Music of the United Kingdom (1970s)
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British popular music in the 1970s built upon the new forms developed of music developed from blues rock towards the end of the 1960s, including folk rock and psychedelic rock. Several important and influential sub-genres were created in Britain in this period, by pursuing the limitations of rock music, including electric folk and glam rock, a process that reached its apogee in the development of progressive rock and one of the most enduring sub-genres in heavy metal music. Britain also began to be increasingly influenced by aspects of World music, including Jamaican and Indian music, resulting in new music scenes and sub-genres. In the middle years of the decade the influence of the pub rock and American punk rock movements led to the British intensification of punk, which swept away much of the existing landscape of popular music, replacing it with much more diverse new wave and post punk bands who mixed different forms of music and influences to dominate rock and pop music into the 1980s.
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[edit] Electric folk
Electric folk is the name given to the kind of folk rock pioneered in England at the end of the 1960s, by the band Fairport Convention.[1] Rather than mixing electric music with forms of American influenced Progressive folk, it used traditional English music as its basis.[2] It was kicked off by Fairport Convention's 1969 album Liege and Lief, but most significant in the 1970s, when it was taken up by groups such as Pentangle, Steeleye Span and the Albion Band.[2] It was rapidly adopted and developed in the surrounding Celtic cultures of Brittany, where it was pioneered by Alan Stivell and bands like Malicorne; in Ireland by groups such as Horslips; and also in Scotland, Wales and the Isle of Man and Cornwall, to produce Celtic rock and its derivatives.[3] It was also influential in those parts of the world with close cultural connections to Britain, such as the USA and Canada and gave rise to the sub-genre of Medieval folk rock and the fusion genres of folk punk and folk metal.[2] By the end of the 1970s the genre was in steep decline in popularity, as other forms of music, including punk and electronic began to be established.[2]
[edit] Jazz
The rise of British rock music had contributed to a decline in the popularity of jazz from the 1960s, although it continued to flourish as an innovative scene. Some of the most significant musicians to emerge during this period include John McLaughlin and Dave Holland (both of whom joined Miles Davis's group), pianists Keith Tippett and John Taylor, saxophonists Evan Parker, Mike Osborne, John Surman and Alan Skidmore, and the Canadian-born trumpeter Kenny Wheeler who had settled in Britain.[4][5] In the 1970s a notable development was the creation of various British jazz fusion bands like Soft Machine, Nucleus, Colosseum, If, Henry Cow, Centipede, National Health and Ginger Baker's Air Force, making it a major influence on progressive rock music.[6]
[edit] Progressive rock
Progressive or prog rock developed out of late 1960s blues rock and psychedelic rock. Dominated by British bands it was part of an attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility.[7] Progressive rock bands attempted to push the technical and compositional boundaries of rock by going beyond the standard verse-chorus-based song structures. The arrangements often incorporated elements drawn from classical, jazz, and world music. Instrumentals were common, while songs with lyrics were sometimes conceptual, abstract, or based in fantasy. Progressive rock bands sometimes used "concept albums that made unified statements, usually telling an epic story or tackling a grand overarching theme."[7] King Crimson have been seen as the band who established the concept of progressive rock". The term was applied to the music of bands such as Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Soft Machine, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer.[7] It reached its peak of popularity in the mid 1970s, but had mixed critical acclaim and the punk movement can be seen as a reaction against its musicality and perceived pomposity.
[edit] Heavy metal
Heavy metal developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in England and the United States.[8] With roots in blues-rock and psychedelic rock, the bands that created heavy metal developed a thick, powerful sound, characterized by highly amplified distortion, extended guitar solos, emphatic beats, and overall loudness. Heavy metal lyrics and performance styles are generally associated with masculinity and machismo.[9] Early heavy metal bands such as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple attracted large audiences, though they were often critically reviled, a status common throughout the history of the genre. In the mid-1970s, Judas Priest helped spur the genre's evolution by discarding much of its blues influence; Motörhead introduced a punk rock sensibility and an increasing emphasis on speed. Bands in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal such as Iron Maiden followed in a similar vein. Before the end of the decade, heavy metal had attracted a worldwide following of fans known as "metalheads" or "headbangers". Unlike progressive rock, heavy metal (already a minority sub-culture) was able to survive the rise of punk and electronic music intact.
