Hard rock or
heavy rock is a
sub-genre of
rock music which has its
earliest roots in mid-1960s
garage,
blues rock and
psychedelic rock and is considerably harder
than conventional rock music. It is typified by a heavy use of
distorted electric guitars,
bass guitar,
drums,
pianos, and
keyboard.
Characteristics
Hard rock is strongly influenced by
blues
music; the most frequently used
scale
in hard rock is the
pentatonic, which is
a typical blues scale. Departing from earlier acoustic based blues,
hard rock makes use of more modern instruments such as electric
guitars, drums and electric bass. A notable departure from
traditional blues forms is that hard rock is seldom restricted to
the I, IV, and V
chords prevalent in
twelve or
sixteen bar blues, but includes other
chords, typically
major chords rooted on
tones of the
minor scale.
Beginnings (1960s)
One of the major influences of hard rock is blues music. American
and British rock bands began to modify rock and roll, adding to the
standard genre harder sounds, heavier guitar riffs, bombastic
drumming and louder vocals. This sound created the basis for hard
rock. Early forms of hard rock can be heard in the songs "
You Really Got Me" by
The Kinks, "
Paperback
Writer" by
The Beatles, "
My Generation" by
The Who, "
See See
Rider" by
The Animals and "
Happenings Ten Years Time Ago"
by
The Yardbirds.
Later,
Jimi Hendrix, produced a form of
blues-influenced
psychedelic rock,
which combined elements of
jazz, blues and rock
and roll. He was one of the first guitarists to experiment with new
guitar effects like
phasing,
feedback and
distortion, along with
Dave Davies of the Kinks,
Hilton Valentine of the Animals,
Pete Townshend of The Who,
Eric Clapton of Cream and
Jeff Beck of the Yardbirds.
Hard rock emerged with groups of the late-1960s, such as
The Who,
Deep Purple,
Iron Butterfly,
Blue Cheer and
Led
Zeppelin who mixed the music of early rock bands with a more
hard-edged form of
blues rock and
acid rock.
Deep
Purple helped pioneer the hard rock genre with the albums
Shades of Deep Purple
(1968),
The Book of
Taliesyn (1968), and
Deep Purple (1969), but they made
their big break with their fourth and distinctively heavier album,
In Rock (1970).
Led Zeppelin's eponymous first album,
Led Zeppelin (1969), and The Who's
Live at Leeds (1970), are
examples of music from the beginning of the hard rock genre. The
blues origins of the albums are clear, and a few songs by
well-known blues artists are adapted or covered within them.
First era (1970s)
Led Zeppelin's third album,
Led
Zeppelin III (1970) was more
folk
rock-oriented than their second, but the heavy aspects of their
music remained. 1971 saw The Who release their highly-acclaimed
album
Who's Next.
Deep Purple's transformation of hard
rock continued in 1972 with their album
Machine Head, considered one of
the first
heavy metal albums,
although some band members shunned that label. Two songs from
Machine Head had great success: "
Highway Star" and "
Smoke on the Water." The latter song's
main riff of four power-chords made it, for many, the "signature"
Deep Purple song.
Nazareth, a
band out of Scotland
, provided a
blend of hard rock which commercialised the genre further with
their best selling album, Hair of
the Dog, which in turn, influenced numerous other
bands.
During the 1970s, hard rock developed a variety of sub-genres. In
1972, macabre-rock pioneer
Alice Cooper
put hard rock into the mainstream with the top ten album
School's Out. The
following year,
Aerosmith,
Queen and
Montrose released their eponymous debut
albums, demonstrating the broadening directions of hard rock. In
1974,
Bad Company released its debut
album and Queen released its third album,
Sheer Heart Attack, with the track
"
Stone Cold Crazy" influencing
later thrash metal artists, such as
Metallica and
Megadeth.
Queen used layered vocals and guitars and mixed hard rock with glam
rock, heavy metal,
progressive
rock, and even
opera.
