This course, part 2 of a 2-course sequence, examines the history of rock, primarily as it unfolded in the United States, from the early 1970s to the early 1990s. This course covers the music of Led Zeppelin, the Allman Brothers, Carole King, Bob Marley, the Sex Pistols, Donna Summer, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince, Metallica, Run-DMC, and Nirvana, and many more artists, with an emphasis both on cultural context and on the music itself. We will also explore how developments in the music business and in technology helped shape the ways in which styles developed. Emerging out of the experimental and ambitious years of late-60s psychedelia, rock splintered into a variety of styles in the 1970s as the music business continued to expand. By the end of the decade, punk and disco had challenged the excesses of the hippie aesthetic, as rock became more commercially streamlined and radio friendly. The emergence and rise of MTV transformed pop music and propelled the careers of Michael jackson and Madonna, while heavy metal and hip hop dominated the late 1980s. Nirvana leads alt-rock's return to simplicity in the early 1990s.
Theatrical Rock
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Del curso dictado por University of Rochester
History of Rock, Part Two
231 calificaciones
De la lección
The Growing Rock Monster (1970-77)
A series of styles continue to develop the combinations of late-1960s psychedelia: blues-rock, southern rock, progressive rock, jazz-rock, theatrical rock, country rock, and singer-songwriters. Rock becomes increasingly ambitious. [Read Chapter 8 and work through listening guides for that chapter, viewing dedicated video.]
Conoce a los instructores
John CovachProfessor of Music and Director
Institute for Popular Music
Theatrical rock in the early 1970's. Exactly exactly what does theatrical rock
mean? some people might want to refer to this
music as glam rock, but glam was a was a style that really only ever really caught
fire in the UK. In this country, we didn't really have a
glam movement like you had in the mid-70's in, in the UK.
When I say theatrical rock, it will include some of that music.
David Bowie, especially. But what I mean by theatrical music,
theatrical rock, is music that was, rock music that was conceived primarily for
its theatrical production, or which relied for in, in an important way, for
your understanding it, on seeing the theatrical production.
Now, when we get into the 80's, we'll start to talk about music videos and
important ways in which songs and things were written.
Michael Jackson for example, I'm thinking about them the songs being thought of in
terms of what they would look like when the video was done.
So to a certain extent, the visual the video element is dictating the way the
music goes. Well this this could be seen as a kind of
early instance of that where why why we're grouping these groups together is
that the the albums came with elaborate. Stage shows, that, that often involved
the performers taking on alternate guises that is playing a role of various kinds
of fictional characters. Of course this has its roots in the
Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Heart Club band right?
I mean they were, they were pretending to be Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Heart Club
band and dressed up that way on the album cover.
and of course Jim Morrison with The Doors.
his idea of being a lizard king and this, this whole thing, you know, sort of
adopting a kind of a stage persona. And in this case makeup and costumes were
often used on stage as part of the as part of what they did.
We talked a little bit about Peter Gabriel and The Lamb Lies Down on
Broadway in that regard, so maybe to a certain extent we should, we should
include that element of genesis music in this discussion as well.
these shows were designed now, not to play in small theaters, but to play in
arenas. So you had to do a show that was
impressive if people were coming into like a basketball arena, you know, or a
stadium or something. And so it meant everything got bigger and
this in many ways sort of. Forced the forced the development of a
lot of things in the, in the concert, rock concert industry that hadn't been
there before. Let's turn first to David Bowie, although
actually his success, Bowie's success in this country, in the United States at
least, is a little bit later. Than than some of the other artists that
we might consider, but Bowie is an important an important figure in this
regard. had an early hit in the UK with the song
"Space Oddity" 1969. A song that was roughly influenced by
Stanley Cooper's 2001 a space oddity film, which was a space odyssey film that
was you know very popular in the late 1960's.
So "Space Oddity" wasn't a hit in this country until 1973 when it was
re-released. he's one of the most important of the
many British glam stars with androgynous images.
That is an image that sort of challenges gender identity.
David Bowie, does he look like a girl? Does it matter?
Is he a boy? This kind of thing.
This androgyny thing starts to sort of. become more important in the 70's.
And so we can see that with Zowie, with David Bowie and his his important
character of Ziggy Stardust. If you look at Ziggy Stardust and the
makeup and the way he sort of presented himself as that character.
You can see that it's a fairly androgynous character.
you, you, the question of gender there is very much sort of put in the forefront,
and I think that's part of what was sort of shocking and ambitious about what,
what Bowie was doing there. later stars in the 80's, for example, who
will challenge gender and sexual role kinds of things in an aggressive kind of
way would be somebody like Madonna. Who, in many ways, in her career in the
80's, is reproducing a lot of what Bowie was doing in, in the 1970's.
the big album, one of the, the big album for this character, The Rise and Fall of
Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars from 1972.
a concept album about an artist who, you know of course, the rise and fall of
Ziggy Stardust rock hero sounds an awful lot like the story of The Wall from 1979,
but remembering this is 1972. The big radio hit from that song was
Suffragette City which interestingly, Bowie had offered to Mott the Hoople
another British band which he was, was friends with.
And they, they turned down Suffragette City, but took his track, All the Young
Dudes, which became a hit for Mott the Hoople.
this album, The rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars went
to number five in the UK. But only to number 75 in this country in
1973. So while it was on the radio all the
time, Bowie was not yet enjoying big success in the United States.
Well, the next couple of records sort of fixed that.
Aladdin Sane, from 1973 went to number 17 here.
Diamond Dogs from 1974 went to number five.
And then Young Americans. From 1975 which which went to number nine
but had the number one hit on it, Fame in a style that Bowie was now calling
plastic soul. So David Bowie a very important figure in
terms of the, the, the show. You had to see the Bowie show to really
get all of what, we didn't get it all from just listening to the record.
