Hard rock

Hard rock (or heavy rock) is a loosely defined genre of rock music which has its earliest roots in mid-1960s garage, blues rock and psychedelic rock. It is typified by a heavy use of distorted electric guitars, bass guitar, drums, and sometimes pianos and keyboards.

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 (1964), "My Generation" by The Who (1965) and "I Feel Free"[1] by Cream (1966).

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, after guitarists such as Link Wray, Dave Davies of the Kinks, 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, Vanilla Fudge, 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),[2] 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 themFirst era (1970s)

Led Zeppelin II (1969), Led Zeppelin's second album, was a watershed moment for the identity of hard rock, proving more popular than their third album Led Zeppelin III (1970). While the heavy aspects of their music remained, Led Zeppelin III was more folk rock-oriented than their second. 1971 saw The Who release their highly-acclaimed album Who's Next.

Though associated more with Heavy Metal, Black Sabbath's first two albums, both released in 1970, are considered as important as any in launching hard rock into the mainstream.[3]

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.[4] Two songs from Machine Head had great success: "Highway Star" and "Smoke on the Water." The latter song's main riff 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. Free released their signature song "All Right Now", which has received massive radio airplay in both the UK and US.[5]

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, Lynyrd Skynyrd, New York Dolls and Montrose released their debut albums, demonstrating the broadening directions of hard rock. ZZ Top released their classic album Tres Hombres this year. 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.[6] [7] 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, hard rock and heavy metal and would later influence rock artists such as Metallica[8], Guns N' Roses[9] , Mötley Crüe, Testament, Nirvana and Van Halen. In 1976, Boston released their highly successful debut album while Heart and The Runaways paved the way for women in the genre with the release of Heart's "Dreamboat Annie" and the Runaways' self-titled album. While Heart had a more folk-oriented hard rock sound, the Runaways leaned more towards a mix of punk-influenced music and hard rock. Around this same time, American guitarist Ted Nugent split from the Amboy Dukes and embarked on a solo career that resulted in four successive multi-platinum albums: Ted Nugent (1975), Free-for-All (1976), Cat Scratch Fever (1977) and Double Live Gonzo (1978).[10]

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". Their style, consisting of two dueling guitarists often playing leads in harmony, proved itself to be a large influence on later bands such as Iron Maiden and Guns N' Roses.

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. 1977 saw the debut and rise to stardom of Foreigner, who went on to release several platinum albums through the mid 1980's. 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 emerged in 1978 from the generally grittier Los Angeles music scene. Their music was based mostly on the guitar skills of Eddie Van Halen, the lead guitarist, who popularized a guitar‐playing technique of two‐handed hammer‐ons and pull‐offs called tapping. The song "Eruption" from the album Van Halen, demonstrated his technique and was very influential in both re‐establishing hard‐rock as a popular genre after the punk and disco explosion, redefining and elevating the role of electric guitar in hard rock and, eventually, popular music.

In 1979, the Australian hard rock band, AC/DC, released its second-biggest album, Highway to Hell. AC/DC's music was based mostly on rhythm &amp; blues and early-1970s hard rock.

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 acute asphyxiation/alcohol poisoning in 1980. Black Sabbath split with original singer Ozzy Osbourne and replaced him with Ronnie James Dio. With these events, 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.[11] 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.

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, #2 in Norway, and #6 on the Billboard 200 in the US.[12]

The late 1980s saw the most commercially successful time period for hard rock.[13] At this time it was the most reliable form of commercial popular music in the United States.[14] 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. It reached #8 on the U.S. charts, while hitting the top 10 in several other countries.[15] 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.

1987: Rock's popularity peaks
1987 was a seminal year for hard rock music, with several key releases from old and new acts alike. The best-selling debut of all time, Appetite for Destruction by Guns N' Roses, was released, a dirty, punky album which foretold the directions rock music would take in the 1990s. At the same time Hysteria by Def Leppard would be one of the biggest sellers of the glam metal era, second only to Slippery When Wet in sales. Both topped the US charts and sold well over 20 million around the world to date. Appetite produced three top 10 hits, including the #1 "Sweet Child o' Mine", Hysteria produced six hit singles (more than any hard rock act before or since). Mötley Crüe, the most influential glam metal band, hit their peak popularity with Girls, Girls, Girls. Other, more extreme rock music had a solid year, with Anthrax's Among The Living being released. Generally seen as the band's best album, it showed that the ground broken by Metallica for broadening thrash metal's appeal the previous year had been picked up by the public and gained momentum.