Kiss released their first three albums
Kiss,
Hotter Than Hell and
Dressed to Kill, in a little
over a year, achieving their commercial breakthrough with the
double live album
Alive! in 1975. The Canadian trio
Rush released three distinctively hard
rock albums in 1974-75 (
Rush,
Fly by Night, and
Caress of Steel) before
moving toward a more progressive sound.
In the mid-1970s, Aerosmith released the ground-breaking
Toys in the Attic
and
Rocks which incorporated
elements of blues and hard rock and would later influence rock
artists such as
Metallica,
Guns N' Roses and
Mötley Crüe. In 1976,
Boston released their highly successful
debut album while
Heart paved the way for women in the genre with
the release of their
debut.
The
Irish
band Thin Lizzy, which
had been around since the late 1960s, made their most substantial
commercial breakthrough in 1976 with the hard rock album
Jailbreak and its top
single, "The Boys Are Back in
Town."
The 1975 departure of Deep Purple guitarist
Ritchie Blackmore (who went on to form
Rainbow the same year) was followed
by the sudden death of his replacement
Tommy
Bolin in 1976, but by that time the group had already
disbanded. In 1978, The Who's drummer,
Keith
Moon, died in his sleep via an overdose. With the rise of
disco in the U.S. and
punk rock in the UK, hard rock's mainstream
dominance was rivaled and began to decline. Disco appealed to a
more diverse group of people and punk seemed to take over the
rebellious role that hard rock once held. Meanwhile,
Black Sabbath moved away from the darkness of
their early work with albums such as
Technical Ecstasy.
Van Halen, another important group in hard
rock, emerged in 1978. Their music was based mostly on the guitar
skills of
Eddie Van Halen, the lead
guitarist, who popularised a technique called
tapping in guitar playing. The song "
Eruption" from the album
Van Halen, demonstrated his technique
and was very influential.
In 1979, the differences between the hard rock movement and the
rising heavy metal movement were highlighted when the
Australian hard rock band,
AC/DC, released its second-biggest album,
Highway to Hell. AC/DC's music
was based mostly on
rhythm &
blues and early-1970s hard rock, with the group explicitly
repudiating the "heavy metal" tag.
Second era (1980s)
In 1980,
Led Zeppelin disbanded after
the sudden death of drummer
John Bonham,
who died of asphyxiation after consuming too much alcohol.
Bon Scott, the lead singer of AC/DC, also died of
alcohol poisoning in 1980. With these deaths, the first wave of
"classic" hard rock bands ended. Some bands, such as Queen, moved
away from their hard rock roots and more towards pop rock. AC/DC
recorded the album
Back in
Black, with their new lead singer,
Brian Johnson.
Back in Black is the
fifth highest-selling album of all time in the U.S. and the second
largest selling album in the world.
Ozzy
Osbourne released his first solo album,
Blizzard of Ozz which featured American
guitarist
Randy Rhoads.
In 1981, the British hard rock band
Def
Leppard released their second album
High 'N' Dry, on which they categorized
the sound of hard rock in the 1980s with songs like "Bringin' on
the Heartbreak." The U.S. band
Mötley Crüe followed suit with their
release
Too Fast for
Love. A year later, the style grew, led by bands such as
Twisted Sister and
Quiet Riot.
In 1983, Def Leppard released the album
Pyromania, which reached #2 on the
American charts. With this release, they established their
trademark style of mixing glam-rock and heavy metal.
Pyromania undeniably started the pop influenced metal
explosion that followed, with songs such as "Photograph" and "Rock
of Ages," which reached the American top 20. This same album
spawned the single "Foolin'" which was
Top 40
hit. "Photograph" was also the most played video clip on
MTV that same year, beating out even
Michael Jackson's highly successful
"Thriller" video.
That same year, Mötley Crüe released the album,
Shout at the Devil, which became a
huge hit.