You had to see the show. Remember these were the days before music
video. So the only way to see the show was to go
to the show. You couldn't watch it very much on TV and
you certainly couldn't see a film of it and there was no way to get a video
because there wasn't yet video that people could get.
Another important artist in this in this category is Alice Cooper coming
originally out of Detroit, although spending some time in the southwest and
somehow landing in L.A. the group is characterized by these sort
of gruesome or at least sort of gothic. Stage shows which end with the lead
singer Alice Cooper's death at the end. Each tour was kind of how do we kill
Alice Cooper at the end of the show. On one tour he would be hanged, on
another tour he would have his head chopped off.
On another tour he would go into the electric chair.
I think eventually they sort of ran out of ways to kill Alice Cooper at the end.
But just the staging of Alice Cooper going to the guillotine, putting him
down, having the blade come down. You know, having it sort of, creating an
effect that there was a head sort of rolling across the stage.
These were kinds of things that nobody had ever seen at a rock concert before.
And early on Alice Cooper was a crazy band of sort of dangerous desperadoes.
I mean, later with albums like Welcome To My Nightmare, a number five album in
1975, Alice Cooper almost becomes a bit campy and sort of self-satire, having
people like Vincent Price sort of doing narratives, narrations and things like
that and so on. But on those early records Alice Cooper.
These were some pretty scary guys. the first couple of records were produced
by Frank Zappa, and Alice Cooper the, the singer, and sort of leader of the group
very much under the influence of Jim Morrison and this sort of darker side of
psychedelia. The breakthrough album for them was from
1971, Love It To Death. And the song I'm Eighteen, number 21
tune, that was released at the end of 1970, then it became a hit in 1971.
They follow it up, with the Killer album, number 21 in 1971, featuring the song Be
My Lover, which asks the musical question.
Why is the singer's name Alice? And then, the, the big hit for them was
School's Out from 1972 at number two album.
And the title track School's Out going to number seven and making them into big
rock stars. Alice Cooper and David Bowie together
sort of raising the bar by the mid 1970's of of what it was to do a rock show.
Together I I I would say also with Genesis and the lamb lies down on
broadway and some of what Pink Floyd was doing at their live shows with the
various kinds of light displays and things like that that they had done.
Remembering that a certain amount of this light display stuff goes back to
psychedelia remember, and the sort of psychedelic shows and light shows that
went there. Well, when it comes to sort of theatrical
display, there was no group that really took that idea and ran with it quite like
Kiss. This was a band who decided if you were
going to come to their show, it was one thing For Alice Copper to scare you with
a guillotine or a hanging or an electric chair you know or for David Bowie to
shock you with his androgyny and sort of European stylishness and all this kind of
thing. But Kiss, they were going to amaze you
with the pyrotechnics. There were going to be explosions and
spitting flames and all kinds of things were going to happen and these guys
really pedaled to the metal with this kind of thing.
They all adopted characters. Very heavy makeup.
I'm sure that you have seen it. If you haven't, just Google it, or
whoever your favorite search engine is, Bing, whatever.
But look it up on the internet and you'll see it.
They're kind of a cross between Alice Cooper And the Monkees [LAUGH].
Alice Cooper in the sense of the makeup and the whole sort of that end of it.
I mean, you know, for a long time you never knew what, what the guys from Kiss
looked like behind the makeup, there's, they would go around, you know.
With with masks on the so they couldn't be recognized you know without the makeup
on. And the monkees because they were four
individual characters, you know sort of like the early Beatles.
You could identify with each of those. These bombastic stage shows as I say with
lights, flames, explosions, costumes, spitting blood.
Gene Simmons with that big old tongue of his.
It was just, just, just like a a big sort of scary cartoon with lots of rock and
roll fun. What's interesting about these guys, from
my perspective, and from the perspective of, of rock music.
Is that, the first major success comes via a live album.
So they had released three studio albums, and had some success with it.
But the other fourth album was a live album, which they called.
Alive! 1975 went to number nine and had the song
"Rock and Roll All Nite and Party Every Day that song went to number 12, and that
was really what broke these guys, especially on American radio, was the
idea of a live album. Which comes back to this idea of, to
really understand what Kiss was about, you had to see them.
To just listen to the records on stage, or listen to the records sort of, you
know, at home, and look at the record cover, wasn't really capturing the entire
experience. Now, contrast that, say, with a Led
Zeppelin record. Could you listen to Led Zeppelin Four and
really get it all without seeing a Led Zeppelin performance?
The answer is yeah, probably. Could you listen to Yes Close to the
Edge? Yeah, probably.
No problem there. But a Kiss record you really, an Alice
Cooper concert, David Bowie, you really had to sort of be there.
the thing about Kiss is they really exploited the marketing.
They had a feature film, and action figures, and they just, they really sort
of went for it and all the possible a domains.
now as I said before, these acts are defined by their emphasis on stage
production. And I've said that it was important to
really understand their music to know what the stage production was.
But if you listen to these acts without the stage production there, if you just
listen to the records, do they really constitute a consistent style?
Well, that, that's a kind of an, an interesting question.
I would say in the case of Kiss and Alice Cooper, you'd really think of them as
kind of a, Kiss would be more of a kind of blueish based rock band.
Alice Cooper might be quasi-progressive rock.
Maybe in the same sense as The Who or Pink Floyd in some kinds of ways.
David Bowie, what would be much more sort of.
I don't know, the singer songwriter era sort of you know mainstream pop kind of
orientated but what pulls them together is the emphasis on the theatrical
production. Which as I said would be a pre-cursor to
the to the focus on video that we'll talk about in the 80's with the rise of MTV.
But let's not get head of our story. Let's move on to the singer songwriters.
In the early 1970's.
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