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Rock music emerged during the mid-1950s
to become the major popular musical form of young audiences
in the United States and Western Europe. Its stylistic scope
is too broad to be encompassed by any single definition; the
only feature common to all rock music is a heavy emphasis
on the beat.
ROCK 'N' ROLL, 1950-62
The primary source of rock 'n' roll was RHYTHM AND BLUES,
an idiom popular among black audiences that combined elements
of urban BLUES (in the structure, vocal style, and use of
amplified guitar), GOSPEL MUSIC (in the piano accompaniments
and vocal harmonizing), and JAZZ (in the saxophone solos).
Rhythm and blues began to gain a wider audience during the
late 1940s, and in 1951 the disc jockey Alan Freed, who played
an important role in attracting white teenagers to the music,
substituted the term "rock 'n' roll," previously
used as a sexual reference in lyrics. Major record producers,
observing the success of rhythm and blues and rock 'n' roll
songs distributed on "race records" (i.e., record
labels marketed to black audiences), issued "covers"--competing,
"sanitized" versions of the same songs, but recorded
by white artists. Covers--whatever their artistic quality--brought
new stylistic influences to rock 'n' roll (white COUNTRY AND
WESTERN and popular music) and eased the transition for white
audiences. This audience, still hesitant at accepting black
music, made Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock"
(1955) the first important breakthrough for white rock 'n'
roll. What appealed to this new audience, accustomed to the
relatively bland TIN PAN ALLEY brand of popular music, was
rock 'n' roll's driving dance rhythms, its direct, adolescent-level
message, and its suggestion of youthful rebellion.
Rock 'n' roll's first superstar was Elvis PRESLEY. With his
country-and-western background, Presley led the way for other
"rockabilly" (rock plus hillbilly) artists; with
his spasmodic hip gyrations, he introduced a sexual suggestiveness
that outraged conservative adults; with his legions of teenage
fans, he brought to rock 'n' roll the cult of personality
and became the archetype of the rock star as cultural hero.
Other popular figures, while commanding a smaller audience,
also made significant contributions to the style; among them,
Chuck BERRY nourished the music's basic roots, Jerry Lee Lewis
expanded its country branch, and Little Richard provided frantic
showmanship. Despite the dynamism of such figures, by the
late 1950s a malaise had set in; the music had become formula
ridden, sentimental, and often--as in love-death ballads like
"Teen Angel"--distinctly maudlin. Seeking a more
honest expression, a significant segment of the adolescent
and young adult audiences transferred their allegiance to
FOLK MUSIC, as sung by such groups as Peter, Paul, and Mary,
a folk trio; to traditional balladeers like the Kingston Trio;
and to the prophets of modern folk/social commentary, Joan
BAEZ and Bob DYLAN.
ROCK, 1963-69
The renewal of rock 'n' roll came from the unlikely locale
of Liverpool, England. The BEATLES made their start in 1960,
at first imitating American styles and then weaving from the
various strands of American rock 'n' roll an individual style
marked--in both music and lyrics--by wit and a sense of fun.
Their successes came quickly during 1963 and '64, and their
domination of the record market was complete and unprecedented.
Rather than repeat the formulas of their initial triumphs,
they chose the more precarious route of experimentation and
growth. From 1965 to 1969 they introduced new sonorities,
textures, forms, rhythms, melodic designs, and lyric conceptions
and were at the forefront of a revolutionary epoch in popular
music. Rock 'n' roll had evolved into an expression of greater
sophistication, complexity, and breadth. It had become a new
idiom: rock.
Other English groups also came into prominence around 1964,
taking their places as equals with American artists in the
development of rock. The ROLLING STONES, the most prominent
and durable of these groups, presented yet another image of
rock--one of anger, alienation, and sensuality.
Other trends of the 1960s included the girl groups, prominent
in the early part of the decade; the merging of rhythm and
blues with black gospel styles to create the MOTOWN sound
of groups like the Supremes and the Temptations, and later
the harder sound of SOUL MUSIC; the beginnings of jazz-rock,
as originally synthesized by the band Blood, Sweat and Tears;
folk-rock, a blending of folk with rock; and the emergence
of the "California sound." The folk-rock style,
first suggested by Bob Dylan at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival,
brought to folk music a hard beat and amplification, and to
rock a new poetic sensibility and social consciousness. A
deeper significance of the blending was its demonstration
of rock's tendency to absorb all challenging idioms.
The "California sound," despite its name, was not
a uniform style, but a term that reflected the rise of California
as a major center of rock activity and experimentation. In
the early 1960s, California was the scene of "surfing
music" (popularized by the BEACH BOYS), but over the
course of the decade the music changed to parallel the trends
of hippies (the Mamas and the Papas), student protest (Country
Joe and the Fish), and a countercultural affair with drugs.
Widespread popularity of hallucinogenic drugs (particularly
LSD, or "acid") produced psychedelic Acid Rock,
whose apostles included JEFFERSON AIRPLANE and the GRATEFUL
DEAD.
Rock's first major effort in musical theater was the hippie
revue Hair (1967), a spectacularly successful pageant celebrating
youth, love, and drugs. Closely following were such rock-opera
successes as Tommy and Jesus Christ Superstar.
