The Seventies: Rock's Classic Age

I was a child of the 80's (graduated HS in '85) and felt like I was born in the wrong decade :-). All of my strong musical interests were 60's and 70's bands - Rush, Zeppelin, Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, The Who. I was completely smitten with what became known as progressive rock. Even when I discovered jazz, it was fusion from the 70's (Return to Forever, Jean Luc Ponty, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Al DiMeola, etc.)...could it get any more 70's :-). How I would have loved to have seen some of those bands live back in their hayday of the 70's!

As I grew older, my musical tastes expanded and the 80's and 90's didn't seem quite as musically barren as I thought during the time. Regardless, the 60's and 70's gave us some rock guitar classics that just cannot be avoided!

Good musical taste, Maggior. ;)

Thanks Wildwoman :-). Now if I could only play like those guys...

What's amazing to me is how this music stands the test of time...and not just with those of us who were alive when it was released.

My daughter is 9 and has typical pre-teen musical taste featuring many flavors-of-the-month and boy bands. She also likes to listen to Led Zeppelin. She is probably the only person on earth that doesn't groan when I play Stairway to heaven. She actually likes it and proudly declares to her friends that she likes the song and daddy can play it :-).

She is just starting to learn guitar supplementing her 3 years of piano, so that may have something to do with it too.

When music appeals to somebody born almost 35 years later, that's some pretty amazing staying power. Ya think in 2045 young kids will be diggin' Justin Beiber or Miley Cyrus? I'm gonna guess not.

In fairness though, the 70's had their fair share of easily forgettable teenie bopper artists - anybody remember Lief Garrett? Sean Cassidy? Eeeeeeh! Must not think too hard and think of any more!! :-). And no, I did NOT own any of these records.

I'm guessing if you didn't have those records, then you didn't have the posters either. ;-)

:-)

No, I most certainly did not!! Though I knew people that had them...how do I un-remember that!!! Ugh, thanks Neal! :-)

In my bedroom at home, I had a Wings Over America poster on my door (which is timely given the new remaster Paul just released) and a Police poster. In college, I graduated to an awesome Rush poster.

Do you still have any of those old posters, Maggior? Namely, the Rush poster. I had a poster of the Frampton Comes Alive album cover hanging on the ceiling over my bed. It was a promo poster I talked National Record Mart into giving me out of their storefront window. It was huge! Wish I’d have kept it like I did some of the band merch from that time. Leif Garrett, Shaun Cassidy, Bobby Sherman, Donny Osmond… Yeah. P.S. My son is a Pink Floyd fanatic! Love that your daughter knows "Stairway."

Originally Posted by: wildwoman1313Do you still have any of those old posters, Maggior? Namely, the Rush poster. I had a poster of the Frampton Comes Alive album cover hanging on the ceiling over my bed. It was a promo poster I talked National Record Mart into giving me out of their storefront window. It was huge! Wish I’d have kept it like I did some of the band merch from that time. Leif Garrett, Shaun Cassidy, Bobby Sherman, Donny Osmond… Yeah. P.S. My son is a Pink Floyd fanatic! Love that your daughter knows "Stairway."

I have a bunch of stuff in a closet at the house I grew up in, including my old posters. Hopefully they didn't get crushed. Some old mix tapes are there in a shoebox too - that would be a blast from the past. The Rush poster was from the Moving Pictures tour - just outside the 70's we are talking about.

That promo poster have have looked gigantic in your room. "Do You Feel Like We Do" is still a classic!

Good parenting that your son is a Floyd fanatic! My kids are still a little young for Pink Floyd. Zeppelin isn't exactly kiddie music, but it's not as dark and moody. The day will come though...

So much fun going through memorabilia. Hope your posters have survived the years.

My idea of tough love is dragging my children into the pit and showing them the ropes. Took my son to see Floyd when he was 8.

Remember Leif Garrett? Sure...I remember when he told Dick on 'Bandstand that he was 15 and didn't need to go to school anymore 'cause he was a star. There was a pause in Dick's patter... :eek: Now I watch Leif every week on truTV's "World's Dumbest" (one of my embarrassing and therefore secret indulgences). Given Justin's recent issues I imagine we'll be seeing him on the next decade's 'Dumbest'.

I had one poster...Janis. I've still got it but it's not up...I haven't found a good spot and I'm not sure how My Lady would take to it. ;)

An old poster of Janis. Nice. ;)

For those of you who don't know, woot.com is a cool little site that offers steeply discounted one-day specials. I've bought vacuum cleaners, iPods, wine racks and a whole bunch of other 'stuff' from them over the past several years. Recently they modified their model and now, along with the one-day specials, they list other items with a sell period of days or even a week or until the items are sold out.

