The Rock n’ Roll of the 70’s

In the Seventies rock continued on its path of fusion with other musical forms. Rock n’ Roll presented more and more variations to the point that new subgenres were created; it was in this decade that this music changed the most. For example, country rock and jazz rock was created; by the middle of the decade some of these variations started to miss the dancing that used to be part of rock n’ roll music. In the seventies, rock started to be produced just for radio and albums. That helped to start off a new fad, the disco fad, but it did not last long. From there, a new variation began, the disco fad returned rock n’ roll back to its beginnings, and new bands came up whose music resembled the original rock; they were called the “new wave”, and one example was Elvis Costello (rocknrollzone.com).

On this decade, society had not yet accepted rock n’ roll completely, and it came to the point of relating it to the devil when some teenagers and gangs started acting violently. However, nothing stopped rock n’ roll, in those years musicians now studied it to be true professionals. Also, people were talking about it as an artistic, cultural and social revolution (azheavymetal.com).

Progressive rock develops as another variation, which wanted innovation, progress and better messages. That is why bands of this music sound very different from each other, because they achieve new combinations for their melodies. Examples of bands are Pink Floyd and Genesis (azheavymetal.com).

Punk rock also came up in the United States, LA and San Francisco area, as a variation; this is the most aggressive descendant of rock n’ roll, it is violence applied to the musical instruments. The people in this movement had a new special ideology, they were against any form of authority that tried to impose a “must be”. Two bands of punk were the Ramones and Sex Pistols (azheavymetal.com).

And finally, Heavy Metal developed. Some of the bands of this rock n’ roll variation started to talk about satanism, and they had more energy and violence. Bands like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath, the last two became a big spectacle due to their live performances because they liked to recur to satanic images. Other rock n’ roll subgenres came up from Heavy Metal, but I will talk about them in other post (azheavymetal.com).

Led Zeppelin represents in this video to a very good extent the evolution rock n’ roll had in the seventies, also how the social attitude changed and collective hysteria continued. It is also an AWESOME song ;) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlNhD0oS5pk&ob=av2n

Works Cited

“History Essay: Rock 'n' Roll in the Seventies”. rocknrollzone.com. The Rock ‘n’ Roll Zone, n. d. Web. September 8, 2011.

“La Evolución Continua- La Década de los 70” AZHeavyMetal.com. Historia del Rock n Roll. N.p., n.d. Web. September 8, 2011.