is punk. if he actually put out full albums of varying styles then yeah i'd cut him slack, but tossing in an extra track with a twist of another style does not make for legit variety in my book. Beck is a more varied artist.

now for those playing the ability to play multiple instruments card = greatest all around ever then please top this blind guy - Rashaan Roland Kirk

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...rolandkirk.jpg

there are plenty of clips of him on youtube playing all of those horns at once and not just resulting in a cacophony of sound.

on the other hand, when it comes to the output card Zappa trumps all other modern contemporaries with Aphex Twin being the possible future exception to my ears though he seems to have slowed down significantly over the last few years.

I'd take Gene Simmons over McCartney, any day of the week. Before you get all bent out of shape, I'm only joking. :laughing: Seriously, I'd take Jimi Hendrix because not only was he the most innovative and influential guitarist in rock, he was a very expressive singer, great writer and arranger, unbelievable performer, could play every instrument in his band, was a studio visionary, and was way effing cooler than Paul.

Prince
 

Prince would have to be one of the latest greats of all time, as well as being a producer in the studio and coryography to add.

Im going to have to say Josh Homme and Brant Bjork on this one. Maybe not the best of all time but definitely notable in that they have both created entire albums by themselves and constantly have many different musicians around them all the time.