Today there is one of those days-long listings for classic rock posters on canvas:

Museum quality wrapped canvas print
• Printed with high quality inks with a matte finish
• Poly-cotton canvas is wrapped around a wood frame
• Arrives ready to hang with metal hanging hardware
• Measures 14" x 22"

The posters look cool but they're pricey...

Anyhoo,...that's all a long intro to what I copied from the site's listing. It seems to fit with this thread and our posts about rock's different decades:


"Rock died in the late 1950s, the mid-1960s, the early 1970s, the early-mid 1980s, the late-mid 1980s, and once a year from 1997 until 2005. So, as you can see, it would be stupid to buy any of these posters, right? Clearly rock's never going to be popular again." :D

Cool posters, John. Can you imagine a Dylan-Zep-Hendrix-Clapton-Fleetwood Mac lineup!

In the late 60's, the music scene in central Virginia wasn't really cooking, but I did get an opportunity to see a band, Steel Mill, at The String Factory' in Richmond featuring a very young Bruce Springsteen and we all new that he would be around for a while. During the 70's, I pulled time in Uncle Sam's drafted Army and came back from Viet Nam ready for some rock. The Eagles opened for Yes at the Richmond Coliseum and Charlie Daniels seemed to play in clubs monthly. We were lucky enough to see Rick Derringer with Edgar Winter's White Trash and Alice Cooper with Flo and Eddie.There is no doubt in my mind that the 70's opened up rock guitar for our generation and the staying power of that decade has yet to be matched. By the way, Wildwoman, your posts are legendary. Keep it up!

Wow...one of the last draftees! Rock on!!

I don't know that the '70s will ever be matched, ripple50. We're so very fortunate to have come of age in that particular decade in music. Thanks for your comment, and I'm glad you like the posts. ;)

Posters vs. 'fine art prints'? Wolfgang's Vault has their entire collection of photography discounted 25% today and tomorrow only. A promo code is required and maybe (?) so too is membership. It's mostly 60's and 70's stuff but it's wide ranging and gorgeous. It better be...the cheapest I saw before the discount was $250 but many ran to $1000 or more. Still, a visit to the site is worthwhile just to see the pics.

Anyone wanna go halvsies? We could keep the pic at my place...you could visit... :D

Interesting to see this thread revived!

70's rock is just unavoidable! In the cover band that we are trying to get off the ground, we have about 10 songs down. Looking at the list, we realized that we are quite stuck in the 70's! Any songs that we know that aren't in the 70's are in the 60's. Time to start getting some newer stuff :-).

There is such a HUGE amount of great stuff from 70's rock bands. It makes it very easy to end up with a setlist that is very 70's centric.

Originally Posted by: wildwoman1313

Every generation has an affinity for the decade in which it came of age. For rock and roll fans, however, it's hard to argue that any decade surpassed that of the 1970s. Post-Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison, and the Beatles and pre-MTV, the dawn of the '70s marked the end of the counterculture for rock fans and the beginning of a wild and crazy decade in music, one that many believe to be the true era of innovation in rock.

Although rock and roll originated in the 1950s, it took shape in the '70s and came to dominate the musical landscape. Many of those working in more traditional genres even hopped on the rock bandwagon. By the start of the decade, if music didn't rock, at least to some degree, it was considered outdated. Rock of that era blurred the musical, social, racial, and geographical boundaries that it inherited from earlier generations. Musicians—who wrote their own material, played their own instruments, and sang without the safety net of a pre-recorded backing track, unlike many of today's artists and entertainers—aspired to art status, but on rock's terms.

The following then are some of what helped to galvanize the '70s as what any music vet from that time would proudly call rock and roll's finest hour.

Riffage

Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water," one of the most enduring of all rock riffs, was written in the early '70s. The decade was rife with great guitar riffs—songs like "Walk this Way," "Iron Man," "Highway to Hell," "Don't Fear the Reaper," "Another Brick in the Wall Part 2," "Sweet Home Alabama," and "Layla," to name but a few, as well as just about every song that Zeppelin ever put out. It's hardly surprising that, to this day, aspiring guitar players still mine the '70s for riffs that are not only memorable, but relatively easy to cover.

One-Hit Wonders

The '70s were the era of the glorious one-hit wonder. Songs like Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky," Blues Image's "Ride Captain Ride," "The Rapper" by The Jaggerz, Shocking Blue's "Venus," Mountain's "Mississippi Queen," Free's "All Right Now," and "Bang a Gong" by T. Rex were just some of the extraordinary songs that were huge hits back in the '70s. Although these bands were poised to make it big, instead of becoming superstars, they are remembered instead for a single song.

Stadium Rock

The origins of stadium rock can be traced back to when the Beatles played several dates in New York City's Shea Stadium in 1965, a venue large enough to accommodate the thousands of screaming Beatles fans who wanted to see the band live. Other big venue shows and music festivals also sprung up in the late '60s, including the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and Woodstock in 1969.

