Blog post #16: A very brief history of rock music

Celtic and African rhythms and melodies and Western harmony came to North America with immigration and slavery and were incorporated into the Blues, Jazz and Country music of the first half of the 20th century. Rock n’ Roll emerged in the mid 1950s as a distillation of these three genres. An important late-stage precursor to Rock n’ Roll also deserves a mention here. Namely, Jump Blues. This genre appeared in the late 1940s and can be considered as Rock n’ Roll with different instrumentation (horns rather than guitars). Louis Jordan was the most prominent of the Jump Blues artists, but his star would soon be eclipsed and totally dwarfed by early rock n’ rollers such as Bill Haley, Elvis, Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly. These artists all put the newly available electric guitar front and centre in their music. Their sound was raucous and futuristic at the same time and the youth of the day found it incredibly appealing and exciting. Their parents... not so much.

As Rock n’ Roll gradually morphed into the “Classic Rock” of the 1960’s, the focal point switched from America to England. Nearly all the influential rock bands of the 60’s and 70’s were English: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kinks, Cream, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Yes, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, T-Rex... I would also include The Jimi Hendrix Experience in this list (An American guitarist who came to England, formed a band with two English musicians and who first gained recognition in England). 


From the 70’s onwards, rock music evolved under various titles such as Prog, Glam, Punk, New Wave, Metal, Soft, Shoegaze, Indie, Alternative, Britpop and Grunge up to the Nu-Metal of the early 2000’s. Since the mid-2000’s, kids have listened to increasingly little guitar music. The charts became dominated by rap and electronic music. The guitar seemed to disappear almost completely from charts by the late 2010’s, but features on more and more new popular songs in the Spotify Top 50 Global playlist during the last couple of years.

Where are all the new bands?

However, ‘bands’ are not really a big thing any more. At least not for the young kids. It’s all “XXX” featuring “YYY” in the charts now. There are no collectives of musicians, only brief collaborations. Apart from manufactured K-Pop boy bands that is. A few legacy rock bands still exist in 2024 to fill out huge arenas, such as The Stones, AC/DC, Coldplay, The Foo Fighters, etc. And a few new rock acts have broken through and have become moderately successful, such as Maneskin (Italy’s entry into the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest). 


Where are all the other new bands though? Not only rock bands, but bands of musicians in any genre? Probably bands are prohibitively expensive in an age where one talented person and a computer can produce very high-quality music. And with more than one new song every second being uploaded to Spotify, producers and music labels need to keep their costs to a minimum to remain competitive in the current marketplace. There is no need to keep full-time band members on the payroll when huge sample libraries of every possible instrument exist and session players can be hired as and when needed for one-off recording sessions.

Is rock music now historical music?

While there are plenty of amateur rock groups playing small local clubs and bars around the world, perhaps rock is historical music now, like Trad Jazz was when I was growing up. The era of rock bands in the charts is over. The always distant prospect of mega-stardom for rock musicians is now extremely distant and has, in fact, totally disappeared. 

If it is indeed the case that rock is now a historical art form, then it’s up to us amateur musicians to carry the torch and keep this music alive. And we’ll do it because we have an innate urge to create primal rhythms with our hands like our ancient forebears. We’ll do it for the sense of community we share with our fellow rock musicians. We’ll do it as an antidote to an increasingly automated, online and artificial lifestyle.


Mark Baxter (c) 2025