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Noob: don't be afraid of your equalizer. It's very important to have control over your frequencies. Try killing the middle a bit and bringing up the low end. And cut off both the lower stuff and the higher treble like I said to mock. Middle is the worst thing for distortion guitar, unless you want to sound like a third-tier nirvana knockoff.
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However, a guitarist with no mid frequencies is one of the live sound man's biggest irritations, because that's where the guitar's sound is - in the middle. Cut the low mids (~200-500) for sure (unless you're playing with really low gain), but a boost to the high mids (~1.5k) will usually make the guitar sound more powerful without sacrificing clarity.
Just because Helm's got a boner for being absolutely unique in every aspect of everything doesn't mean there's something wrong with Marshall distortion (or the Metal Zone, though Boss's orange distortion really does suck); bands use Marshalls because they sound good, not because they were trendy. There's a little thing called songwriting and another one called musicianship that's supposed to make guitarists unique even if they're using similar equipment.
And without good pickups, any distorted sound will be a little muddy, but you've probably got a lot of other priorities before pickups.
I learned to play by listening to Metallica CDs since they've got a range from really easy to middle of the road stuff. Other than that just play whatever you want. Punk rock is easy. Nirvana's easy. etc.