Portal:Rock music

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The Rock Music Portal

Rock is a broad genre of popular music that originated as "rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles from the mid-1960s, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, a style that drew directly from the blues and rhythm and blues genres of African-American music and from country music. Rock also drew strongly from genres such as electric blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz and other musical styles. For instrumentation, rock has centered on the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with electric bass guitar, drums, and one or more singers. Usually, rock is song-based music with a ⁴
₄ time signature using a verse–chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political. Rock was the most popular genre of music in the U.S. and much of the Western world from the 1950s to the 2010s.

Rock musicians in the mid-1960s began to advance the album ahead of the single as the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption, with the Beatles at the forefront of this development. Their contributions lent the genre a cultural legitimacy in the mainstream and initiated a rock-informed album era in the music industry for the next several decades. By the late 1960s "classic rock" period, a number of distinct rock music subgenres had emerged, including hybrids like blues rock, folk rock, country rock, southern rock, raga rock, and jazz rock, which contributed to the development of psychedelic rock, influenced by the countercultural psychedelic and hippie scene. New genres that emerged included progressive rock, which extended artistic elements, and glam rock, which highlighted showmanship and visual style. In the second half of the 1970s, punk rock reacted by producing stripped-down, energetic social and political critiques. Punk was an influence in the 1980s on new wave, post-punk and eventually alternative rock.

From the 1990s, alternative rock began to dominate rock music and break into the mainstream in the form of grunge, Britpop, and indie rock. Further fusion subgenres have since emerged, including pop-punk, electronic rock, rap rock, and rap metal. Some movements were conscious attempts to revisit rock's history, including the garage rock/post-punk revival in the 2000s. Since the 2010s, rock has lost its position as the pre-eminent popular music genre in world culture, but remains commercially successful. The increased influence of hip-hop and electronic dance music can be seen in rock music, notably in the techno-pop scene of the early 2010s and the pop-punk-hip-hop revival of the 2020s. (Full article...)

General images - load new batch

The following are images from various rock music-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Chuck Berry in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 2Wolfmother, 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 3Aerosmith performing at Quilmes Rock in Buenos Aires, Argentina on April 15, 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 4Big Joe Turner and Pete Johnson's record "Roll 'Em Pete" is regarded as a precursor to rock and roll. (from Rock and roll)
Image 5Nirvana were at the forefront of the 1990s grunge era. (from Hard rock)
Image 6Foo Fighters performing an acoustic show in 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 7Tommy Steele, one of the first British rock and rollers, performing in Stockholm in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 8Golden Earring receives a gold record in 1970. (from Hard rock)
Image 9Sign commemorating the role of Alan Freed and Cleveland, Ohio, in the origins of rock and roll (from Rock and roll)
Image 10Baker, Bruce and Clapton of Cream, whose blues rock improvisation was a major factor in the development of the genre (from Hard rock)
Image 11Buddy Holly and his band, the Crickets (from Rock and roll)
Image 12Rush on stage in Milan, Italy, 2004 (from Hard rock)
Image 13Elvis Presley in a promotion shot for Jailhouse Rock in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 14Poison, seen here in 2008, were among the most successful acts of the 1980s glam metal era. (from Hard rock)
Image 15Original member Izzy Stradlin' on stage with Guns N' Roses in 2006 (from Hard rock)
Image 16Led Zeppelin live at Chicago Stadium, January 1975 (from Hard rock)
Image 17"There's No Romance in Rock and Roll" made the cover of True Life Romance in 1956. (from Rock and roll)
Image 18Bill Haley and his Comets performing in the 1954 Universal International film Round Up of Rhythm (from Rock and roll)
Image 19Little Richard in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 20Drum notation for a backbeat (from Hard rock)
Image 21The Who on stage in 1975 (from Hard rock)
Image 22Kiss onstage in Boston in 2004 (from Hard rock)

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Red Rocks Amphitheatre, the site of the concert, pictured in 2006.

U2 Live at Red Rocks: Under a Blood Red Sky is a concert film by Irish rock band U2. It was recorded on 5 June 1983 at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado, United States, on the group's War Tour. Originally released in 1984 on videocassette, U2 Live at Red Rocks was the band's first video release. It accompanied a 1983 live album entitled Under a Blood Red Sky, on which two tracks from the film appear. The video was directed by Gavin Taylor and produced by Rick Wurpel and Doug Stewart.

The film was arranged by U2 management to showcase the band's live act and to promote them to American audiences. It depicts the band's performance at Red Rocks on a rain-soaked evening. The concert was almost cancelled because of the inclement weather, but the band had invested in the filming with Island Records and concert promoter Barry Fey and wished to proceed with the gig. The rain and the torch-lit atmosphere of the surroundings made U2's performance dramatic. Segments of U2 Live at Red Rocks were shown in regular rotation on MTV, and were also broadcast on other television networks.

Critics praised the concert and the video, and it subsequently became a best-seller. The video, along with Under a Blood Red Sky, helped establish U2's reputation as remarkable live performers and boosted Red Rocks' stature as a live venue. A remastered edition of U2 Live at Red Rocks was released on DVD in September 2008 with previously unreleased tracks, coinciding with a remastered edition of Under a Blood Red Sky. Rolling Stone selected the film's performance of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" as one of the "50 Moments that Changed the History of Rock and Roll". (Full article...)

