“Everyone knows Rock & Roll attained perfection in 1974. It’s a scientific fact.”
I love that line from the Simpsons. When Homer uttered those words, it may have just been some simple creative humor on the part of the writers, but I don’t think it’s too far from the truth. I’m an 80s rock guy. Always will be. However, when you consider that 1974 gave us such great rock albums such as Rush’s first album aptly titled Rush, Queen’s Queen II AND Sheer Heart Attack, Aerosmith’s Get Your Wings, The Rolling Stones’ It’s Only Rock and Roll But I Like It, in addition to many others, for us rock n’ rollers you could make this case that this year was a major turning point in rock music and signaled what was to come in the rest of the 70s as well as the 80s.
Ok, so yeah, perfection is subjective … but 1974 was a hell of a good year.
The decade of the 70s in of itself was a banner time for many genres of music, including rock and roll. But before I blabber on about my favorite decade of rock, I want to walk through the evolution that took place in 70s rock and roll as I see it.
Mashin’ It Up
Steely Dan and Doobie Brothers guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter summarized rock in the 1970s pretty succinctly during an interview for the 1995 television series The History of Rock n’ Roll:
“There had been enough time in the Rock n’ Roll timeline to be able to draw from that. There had been enough Rock n’ Roll, the three-chord guys. There was the Rhythm n’ Blues and the Blues of the 40s and 50s. There was the Jazz era. There had been enough Rockabilly. There had been enough Country Music. So now you had the wellspring, you can draw from a lot of different things, and a lot of the bands in the 70s did that.”
This well spring led to a cross-pollination of different styles which in turn led to new sub-genres found throughout rock music during the 70s. As you listen to Clapton, The Eagles, Aerosmith, Queen, etc from the 70s those sounds and styles Skunk references become immediately identifiable by those bands and many others.
Less Bluer Blues
Blues rock saw a marked evolution in the 70s, incorporating the heavier and louder stylings initially brought on by the late 1960s music of Led Zeppelin and Cream. After all, Clapton was arguably the first to give us the sound of the Les Paul-meets-cranked-Marshall on the Beano album, later followed by Jimmy Page with “Heartbreaker” on Led Zeppelin II.
The boogie-woogie and swing from blues collided with louder and louder guitars in bands such as ZZ Top (“Jesus Just Left Chicago”), Pat Travers (“Boom Boom (Out Go The Lights)”), and Ram Jam (“Black Betty”), while other bands continued to expand on the evolution that started with Cream, Led Zeppelin and Ten Years After, such as Aerosmith, Foghat and Robin Trower.
Southern rock was also popularized by groups such as The Allman Brothers Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd. The style was marked by its rock and roll, blues, country music and classic R&B influences mixed with styles such as jazz and folk music. The former of these two last genres is reflected in the improvisational nature of the music, with jams that can stretch for hours at a time. I’ve been to my fair share of Allman Brothers shows in the 90s and can attest to this personally. lol
The latter influence is reflected in the lyrical content, eschewing (look at that … I know words! haha) the subject of girls and cars of classic rock and roll for more reflective and storytelling lyrics such as “Simple Man.” Needless to say, I like the words of classic rock a tad bit better. lol
Pop Rock (no not the candy)
A large amount of rock music could be classified more as pop music (at least what pop was perceived to be at the time), continuations of what began with the Beatles and other 1960s groups, pushing the limits of songcraft beyond three chords and some lyrics. For instance, if we look at Fleetwood Mac’s two most significant records from that decade (1975’s Fleetwood Mac and 1977’s Rumours), the band that initially cut its teeth making seminal British blues rock under Peter Green’s guitar and songwriting made a complete 180-degree turn after the arrival of Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks, who both came from a more folk-rock background. The results were poppier melodies and arrangements with more sophisticated and biographical lyrics. Rumours was mostly Buckingham and Nicks trading barbs at each other between other songs. A tad bit different than Taylor Swift who writes songs about someone after she breaks up with them. Nicks wrote them about Lindsay and made Buckingham sing them to her. Classic!!!
Elements of theatrics were also sneaking into the genre, from the stage shows of Alice Cooper to the spectacles of Kiss, setting these acts apart from many of their counterparts who had just gotten on stage and played.
In my opinion, you can draw a straight line from artists like these to many of the 80s rock bands what were more theatrical, glam and wanted to put on a show to entertain.
Western Classical Music was another infiltrating style that crept into 1970s rock. I when I say western I don’t cowboys and Indians. lol The exquisite composition style of western classical music served many bands looking for a bigger sound beyond the bluesy trappings of music past. While it drew from more classic music on occasion it was still more pop then heavy in many cases. And when it came to bands like Queen there were certainly some theatrics as well. Considering the genre’s influences on artists such as Freddie Mercury and Tom Scholz, you don’t need to go far beyond bands like Queen or Boston to hear the influence.
The most evident are the operatic sections of “Bohemian Rhapsody” (though the tragic aspects of the verses could easily fit in), regaling the protagonist’s sad tale in a backdrop of voices that would fit in easily with an operatic chorus.
Listen to “Foreplay” by Boston to see another obvious example. The opening of “Long Time” sounds like Bach if Bach composed some epic rock number.
These aspects were taken wwwaaayyy further than simple songs by those in the progressive rock set, going for long musical themes, full-storied concept albums, and more complex harmonic structures and melodies. Check out the catalogues of Yes, Genesis and Rush for some choice examples.
Not that anyone asked (I’m sarcastic, what can I say?) but Rush was a real game changer for me musically. I didn’t start listening to them until the 80s but I love listening back on their music from the 70s (I was 2 when Rush’s first album came out) and hearing how it drew from other musical styles and evolved all the way through their last album, Clockwork Angels, in 2012.
A Heavier Metal
The heavy rock that began with bands such as Led Zeppelin and The Who continued to evolve during the 1970s, keeping the blues influence but melding it with elements of classical music and fantastic themes in their lyrics. I feel like Black Sabbath in 1970 was the first one to really take it to the next level. Other great examples of this were albums by Deep Purple (Machine Head), Rainbow (particularly the songs “Man On The Silver Mountain” and “Gates of Babylon”) and the Scorpions (“Sails Of Charon”)
Rebellion!
Most musicians were on board with the direction, complexity and pomp that a lot of rock music was taking. Some musicians though wanted to go against the grain and get “back to basics” in music and rock n’ roll attitude. This need gave birth to punk rock, with bands like The Clash, The Sex Pistols and the Ramones leading the fold—short songs with intensity at 11 and a DILLIGAF attitude. The irony is that the genre would influence some more sophisticated genres, and a lot of what happened in the 90s in my opinion, but that’s for a later time.
While it may not be perfect and capture every details hopefully I gave you slight tasty taste of how rock evolved in the 1970s. There is A LOT to expound on during the 70s and I can (and will at some point) go deeper into other genres, such as glam rock, reggae, funk rock, country rock, and singer-songwriter music, which found their audience during that decade. For now, cue up some of your favorite 70s records and try to spot the influences I mentioned above and see how some of your favorite artists took rock music to brave new directions.