Rock Music

I

Introduction

Rock Music, group of related music styles highly popular in Western music since about 1955. It is often characterized by an insistent, accented beat and a vibrant style of playing, provided by small bands of musicians. Rock music began in the United States, but it has influenced and in turn been shaped by a broad field of cultures and musical traditions, including gospel music, the blues, country-and-western music, classical music (see Music, Western), folk music, electronic music, hip-hop, and the popular music of Asia, Africa, and Latin America (often grouped together under the term “world music”). In addition to its use as a broad designation, the term “rock music” is used to refer more specifically to music styles after 1959 predominantly influenced by white musicians. Other major rock-music sources include rock and roll, the first genre of the music; and rhythm-and-blues music (R&B), influenced mainly by black American musicians. Each of these major genres encompasses a variety of sub-styles, such as heavy metal, punk, alternative, and grunge. While innovations in rock music have often occurred in regional centres—such as New York, Kingston, and Liverpool—the influence of rock music is now felt worldwide.

II

Musical Elements

The central musical instrument in most kinds of rock music is the electric guitar. Important figures in the history of this instrument include jazz musician Charlie Christian, who in the late 1930s was one of the first to perform the amplified guitar as a solo instrument; Aaron Thibeaux “T-Bone” Walker, the first blues musician to record with an amplified guitar (1942); Leo Fender, who in 1948 introduced the first mass-produced solid-body electric guitar; and Les Paul, who popularized the instrument in the early 1950s with a series of technologically innovative recordings. The guitarist Ike Turner recorded a seminal record, “Rocket 88” in 1951 with the singer Jackie Brenston. A damaged guitar amplifier created a distorted sound, which was used to creative effect. Rock-and-roll guitarist Chuck Berry established a style of playing in the late 1950s that remains a great influence on rock music. Beginning in the late 1960s a new generation of rock guitarists, including Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Carlos Santana, experimented with amplification, feedback (looping the sound back from the speakers through the microphone to produce distortion), and various electronic devices, extending the musical potential of the instrument.

Other instruments commonly used in rock music include the electric bass guitar (introduced by Fender in 1951); keyboard instruments such as the electric piano, organ, and synthesizer; and the drum kit, a variable grouping of snare drum, bass drum, tom-toms, and cymbals that came into rock music from jazz and R&B. Instruments that play important roles in certain rock-music genres include the saxophone—prominent in jazz-rock and soul music—and a wide assortment of traditional instruments used in world music. The microphone also functions as a musical instrument for many rock singers, who rely upon the amplification and various effects (such as echo) obtainable through electronic means.

Rock music also shares more complex technical aspects. Most rock music is based on the traditional harmonic system of Western music known as tonality, and especially on the three most important tonal chords: the tonic, subdominant, and dominant (see Harmony: Functional Chord Names). The chord progression (series of chords) known as the 12-bar blues is based on these chords and has figured prominently in certain styles, especially rock and roll and soul music. Other common harmonic devices include the use of a drone, or pedal point (a single pitch sustained through a progression of chords), and the parallel movement of chords, derived from a technique on the electric guitar known as bar-chording. Many elements of African-American music have been a continuing source of influence on rock music. These characteristics include riffs (repeated melodic patterns), backbeats (emphasizing the second and fourth beats of each bar; see Musical Rhythm: Pulse and Metre), call-and-response patterns, blue notes (altering the pitch of certain degrees of the scale, especially flattening the third and fifth), and dense buzzy-sounding timbres, or tone colours.

The musical form of rock music varies. Rock and roll of the late 1950s relied heavily on 12-bar blues and 32-bar song forms. Some rock bands of the late 1960s experimented with more flexible, open-ended forms, and in the 1970s some developed suite forms derived from classical music. Another important formal development in rock music has been the so-called concept album, a succession of musical pieces tied together by a narrative theme.

Much rock music is performed at high volume levels, so the music has been closely tied to developments in electronic technology. Rock musicians have pioneered new studio recording techniques, such as multi-tracking—a process of recording different song segments at different times and layering them on top of one another—and digital sampling, the reproduction by a computer of the patterns of a particular sound. Rock concerts, typically huge events involving thousands of audience members, often feature high-tech theatrical stage effects, including synchronized lighting.

III

Historical Development

A

Rock and Roll

The first type of rock music, rock and roll, originated in the United States in the 1950s, and was largely derived from music of the American South. In the United States, the affluence that followed the end of World War II in 1945 and the emergence of a youth culture—based in part upon the rejection of older styles of popular culture—helped rock and roll to displace the New York-based Tin Pan Alley songwriting tradition that had dominated the mainstream of American popular taste since the late 19th century. Rock and roll was a combination of the R&B style known as jump blues, the gospel-influenced vocal-group style known as doo wop, the piano-blues style known as boogie-woogie (or barrelhouse), and country-music styles such as hillbilly and honky-tonk.

During the 1950s the term “rock and roll” was used as a synonym for black R&B music. Rock and roll was first released by small, independent record companies and promoted by radio disc jockeys (DJs) like Alan Freed, who popularized the term “rock ‘n’ roll” (originally a slang term for sex) to help attract white audiences unfamiliar with R&B. He hosted a concert, The Moondog Coronation Ball, at the Cleveland Arena in 1952, which is often cited as the first major rock-and-roll promotion. Indeed, the appeal of rock and roll to white middle-class teenagers was swift and caught the major record companies by surprise. As these companies moved to capitalize on the popularity of the style, the market was fuelled by cover versions (performances of previously recorded songs) of R&B songs with their original suggestive lyrics and expressions excised and performed in the singing style known as crooning, by white vocalists such as Pat Boone. The most successful rock-and-roll artists wrote and performed songs about love, sexuality, identity crises, personal freedom, and other issues that were of particular interest to teenagers.

