Hard rock or heavy rock is a heavier subgenre of rock music typified by vocals and electric guitars that are aggressive and distorted relative to traditional rock music. Hard rock began in the mid-1960s with the garage, psychedelic, and blues rock movements. Some of the earliest hard rock music was produced by the Kinks, the Who, the Yardbirds, the Rolling Stones, Cream, Vanilla Fudge, and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. In the late 1960s, bands such as Blue Cheer, the Jeff Beck Group, Iron Butterfly, Led Zeppelin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Golden Earring, Steppenwolf, Grand Funk Railroad, Free, and Deep Purple also produced hard rock.
The genre developed into a major form of popular music in the 1970s, with the Who, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple being joined by Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, Aerosmith, Kiss, Queen, AC/DC, Thin Lizzy and Van Halen. During the 1980s, some hard rock bands moved away from their hard rock roots and more towards pop rock.V. Bogdanov, C. Woodstra and S. T. Erlewine, All Music Guide to Rock: the Definitive Guide to Rock, Pop, and Soul (Milwaukee, WI: Backbeat Books, 3rd edn., 2002), , pp. 903–905. Established bands made a comeback in the mid-1980s and hard rock reached a commercial peak in the 1980s with glam metal bands such as Mötley Crüe, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard and Poison, as well as the rawer sounds of Guns N' Roses which followed with great success in the later part of that decade.
Hard rock began losing popularity with the commercial success of R&B, hip-hop, urban pop, grunge, and later Britpop in the 1990s. Despite this, many post-grunge bands adopted a hard rock sound, and the 2000s saw renewed interest in established bands, revival attempts, and new hard rock bands. In the 2000s, only a few hard rock bands from the 1970s and 1980s managed to sustain highly successful recording careers.
Definitions
Hard rock is a form of loud, aggressive rock music. The electric guitar is often emphasised, used with distortion and other effects, both as a rhythm instrument using repetitive riffs with a varying degree of complexity, and as a solo lead instrument. Drumming characteristically focuses on driving rhythms, strong bass drum and a backbeat on snare, sometimes using cymbals for emphasis.R. Shuker, Popular Music: the Key Concepts, (Abingdon: Routledge, 2nd end., 2005), , pp. 130–1. The bass guitar works in conjunction with the drums, occasionally playing riffs, but usually providing a backing for the rhythm and lead guitars. Vocals are often growling, raspy, or involve screaming or wailing, sometimes in a high range, or even falsetto voice.E. Macan, Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), , p. 39.
In the late-1960s, the term heavy metal was used interchangeably with hard rock, but gradually began to be used to describe music played with even more volume and intensity.P. Du Noyer, ed., The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music (Flame Tree, 2003), , p. 96. While hard rock maintained a bluesy rock and roll identity, including some swing in the back beat and riffs that tended to outline chord progressions in their hooks, heavy metal's riffs often functioned as stand-alone melodies and had no swing in them.. In the 1980s, heavy metal developed a number of subgenres, often termed extreme metal, some of which were influenced by hardcore punk, and which further differentiated the two styles.V. Bogdanov, C. Woodstra and S. T. Erlewine, All Music Guide to Rock: the Definitive Guide to Rock, Pop, and Soul (Milwaukee, WI: Backbeat Books, 3rd edn., 2002), , pp. 1332–1333. Despite this differentiation, hard rock and heavy metal have coexisted with one another, with bands frequently flirting with the boundaries of, or hybridizing the genres.R. Walser, Running With the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1993), , p. 7.
History The roots of hard rock can be traced back to the mid-to-late 1950s, particularly electric blues,Simon Frith, Will Straw. The hard rock genre is originally from Glasgow. John Street, The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock, page 19, Cambridge University Press which laid the foundations for key elements such as a rough declamatory vocal style, heavy guitar riffs, string-bending blues-scale guitar solos, strong beat, thick riff-laden texture, and posturing performances.Michael Campbell & James Brody (2007), Rock and Roll: An Introduction, page 201 Electric blues guitarists began experimenting with hard rock elements such as driving rhythms, distorted guitar solos and power chords in the 1950s, evident in the work of Memphis blues guitarists such as Joe Hill Louis, Willie Johnson, and particularly Pat Hare, who captured a "grittier, nastier, more ferocious electric guitar sound" on records such as James Cotton's "Cotton Crop Blues" (1954).Robert Palmer, "Church of the Sonic Guitar", pp. 13–38 in Anthony DeCurtis, Present Tense (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1992), , pp. 24–27. Other antecedents include Link Wray's instrumental "Rumble" in 1958,J. Simmonds, The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars: Heroin, Handguns, and Ham Sandwiches (Chicago Il: Chicago Review Press, 2008), , p. 559. and the surf rock instrumentals of Dick Dale, such as "Let's Go Trippin' (1961) and "Misirlou" (1962).
