The many sub-genres of rock music

Even before the Beatles came and redefined rock & roll, the music was showing signs of splitting off into its own sub-genres, a good example of this is the male-oriented Surf Rock and Garage Rock versus the female-oriented dance vocal R&B and Gospel which would give birth to soul music around 1960, 1961 to about 1964.

It wasn’t until retrospect (many years after) that the term “rock” would become an umbrella term used to describe many mixes of rock & roll music with other genres.

Tony Iommi was influenced by “Blues” but in many of the songs that he created for Sabbath have a “Classic Music” feel to them like the Baroque or classical guitar (Segovia or Paganini). In fact, many of the Brits contributed a distinct classical music spin of influence to rock music in the late 60s/early 70s.

The Beatles, Stones, Who, Procol Harum, Moody Blues, Pink Floyd and on to Led Zeppelin, Yes and Sabbath were more classically influenced or had a more classical music slant than the Americana (folk, blues, gospel, country, etc.) groups like continental U.S.A regionally influenced Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Skynard, Dylan & the Band, Eagles, Doobies, Steely’s or Zappa’s influence to the whole of “classic rock”.

Classic rock as a whole encompasses both Britain & America, its richness is in its divergent sub-genres and its wide range appeal. With the exception of Frank Zappa and a couple of other classically trained jazz artists, the music of “Classic Rock” was primarily created and developed by amateur in some cases street-punks rock & roll bands, be they American or British the bands had a criss-cross influence on each other.over and above Jazz influenced pop music.