3 Bands Whose Debut Was Their Best Album

If you step to the plate for the first time and hit a home run, you’ve established an impossibly high bar. Likewise, there are many iconic rock bands whose first album remains their best. Swing and a long one, deep right field! This isn’t to say greatness didn’t follow, but everything the bands here have done since has existed under the giant shadow of their legendary debut albums.

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Guns N’ Roses: ‘Appetite For Destruction’

After Slash burns multiple epic guitar solos in “Sweet Child O’ Mine”, the song breaks down, and Axl Rose asks: “Where do we go now?” It’s a question with more weight than the singer probably imagined. When you open with “Welcome To The Jungle” and close with “Rocket Queen”, where, truly, does one go? So, where did GNR go? “Patience”, the Use Your Illusion albums, a covers collection, and a revolving door of musicians that included Buckethead instead of Slash. Chinese Democracy took so long to complete that its title remains a metaphor for anything drawn out to the point of exhaustion.

But Use Your Illusion had great jams, too. “You Could Be Mine” doesn’t shrink against “It’s So Easy” or “Mr. Brownstone”. Rose was ambitious (“November Rain”, “Estranged”), and on Use Your Illusion, he hadn’t yet become paralyzed by perfectionism. He was wise enough to know his band couldn’t (and shouldn’t) repeat their debut Appetite.

Nevertheless, there’s a reason the concerts still begin with “Welcome To The Jungle”.

The Strokes: ‘Is This It’

If you want to know what a perfect debut sounds like: This Is It. When The Strokes emerged from New York City with the best hair this side of Oasis, American rock music was in a sad state. Julian Casablancas and his band renewed the tradition of New York punk, art, and garage bands like The Velvet Underground and Television. But “Last Nite” also borrows from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, which reveals Casablancas’s instinct for big hooks.

He delivered these hooks in a distorted, lazy-day voice and helped make American rock and roll exciting again. Meanwhile, guitarists Albert Hammond Jr. and Nick Valensi recorded weaving, intricate parts with a level of meticulousness to offset The Strokes’ slacker vibes. While other bands aimed for expensive-sounding albums, Is This It comes across like it was recorded in a garage. It’s raw but inviting and a little exotic.

In addition to Casablancas, Hammond, and Valensi, the lineup is rounded out by drummer Fabrizio Moretti and bassist  Nikolai Fraiture. These names are the Axl, Slash, Duff, and Izzy of early 2000s garage revival rock. Equally similar to Guns N’ Roses, The Strokes came out of the gate with their best record. Swing and a long one…

Van Halen: ‘Van Halen’

The first Van Halen album would be most fans’ Van Halen desert album. “Running With The Devil” is the first song you hear, and it contains every great David Lee Roth howl, gobble, grunt, moan, and crow you would want. Next up: “Eruption”. Never has a song been so aptly named as Eddie Van Halen radically transformed rock guitar in less than two minutes. Not only how people played the instrument, but the instrument itself. Eddie sent countless shredders to the music store in search of their own Frankenstrat.

Then Van Halen covered The Kinks. It’s hard to improve on The Kinks’ original, but Van Halen took the British Invasion of “You Really Got Me” and planted a new flag with it in front of Gazzarri’s. It has a crushing riff from Eddie, Roth’s barker-meets-lounge-singer act, and Michael Anthony’s soaring, Beach Boys-inspired backing vocals. All of it driven by brother Alex on drums.

Van Halen I puts the listener inside the room with the band. Eddie didn’t need a load of overdubs to change rock history. When all the copycats lined up behind him, they looked like chumps. “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love”, come on. “Little Dreamer”, the deep groove of “Jamie’s Cryin’”, the cosmic, well, punk of “Atomic Punk”. This album is stacked.

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