Van Halen's album
1984 became a huge success as
well, hitting #2 on the Billboard album chart. In particular, the
song "
Jump" reached #1 on the
singles chart, where it remained
for several weeks.
After a number of lineup changes and an 8-year disbandment, Deep
Purple's classic
Machine Head formation made a successful
comeback in late 1984 with the release of
Perfect Strangers.
The album
reached #5 in the UK
and #17 on
the Billboard 200 in the US
.
The late 1980s saw the most commercially successful time period for
hard rock. At this time it was the most reliable form of commercial
popular music in the United States. Numerous hard rock acts
achieved hits in the mainstream charts. One of those hits was the
album
Slippery When Wet
(1986) by
Bon Jovi, which spent a total of
8 weeks at the top of the
Billboard
200 album chart, sold 12 million copies, and became the first
hard rock album to spawn three top 10 singles—two of which reached
#1.
In
addition, the anthem rock album The Final Countdown by
Swedish
group Europe was
released in 1986 and reached #1 on 26 countries' charts and sold
more than 6 million copies. This time period also saw more
glam-infused American hard rock bands come to the forefront, with
both
Poison and
Cinderella releasing their multi-platinum
debut albums this year. Also in 1986,
Van
Halen released their first album with
Sammy Hagar on lead vocals,
5150, which was #1 for three weeks and
sold over 6 million copies in the U.S.
In 1987, the most notable success of the decade came in the form of
Appetite for
Destruction by
Guns N' Roses,
and
Hysteria
by Def Leppard (both of which reached #1 on Billboard's album
chart). Both sold well over 10 million copies in America alone and
more than 20 million around the world to date.
Appetite
produced three top 10 hits, including the #1 "Sweet Child o' Mine,"
and is still listed as the fastest-selling debut album by any
artist in history as well as the biggest selling debut album in
history, selling 18 million copies in the U.S. alone.
Hysteria produced seven hit singles (more than any hard
rock act before or since). Also of note that year was Mötley Crüe's
Girls, Girls,
Girls, Aerosmith's comeback album
Permanent Vacation and
Whitesnake's
self-titled album.
In 1988 and 1989, the most notable successes were
New Jersey by
Bon Jovi,
Pump
by
Aerosmith,
OU812 by
Van Halen,
Dr. Feelgood by
Mötley Crüe, and
Open Up and Say... Ahh! by
Poison.
New Jersey spawned five top
10 singles, the most ever for a hard rock album. In 1988,
Skid Row formed. Their first
album,
Skid Row, was
released in 1989, reaching number 6 in the Billboard 200. Towards
the end of the 1980s, numerous hard rock artists such as
Mr. Big,
Firehouse,
Warrant,
Winger,
and
Extreme broke into mainstream
success, with many of these bands achieving their peak success in
1990 and 1991.
Third era (1990s-present)
The early 1990s were at first dominated by
Guns N' Roses,
Metallica and
Van Halen.
The multi-platinum releases of Metallica's
Metallica (often referred to as "The
Black Album"), Guns N' Roses'
Use Your Illusion I and
Use Your Illusion II
and Van Halen's
For
Unlawful Carnal Knowledge in 1991 showcased this
popularity. In 1992, Def Leppard followed up 1987's
Hysteria with
Adrenalize, a multi-platinum smash that
spawned four Top 40 singles and held the #1 spot on the U.S. album
chart for 5 straight weeks, the only hard rock album to reach that
position that year. While these few hard rock bands managed to
maintain success and popularity in the early part of the decade, an
alternative to hard rock simultaneously broke into the mainstream
during this time period.
Grunge combined elements of
hardcore punk and
heavy metal into a dirty sound that made
use of heavy guitar distortion, fuzz and feedback, along with
darker lyrical themes than their "hair band" predecessors. Although
most grunge bands had a sound that sharply contrasted mainstream
hard rock (for example
Nirvana,
Pearl Jam and
L7), a minority (for example
Alice in Chains,
Mother Love Bone, and
Soundgarden) were more strongly influenced by
much 1970s and 1980s rock and metal. However, all grunge bands
shunned the macho, anthemic and fashion-focused style of hard rock
at that time.
