Rock Origins

Rock is a form of popular music from the mid 20th century which typically features a vocal melody (often with vocal harmony) that is supported by accompaniment of electric guitars, a bass guitar, and drums, often with a strong back beat. Keyboard instruments such as organ, piano, or synthesizers are often used in many types of rock music. While brass and woodwind instruments, such as saxophone were common in some styles in earlier development of rock, they are less common in the newer subgenres of rock music since the 1990s. The genre of rock music is broad, and its boundaries loosely-defined, with related genres such as soul and funk sometimes being included in the definition of the term.

A major formative influence on rock was rock and roll, and rockabilly. In the 1960s, as British rock developed, the term "rock music" became popular. With the "British Invasion" this reinvigorated musical style spread back to the United States, and became an international cultural phenomenon with considerable social impact. Rock has evolved into a multitude of highly-varying styles with widespread popularity.

Rock and Roll

Rock 'n' Roll started off in the early-to-mid 1950s in the United States of America. African-American artists such as Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Bo Diddley and Fats Domino played mostly to African American crowds.

Mainstream acceptance of rock and roll came in the mid-1950s when Caucasians signed to major labels and started covering their material. Elvis Presley and Bill Haley and the Comets, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash often toured and played together in dance halls and clubs across the US and Britain.

Surf Music

The rockabilly sound influenced the West Coast development of a wild, mostly instrumental sound called surf music, though surf culture saw itself as a competing youth culture to Rock and Roll. This style, exemplified by Dick Dale and The Surfaris, featured faster tempos, innovative percussion, and processed electric guitar sounds. In the UK, British groups included The Shadows. Other West Coast bands, notably The Beach Boys and Jan and Dean, slowed the tempos back down and added harmony vocals to create the "California Sound."

British Rock

In the United Kingdom the traditional jazz movement brought visiting blues music artists to Britain. Lonnie Donegan's (pictured left) music was a major influence, and helped to develop the trend of skiffle music groups throughout the country, including John Lennon's early group then known as The Quarry Men. Britain developed a major rock and roll scene, without the race barriers that occurred in the U.S.

Cliff Richard had the first British rock 'n' roll hit with "Move It", effectively ushering in the sound of British rock. At the start of the 1960s, his backing group The Shadows was one of a number of groups having success with Surf music instrumentals.

By the end of 1962, the British rock scene had started, with groups drawing on a wide range of American influences including soul music, rhythm and blues and surf music.

The Beatles brought together an appealing mix of image, song writing, and personality. In mid-1962 the Rolling Stones started as one of a number of groups increasingly showing blues influence, along with The Animals and The Yardbirds. In late 1964, The Kinks, followed by The Who, represented the new Mod style. Towards the end of the decade, British rock groups began to explore Psychedelic musical styles that made reference to the drug subculture and outer body experiences.


1960s Garage Rock

The British Invasion spawned a wave of imitators that played mainly to local audiences and made inexpensive recordings, a movement later called Garage Rock. Some of the better known bands of this genre include Paul Revere & the Raiders, Question Mark & the Mysterians (pictured right), and The Trashmen.

Progression Of Folk Rock

The Byrds, with hits such as Mr. Tambourine Man, helped to start the trend of Folk rock, and helped to stimulate the development of US Psychedelic rock. Bob Dylan's own contribution continued, with his "Like a Rolling Stone" becoming a US hit single. Neil Young's lyrical inventiveness and wailing electric guitar attack created a variation of folk rock. Other folk rock artists include Simon & Garfunkel, The Mamas & the Papas, Joni Mitchell and The Band.

Psychedelic Rock

Psychedelia began in the folk scene, with The Holy Modal Rounders (pictured left), introducing the term Psychedelia in 1964.They were an American folk music duo consisting of Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber.

The Grateful Dead, with a background including folk and jug band music, were an American psychedelia-influenced rock band formed in 1965 in San Francisco. The band was known for its unique and eclectic song writing style—which fused elements of rock, folk music, bluegrass, blues, country, jazz and psychedelia.

