Introduction to the 60’s and 70’s rock & roll music
At the beginning of the 1960’s a strange musical phenomenon broke free in the world, this phenomenon was called Rock and Roll. Suddenly electric guitars started screaming around the world: The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Jimmy Hendrix, The Doors, Led Zeppelin…All these amazing rock bands were formed during the 60’s and many kept rocking on during the 70’s and even the 80’s. In this in introduction, we’ll go back 50 years ago and see how Rock & Roll made its firsts steps in music History.
First of all we have to know that Rock and roll would have never born without people such as Muddy Watters or B.B King, that’s to say without Blues music. The King: Elvis Presley started rocking out with songs which were deeply rooted in the Blues ( Hound Dog, Jailhouse Rock ) for many people is difficult to make a difference between blues songs and early rock and roll songs, and l have to admit that is difficult for me too, but that is because both were so similar. So if Rock and Roll was born with Elvis Presley during the mid or late 50’s why did l say it was at the early 60’s? Well the answer is easy: Rock and Roll was taken to another level, it crossed the Atlantic Ocean from the States and found a new hot spot in England, in Liverpool to be more precise. Yes l think the Beatles started a new kind of music, some call it pop music (because it began being popular very fast) but it don’t really like this term, as John Lennon was a huge fan of Elvis, the Beatles started playing rock and roll songs but singing in a kind of softer way mixing rock instruments with these new vocal melodies (listen to Love Me Do). Soon in England many other bands were formed, some following the Beatles’ same musical style (The Yardbirds : For Your Love) and others following the rock and blues American style such as the Rolling Stones. To me The Beatles and The Rolling Stones combine their new musical styles to the raise of musical business that was going on, to create Pop music, but pop music itself isn’t a real music style.
 |
| The Rolling Stones |
But something else was up to change everything again: Psychedelic rock. Linked to the cultural and social context during the mid 60’s this new wave of rock opened the doors to many bands that already existed who started playing psychedelic music for example The Beatles with their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. But other new bands had born inside this wave: there were three different spots in the world of the psychedelic music. The first one was San Francisco with bands such as Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane in 1965, then Los Angeles with the Doors and finally London with Pink Floyd and their first album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn in 1967. In addition psychedelic rock brought within new musical and sound effects: the Wah, The Fuzz box, all kind of delays, phaser, chorus….and artist like Jimi Hendrix didn’t hesitate to make use of them, actually he was one of the firsts to use the Wah pedal (Voodoo Child). Then the psychedelic drugs such as LSD had a huge part of responsibility of this new musical genre, artist wrote songs about their experiences with those drugs, and as Tim Leary made the Acid test across the US, now musicians where promoters of the Psychedelic wave to… "If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” William Blake.
Jimi Hendrix’s second album: Bold As Love, 1967
Then Rock kept on evolving and a new style came, it was the early ages of hard rock, indeed most of the greatest bands of hard rock or metal were formed during the late 60’s: Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Mountain, and of course Led Zeppelin. All these new bands played blues or psychedelic rock and at the beginning of the 70’s started taking their music in a hard rock context. For example Led Zeppelin started playing, their first album: Led Zeppelin was manly a blues album but with some psychedelic influences: Dazed and Confused, Black Mountain Side and How Many More Times that the band considered as a psychedelic jazz song, then Communication Breakdown could be their first real hard rock song. And if some bands where evolving in the hard rock genre, others evolved into progressive rock such as Pink Floyd with their album The Dark Side of the Moon in 1973 which is the third best selling album of all the times.
To conclude, at the beginning of the 1960’s new musical genres have been surging, and have changed our culture in a radical way, all of nowadays bands are influenced by all those bands but, in my opinion, would never be as good as the classics. That’s why l think is important that people keep on listening to this “old stuff” they were the firsts to create a new kind of music style, and they will be remembered, they have to be remembered in the Rock and Roll History for ever. Since people still listening to the classics Rock and Roll will live…Forever. And will be there to bring this music closer to you thanks to this blog.
See You!
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario