In the 1950s a new dynasty began in America; the age of rock ‘n’ roll.

This new age

brought upon, not only a new form of music, but new clothing styles, new combinations of

instruments, and most importantly a new way of thinking. Teenage rebellion was finally able to

take a stand against their adult oppressors with the loud music that the adults hated. The strong

rhythm of the electric bass, timely beat of the drums, high-pitched tones of the electric guitar,

and up-beat lyrics was the stepping stone of the greatest combination of instruments ever

assembled. Although, this would later go on to split off into several different styles in itself.

With this new era, the music industry flourished and readied itself to hire just about

anyone who could get a crowd roaring or that they saw that had even the slightest hint of talent.

As a result many people were brought into the bright light of stardom. Even though some may

not be very widely known today, people such as Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis would not

have been brought into this light if it were not for the music industry’s insatiable thirst for new

talent. Thankfully the youth of America recognized good music when they heard it and made

sure that its spark would kindle the flame for its future for generations to come.

But before there was any notion of rock ‘n’ roll, a two forms of music known as the blues

and folk existed, later to become the parents of rock. Despite the fact that these forms of music

would indeed influence the creation of rock ‘n’ roll, they were almost entirely different. Unlike

the blues, folk music uses an instrument called the fiddle which is essentially a violin. With this

instrument folk music is able to make its tunes fast-paced. Contrary to this, the blues is all about

taking things slowly, not caring about the time passing by, or wallowing in sadness because time

has passed by too fast, or any reason that puts a person in a sour mood. The combination of these

two different types of music clashing together created a sort of musical Big Bang. Rock ‘n’ roll
had been created and what the people of America considered to be music would be forever

changed.

When rock ‘n’ roll was first created it was a peaceful time for America. The decade of the

1950s was recovering from WWII and faced no viable enemies at the time, other than maybe

communists. As with the Renaissance of Europe, it was time for a great revival of the arts, or in

this case just music. The youth of America needed a little spice in their bland life and Sam

Phillips, founder of Sun Records was just the person to give it to them. After coming across a

man named Elvis Presley, Phillips knew he had hit the jackpot. The popular, but disrespected

blues music of the time conjoined with the cheery sounds of American folk music allowed for

Phillips and Presley to give the youth what they wanted; a white man with the sound of a black

man.

Elvis Presley went on to lead this revolutionary form of music that disregarded color

when it came to who could listen to and play it, but he was not the only person involved in its

spreading similar to a wildfire throughout the U.S. Many other performers and bands followed

in Presley’s footsteps in an attempt to support its distribution and share in its booming profits.

Even black performers who were once greatly discriminated against found that their audiences

began to contain mostly white people and, after their shows, those same white people would

gather on the stage and ask them about their musical career, etc. In addition, in places in the

south that would setup a rope in the middle of the audience so that the whites would be separated

from the blacks the rope would often be gone by the end of the performance with the inhabitants

of the audience all mixed together. People began to learn that it does not matter the color of

someone’s skin and it showed.

 By the time the 1960s came around many new controversial ideas had risen. Drugs, such

as marijuana and acid were being used the same way someone takes vitamins every morning. To

the general public, or at least the people using them, they were harmless and were simply fun to

use and would help mellow someone out. People were mainly able to use these drugs so often

because they were not illegal at the time. These drugs were not scientifically studied yet and so

were not able to be considered dangerous because it was not common knowledge to know the

bad effects they caused after usage. People would do these drugs right out in the open and would

not have to worry about being busted by the police unlike the current times.

Also, because America was such a conservative country before the 1960s people began to

move to the side of liberalism. Countless activist groups were created in an attempt to fight “The

Man”, or the government/conformist industrialized agenda intended to subdue the masses to do

the biding of those in power. One of the most famous was the Black Panthers who strived for

black equality in America and the end of segregation. Activists groups also fought against the

government about the Vietnam War and wanted the men who were over there to be returned

immediately because it was a war that had no real purpose and should not have occurred in the

first place. But it went on primarily because the people leading the war felt that if they had left

they would have been surrendering, which is what it ultimately resulted in by the end.

All of this controversy was reflected in the current decade’s music. The band Creedence

Clearwater Revival wrote a song called “Fortunate Son” which used satire to sarcastically

explain how lucky someone was when they were drafted to fight in the war. Other bands, such as

Fleetwood Mac were all about the freedom that everyone deserves and how everyone should

love one another. This was because bands started to write their own songs rather than the music

companies write the songs for them. So they were able to express whatever they wanted because
it was their music. These as well as many other bands went on to right songs about the times that

continued to change before their very eyes.

Meanwhile Britain was still listening to the blues and folk of the times long passed.

Eventually, though, word and record spread and soon enough Great Britain was in on the fun of

rock ‘n’ roll, too. This came to be known as the British Invasion. The period when English

rockers came over to America and showed off their versions of rock ‘n’ roll. Famous bands such

as The Beatles, The Animals, and The Rolling Stones shook the very platform of what America

had found to be rock ‘n’ roll. They began with their own interpretations of blues and folk classics

and from that point on the British groups were making their own songs just as the American

bands were and quickly rivaled, if not, surpassed the native rockers, beating them at their own

game. This awe inspiring event would go onto separate the borders between the two countries’

bands and forever create a bond that would make it hard for people to tell if bands were

American or English to the point that it did not matter.

By the end of the decade the most historic festival in history took place, and it was

created by people who the conservatives and people of the previous generation looked down

upon. These people who many found to be a bane on normal society were known as hippies. This

counterculture within the American society proved to be a force of reckoning. Although they did

not accomplish much with their protests and riots the hippies were able to put together

Woodstock. Woodstock was a gathering of about 500,000 people on a 600 acre farm owned by a

man named Max Yasgur located in Bethel, New York were musicians played music for three

days straight. People dug holes in the ground to have somewhere to go to the bathroom. Drugs

were circuited throughout the crowd like veins sending blood to the entire body. A documentary

was made by Michael Wadleigh that captured the essence of the festival for anyone who had not
been there and won an Oscar for best documentary and was nominated for best film editing and

best sound. Unfortunately, but understandably, the film was edited so the whole of the festival is

not on film. Regardless, the film showed anyone who was unlucky enough to attend the

spiritually enlightening concert the importance and purpose of its occurrence.

The 1960s went on to be remembered as the most culturally moving period of the

century. But one cannot argue with the fact that the hippies of the 1960s did not go out without

class. All the protests and the riots, the drugs and the fighting for freedom within a country that

was founded on the idea that every person should be free and treated equal; the shattering new

generation of rock bands, native and foreign; these were just the build of one of the greatest

stories of American history. Then, to top it all off Woodstock was held not unlike the grand

finale of a fireworks show. It stood as a monument to everything that had occurred in the past

nine years and essentially recapitulated all the struggle and expression into one three day event.

Without Woodstock, there is a chance that people would not have thought much about it because

it was just the following period of revolutionary ways of thinking after the 1950s. Woodstock is

the ultimate reminder of the great shift in ways of thinking in America and Britain, too.

The decade to succeed the great 1960s was, to put it in basic terms, its spoiled brat. The

1970s seemed to stray from their former ways of ethereal articulation and only focused on the

fame and fortune the music industry could bring someone. Rather than marijuana or acid that

only got someone to be mellower, people started to focus on using cocaine. First produced as an

anesthetic for people that were to undergo eye surgery, cocaine was used to get someone to be

more awake and be happier. Or in other words it made someone feel more ‘alive’. The downside

was that this drug was much more dangerous than the drugs of the earlier decade and could be

overdosed on fairly easily. In fact people overdosed on it very frequently due to its addictive
quality which would lead to constant use. This constant use would build up a slight immunity in

people, forcing them to take more to get the same effect as when they first started to use the

cocaine. In the end, if someone was not careful they would wind up taking too much trying to get

the narcotic effect they so deeply needed and would die from being over utilized. People who

used cocaine were thought of being cool because they had the money to buy it and were always

up for a hardcore party. Grievously it was not uncommon for famous people to overdose on

drugs such as cocaine, including rock stars. Rock stars began to be musicians only for the fame

because all the cared about was the money that it brought them. The once proud culture of the

hippies had been practically forgotten as greed set over the rock ‘n’ roll world.

But out of this dimness new life was born. New sects of rock ‘n’ roll were created: funk

and disco. Funk concentrated on the electric bass, which, up until that point was just a bridge

between the drums and guitar. But with funk, the bass was able to step into the spotlight and

show what it could really do. A technique which involved slapping the bass with one’s thumb

and plucking with the index finger was used more with funk and was put under that genre

becoming a style of playing the bass unique to funk. But disco, the more infamous of the two

would find that the 1970s would be its only home in which it was born - and would later die - in.

Disco was more of pop than rock, though it still used some of the style and instruments of rock.

In contrast to the usual ways of rock disco was made primarily for people to listen to while they

danced. Disco was the main type of music played at clubs and influenced its own style. A

hairstyle known as the afro became very popular within the black culture and spread s bit into the

other races of the country. Rather than wear a hat, if someone had an afro they may have stuck a

comb in it, which may as well have been the same thing, seeing as it was extremely difficult, if

not impossible to wear a hat because the afro was so large and puffy.
 Alongside these two forms of music, a lesser known type of rock, later to be identified in

several different ways, was made famous by one of the greatest rock bands in history: Pink

Floyd. The only way to describe such a sound that this band made was with the term

psychedelic, which was popular among the hippies of the 1960s. By combining strong, but slow,

rock melodies with technical affects the band was able to stir up the definition of rock and

expand what people considered to be its boundaries. After slowly working their way up the food

chain of fame Pink Floyd also redefined the normal concert experience. Dark and disturbing

animations would be played during shows in addition to giant balloons and even a giant, fake

brick wall that would be built during the concert and knocked down at the end as their big finish.

At the same time a band called AC/DC stuck its foot in the door with powerful hard rock.

Their tunes were elementary at the core, but that’s not to say that the band was not creative.

Adequately diverse lyrics were in every song showing that the band kept their options open

instead of having songs based on just a few subjects. Also, the singer, Ronald Scott (Bon Scott),

was able to put out a unique sound with his gruff voice. This, in coalition with the raging guitar

solos played by Angus Young, put the band at the top of the charts in no time.

The 1970s marked the recession in rock and roll where the money became more

important than the music, which was the complete opposite view during the 1960s. Just as it was

in the 1950s, the 1970s focused on the overall profits that could and would be made from the

music that was being created. Many people wonder why disco died. All that can be said about

that is that it was not made with the care that true music should have been made with and as a

result it was left behind by the changing times. The 1970s was truly an age of creation and

hardship for the world of rock.

 As the candle of the 1970s started to run of wax it left in its wake a form of rock ‘n’ roll

that had been created in Britain. This new embodiment of rock, known as punk, blossomed into

the jagged and hate filled flower of the 1980s that existed mostly in England. Similar to disco,

punk had its own signature hairstyle called the Mohawk. The Mohawk consisted of shaving most

of the wearer’s head, leaving only about a third of the hair in the middle from the front to the

back of the scalp. Afterwards the hair was covered in gel and set into a row of spikes.

Punk music at its beginning had no stabilization to hold it together. The art of punk was

to have a vocalist scream and yell into the mike while the band played a mash of almost random

notes and beats. This gave the music a strong vibe and set the seed for its future grooming. As

time passed, punk, music became slightly more civilized to the point where it was no longer

considered underground rock because people began to like it for its solely rebellious nature and

anarchist structure. It was no easy task to control the wild behavior of the punk spirit. But if a

band could accomplish this feat they could become quite famous, such as The Clash, The Sex

Pistols, and The Ramones.

Back in America an even darker type of music had been devised. This type of music

called metal was the evil side of rock. Driven by pure hatred of anything they saw fit, metal

rockers took any morbid topic they could think of and put it into words. Ironically, the singers of

metal bands normally could not be understand as they sought to make themselves sound as dark

and demonic as possible by singing in very low groans and grunting noises. It was with this form

of rock that the double bass pedal was meant for. Due to the fact that meal songs were typically

very fast paced, it would be impossible to get a fast enough beat with only one bass drum. But

the double bass pedal changed that. It allowed for drummers to play extremely fast, not only with

their hands, but with their feet too.

 The most famous metal band to exist in this era was Metallica. The name alone shows

how imbedded in the core of metal Metallica would be greatly known for. Not only did Metallica

play for the part, but the dressed for it too. The hairstyle of Metallica, as well as most other metal

bands of the time, was just to have long hair. It was not complex unlike the Mohawk and the afro

of the 1970s, but it dignified someone’s rock status all the same.

Yet, even though metal was the epitome of hate and darkness of rock, it was twisted and

churned to form a different more hard rock version. Uncommonly known as hair metal, this type

of metal tended to focus too much on how they looked and in some cases could hardly be

considered metal at all. Twisted Sister, one of the most well known hair metal bands was a great

example of this. Although they took it a little too far by dressing as transvestites, but made it

obvious that they were men. They used this purely exclusive style to their advantage to take hair

metal to its height. But it seems almost pointless because hair metal survived no better than

disco.

Metal would go on to the next decade and so on providing the blackness that the heaviest

of rockers crave. But in its transition into the 1990s its reign of glory ended abruptly. There was

a new kid on the block that ready to speak his mind just as the hippies of the time that felt so

long ago. He existed to speak out against all the happiness that the world wanted to believe

existed when there was really still the same amount of anguish in the world as the last three

decades.

This kid’s name was grunge and he styled the same as the definition of his name. Jeans

were ton typically torn at the knee to give a sort of ragged feel. Button-down shirts were worn

over just about any other kind of shirt. People often wore their sweatshirts around their waists
when they felt that it was too hot to wear them in the normal fashion. Tattered sneakers also

came custom with the grunge outfit.

Grunge rockers were akin to the hippies because they fought against “The Man”

for his suppressive conformist agenda. Also grunge rockers wrote their songs about why one

should stand up for themselves, as well as why other people should feel sorry for them. This mix

of depression and courage brought a new view to the ‘bad boy’ and ‘bad girl’ genres. The look

was of its own kind; one tried to look as if they did not care which made them seem cool, but

also any emotional expression made them seem really ‘deep’, or very in touch with their

emotions, even if they actually were not.

Nirvana, the leading group of the grunge style represented this in every way one could

think of. The band was one of the, if not the most, successful band of the decade. Although, this

success collided with the message that Nirvana was trying to spread. This hypocritical clash

stunted the band in the worst way possible; death. The singer/guitarist Kurt Cobaine of Nirvana

shot himself due the fear he had of his music becoming a part of the conformist mechanism he so

greatly despised and died in the year 1994.

All these events, these styles, and these influences are what made the greatest fifty years

in American history. No other country, other than England who shared our changes, has had such

dramatic shifts in such short amounts of time. Neither has any society altered its entire outlook

so drastically before. The timing of each change being almost precisely on the beginning of each

decade was impeccable. It is like watching a social structure fast-forward. This interim in time is

incomparable to any other point in time in recorded history almost like the separate periods that

took place within it.

A Dictation of the History of Rock ‘N’ Roll Up Until the New Millennium

By

Max Nelson

Mr. Coughlin
Honors U.S History II
March 3, 2011