Big Brother & the Holding Company is a rock band that formed in San Francisco in 1965 as part of the psychedelic music scene that also produced The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. The original members of Big Brother & the Holding Company are Sam Andrew and James Gurley on guitars, Peter Albin on bass and Chuck Jones on drums, who was replaced by Dave Getz in 1966. The group increased in popularity with the addition of lead singer Janis Joplin in 1966.

Progressive Rock

The music itself broadened past the guitar-bass-drum format; while some bands had used saxophones and keyboards before, now acts like The Beach Boys and The Beatles (and others following their lead) experimented with new instruments including wind sections, string sections, and full orchestration. Many bands moved well beyond three-minute tunes into new and diverse forms; increasingly sophisticated chord structures, previously limited to jazz and orchestrated pop music.

Progressive rock could be lush and beautiful or highly complex or minimalist, sometimes all within the same song. At times it was hardly recognizable as rock at all. Some notable progressive rockers included Electric Light Orchestra, Jethro Tull, Genesis (pictured below), Emerson, Lake & Palmer (pictured right) and Pink Floyd.

Birth Of Heavy Metal

A second wave of British bands and artists gained great popularity during this period. These bands were typically more steeped in American blues music than their more pop-oriented predecessors, but their performances took a highly amplified, often spectacular form. Guitar-driven acts such as Cream and Led Zeppelin were early examples of this blues-rock form as well as heavier rock bands including Deep Purple and Black Sabbath.

Arena Rock

The Beatles, the Rolling Stones and The Who began the practice of live performances for large audiences in stadiums and arenas. The growing popularity of metal and progressive rock led to more bands selling out large venues. Entertainment companies marketed a series of arena rock bands, such as Queen, Pink Floyd, Genesis (Pictured left), and later Boston, Styx, Foreigner, and Journey. The "arena rock" movement became a precursor to the power pop of future decades.


 

Soft Rock

Rock music had a short-lived "bubble gum pop" era, of soft rock, including groups such as The Partridge Family, The Cowsills, The Osmonds, and The Archies. Other bands or artists added more orchestration and created a popular genre known as soft rock. Performers included Barry Manilow, Olivia Newton-John, and Eric Carmen, and groups such as Bread, The Carpenters, Electric Light Orchestra, and England Dan & John Ford Coley (pictured right). Other well-known artists performing soft rock included Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand.



Classic Rock Emerging

Meanwhile, groups such as Queen, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Aerosmith, REO Speedwagon, ZZ Top, Van Halen, Golden Earring and The Rolling Stones as well as such solo artists as Peter Frampton were being heard mainly on AM radio and sharing the charts with their soft rock counterparts. These bands are often referred to as hard rock.

Disco

While Funk music had been part of the rock and roll scene in the early 1970s, it would eventually give way to more accessible songs with a danceable beat. The Disco format was brought to us by such groups as Donna Summer, K.C. and the Sunshine Band, The Three Degrees, The O'Jays (pictured left), Barry White, Gloria Gaynor, The Bee Gees and The Trammps. Suddenly, many popular hits featured the danceable disco beat, and discotheques -- previously a European phenomenon -- began to open in the U.S.

Many mainstream rock acts, including the Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart, Queen (Another One Bites The Dust) and even The Grateful Dead, incorporated disco beats into their releases in attempts to keep up with the trend; many rock radio stations began to adopt all-disco formats.

Punk Rock

Punk rock started off as a reaction to the lush, producer-driven sounds of disco, and against the perceived commercialism of progressive rock that had become arena rock. Early punk borrowed heavily from the garage band ethic: played by bands for which expert musicianship was not a requirement, punk was stripped-down, three-chord music that could be played easily. Many of these bands also intended to shock mainstream society, rejecting the "peace and love" image of the prior musical rebellion of the 1960s which had degenerated, punks thought, into mellow disco culture.

Punk developed as more than an aesthetic movement in America, with artists Patti Smith, The Ramones, and Talking Heads (pictured right). In England Punk rock became a more violent form of expression with the proto-typical band The Sex Pistols choosing aggressive stage names (including "Johnny Rotten" and "Sid Vicious") and did their best to live up to them.