[edit] Glam rock
Glam or glitter rock developed in the UK in the post-hippie early 1970s. It was characterised by outrageous clothes, makeup, hairstyles, and platform-soled boots.[10] The flamboyant lyrics, costumes, and visual styles of glam performers were a campy, playing with categories of sexuality in a theatrical blend of nostalgic references to science fiction and old movies, all over a guitar-driven hard rock sound.[11] Pioneers of the genre included David Bowie, Roxy Music, Mott the Hoople, Marc Bolan and T.Rex.[11] These, and many other acts straddled the divide between pop and rock music, managing to maintain a level of respectability with rock audiences, while enjoying success in the singles chart, including Queen and Elton John. Other performers aimed much more directly for the popular music market, where they were the dominant groups of their era, including and Slade and Sweet.[11] The glitter image was pushed to its limits by Gary Glitter and The Glitter Band. Largely confined to the British, glam rock peaked during the mid 1970s, before it disappeared in the face of punk rock and new wave trends.[11]
[edit] Pop music
The early 1970s were probably the decade when British pop music was most dependent on the group format, with pop acts, like rock bands, playing guitars and drums, with occasional additions of keyboard or orchestration. Some of these groups were in some sense "manufactured", but many were competent musicians, playing on their own recordings and writing their own material. In addition to the glam and glitter rock bands who enjoyed considerable success in the early 1970s some of the technically more impressive groups who enjoyed number one hits in the UK were 10cc, Status Quo and Mungo Jerry. Aiming much more for the teen market, partly in response to the Osmonds were The Rubettes and The Bay City Rollers.[12] Largely vocal-based groups included the New Seekers, Brotherhood of Man, the last of these designed as a British answer to ABBA.[13] Individuals who enjoyed successful pop careers in this period included Gilbert O'Sullivan, David Essex Leo Sayer and Rod Stewart.[14] In addition there were the rock and roll revivalists Showaddywaddy and Alvin Stardust.[15] This pattern changed radically in the late 1970s as a result of the impact of punk. The first wave of Punk in itself, even when not banned from the charts, was not overwhelming, but by the end of the decade the British pop music industry was becoming dominated by New Wave acts like the Boomtown Rats and Ian Dury and the Blockheads.[14]
[edit] Jamaican music
Jamaican ska, rocksteady and reggae had been introduced to the United Kingdom in the 1960s, and the genres became especially popular with mods, skinheads and suedeheads.[16] The 1970s saw the first major flowering of British reggae with bands such as The Cimarons, Aswad and Matumbi. Jamaican music began to influence British pop music, punk rock and the 2 Tone genre with the rise of the (often interracial) bands, such as The Specials, Madness, The Selecter and The Beat.[17] Many of these Jamaican-influenced UK bands (such as UB40) adopted pop styles to appeal to mainstream audiences, but some UK reggae bands (such as Steel Pulse) played songs with more confrontational socio-political lyrics.[18] The 1970s also saw the rise of dub poetry, exemplified by Linton Kwesi Johnson, Sister Netifa and Benjamin Zephaniah. The reggae subgenre lovers rock originated in the UK in the 1970s, and the Louisa Marks song "Caught You in a Lie" helped popularize the genre.[19]
[edit] Pub rock
Pub rock was a short-lived trend that left a lasting influence on the British music scene, especially in punk rock. It was a back-to-basics movement that reacted against the glittery glam rock of David Bowie and Gary Glitter, and peaked in the mid 1970s. Pub rock developed in large north London pubs.[20] and is said to have begun in May 1971 with Eggs over Easy, an American band, playing in the Tally Ho! in Kentish Town. A group of musicians who had been playing in blues and R&B bands during the 1960s and early 70s soon formed influential bands like Brinsley Schwarz, Ducks Deluxe and Bees Make Honey. Brinsley Schwarz was probably the most influential group, achieving some mainstream success both in the UK and in the States.[21] The second wave of pub rock included Kilburn and the High Roads, Ace and Chilli Willi & The Red Hot Peppers; these were followed by the third and final wave of pub rock, including Dr. Feelgood, The Winkies and Sniff 'n' the Tears. Several pub rock musicians joined the new wave acts such as Graham Parker's backing band, The Rumour, Elvis Costello & the Attractions and even The Clash.[22]
[edit] Punk rock
Punk rock developed between 1974 and 1976, originally in the United States, where it was rooted in garage rock, and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music. The first punk band is usually thought to be the Ramones from 1976. This was taken up in Britain by bands also influenced by the pub rock scene, like the Sex Pistols and The Clash, particularly in London, who became the vanguard of a new musical and cultural movement, blending simple aggressive sounds and lyrics with clothing styles and a variety of anti-authoritarian ideologies. Punk rock bands eschewed the perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock. They created fast, hard-edged music, typically with short songs, stripped-down instrumentation, and often political, anti-establishment lyrics. Punk embraced a DIY (do it yourself) ethic, with many bands self-producing their recordings and distributing them through informal channels. 1977 saw punk rock spreading around the world, and it became a major international cultural phenomenon. However, by 1978, the initial impulse had subsided and punk had morphed into the wider and more diverse new wave and post punk movements.