The year also proved to be the most important and successful for 1970s rock bands who had adapted to playing in a more modern style. Aerosmith's comeback album Permanent Vacation would launch the band to new heights, and a decade of growing popularity after seven years of commercial decline. Former Deep Purple frontman David Coverdale's band Whitesnake put out their self-titled album, which would sell better than anything else in Coverdale or Purple's catalogue, selling 17 million copies and featuring the rock anthem "Here I Go Again '87". The album's glam metal sensibilities appealed to American audiences, but retained Coverdale's British fanbase producing 4 UK top 20 singles. Though not as significant as Aerosmith and Coverdale's releases of the year, the other release worthy of note is Crazy Nights by KISS. It was the band's biggest seller since 1979's Dynasty. It was their highest charting release since 1979 in the USA, and highest charting of their career in the UK where it remains the band's biggest seller thanks to the title track, the band's biggest single there.

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 1986, 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 Aerosmith, AC/DC, Guns N' Roses, Metallica and Van Halen. The multi-platinum releases of AC/DC's The Razors Edge, 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, while the critical and commercial success of Aerosmith's Pump continued. 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.

At the same time that grunge music dominated rock, many of the popular hard rock acts of the 1980s and early 1990s fell into decline. Many of the glam metal bands like Ratt, Europe, White Lion, and Winger broke up. While many of these bands would re-unite again in the late 1990s or early 2000s, they never reached the commercial success they saw in the 1980s or early 1990s. Other bands such as Mötley Crüe, Poison, and Warrant saw personnel changes which impacted those bands' commercial viability during the decade. Whitesnake, who failed to repeat the success of their 1987 self-titled album with 1989's Slip of the Tongue (though the album still sold over four millions of copies), went on hiatus in 1991.

In the mid 1990s, some of the biggest and most-publicized personnel changes occurred with Guns N' Roses and Van Halen, contributing to the decline of hard rock in the 1990s. In 1995, Van Halen released Balance, a multi-platinum seller that would be the band's last with Sammy Hagar on vocals. In 1996, Sammy Hagar left Van Halen, shortly after the release of a new song for the Twister soundtrack. A much-publicized reunion with David Lee Roth ensued, when the classic lineup was featured at the 1996 MTV Video Music Awards. After recording two new songs for a greatest hits collection, Roth was fired, to be replaced by Extreme singer Gary Cherone for the 1998 album Van Halen III, which was a commercial failure. After the tour, Cherone was fired. Van Halen would not tour or record again until 2004. Meanwhile, Guns N' Roses' original lineup whittled away throughout the decade. Drummer Steven Adler was fired in 1990, guitarist Izzy Stradlin left in late 1991 after recording Use Your Illusion I and II with the band. Tensions between the other band members and lead singer Axl Rose continued after the release of the 1993 covers album The Spaghetti Incident?. Guitarist Slash left in 1996, followed by bassist Duff McKagan in 1997. Stradlin and Adler's replacements, Gilby Clarke and Matt Sorum, were fired in 1994 and 1997 respectively. Axl Rose worked with a constantly-changing lineup in recording an album that took over ten years to complete, Chinese Democracy, which when finally released in 2008, only went platinum, produced no hit singles, and failed to come close to the success of the band's late 1980s and early 1990s material.

Towards the mid 2000s, new bands started to become mainstream; Jet, Wolfmother, Airbourne, Three Days Grace, The Answer, The Glitterati, The Datsuns, Towers of London and Queens of the Stone Age 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, The Who and Black Sabbath and even a one off performance by Led Zeppelin, renewing the interest in previous eras. Additionally, hard rock supergroups, such as Audioslave and Velvet Revolver came to the forefront with multi-platinum debut albums and a series of Mainstream Rock hits. Velvet Revolver even won a Grammy award. However, these bands were short-lived, ending in 2007 and 2008, respectively.

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 an attempt to return to the band's 1980s thrash metal roots.