3 of the Best Rock Trios From the 1990s

The rock trio is a hard thing to pull off. Sure, there have been many great ones: The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Police, ZZ Top, Cream, Motörhead, and The Jam, to give you a highly incomplete list. But it’s a hard gig. First, one of the instrumentalists must possess the combined skills of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards or John Lydon and Steve Jones. Secondly, a trio has less room for error when it comes to departing bandmates.

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The 1990s had great trios, too. Let’s look at three of the best from the decade.

Muse

When the English rock band Muse debuted in 1999 with Showbiz, they filled a guitar-based void left by Radiohead’s shift to electronica and post-rock. Soon, the trio, led by singer and guitarist Matt Bellamy, embraced progressive rock and heavy metal and wrote albums full of apocalyptic themes and sci-fi dystopias. For his part, Bellamy often sings in a Bends-era falsetto but also possesses the drama and operatic reach of Freddie Mercury.

Although Muse arrived just as the decade was ending, they’ve since become a stadium band. A remarkable feat for a trio.

Green Day

I don’t know if data exists to show how many kids bought guitars because of Dookie, but I imagine the number is staggeringly high. Green Day’s third studio album helped make punk rock mainstream and spawned countless like-minded bands. Many alternative rock groups in the 1990s were defined by angst and gloom. They made it seem like being in a band was the worst thing in the world. Green Day offered the opposite.

Which brings me back to how many kids bought guitars and began making a racket in their parents’ garages. Singer and guitarist Billy Joe Armstrong spent the 1990s on a Noel Gallagher-esque songwriting run, prompting Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo to add Green Day (and Oasis) to his three-ring binder, the Encyclopedia O’ Pop, trying to unlock the chemistry behind the hits.

Nirvana

Though Nirvana formed in 1987, they were one of the most important rock bands in the 1990s. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” created a quake that turned into a cultural tsunami not only for fellow Seattle grunge bands but for alternative rock generally. It changed the sound of the radio and the look of MTV. It changed how people dressed and prompted major marketing companies to dream up new ways to sell angst to the kids.

Nirvana released back-to-back blockbuster albums, Nevermind (1991) and In Utero (1993), the latter of which was Kurt Cobain’s answer to the previous album’s slick production. But in all its Steve Albini-engineered rawness, In Utero still produced the radio staples “All Apologies” and “Heart-Shaped Box”.

Photo by Paul Bergen/Redferns