Rock spreads and diversifies
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Diversification of American rock
Main article: American rock
With the runaway popular success of rock, the style began to influence other genres. Vocalized R&B became doo wop, for example, while uptempo, secularized gospel music became soul, and audiences flocked to see Appalachian-style folk bands playing a rock-influenced pop version of their style. Young adults and teenagers across the country were playing in amateur rock bands, laying the roots for local scenes, garage rock and alternative rock. More immediately, places like Southern California produced their own varieties of rock, such as surf.
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Surf music
Main article: surf music
The rockabilly sound reached the West Coast and mutated into a wild, mostly instrumental sound called surf music. This style, exemplified by Dick Dale and The Surfaris, featured faster tempos, innovative percussion, and processed electric guitar sounds which would be highly influential upon future rock guitarists. Other West Coast bands, notably The Beach Boys and Jan and Dean, would capitalize on the surf craze, slowing the tempos back down and adding harmony vocals to create the "California Sound".
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Australia
Main article: Australian rock
After Johnny OKeefes 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.
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British rock
Main article: British rock
American rock and roll had an impact across the globe, perhaps most intensely in the United Kingdom, where record collecting and trend-watching were in full bloom among the youth culture prior to the rock era, and where color barriers were less of an issue. Countless British youths listened to R&B and rock pioneers and began forming their own bands to play with an intensity and drive seldom found in white American acts. Britain quickly became a new center of rock and roll, leading to the British Invasion from 1964 to 1969.
In 1958 three British teenagers formed a rock and roll group, Cliff Richard and the Drifters (later renamed Cliff Richard and the Shadows). The group recorded a hit, "Move It", marking not only what is held to be the very first true British rock n roll single, but also the beginning of a different sound — British rock. Richard and his band introduced many important changes, such as using a "lead guitarist" (virtuoso Hank Marvin) and an electric bass. Richard inspired many British teens to begin buying records and follow the music scene, thus laying the groundwork for Beatlemania.
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British invasion
Main article: British Invasion
By the early 1960s, bands from England were dominating the rock and roll scene world-wide. First re-recording standard American tunes, these bands then infused their original rock and roll compositions with an industrial-class sensibility. Foremost among these was The Beatles, who became the single most influential and popular act in the history of rock and roll. The Beatles brought together an appealing mix of image, songwriting, and personality and, after initial success in the UK, were launched a large-scale US tour to ecstatic reaction, a phenomenon quickly dubbed Beatlemania.
Although they were not the first British band to come to America, The Beatles spearheaded the Invasion, triumphing in the US on their first visit in 1964 (including historic appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show). In the wake of Beatlemania other British bands headed to the U.S., notably the Rolling Stones (who disdained the Beatles clean-cut image and presented a darker, more aggressive image), and other acts like The Animals and The Yardbirds. Throughout the early and mid-60s Americans seemed to have an insatiable appetite for British rock. Other British bands, including The Who and The Kinks, had some success during this period but saved their peak of popularity for the second wave of British invasion in the late 1960s.
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1960s garage rock
Main article: Garage rock
The British Invasion spawned a wave of imitators in the U.S. and across the globe. Many of these bands were cruder than the bands they tried to emulate. Playing mainly to local audiences and recording cheaply, very few of these bands broke through to a higher level of success. This movement, later known as Garage Rock, gained a new audience when record labels started re-issuing compilations of the original singles; the best known of these is a series called Nuggets. Some of the better known band of this genre include The Sonics, ? & the Mysterians, and The Standells.
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Bob Dylan and folk-rock (starting 1963)
Main articles: Bob Dylan, Folk-rock
As the British Invasion led by The Beatles picked up steam, a homegrown American trend was making itself felt, led by Bob Dylan. By 1963 the 22 year old Dylan had assimilated a variety of regional American styles and was set to create a new genre, usually dubbed "folk-rock". From 1961 to mid-1963 Dylan had kept his distance from rock and roll even though his first adolescent musical forays owed more to early rockers like Buddy Holly and Little Richard than to any of the more obscure folk and blues artists he would later revere as paradigms (in particular, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly and Robert Johnson). Dylan and others on the new folk circuit tended to view The Beatles as bubblegum (that is, tritely commercial), but admitted to a grudging respect for their melodic originality and energetic, danceable delivery. In 1963 Dylans release of the album The Times They Are A-Changin was a watershed event, bringing "relevant" and highly poetic lyrics to the edge of rock and roll. The Beatles listened to this album incessantly and moved away from the exclusively romantic/interpersonal themes of their songs to date. In 1964 and 1965 Dylan threw off all pretense to roots purity and embraced the rock beat and electrified instruments, culminating in the release of the song "Like a Rolling Stone" which, at over six minutes playing time, changed the landscape of hit radio and ushered in a period of intense lyrical and structural experimentation on both sides of the Atlantic. Dylan would continue to surprise fans and critics with tour-de-force albums in many styles, but, from 1964 on, he has worked mostly within the rock and roll framework. His influence on all rock sub-genres is incalculable, probably equaled only by The Beatles. Among Dylans most important disciples was Neil Young, whose lyrical inventiveness, wedded to an often wailing electric guitar attack, would presage grunge.