[edit] Early new wave
As the initial punk impulse began to subside, with the major punk bands either disbanding or taking on new influences, the term new wave began to be used to describe particularly British bands that emerged in the later 1970s with mainstream appeal. These included pop bands like XTC, Squeeze and Nick Lowe, the electronic rock of Gary Numan as well as songwriters like Elvis Costello, rock & roll influenced bands like the Pretenders, the reggae influenced music of bands like The Police, as well as bands of the ska revival like The Specials and Madness.[23] By the end of the decade many of these bands, most obviously the Police, were beginning to make an impact in American and world markets.
[edit] Post punk
Beside the development of mainstream new wave, there were also less commercial, darker and sub-culture acts, often classified as post punk. Like new wave they incorporated a range of influences, including electronic music, Jamaican dub music (specifically in bass guitar), and American funk. Examples of post-punk outfits include The Sound, Orange Juice, The Psychedelic Furs, Devo, The Birthday Party, The Fall, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Lords of the New Church, Joy Division, New Order, Killing Joke, Echo & the Bunnymen, The Cure, Bauhaus, Magazine, Wire, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Talking Heads, and Tubeway Army.[24] Post punk would be a major element in the creation of the alternative rock and gothic rock genres.
[edit] Industrial music
Industrial music was an experimental music style, often including electronic music, that drew on transgressive and provocative themes. The term was coined in the mid-1970s to describe Industrial Records artists. It blended avant-garde electronics experiments (including tape music, musique concrète, white noise, synthesizers, sequencers) and a punk sensibility.[25] The first industrial artists experimented with noise and controversial topics. Their production was not limited to music, but included mail art, performance art, installation pieces and other art forms.[26] Prominent industrial musicians include the Sheffield based groups Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire.[26] While the term was initially self-applied by a small coterie of groups and individuals associated with Industrial Records, it broadened to include artists influenced by the original movement or using an "industrial" aesthetic.[27]
[edit] Notes
- ^ M. Brocken, The British Folk Revival, 1944-2002 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003).
- ^ a b c d B. Sweers, Electric Folk: The Changing Face of English Traditional Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
- ^ J. S. Sawyers, Celtic Music: A Complete Guide (Cambridge MA: Da Capo Press, 2001), pp. 1-12.
- ^ W. Kaufman, H. Slettedahl Macpherson, Britain and the Americas: culture, politics, and history (ABC-CLIO, 2005), pp. 504-5.
- ^ A. Blake, The land without music: music, culture and society in twentieth-century Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), p. 149.
- ^ E. Macan, Rocking the classics: English progressive rock and the counterculture (Oxford: Oxford University Press US, 1997), p. 132.
- ^ a b c "Prog-Rock/Art Rock". AllMusic. AllMusic. 2007. http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=77:374. Retrieved on 2007-12-04.
- ^ D., Weinstein, Heavy Metal: The Music and its Culture (Da Capo, 2000). p. 14.
- ^ Fast (2005), pp. 89–91; Weinstein (2000), pp. 7, 8, 23, 36, 103, 104
- ^ "Glam Rock". Encarta. http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_561509274/glam_rock.html. Retrieved on 2008-12-21.
- ^ a b c d "Glam rock", All music guides, http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=77:388, retrieved 26/06/09.
- ^ B. Longhurst, Popular Music and Society (Wiley-Blackwell, 1995), p. 245.
- ^ E. Vincentelli, ABBA Gold (Continuum, 2004), p. 50.
- ^ a b P. Gambaccini, T. Rice and J. Rice, British Hit Singles (6th edn., 1985), pp. 335-7.
- ^ S. Brown, Marketing: the Retro Revolution (SAGE, 2001), p. 131.
- ^ P. Childs and M. Storry, Encyclopedia of Contemporary British Culture (Taylor & Francis, 1999), p. 496.
- ^ W. Kaufman and H. S. Macpherson, Britain and the Americas: culture, politics, and history (ABC-CLIO, 2005), p. 818.
- ^ K. Walker, Dubwise: Reasoning From the Reggae Underground (Insomniac Press, 2005), p. 205.
- ^ A. Donnell, Companion to contemporary Black British culture (London: Taylor & Francis, 2002), p. 185.
- ^ NME article on Pub Rock by Roy Carr published 29 October 1977, http://www.punk77.co.uk/punkhistory/pub_rock.htm, retrieved 14/05/09.
- ^ L. D. Smith, Elvis Costello, Joni Mitchell, and the Torch Song Tradition (Greenwood, 2004), p. 132.
- ^ "Pub rock", All Music guides, http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=77:2627, retrieved 27/03/09.
- ^ "New wave", All Music Guides, http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=77:381, retrieved 26/06/09.
- ^ "Post punk", 'All music, http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=77:2636, retrieved 26/06/09.
- ^ "Industrial", Allmusic. [1] Access date: May 29, 2009.
- ^ a b V.Vale. Re/Search #6/7: Industrial Culture Handbook, 1983.
- ^ P. Scaruffi, A History of Rock Music: 1951-2000 ( iUniverse, 2003), pp. 203-4.
