Rock begins in the late-1940s collision of country, gospel, and electrified blues — Muddy Waters going from Mississippi to Chicago in 1943 with an acoustic guitar; by 1948 he had a Fender amp, a Telecaster, and a record contract with Chess.
Sun Studio in Memphis, run by Sam Phillips, cut Jackie Brenston's Rocket 88 in 1951 — often called the first rock and roll record. Phillips signed Elvis Presley in 1954. Chuck Berry recorded "Maybellene" for Chess in 1955. Bo Diddley invented his namesake beat the same year. Little Richard cut "Tutti Frutti" in New Orleans that fall. The genre was named, marketed, and on the radio by 1956.
The Beatles played their first U.S. show on the Ed Sullivan Show, February 9, 1964 — 73 million viewers. Within a year the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Who, and the Yardbirds were all on American charts. The British acts had grown up listening to imported Chess, Sun, and Stax records that Black American audiences had moved past; they sold the music back across the Atlantic in white packaging, and made the LP — not the single — the central unit of pop ambition. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) was the proof.
Revolver · Sgt. Pepper · The White Album · Abbey Road
Beggars Banquet · Let It Bleed · Sticky Fingers · Exile on Main St.
My Generation · Tommy · Who's Next · Quadrophenia
Village Green Preservation Society (1968)
By 1969 the Yardbirds had broken up and produced three of rock's defining guitarists — Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page. Page formed Led Zeppelin in October 1968. Tony Iommi, after losing two fingertips in a sheet-metal accident, tuned down and formed Black Sabbath in Birmingham the same year.
Hard rock split into branches: blues-rock (Zeppelin, Free, Bad Company), proto-metal (Sabbath, Deep Purple), American arena rock (Aerosmith, Van Halen), and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal — Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Motörhead — which fed straight into thrash (Metallica's Master of Puppets, 1986; Slayer's Reign in Blood, 1986).
1976. The Ramones open for the Sex Pistols at Manchester's Lesser Free Trade Hall in July; the audience includes future members of Joy Division, the Smiths, the Buzzcocks, and the Fall. The Clash form weeks later. CBGB's in the Bowery has been hosting Television, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, and Blondie since 1974. Never Mind the Bollocks (1977). The Clash (1977). Marquee Moon (1977). Horses (1975). The records cost £1,000 to make and changed everything.
By 1980 hardcore had pushed the tempos faster — Black Flag in LA, Minor Threat in DC, Bad Brains from DC via Jamaica via reggae. Ian MacKaye's "straight edge" emerges as a song title; the scene names itself after it.
Post-punk took punk's anti-virtuosity and rebuilt it into something experimental. Joy Division (Manchester, 1976–80) channeled gothic dread into Unknown Pleasures (1979). Wire made twelve-track, fifteen-minute albums of clipped songs. Gang of Four applied Marxist theory and James Brown's rhythm guitar to the same problem. The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Public Image Ltd. — Lydon's post-Pistols project — extended the language toward dub, electronics, and the clatter of Metal Box (1979).
In New York the no-wave scene (DNA, Mars, Lydia Lunch, James Chance) was even more extreme. Brian Eno produced No New York (1978) as a snapshot.
By the mid-1980s "college rock" had its own infrastructure: SST Records (Black Flag, Hüsker Dü, Sonic Youth, the Minutemen), Touch and Go, Sub Pop. R.E.M. emerged from Athens, Georgia. The Pixies' Surfer Rosa (1988) and Doolittle (1989) rewrote loud-quiet-loud dynamics — and were the records Kurt Cobain admitted he was trying to copy.
Sub Pop's Seattle catalog (Mudhoney, Soundgarden, the early Nirvana) became "grunge" in the trade press. Nevermind (September 1991) sold 30 million. Smells Like Teen Spirit displaced Michael Jackson at #1 in January 1992. In Utero (1993). Cobain shot himself April 5, 1994. The decade kept going — Pearl Jam, Hole, Smashing Pumpkins, Alice in Chains — but the moment had passed.
"Indie" stops meaning "small label" and starts meaning a sound: Pavement, Guided by Voices, Built to Spill, Modest Mouse. In the UK: Belle & Sebastian, Pulp, Blur, Radiohead. Radiohead's OK Computer (1997) and Kid A (2000) did to rock what Miles had done to jazz with Bitches Brew — they kept the name and broke the form. The 2000s revival (the Strokes, the White Stripes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, the Arctic Monkeys). The post-2010 move toward Big Thief, Phoebe Bridgers, Black Country, New Road.
Most rock songs you know are built from the same parts: verse · chorus · verse · chorus · bridge · chorus, two or three guitars, bass, drums, three or four chords, hooks under three minutes. The trick is in the ratio of repetition to surprise.
November 18, 1993, Sony Studios, New York. Cobain in a green cardigan; the Meat Puppets join for three tunes; the set ends with a leveling cover of Lead Belly's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night."