Hard Rock

Hard rock is a genre that came to light in the mid-sixties, hard rock is made up of several rock & roll influenced sub-genres.

First, there is “garage rock” which cropped up from the instrumental rock & roll of the late fifties with songs like the Kingsmen’s “Louie, Louie” and the surf rock of the early sixties such as the Trashmen’s “Bird Is A Word”.

Then add to that the mix of blues-influenced British Invasion bands like the Beatles and the Stones and you get hard rock. Many scholars argue as to the first song of whatever yet with the song “You Really Got Me” by the Kinks it seems to be a good start with the first distortion later to be enhanced and duplicated spawning several sub-genres.

Hard rock developed in the middle years of the 60’s with the influence of the Briitish Invasion becoming more and more important in the development of rock.

The distortion on the guitars continued from the Kinks late 1964 to the Rolling Stones “Satisfaction” in the summer of 1965 then there was an outcropping of the sound amongst the Beatles (I Feel Fine, Ticket To Ride), The Kinks (I Need You), The Stones (19th Nervous Breakdown), The Yardbirds (Shape Of Things )and the Who (My Generation) and their albums.

This led to new psychedelic bands that experimented in folk rock as well as blues induced hard rock in 1967. In the UK there was the rise of Cream, Jimi Hendrix Experience and Pink Floyds mix of eclectic music.

On the west coast particularly San Francisco where the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and (Janice Joplin) Big Brother and the Holding Company. In LA was the mighty Jim Morrison and the Doors along with Frank Zappa and the Mothers, not to forget the Village NY with Velvet Underground and the Fugs.

 

Hard rock had been growing since the early days of rhythm and blues and yet the year it became main-stream and would be listened to on public radio stations for decades has to be 1968 for several reasons. First, The Beatles and the Stones put out hard rock singles with “Revolution” and “Street Fighting Man”, Steppenwolf releases “Born To Be Wild” hitting number 2 on the Billboard charts at the end of the summer.

 

 

Key Hard Rock songs that influenced: The Beatles “Revolution”, “Helter Skelter”;Blue Cheer – “Summertime Blues”; Arthur Brown – “Fire”; Iron Butterfly -“In A Gadda Da Vida”, Steppenwolf – “Born To Be Wild”, King Crimson