Favorite band or artist of all time?


1st of all Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone at Audiogon!
I've Have been thinking about it(hundreds of choices)and lately  just wondering, If you had to pick just one, what would be your favorite band or artist of all time???
 Extremely hard decision!, but Mine would be Elton John.
(deeply rooted since I was 10 or 11) Old fart now😎
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I saw Jimi, Noel, and Mitch live twice. I know a lot of ya’ll really love them, but I found "the middle" of the music missing in what they did. To speak in analogies, what they played created a "sphere" of music, with a hollow center. It’s like they are playing "around" where the music would normally be found, but is completely missing in theirs.

With only a single guitar (yes, played by a very creative one), a mediocre bassist (Noel was a guitarist, not a bassist) who contributed little MUSICALLY, and a drumset (played by a real fine player)---no harmony singing (and lyrics of little interest), no instrument(s) playing chords and supportive parts, and, imo, rather pedestrian chord progressions and melodies---the resulting music I find very 1-dimensional (I can hear the howls of outrage from here ;-). But what I listen for in music is particular to me, as it is for everyone.

@french_fries, as you like John Coltrane, give a listen to Ornette Coleman, another genius. Rock ’n’ Roll band NRBQ did some collaborations with another great, Sun Ra. Now THERE was a great band!

BDP24, I agree with what you like, too. A lot. But... well my connection to the JHE was immediate and like a force of nature (so to speak).  I have never tired of listening to them- like great jazz or Mozart my appreciation just gets better all the time.  Some like fireworks (I do too), but I can "hear" the lights and the colors when I listen to those live concert tapes. 
And a lot more. P.S.- The Beatles were "okay" too!
@bdp24
So often you contribute much by way of informed music criticism and great knowledge of popular music history. There are just sometimes, however, a point you make has to be contested; in this case, "...lyrics of little interest". If these below were all he he ever wrote, it would be enough for me. If you don’t recognize the unique beauty here, probably best to stick to playing drums and forget the second career as literary critic! :-)

The Wind Cries Mary
Jimi Hendrix
After all jacks are in their boxes
And the clowns have all gone to bed
You can hear happiness staggering on down the street
Footprints dressed in red
And the wind whispers Mary

A broom is drearily sweeping
Up the broken pieces of yesterday’s life
Somewhere a queen is weeping
Somewhere a king has no wife
And the wind, it cries Mary

The traffic lights they turn a blue tomorrow
And shine their emptiness down on my bed
The tiny island sags downstream
’Cause the life that they lived is dead
And the wind screams Mary

Will the wind ever remember?
The names it has blown in the past
And with its crutch, its old age and its wisdom
It whispers "no, this will be the last"
And the wind cries Mary