29 July 2008
Rock ‘n’ Roll Will Never Die
Rock of the 1970s featured diverse approaches
(The following is excerpted from the U.S. Department of State publication, American Popular Music.)
During the 1970s, the music industry created a number of rock genres, designed to appeal to the widest possible demographic and promoted on Top 40 radio and television. Musicians as diverse as Led Zeppelin; Stevie Wonder; Elton John; Carole King; Pink Floyd; Paul Simon; Neil Diamond; Crosby, Stills, and Nash; the Rolling Stones; Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention; and Santana were promoted by record companies under the general heading of rock music. By the mid-1980s, the rocker Bruce Springsteen found a large audience. Springsteen’s songs reflected his working-class origins and sympathies, relating the stories of still young but aging men and women with dead end jobs (or no jobs at all), who were looking for romance and excitement in the face of repeated disappointments. Springsteen performed with his E Street Band, and their music was characterized by a strong, roots-rock sound that emphasized Springsteen’s connections to 1950s and 1960s music. The band even included a saxophone – virtually an anachronism in the pop music of this period – to mark the link with the rhythm & blues and rock ’n’ roll of earlier eras.
Purists insist that rock music is past its prime. The times have changed, and so has the spirit of the times. Many others insist just as fervently that rock continues alive and healthy today, and many will agree that it is hard to argue with their evidence. The profusion of forms and genres that can be called, in one way or another, rock music, is astounding. One Web site lists 32 varieties of rock music. Punk, thrash, metal, grunge, country rock, and glam rock, to name just a few, have all developed out of the rock ’n’ roll tradition that began in the 1950s. They continue to be played and heard and, just as significantly, to provide the stimulus for new forms and styles of popular music in America and around the world.
[This article is excerpted from American Popular Music: From Minstrelsy to MP3 by Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman, published by Oxford University Press, copyright (2003, 2007), and offered in an abridged edition by the Bureau of International Information Programs.]
