1.3 Diversification of American rock: Late 50s

With the runaway popular success of rock, the style began to influence other genres. Vocalized R&B became doo wop, for example, while uptempo, secularized gospel music became soul, and audiences flocked to see Appalachian-style folk bands playing rock-influenced pop version of their style. Young adults and teenagers across the country were playing in amateur rock bands, laying the roots for local scenes, garage rock and alternative rock. More immediately, places like Southern California produced their own varieties of rock, such as surf.

1.3.1 Surf Music

Main article: Surf music

The rockabilly sound reached the West coast and mutated into a wild, mostly instrumental sound called surf music. This style, exemplified by Dick Dale and The Surfaris, featured faster tempos, innovative percussion, and processed electric guitar sounds which would be highly influential upon future rock guitarists. Other West coast bands, notably the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean, would capitalize on the surf craze, slowing the tempos back down and adding harmony vocals to create the "California Sound".

2 1960s

2.1 British Invasion

American rock and roll had an impact across the globe, perhaps most intensely in Britain, where record collecting and trend-watching were in full bloom among the youth culture prior to the rock era, and where color barriers were less of an issue. Countless British youths listened to and were influenced by the R&B and rock and roll pioneers and began forming their own bands to play the new music with an intensity and drive seldom found in white American acts. This set the stage for Britain becoming a new center of rock and roll, leading to the British Invasion from 1958 to 1969.

By the early 1960s, bands from England were dominating the rock and roll scene world wide, giving rock and roll a new focus. First re-recording standard American tunes, these bands then infused their original rock and roll compositions with an industrial-class sensibility. Foremost among these was The Beatles, comprised of four youths from Liverpool who became the single most important and influential act in the history of rock and roll. The Beatles brought together a near-perfect mix of image, songwriting, and personality and, after initial success in the UK, were signed in the US and launched a large-scale stateside tour to ecstatic reaction, a phenomenon quickly dubbed Beatlemania.

Although they were not the first British band to come to America, The Beatles spearheaded the Invasion, triumphing in the U.S. on their first visit in 1964 (including historic appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show). In the wake of Beatlemania other British bands headed to the U.S., notably The Rolling Stones, who disdained the Beatles' clean-cut image and presented a darker, more aggressive image, The Animals and The Yardbirds. Throughout the early and mid-'60s Americans seemed to have an insatialble appetite for British rock; one of the groups who made a greater mark in the USA than on the UK was Herman's Hermits. Other British bands, including The Who and The Kinks, would have some success during this period but saved their peak of popularity for the second wave of British invasion in the late 1960s.

2.1.1 1960s Garage rock

Main article: Garage rock

The British Invasion spawned a wave of imitators in the U.S. and across the globe. Many of these bands were cruder than the bands they tried to emulate. Playing mainly to local audiences and recording cheaply, very few of these bands broke through to a higher level of success. This movement, later known as Garage Rock, gained a new audience when record labels started re-issuing compilations of the original singles; the best known of these is a series called Nuggets. Some of the better known band of this genre include The Sonics, ? & the Mysterians , and The Standells.

2.2 Folk-rock

Main article: Folk-rock

As the British Invasion led by The Beatles picked up steam, a homegrown American trend was making itself felt, led by Bob Dylan. By 1963 the 22 year old Dylan had assimilated a deep variety of regional American styles and was about to work some alchemy to create an entirely new genre, usually dubbed "folk-rock". From 1961 to mid 1963 Dylan had kept his distance from rock and roll even though his first musical forays back in high school owed more to early rockers like Buddy Holly and Little Richard than to any of the more obscure folk and blues artists he would later embrace. He and others on the new folk circuit tended to view The Beatles as "bubblegum", but admitted to a grudging respect for their originality and energetic style. In 1963 Dylan's release of the album The Times They Are A-Changin was a watershed event, bringing "relevant" and highly poetic lyrics to the edge of rock and roll. The Beatles listened to this album incessantly and moved away from the exclusive love themes of their work to date. In 1964 and 1965 Dylan threw off all pretense to roots purity and embraced the rock beat and electric instruments, climaxed by the release of the song " Like A Rolling Stone " which, at over six minutes, changed the landscape of hit radio and ushered in a period of intense experimentation on both sides of the Atlantic. Dylan would continue to surprise fans and critics with tour-de-force albums in many different styles, but, after 1964, rarely strayed far from the rock and roll framework. His influence on all rock sub-genres is incalculable, probably equaled only by The Beatles'. Among Dylan's most important disciples was Neil Young, whose lyrical inventiveness, wedded to an often wailing electric guitar attack, would presage grunge.

2.3 Psychedelic rock

3 1990s

Early grunge bands, particularly Mudhoney and Soundgarden, took much of their sound from early heavy metal and much of their approch from punk, though they eschewed punk's ambitions towards political and social commentary to proceed in a more purely nihilistic direction. Grunge remained a mostly local phenomenon until the breakthrough of Nirvana in 1991 with their album Nevermind. A slightly more melodic, more completely produced variation on their predecessors, Nirvana was an instant sensation worldwide and immediately made much of the competing music seem stale and dated by comparison.

Nirvana whetted the public's appetite for more direct, less polished rock music, and one place it was found was in the debut album from a hard-rocking West Coast band with ties to the grunge movement, a band named Pearl Jam. Pearl Jam took a somewhat more traditional rock approach than other grunge bands but shared their passion and rawness. Pearl Jam were a major commercial success from their debut but, beginning with their second album, refused to buy in to the traditional corporate promotion and marketing mechanisms of MTV and Ticketmaster (with whom they famously engaged in legal skirmishes over ticket service fees).

World rock

Argentina - Australia - Austria - Belgium - Canada - Chile - China - Colombia - Croatia - Denmark - Finland - France - Greece - Germany - Iceland - Ireland - Italy - Japan - Mexico - New Zealand - Norway - Peru - Philippines - Portugal - Russia - Serbia and Montenegro - Slovenia - South Africa - Sweden - Switzerland - Thailand - Turkey - Ukraine - United Kingdom - United States - Zambia

American music Rock music by nation

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