As the popularity of artists such as Metallica and Van Halen
continued from the 1980s into the 1990s, some other bands had begun
to fuse metal with a range of eclectic influences. These bands came
to be known as
alternative metal
artists, a subset of
alternative
rock. Some, such as
Primus,
Red Hot Chili Peppers,
Rage Against the Machine,
Living Colour and
White Zombie fused
funk
with metal styles, though most of these bands actually formed in
the '80s.
Faith No More/
Mr. Bungle fused many genres with hard rock,
ranging from
rap music to soul.
The Darkness's retro glam-metal
influences helped propel them to the upper realms of the charts in
the early 2000s, with the likes of
Wolfmother. Towards the mid 2000s with new bands
started to become mainstream,
Jet,
Wolfmother,
White Stripes,
The
Strokes,
The Vines,
Three Days Grace,
The Answer,
The
Glitterati,
The Datsuns, plus
Nineteenth century and punk-influenced
Towers of London, are some of the new rock
bands which followed up from the Garage rock revival.
This has helped revive the
glam metal
scene (e.g. bands like
Buckcherry, which
Guns N' Roses
Appetite for Destruction album is often
credited with influencing). The 00's even saw reunions and
subsequent tours from
Rage
Against the Machine,
Stone
Temple Pilots,
Eric Burdon and
Living Colour, in addition to
Van Halen,
AC/DC,
The Who and
Black
Sabbath and even a one off performance by
Led Zeppelin, renewing the interest in previous
eras.
In addition, a few hard rock bands from the 1970s and 1980s managed
to sustain highly successful recording careers throughout the 1990s
and 2000s by constantly re-inventing themselves and exploring
different musical styles, namely
Aerosmith,
Bon Jovi,
AC/DC, and
Metallica.
Since 1989's
Pump, Aerosmith has released two #1
multi-platinum albums:
Get a
Grip in 1993 and
Nine Lives in 1997.
Get a Grip produced four Top 40 singles and became the
band's best-selling album worldwide, going on to sell over 20
million copies. In addition, Aerosmith released a #2 platinum
album,
Just Push Play
(2001), which saw the band foray further into pop, and a blues
cover album,
Honkin' on
Bobo, which reached #5 in 2004. Additionally, since the
early 1990s, Aerosmith has achieved eight Top 40 singles (including
the #1 hit "
I Don't Want to
Miss a Thing" in 1998). Bon Jovi released five albums which
achieved platinum status or better and also achieved eight Top 40
singles since 1988's
New Jersey. In addition to remaining
true to their hard rock roots with songs like "
Keep the Faith" and "
It's My Life", Bon Jovi
achieved success in the adult contemporary genre, with the Top 10
ballads "
Bed of Roses" (1993)
and "
Always" (1994) and also
in country with "
Who Says You
Can't Go Home", which reached #1 on the Hot Country Singles
chart in 2006 and the rock/country album
Lost Highway which reached #1 in
2007. In 2009, Bon Jovi released another #1 album,
The Circle. Since 1990's
multi-platinum
The Razors
Edge,
AC/DC, released two double
platinum #1 albums,
Ballbreaker
(1995) and
Black Ice
(2008) and the platinum-certified
Stiff Upper Lip (2000). Meanwhile,
Metallica released four multi-platinum #1 albums since 1991's
The Black Album -
Load,
ReLoad,
St.
Anger, and
Death
Magnetic.
Load and
ReLoad both sold in
excess of 4 million copies in the U.S. and saw the band develop a
more blues-rock sound, while
Death Magnetic was a return
to the band's 1980s heavy metal roots. All of these bands, with the
exception of AC/DC, received
Grammy
awards for work during this time period and all bands have
remained successful touring acts as well.
See also
External links
References