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W. Axl Rose (born William Bruce Rose Jr.; born February 6, 1962) is an American singer and songwriter. He is the lead vocalist and lyricist of the hard rock band Guns N' Roses, and has been the band's sole constant member since its inception in 1985. Possessing a distinctive and powerful wide-ranging voice, Rose has been named one of the greatest singers of all time by various media outlets, including Rolling Stone, NME and Billboard.

Born and raised in Lafayette, Indiana, Rose moved in the early 1980s to Los Angeles, where he became active in the local hard rock scene and joined several bands, including Hollywood Rose and L.A. Guns. In 1985, he co-founded Guns N' Roses, with whom he had great success and recognition in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Their first album, Appetite for Destruction (1987), has sold in excess of 30 million copies worldwide and is the best-selling debut album of all time in the U.S. with 18 million units sold. Its full-length follow-ups, the twin albums Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II (1991), were also widely successful; they respectively debuted at No. 2 and No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and have sold a combined 35 million copies worldwide.

After 1994, following the conclusion of their two-and-a-half-year Use Your Illusion Tour, Rose disappeared from public life for several years, while the band disintegrated due to personal and musical differences. As its sole remaining original member, he was able to continue working under the Guns N' Roses banner because he had legally obtained the band name. In 2001, he resurfaced with a new line-up of Guns N' Roses at Rock in Rio 3, and subsequently played occasional concert tours to promote the long-delayed Chinese Democracy (2008), which undersold the music industry's commercial expectations despite positive reviews upon its release. In 2012, Rose was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Guns N' Roses, though he declined to attend the event and requested exclusion from the Hall. In 2016, the same year as he toured with AC/DC, Rose partially reunited the "classic" lineup of Guns N' Roses and has since toured the world as part of the Not in This Lifetime... Tour. (Full article...)

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Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell is the sixth studio album by American rock singer Meat Loaf and the second one in the Bat Out of Hell trilogy, which was written and produced by Jim Steinman. It was released on September 14, 1993, sixteen years after Meat Loaf's first solo album Bat Out of Hell. The album reached number 1 in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada. Five tracks were released as singles, including "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)", which reached number 1 in 28 countries.

The album was released by Virgin Records outside of North America, where it was released by MCA. The third part of the Bat trilogy, Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose, was released in 2006.

Like the first album of the trilogy, Bat Out of Hell II was a commercial success. It sold over 14 million copies worldwide. (Full article...)

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"You Really Got Me" is a song by English rock band the Kinks, written by frontman Ray Davies. The song, originally performed in a more blues-orientated style, was inspired by artists such as Lead Belly and Big Bill Broonzy. Two versions were recorded, with the second performance used for the final single. Lead guitarist Dave Davies performs the song’s famous guitar solo. Although it was long rumoured that future Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page had performed the song's guitar solo, this has been debunked by Page himself.

"You Really Got Me" is built around power chords (perfect fifths and octaves) and it heavily influenced later rock musicians, particularly in the heavy metal and punk rock genres. Built around a guitar riff played by Dave Davies, its lyrics were described by Dave as "a love song for street kids".

The song was released in the UK on 4 August 1964 by Pye Records as the group's third single, and reached number one on the Record Retailer chart the following month, remaining there for two weeks. It was released in the US on 2 September by Reprise Records. The song became the group's breakthrough hit. It established them as one of the top British Invasion acts in the United States, reaching number seven later in the year. "You Really Got Me" was later included on the Kinks' debut album, Kinks. American rock band Van Halen covered the song in their 1978 self-titled debut album; it was released as their first single and peaked at No. 36 on the Billboard Hot 100. (Full article...)

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Credit: Ollie Atkins

Elvis Presley meeting with US President Richard Nixon. On December 21, 1970.

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Did you know (auto-generated)

... that the British rock musician Hannah Grae went viral online with an anti-sexual harassment parody of Aqua's "Barbie Girl"?
... that the Liverpool Echo described British rock and roll star Tommy Steele as "quite unable to sing and play the guitar at the same time" when reviewing his first album?
... that Shin Hae-chul, who previously made hard rock and heavy metal albums, was inspired by big band music when he made The Songs for the One?
... that when rock musician Warren Zevon received a terminal diagnosis of lung cancer, he learned to "enjoy every sandwich"?
... that Greg Cooper based the character of suffragist Kate Sheppard in punk-rock musical That Bloody Woman on Bette Midler in concert in Cleveland?
... that before charting on the UK Albums Chart with Are We There Yet?, the indie rock musician James Marriott had made a career of mocking other YouTubers' music?

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Garage rock (sometimes called garage punk or '60s punk) is a raw and energetic style of rock and roll that flourished in the mid-1960s, most notably in the United States and Canada, and has experienced a series of subsequent revivals. The style is characterized by basic chord structures played on electric guitars and other instruments, sometimes distorted through a fuzzbox, as well as often unsophisticated and occasionally aggressive lyrics and delivery. Its name derives from the perception that groups were often made up of young amateurs who rehearsed in the family garage, although many were professional. (Full article...)