He shouldn't be higher than most of the guys above him. Plus he only really had one song. Anyway, I just found this clip of a twelve-year-old Billy Preston and Nat King Cole that's awesome. Billy doesn't get nearly enough credit.

Billy Preston was a genius. And there aren't many rock musicians I feel comfortable saying that about.

His 70s stuff alone would have cemented his reputation as a great musician. If you truly consider him to be the "Fifth Beatle", then he may have the best solo career out of all of them (except Harrison).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlxxmNP2MKw

Dunno if you've seen this, but it really showcases his incredible ability. Don't know of many folks who can improvise counterpoint like that.

Seen it like 5 times already. It's always just as awesome as the first time I saw it.

Also any room for at least one of the 10cc guys? And why is Rod Argent above Steve Winwood?

Regardless of Criteria I think Banks is quite a better keyboardist than Wright, their both fantastic but....I also wonder if the criteria favors Wright or his influence comes from Pink Floyd being more widely listened too than Genesis even when Banks keyboard playing was more developed earlier on.

It's mostly because Rick was one of the few rock keyboardists to focus primarily on bringing ambience to the music with chords and synthesizer patterns, rather than just soloing like Emerson and Wakeman, who came around the same time.

Essentially without Rick, we wouldn't have a lot of other guys like Richard Barbieri (whose exclusion on this list is a crime) and virtually other instance of ambient keyboard playing.

And personally, I think Billy Preston is better than both of them.


Skill: Billy or Tony
Creativity: Billy
Influence: Rick
Musical Depth: Billy
Lasting Popularity: Billy, although it might be a tie between all 3

Billy Preston has lasting popularity over Wright? O_O. I could believe it, I like Billy far more but I thought the mainstream audience nowadays is much more familiar with Floyd than anyone who knows Preston. And about Ambiance I like the switched roles because I was thinking what about Manzarek in The Doors and then realized their heavy ambiance was left, correctly, in the hands of minimalist Krieger (outside his solos). The brilliance was Krieger provided heavy ambiance with gentle, eerie chords while Manzarek handled solos and riffs, like the guitar and keyboards switched places.

How about Roger Hodgson (of Supertramp fame) for the pianists list? Marvelous player. Especially on "Don't Leave Me Now" off of "...Famous Last Words..."

Is Allman really that great an organist? It seems like all he does is comp. Any great performances by him?

Listen to his performance of "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" at the Fillmore East. Wicked organ work.
Although, his placement is rather high. In fact, "Southbound" is the only performance by Allman on the keyboard performance list, and it only features Allman on organ, the piano solo is Chuck Leavell.

I would not mind seeing him switch with Brian Eno and bringing Stevie Wonder way up.

I also feel like Tuomas Holopainen from Nightwish should be on here for being one of the most influential keyboardists in a metal genre dominated by keyboards.

I agree with Allman being a little too high. That organ solo on Liz Reed is nothing special, imo. It's just there to kill time before the mind-blowing guitar solos.

Yeah I've never heard phenomenal work from him. But I would love to see Richard Barbieri from Porcupine Tree and Japan somewhere on here. He's done a lot in terms of providing atmosphere to rock recordings.

I only have one album from Porcupine Tree and I can tell the guy is great.

Anyway, just thought I'd say that Manzarek is one of the most underrated musical geniuses in all of rock. Not a soloing beast like Emerson or Lord, but he's so much more concise and managed to come up with PERFECT accompaniment for whatever song the band played. His live improv was killer, and his tone and choice of notes were all his own.

In short, I just fuckin love Ray. Damn near as much as I love Jim...