Origins (1960s)
In the 1960s, American and British blues and rock bands began to modify rock and roll by adding harder sounds, heavier guitar riffs, bombastic drumming, and louder vocals, from electric blues. Early forms of hard rock can be heard in the work of Chicago blues musicians Elmore James, Muddy Waters, and Howlin' Wolf,Jane Beethoven, Carman Moore, Rock-It, page 37, Alfred Music the Kingsmen's version of "Louie Louie" (1963) which made it a garage rock standard,P. Buckley, The Rough Guide to Rock (London: Rough Guides, 2003), , p. 1144. and songs of R&B-influenced British Invasion acts,R. Unterberger, "Early British R&B", in V. Bogdanov, C. Woodstra and S. T. Erlewine, All Music Guide to Rock: the Definitive Guide to Rock, Pop, and Soul (Milwaukee, WI: Backbeat Books, 3rd edn., 2002), , pp. 1315–1316. such as "You Really Got Me" by the Kinks (1964),[ "Review of 'You Really Got Me' "], Denise Sullivan, AllMusic, All Music.com "My Generation" by the Who (1965) and "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" (1965) by the Rolling Stones.P. Prown and HP Newquist, Legends of Rock Guitar: the Essential Reference of Rock's Greatest Guitarists (Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard Corporation, 1997), , p. 29. Soft rock was often derived from folk rock, using acoustic instruments and putting more emphasis on melody and harmonies.J. M. Curtis, Rock Eras: Interpretations of Music and Society, 1954–1984 (Madison, WI: Popular Press, 1987), , p. 447. In contrast, hard rock was most often derived from blues rock and was played louder and with more intensity.
Blues rock acts that pioneered the sound included Cream, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and the Jeff Beck Group. Cream, in songs like "I Feel Free" (1966), combined blues rock with pop and psychedelia, particularly in the riffs and guitar solos of Eric Clapton.R. Unterberger, [ "Song Review: I Feel Free"], AllMusic, retrieved 22 February 2010. Cream's best known-song, "Sunshine of Your Love" (1967), is sometimes considered to be the culmination of the British adaptation of blues into rock and a direct precursor of Led Zeppelin's style of hard rock and heavy metal.J. Covach and G. M. Boone, Understanding Rock: Essays in Musical Analysis (Oxford, England: University Press, 1997) , P. 85. Jimi Hendrix produced a form of blues-influenced psychedelic rock, which combined elements of jazz, blues and rock and roll.D. Henderson, Scuse Me While I kiss the Sky: the Life of Jimi Hendrix (London: Omnibus Press, 2002), , p. 112. From 1967, Jeff Beck brought lead guitar to new heights of technical virtuosity and moved blues rock in the direction of heavy rock with his band, the Jeff Beck Group.V. Bogdanov, C. Woodstra, S. T. Erlewine, eds, All Music Guide to the Blues: The Definitive Guide to the Blues (Backbeat, 3rd edn., 2003), , pp. 700–2. Dave Davies of the Kinks, Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, Pete Townshend of the Who, Hendrix, Clapton and Beck all pioneered the use of new guitar effects like phasing, feedback and distortion.P. Prown and HP Newquist, Legends of Rock Guitar: the Essential Reference of Rock's Greatest Guitarists (Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard Corporation, 1997), , pp. 59–60. The Doors' debut album, released in 1967, included songs like "Soul Kitchen", "Twentieth Century Fox", and a cover version of "Back Door Man", which were what music journalist Stephen Davis characterized as "enough hard rock tracks". One track that stands out as especially heavy for its time is the last 1:10 of "I Feel Much Better" by the Small Faces, recorded in May 1967. The first 2:46 is typical psychedelic fare of the time, but then the song suddenly changes into a hard bass-and-guitar power chord with Steve Marriott's rhythm guitar and gut bucket singing, equal to the heaviest rock to be heard later. The Beatles began producing songs in the new hard rock style beginning with their 1968 double album The Beatles (also known as the "White Album") and, with the track "Helter Skelter", attempted to create a greater level of noise than the Who. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic has referred to the "proto-metal roar" of "Helter Skelter",S. T. Erlewine, [ "Beatles: 'The White Album"], AllMusic, retrieved 3 August 2010. while Ian MacDonald called it "ridiculous, with McCartney shrieking weedily against a massively tape-echoed backdrop of out-of-tune thrashing".I. Macdonald, Revolution in the Head: The Beatles Records and the Sixties (London: Vintage, 3rd edn., 2005), p. 298.
Groups that emerged from the American psychedelic scene about the same time included Iron Butterfly, MC5, Blue Cheer and Vanilla Fudge.R. Walser, Running With the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1993), , pp. 9–10. San Francisco band Blue Cheer released a crude and distorted cover of Eddie Cochran's classic "Summertime Blues", from their 1968 debut album Vincebus Eruptum, that outlined much of the later hard rock and heavy metal sound. The same month, Steppenwolf released its self-titled debut album, including "Born to Be Wild", which contained the first lyrical reference to heavy metal and helped popularise the style when it was used in the film Easy Rider (1969). Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (1968), with its 17-minute-long title track, using organs and with a lengthy drum solo, also prefigured later elements of the sound.
By the end of the decade a distinct genre of hard rock was emerging with bands like Led Zeppelin, who mixed the music of early rock bands with a more hard-edged form of blues rock and acid rock on their first two albums Led Zeppelin (1969) and Led Zeppelin II (1969), and Deep Purple, who began as a progressive rock group in 1968 but achieved their commercial breakthrough with their fourth and distinctively heavier album, Deep Purple in Rock (1970). Also significant was Black Sabbath's Paranoid (1970), which combined guitar riffs with dissonance and more explicit references to the occult and elements of Gothic horror. All three of these bands have been seen as pivotal in the development of heavy metal, but where metal further accentuated the intensity of the music, with bands like Judas Priest following Sabbath's lead into territory that was often "darker and more menacing", hard rock tended to continue to remain the more exuberant, good-time music.
Expansion (1970s)