By the end of the 1960s the distinctions between rock 'n'
roll and rock were evident. The earlier instrumentation of
saxophone, piano, amplified guitar, and drums had been replaced
by several amplified guitars, drums, and an ever-increasing
reliance on electronic technology. To the standard patterns
of 12-bar blues and 32-bar song form were added extended,
unique forms, sometimes encompassing the entire side of a
record album; to the lyrics of teenage love and adolescent
concerns were added social commentary, glorification of drugs,
and free-association poetry. Descriptive group names (Crew
Cuts, Everly Brothers, Beach Boys) were replaced by nondescriptive,
enigmatic names (The WHO, Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother
and the Holding Company). Finally, the separation between
performer and composer seemed to vanish as the two merged
in a single performer-composer. As demonstrated by the WOODSTOCK
FESTIVAL in August 1969, rock music was by this time an intrinsic
element in the life of American youth and a powerful articulation
of their moods, hopes, and fears.
ROCK, 1970-79
This decade saw the fragmentation of rock into subdivisions
beyond the general categories of hard rock (extremely loud
and electronically amplified) and mellow rock (softer, sometimes
with acoustic instruments). The terms identifying these subdivisions
are not firm definitions, but merely guides, tenuous and fluid,
with much stylistic overlapping.
Some styles are blendings of rock with other established idioms,
the rock contribution invariably being a heavy beat and electronic
technology. Thus, folk-rock and country-rock each retain the
character of folk and country music. REGGAE, which emerged
from Jamaica around 1972, is an integration of rock, soul,
calypso, and other Latin rhythms. Jazz-rock fusion, or simply
fusion, is a meeting between rock instrumentalists, attracted
to the broad creative opportunities and demanding musicianship
of jazz, and jazz musicians, attracted to rock's electronics
and commercial potential.
Other styles are more clearly based on rock principles and
precedents and range from the benign bubble-gum rock of the
Osmond Brothers, directed toward the youngest popular music
fans, and the intentionally vile PUNK ROCK, which punctuates
its strident denunciations with vulgarity. Heavy metal rock
has continued the hallucinogenic approach of acid rock, but
within a narrower musical dimension, relying upon the hypnotic
power of repetitiveness, loud volume, and electronic distortion;
among its leading exponents have been Iron Butterfly and LED
ZEPPELIN. Glitter rock is more of a theatrical approach than
a musical style; it offers glittering costumes as an alternative
to the usual blue jeans, and bizarre--sometimes androgynous--exhibitions
(Alice Cooper, David BOWIE, Kiss). New wave rock, which made
its debut as the 1970s drew to a close, appeared to be something
of an old wave, with its return to a more basic, unadorned
metric emphasis and a greater lyricism.
Most rock music of the period was intended almost solely for
listening, not for dancing. The inevitable reaction was DISCO,
a music first and foremost for dancing. With its thumping
regularity of accented beats divided into accented minibeats,
disco has been decried by hard-line rock fans as mechanical,
commercial, and unlyrical. Nevertheless, its following increased
and, after the BEE GEES composed and recorded Saturday Night
Fever (1977), disco became for a while a major sector of rock
music.
THE ECLECTIC 1980s
Rock music, by the mid-1980s, had presented no clear-cut new
musical direction. Bands became more production oriented,
in part because of the sudden explosion of "videos"
on TV screens. Ranging from televised concerts to minutes-long
acted-out versions of rock songs, videos have proved to be
a powerful tool for introducing new groups (the Australian
Men at Work, for example). With their emphasis on the visual,
though, they encouraged the use of bizarre, grotesque "stories"
and staging, while the music remained secondary. Heavy metal
bands received a boost from videos. Although fading musically,
punk remained a strong visual style. It was outshone, however,
by the glittery, androgynous look of such immensely popular
performers as Michael JACKSON, PRINCE, and Boy George. Bruce
SPRINGSTEEN, whose "populist" explorations of the
American experience in the 1970s earned him a wide following,
achieved superstar status in the mid-1980s.
The influence of British bands on the U. S. rock scene remained
strong. Their music was as eclectic as the work of their predecessors,
the Beatles, but it drew from a far narrower range: punk,
disco, pop-rock, reggae.
At the same time, there was a nostalgic return to older, simpler
rock and prerock idioms. British musician Elvis Costello's
songs harked back to rhythm-and-blues and country-western
styles, and Los Angeles-based Los Lobos fused rock music with
traditional Mexican music.
Since the mid- to late-1980s, artists such as Paul Simon (formerly
of SIMON AND GARFUNKEL) and David Byrne (of the TALKING HEADS),
extensively "borrowed" from styles outside rock
music, particularly from African music. Concurrently, almost
every country in the world has begun to develop and support
indigenous forms of rock music.
The scope and significance of rock remains without precedent
in the history of popular music. Beginning as a minority expression
on the fringe of American society, it developed into a distinct
counterculture during the 1960s, and a decade later had become
a dominant cultural force, affecting and reflecting the mores
and moods of American youth and weaving itself into the very
fabric of society.
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