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Birth of a counterculture (1967-1974)
Main article: Counterculture
As part of the societal ferment in North America and Europe, rock changed and diversified in a number of subtle and not-so-subtle ways.
As early as the mid-1960s, the image of rock and roll became less like previous musical forms. The Rolling Stones are credited with being the first band to dispense with band uniforms; band members simply wore whatever clothes they wished, and these clothes were often outlandish or controversial. Hair styles also became longer and less tamed. As trivial as these changes may sound today, this break from tradition was shocking to audiences used to clean-cut musical groups in matching suits.
But in 1967, one album forever changed the course of rock and roll. The Beatles groundbreaking album, Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, was unlike any album or song that had come before, with a sound unlike anything The Beatles (or any other band or solo artist) had performed. After the climactic final chord of A Day In The Life, it was clear that rock and roll was about to move in different directions, such as the following:
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Psychedelic rock
Main article: Psychedelic rock
The music took on a greater social awareness; it was not just about dancing and smooching anymore, but took on themes of social justice. The counterculture that was emerging (partly as a reaction to the Vietnam War) adopted rock and roll as its defining feature, and the music began to be heavily influenced by the various drugs that the youth culture was experimenting with. In America, psychedelic rock influenced and was influenced by the drug scene and the larger psychedelic lifestyle. It featured long, often improvised jams and wild electronic sounds. Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, Iron Butterfly, and the Grateful Dead were leading practitioners of psychedelia. A more esoteric form of British psychedelia and the Canterbury Sound is exemplified by the Soft Machine, who accompanied Hendrix on his first U.S. tour. Pink Floyd found their roots in British psychedelia, moving on to becoming more of a progressive rock, and arena rock band later in their careers.
The culmination of rock and roll as a socially-unifying force was seen in the rock festivals of the late 60s, the most famous of which was Woodstock which began as a three-day arts and music festival and turned into a "happening", as hundreds of thousands of youthful fans converged on the site.
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Progressive rock
Main article: 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, were heard.
Dabbling heavily in classical, jazz, electronic, and experimental music resulted in what would be called progressive rock (or, in its German wing, krautrock). Progressive rock could be lush and beautiful or atonal and dissonant, highly complex or minimalistic, sometimes all within the same song. At times it was hardly recognizable as rock at all. Some notable practitioners include King Crimson, Genesis, Gentle Giant, The Nice, Yes, Gong, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Magma, Can, and Faust.
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German prog
Main article: Krautrock
In the mid-1960s, American and British rock entered Germany, especially British progressive rock bands. At the time, the musical avant-garde in Germany were playing a kind of electronic classical music, and they adapted the then-revolutionary electronic instruments for a progressive-psychedelic rock sound. By the early 1970s, the scene, now known as krautrock, had begun to peak with the incorporation of jazz (Can) and Asian music (Popol Vuh). This sound, and later pioneers like Kraftwerk, were to prove enormously influential in the development of techno and other genres later in the century.
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Italian prog
In Italy progressive rock had a great success in the 1970s and some bands played prog at the same level of the more famous American groups and went in tour in the States.
Some Italian progressive rock bands were Premiata Forneria Marconi, Banco del Mutuo Soccorso and Area International Popular Group.
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Birth of heavy metal
Main article: Heavy metal music
A second wave of British bands and artists gained great popularity during this period dominant; these bands typically were more directly steeped in American blues music than their more pop-oriented predecessors but their performances took a highly amplified, often spectacular form. These were the bands that were led by the guitar; Cream and Led Zeppelin were early examples of this blues-rock form and were followed by heavier rock bands including Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. This style of rock would come to be known as heavy metal music.
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