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Yardbirds: During the course of a career that spanned the better part of the '60s, the band's revolving-door membership included three of the greatest guitar gods of British Rock: Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton. Emerging from the same British maximum R&B scene that birthed the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds jacked up their Chicago blues vamps with high-octane tempos, honking harmonica/guitar interplay and free-jazz-inspired soloing. By 1965, the Yardbirds began moving into a more experimental pop direction, unwittingly pioneering a number of stylistic stratagems that we would come to know as psychedelia.

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"You Really Got Me" by the Kinks: When the Martians land and they ask you "What is rock 'n' roll?" play them the Dave Davies' guitar solo. Then they will know.

Young, Neil: There are at least three Neil Youngs: the electric warrior, able to make the guitar howl righteously or weep at the pity of it all. The iconoclastic Neil, who dabbled in synthetic pop and nouveau rockabilly, and was once sued by David Geffen for perversely refusing to make "music representative of the artist known as Neil Young." And then there is the best-loved Neil, the scuffed-shoe-and-denim troubadour, wandering through red sunsets on railroad towns and the backcountry roads of the American Dream.

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Zappa, Frank: Ridiculously prolific iconoclast whose sprawling oeuvre maps the middle ground between composer Edgar Varese and Mad magazine's Alfred E. Neuman.

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Zeppelin, Led: Though they will surely have to answer for their invention of heavy metal in the afterlife, and the shark-shagging rapaciousness of their backstage Sodom and Gomorrah probably means that Houses of the Holy doesn't get played much over at Gloria Steinem's house, Zeppelin was arguably the greatest rock band of all time (which is a different distinction than the greatest rock 'n' roll band of all time, and everybody knows that's the Rolling Stones). Their hobbit-hole occultism is actually zeitgeist-ing again in the wake of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, and there is no denying the stentorian sex magic and hash pipe juju embedded in the tracks of every album up to and including Physical Graffiti.

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Zimmerman, Robert: Aka Bob Dylan, aka the Mystery Tramp, aka Napoleon in Rags. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Bob Dylan was the all-seeing eye atop the pyramid of rock--a razor-thin, tousle-haired visionary speaking in stoned parables and meth-riddles about the nature of transcendental consciousness from behind impenetrable black shades. His status as generational oracle was earned by a triumvirate of hallucinatory folk-rock albums--1965's Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited, and 1966's Blonde on Blonde--that he would spend the rest of his career simultaneously trying to live up to and live down, never quite succeeding on either count.

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Zombies, The: Geeky mod princes in the court of '60s Britpop. The Zombies' royalty status was established by three timeless singles ("She's Not There," "Tell Her No" and "Time of the Season") and one heartbreaking album of staggering genius in Odyssey and Oracle.

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If you'd like a copy of the unabridged version of this story, email staff writer Jonathan Valania at jvalania@philadelphiaweekly.com.