Thirty greatest sibling acts in rock and roll history

16. STONE TEMPLE PILOTS – DEAN AND ROBERT DELEO

This is similar to the INXS situation. Vocalist Scott Weiland was the face of the band, but the DeLeo brothers played guitar and bass and wrote a lot of material with Weiland. They tended to get caught up in the tidal wave of grunge propelled by Pearl Jam in the early ‘90s, so much so that even fans at times couldn’t distinguish between STP, Pearl Jam, and British interlopers Bush. If that hints at a static grunge quality, STP was able to overcome it by writing a wider range of songs than many of their counterparts.

15. BACHMAN-TURNER OVERDRIVE – RANDY, ROBBIE AND TIM BACHMAN

Frontman Randy and drummer Robbie were constants through 2005. Guitarist Tim kind of came and went depending on how he was getting along with Randy. Their band grew out of Randy’s decision to leave the Guess Who in search of a band in which he felt more comfortable and could exercise more control.

Their first album was a modest success. The second one closed with “Takin’ Care of Business,” their first top-20 hits in the US. The following album yielded their only number-1 – “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet.”

The story goes that Randy was inspired to write the song as a way to poke fun at yet another brother – the band’s manager Gary, who had a stutter. In the end, that song doesn’t sound much like BTO’s standard blues rock, but catchy is catchy. And brothers will always make fun of each other.

14. MEAT PUPPETS – CURT AND CRIC KIRKWOOD

If Curt Kirkwood were a better singer, there’s no telling where Meat Puppets would have gone. It’s not that he’s bad, but in a band that constantly blew expectations away with unpredictable songs and directions, he sounded just a little too generic. By the way, Curt’s son Elmo now plays with the band, which reminds me that Tal Bachman is now playing alongside his dad Randy in the above-mentioned band.

Meanwhile, back to the Kirkwood brothers of Arizona, it looked like they were going to have some mainstream success with the release of Too High to Die in 1994. They had their first charting single in “Backwater” and a host of other hooky blends of punk and indie rock tunes. They even had Kurt Cobain playing their songs. Then Cobain died, Cris left the band for an extended period, and Meat Puppets were unable to build on their burgeoning success. Still, they remain one of the most consistently interesting acts of the ‘90s.

13. OASIS – NOEL AND LIAM GALLAGHER

The Gallaghers are probably the most famous – perhaps notorious – siblings in modern rock. Their love/hate relationship (tilting heavily to the latter emotion) is well known. There’s no doubt that Noel wrote some fantastic pop-rock songs and that Liam was an extraordinary frontman/vocalist. They were massively successful at the height of Britpop in the mid-‘90s.

But I suspect their notoriety offstage may have overshadowed their actual music, making it hard to fairly judge them. I’ll say right up front that I am not a big fan, but as brothers go, they kind of define a particular contentious brand of rock music creativity.