Popular rock-and-roll artists and groups emerged from diverse backgrounds. The group Bill Haley and the Comets, which had the first big rock-and-roll hit with the song “Rock Around the Clock” (1954), was a country-music band from Pennsylvania that adopted aspects of the R&B jump-blues style of saxophonist and singer Louis Jordan. The unique style of Chuck Berry came from his experience playing a mixture of R&B and country music in the Midwest. The rock-and-roll piano style of Fats Domino grew out of the distinctive sound of New Orleans R&B, which also influenced singer and songwriter Little Richard. The earthy style of guitarist Bo Diddley derived from the blues of the Mississippi Delta region. Rockabilly, a blend of rock-and-roll and country-and-western music, was pioneered by Memphis producer Sam Philips, who first recorded artists Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins on his Sun Records label.

The first Elvis single release in 1954 combined two critical aspects of rock and roll. One track was a spirited version of the R&B song, “That’s Alright Mama”. The second track was a bluegrass song, “Blue Moon of Kentucky”, played much faster than before. Elvis became a figurehead for this new music, which also valued image, attitude, and energetic performances in addition to the music.

The age of classic rock and roll, which lasted only five years, from 1954 to 1959, is exemplified by the recordings of Berry, Presley, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Buddy Holly. The latter developed the standard four-piece instrumentation of rock bands (drum kit and lead, rhythm, and bass guitars). By the early 1960s, the popular music industry was assembling professional songwriters, hired studio musicians, and teenage crooners to mass-produce songs that imitated late-1950s rock and roll. In the early 1960s professional songwriters in New York, such as Carole King and Neil Sedaka, produced numerous hit songs, many of which were recorded by female ensembles known as girl groups, such as the Ronettes and the Shirelles. Also during this period, the role of the record producer was expanded by Phil Spector, a producer who created hits by using elaborate studio techniques in a dense, heavily instrumented approach known as the “wall of sound”.

Beginning about 1962, producer Berry Gordy expanded the crossover market (largely music by black performers purchased by white youth) with a number of hits for his Motown record company, based in Detroit, Michigan. Popular Motown groups included the Supremes (featuring Diana Ross), the Temptations, and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. Other distinctive regional styles also developed during this period, such as the “surf” sound of the southern California band the Beach Boys and the mostly urban folk-music revival that included the singer and lyricist Bob Dylan.

B

The British Invasion

English band the Beatles combined the energy of rock and roll with a strong melodic sensibility, creating a British variant known as Beat Music. In 1964 they travelled to New York where they made a famous television appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, becoming the first British band to make a major breakthrough in the United States. The increased receptivity of the American market to foreign bands that followed led to the so-called “British Invasion”. Influenced by American recordings, British pop bands of the period invigorated the popular music mainstream and confirmed the international stature of rock music. Soon, several British groups had developed individual distinctive styles: the Beatles combined the guitar-based rock and roll of Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly with the artistry of the Tin Pan Alley style; the Animals blended blues and R&B influences; and the Rolling Stones joined aspects of Chicago blues to their intense, provocative music.

As with early rock and roll, the major American record companies did not take the British bands seriously at first—the Beatles’ first hit singles in the United States were released through small, independent record companies. Soon, however, the success of the British bands became too difficult to ignore, and some American musicians reacted by developing their own styles. In 1965 Bob Dylan performed live and in-studio with a band that played electric instruments, alienating many folk-music purists in the process. The folk-rock style was further pioneered the same year by the Byrds, who had a No. 1 hit on the Billboard magazine chart with a version of Dylan’s song “Mr Tambourine Man”. Dylan brought a new kind of lyric writing to the genre—using poetic metaphors, strange symbolism, and word associations, while tackling subjects far away from the standard theme of love. This self-conscious dimension of rock music is largely due to the writing of Dylan and then the Beatles, who were quick to follow his example. Soon it became normal to critique an issue of society in a rock song. During the late 1960s, rock music diversified further into new styles while consolidating its position in the mainstream of Western popular music. The Beatles’ 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was an ambitious concept album, devising new standards for studio recording and helped to establish the notion of the rock musician as an adventurous artist. Other British acts such as the Who, the Kinks, Pink Floyd, and the Small Faces all began to experiment with unusual themes, sounds, and song structures that challenged the three-minute pop tradition.

Once again, American musicians responded to the British musical stimulus by experimenting with new forms, technologies, and stylistic influences. The Beach Boys album Pet Sounds (1966) developed rich, symphonic textures in the studio, and is still regarded as a milestone. San Francisco rock, or psychedelic rock, emerged about 1966 and was associated with the use of hallucinogenic drugs, such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD); psychedelic art and light shows; and an emphasis on spontaneity and communitarian values. Musicians such as Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead experimented with long, improvised stretches of music called jams. Another important centre of rock music in the 1960s was Los Angeles, where film student Jim Morrison formed the group the Doors and guitarist and composer Frank Zappa developed a unique blend of risqué humour and complex jazz-influenced compositional forms with his group the Mothers of Invention. In the late 1960s “hard rock” emerged, focusing on thick layers of sound, loud volume levels, and virtuoso guitar solos. In London, American Jimi Hendrix developed a highly influential electric-guitar style. His fiery technique gained exposure at the first large-scale rock festivals in the United States, Monterey Pop (1967) and Woodstock (1969). In 1966 the first so-called power trio was formed in London—the band Cream, which showcased the virtuosity of guitarist Eric Clapton, bassist Jack Bruce, and drummer Ginger Baker.