Rock music

• 1. Introduction

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  In 1951, a Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey named Alan Freed began spinning rhythm and blues records for a multi-racial audience, and he is credited with first using the phrase "rock and roll" to describe the music. The genre he named would dominate popular music in the United States and much of the western world from the 1960s until the 2010s. It started as a melding of African-American blues, rhythm and blues, and gospel with country and western, centered on the amplified electric guitar. How did a sound born in late-1940s America come to carry hippies out of San Francisco, glitter onto the stages of London, and grunge out of Seattle? What made a few musicians decide the album mattered more than the single? And why, after decades on top, did rock finally lose its place as the leading popular genre of world culture while remaining commercially successful? The answers run through dance crazes, a payola scandal, a plane crash, and an estimated 73 million viewers watching four men from Liverpool on a Sunday night.

• 2. The First Record

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  Debate surrounds the many recordings suggested as "the first rock and roll record." Contenders include "Strange Things Happening Every Day" by Sister Rosetta Tharpe from 1944, "That's All Right" by Arthur Crudup from 1946, and "Rocket 88" by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, recorded by Sam Phillips for Chess Records in 1951. Behind that last record was Ike Turner and his band the Kings of Rhythm. Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" settled at least one question. In 1954 it became the first rock and roll song to top Billboard magazine's main sales and airplay charts. Other early hitmakers included Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Gene Vincent. Soon rock and roll was the major force in American record sales, and crooners like Eddie Fisher, Perry Como, and Patti Page found their access to the pop charts curtailed. A subgenre called rockabilly combined rock and roll with hillbilly country music, recorded by white singers such as Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly, and with the greatest commercial success, Elvis Presley. By 1959 a sense had grown that the era was ending. Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens died in a plane crash, Elvis departed for the army, and Little Richard retired to become a preacher. The payola scandal then broke, implicating major figures including Alan Freed in bribery and corruption.

• 3. When Britain Answered

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  Lonnie Donegan's 1955 hit "Rock Island Line" helped spread skiffle music groups throughout Britain, and many of them moved on to play rock and roll. One such skiffle outfit was John Lennon's Quarrymen, who later became the Beatles. While the former rock and roll market in the US drifted toward lightweight pop and ballads, British groups at clubs and local dances developed a style more strongly influenced by blues-rock pioneers. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was the Beatles' first number one on the Billboard Hot 100, spending seven weeks at the top. Their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on the 9th of February 1964 drew an estimated 73 million viewers, at the time a record for an American television program. During the week of the 4th of April 1964, the Beatles held twelve positions on the Billboard Hot 100, including the entire top five. They became the biggest selling rock band of all time, followed into the US charts by Peter and Gordon, the Animals, Manfred Mann, Herman's Hermits, the Rolling Stones, the Troggs, the Kinks, the Who, and the Dave Clark Five. The invasion dented the careers of established R&B acts like Fats Domino and Chubby Checker and even temporarily derailed Elvis. It also ended American instrumental surf music, whose Southern California bands like the Beach Boys had ridden hits such as 1963's "Wipe Out" by the Surfaris.

• 4. The Album Era

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  Following the example of the Beatles' 1965 LP Rubber Soul, British rock acts released albums intended as artistic statements in 1966. These included the Rolling Stones' Aftermath, the Beatles' own Revolver, and the Who's A Quick One, alongside American records like the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde. Rock musicians in the mid-1960s, led by the Beatles, began advancing the LP as the dominant form of recorded music ahead of the single. According to Ritchie Unterberger, Dylan had already shown the rock generation that an album could be a major standalone statement without hit singles, as on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan from 1963. The 1967 record Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, including the track "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," was later regarded as a starting point for the album era. The Rolling Stones responded later that year with Their Satanic Majesties Request, and Pink Floyd debuted with The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. These psychedelic trends peaked at the 1969 Woodstock festival, which saw performances by most of the major psychedelic acts. This shift lent rock cultural legitimacy in the mainstream and initiated a rock-informed album era that would shape the music industry for several decades.

• 5. Blues, Folk, And Country Roots

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  Muddy Waters toured Britain in 1958, prompting Cyril Davies and guitarist Alexis Korner to form the band Blues Incorporated. That band inspired many figures of the British blues boom, including members of the Rolling Stones and Cream. The other key focus was John Mayall, whose band the Bluesbreakers included Eric Clapton after his departure from the Yardbirds, and later Peter Green. Clapton went on to form the supergroups Cream, Blind Faith, and Derek and the Dominos. The last Yardbirds guitarist was Jimmy Page, who formed The New Yardbirds, which rapidly became Led Zeppelin. Many of their early songs were expansions on traditional blues. The folk rock movement is usually thought to have taken off with the Byrds' recording of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man," which topped the charts in 1965. The Byrds adopted drums and 12-string Rickenbacker guitars, which became a major element of the genre's sound. Later that year Dylan adopted electric instruments, much to the outrage of many folk purists, with "Like a Rolling Stone" becoming a US hit single. Roots rock then pulled music back toward basic rock and roll built on blues, country, and folk. In 1968 Gram Parsons recorded Safe at Home with the International Submarine Band, arguably the first true country rock album, before joining the Byrds for Sweetheart of the Rodeo. The greatest commercial success for country rock came in the 1970s with the Eagles, who produced albums including Hotel California in 1976.

• 6. Showmanship And Spectacle

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  Marc Bolan renamed his folk duo to T. Rex and took up electric instruments by the end of the 1960s. His appearance on the BBC music show Top of the Pops in March 1971, wearing glitter and satins to perform "Hot Love," is often cited as the moment glam rock began. Glam was most noted for its sexual and gender ambiguity and representations of androgyny, with outrageous clothes, makeup, hairstyles, and platform-soled boots. From 1971 David Bowie developed his Ziggy Stardust persona, becoming the major exception among glam acts to break through in the United States. In the UK the term glitter rock most often described the extreme version pursued by Gary Glitter and his support musicians the Glitter Band, who achieved eighteen top ten singles between 1972 and 1976. Progressive rock pursued a different kind of ambition, moving beyond established formulas by experimenting with instruments and forms. King Crimson's 1969 debut album, In the Court of the Crimson King, mixed powerful guitar riffs and mellotron with jazz and symphonic music. Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon from 1973 became one of the best-selling albums of all time. Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells, also from 1973, was the first record for the Virgin Records label and a worldwide hit. With the advent of punk and technological changes, progressive rock was increasingly dismissed as pretentious and overblown.

• 7. Stripped Down And Angry

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  Punk rock was developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States and the United Kingdom, with fast, hard-edged music, short songs, stripped-down instrumentation, and often anti-establishment lyrics. By late 1976 the Ramones and Patti Smith in New York City, and the Sex Pistols and the Clash in London, were recognized as the vanguard of the movement. The Sex Pistols' live TV skirmish with Bill Grundy on the 1st of December 1976 turned British punk into a major media phenomenon. In May 1977 the band reached number two on the singles chart with "God Save the Queen," which referenced Queen Elizabeth II during her Silver Jubilee. New wave came to represent punk's commercial wing, with bands like Talking Heads and Devo and pop acts like the Cars and the Go-Go's. Between 1979 and 1985 British new wave moved toward New Romantics such as Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, and Culture Club, coinciding with the rise of MTV. Post-punk emerged as the more artistic and challenging side, including Gang of Four, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Joy Division. Bands like Bauhaus, the Cure, and the Sisters of Mercy moved toward gothic rock, which became the basis of a major sub-culture by the early 1980s. The most successful band to emerge from post-punk was Ireland's U2, who by the late 1980s had become one of the biggest bands in the world.

• 8. Alternative Breaks Through

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  The term alternative rock was coined in the early 1980s to describe rock artists who did not fit the mainstream genres of the time. Bands dubbed alternative had no unified style, but shared a collective debt to punk rock through new wave, post-punk, or hardcore. Important US bands of the 1980s included R.E.M., Hüsker Dü, Jane's Addiction, Sonic Youth, and the Pixies. They were largely confined to independent labels, building an underground scene based on college radio, fanzines, touring, and word-of-mouth. In the latter half of the 1980s, bands in Washington state, particularly around Seattle, formed a style that came to be known as grunge, a term descriptive of the dirty sound and the unkempt appearance of the musicians. Grunge made heavy use of guitar distortion, fuzz, and feedback, with lyrics that were typically apathetic and angst-filled. Green River, Soundgarden, and Melvins pioneered the genre, with Mudhoney the most successful by the end of the decade. Grunge remained largely a local phenomenon until 1991, when Nirvana's album Nevermind became a huge success, containing the anthemic song "Smells Like Teen Spirit." From the 1990s, alternative rock began to dominate and break into the mainstream through grunge, Britpop, and indie rock. Since the 2010s, rock has lost its position as the pre-eminent popular music genre in world culture, but it remains commercially successful, with the increased influence of hip-hop and electronic dance music visible in the pop-punk-hip-hop revival of the 2020s.