It was also through punk, and to an extent, New Wave, that Australia made its first major impacts on the global popular music scene. After Johnny O'Keefe's last major hit in 1961, Australian popular music was dominated by clean-cut family bands. Bubbling beneath the surface, however, was a group of pioneering bands like the surf band The Atlantics, but it was not until the late 1970s, with acts like INXS, and Midnight Oil offering an energetic experimentalism that the country's role in pop music became manifest.

New Wave

Punk rock had a certain following and soon bands sporting a more educated, arty approach, such as the Talking Heads (pictured above) and Devo, began to infiltrate the punk scene; in some areas the description New Wave began to be used to differentiate these less overtly punk bands. The Cars and The Go-Go's were essentially pop bands dressed up in New Wave Symbolism; others, including The Police and The Pretenders lead lucrative careers out of the New Wave movement.

Between 1982 and 1985, New Wave went in the direction of such New Romantics as Duran Duran, A Flock of Seagulls, Psychedelic Furs (pictured left), Talk Talk and the Eurythmics, sometimes using the synthesizer entirely in place of other instruments. This period coincided with the rise of Music being viewed on Television this led to a great deal of exposure for this brand of synth-pop. Although many "Greatest of New Wave" collections feature popular songs from this era, New Wave more properly refers to the earlier "skinny tie" rock bands such as The Knack or Blondie.

Post-Punk

Alongside New Wave, post-punk developed as an outgrowth of punk rock the most successful bands to emerge from post-punk was Ireland's U2, which by the 1980s had become one of the biggest bands in the world.

Hard Rock

Heavy metal languished in obscurity until the mid - to late 1970s. A few hard rock bands maintained large followings, like Queen, AC/DC, T.Rex, Led Zeppelin (pictured right) and Aerosmith. However this changed in 1978 with the release of the hard rock band Van Halen's debut, which ushered in an era of widely popular, high-energy rock and roll, based out of Los Angeles, California.

Glam Metal

The most popular rock genre of the 1980s, was that of group of glam metal. Taking influence from various artists such as Aerosmith, The Sweet, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. The earliest glam metal bands to gain notability are often considered as Twisted Sister (Pictured Left), Mötley Crüe, and W.A.S.P. They became known for their debauched lifestyles, teased hair, use of make-up and clothing. Their songs were bombastic, aggressive, and often defiantly macho, with lyrics focused on sex, drinking, drugs, and the occult.

Instrumental Rock

During the 1980s, the instrumental rock genre was dominated by several guitar soloists notables were George Lynch: heavy metal guitarist best known as a member of the band Dokken (Pictured Below), Joe "Satch" Satriani: an instrumental rock guitarist and teacher, and a recognized virtuoso of the rock guitar, Steven J. Morse: an American rock guitarist and guitar virtuoso, best known as the lead guitarist for Deep Purple, Angus McKinnon Young: the lead guitarist of Australian hard rock band AC/DC

By the mid 1980s, a formula developed in which a glam metal band had two hits -- one a "power ballad" (slow-dance tempo, but just as loud and driving as anything else by the group), and the other a hard-rocking anthem. The original line-up of Van Halen broke up in 1985. In 1987 a subgenre of glam metal Guns N' Roses whose debut album Appetite for Destruction, became phenomenally successful. Until glam metal's demise in the early-1990s, Guns N' Roses were hard rock's standard-bearers, and influenced its sound by incorporating influences from punk rock, and blues.

Alternative rock

The term alternative Rock (also often known as alternative music) was coined in the early 1980s to describe bands which didn't fit into the mainstream genres of the time. Bands dubbed "alternative" could be most any style not typically heard on the radio; however, most alternative bands were unified by their collective debt to punk. Important bands of the '80s alternative movement included R.E.M: an acronym for "Rapid Eye Movement", Adam & The Ants, Sonic Youth, The Smiths, The Cure, and countless others.

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