By the early 1970s, many popular rock bands had largely outgrown standard concert halls and rock-oriented nightclubs. Bands such as Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Queen, Rush, Kiss, Journey, ZZ Top, Peter Frampton and others needed to find venues large enough to hold many thousands of fans as well as more elaborate stage, sound and lighting equipment. The solution was to book these larger-than-life bands into sports stadiums and other arenas.

Best of all, concert tickets were dirt cheap forty years ago. Many could be had for under $10 on bills that most times included two and three headline-caliber bands. This allowed fans to take in an enormous amount of live music. It was commonplace to have artists like the Stones, Pink Floyd, Aerosmith, Three Dog Night, Chicago, Jethro Tull, Bowie, The Grateful Dead, The Eagles, Elton John, Fleetwood Mac, Mott the Hoople, Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton, Heart and many other big name acts roll through town on a fairly regular basis, and you could afford to catch them all. It wasn't at all uncommon to take in 8-10 bands in some weeks. Chew on that a moment. Can you even imagine?

Album Output and Cover Art

Bands were more prolific back in the '70s, releasing new material at a rate that far surpasses the more sluggish pace of most of today's artists. (Cudos must be given here to Green Day for releasing three full-length records in the span of three months last fall.) It was not unheard of for a band to put out an album a year, and sometimes multiple LPs. Groups would often write material while out on the road promoting an album, come off tour just long enough to cut a new record, and then turn around and head back out again. There wasn't all this excess time spent waiting for new music from your favorite band. It was in the pipeline and on its way to you before you had the chance to lose interest.

Album art was an important part of the '70s music culture as well. Records were enjoyed and appreciated not only for their musical content, but also for their iconic artwork. From Roger Dean’s fabulous Yes covers to H.R. Giger’s ambitious packaging of Emerson Lake & Palmer's Brain Salad Surgery to Storm Thorgerson’s elegant work for Pink Floyd and Peter Corriston's die-cutting for Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti and the Stones' Some Girls, cover art and packaging reached a zenith in the '70s. Today's rockers often speak of the lost thrill of tearing the shrink-wrap from an LP, and then musing over the elaborate packaging while listening to a treasured new disc. The compact size of CDs and online access to music has, for the most part, deprived today's listeners of that experience.

Concept Albums and Rock Operas

Theme albums and rock operas were huge in the 1970s, most especially on the glam and progressive rock scenes. Concept albums are unified by a central theme or narrative, and are meant to be listened to from start to finish in one sitting. They essentially tell a story or are built to guide your emotions in one way or another. Everyone from Emerson Lake & Palmer (Pictures at an Exhibition), Pink Floyd (Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall), David Bowie (Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, Diamond Dogs), Yes (Tales from Topographic Oceans), Genesis (The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway), The Who (Quadrophenia) and Alice Cooper (Welcome to My Nightmare) to Joni Mitchell (Blue), Willie Nelson (Red Headed Stranger), and Elton John (Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy) released song cycles whose tracks were interrelated, either through subject matter, tone, or emotion.

Record Labels

Independent labels accounted for only one of every ten records sold in the 1970s, while six huge corporations (Columbia/CBS, Warner Communications, RCA Victor, Capitol-EMI, MCA, and United Artists-MGM) were responsible for over 80 percent of record sales in the United States. The recording industry came to depend on a relatively small stable of multi-platinum superstars to turn a profit.

It was common practice in the '70s for record companies to simply allot a budget to a band, and then turn them loose in the studio to make whatever type of album they wanted to make. Artists such as Alice Cooper, Sly and the Family Stone, and Peter Frampton were nurtured along until commercial success came their way. Such freedom and coddling would be unthinkable today.

Radio

The primary medium for rock music in the '70s was FM radio. Album-oriented rock (AOR) was introduced early on in the decade and was geared to album sales rather than singles. Many stations began to play whole album sides as opposed to the Top 40 model of preceding decades when playlists were restricted, making it difficult for bands without the backing of a major label to break into the Top 40.

Led Zeppelin

The mighty Zeppelin are a category unto themselves. From the drop of their debut album in early 1969, and over the course of a gazillion hits from ten studio albums, including that mother of all rock anthems "Stairway to Heaven," Page, Plant, Jones, and Bonham crafted a body of work to rival that of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in terms of far-reaching impact. With almost 300 million records sold to date worldwide, Led Zeppelin were the preeminent band of the '70s. They are widely considered to be one of the most successful, innovative, influential, and enduring groups in all of rock history.

Glam Rock

Glam rock evolved in Britain during the early '70s and featured some of the finest performers in music memory. Androgynous idols like Marc Bolan of T. Rex, David Bowie, Roxy Music, Sweet, New York Dolls, and Mott the Hoople—bedecked in flamboyant costumes, platform shoes, garish makeup, and outlandish hairstyles—fascinated the pop scene on both sides of the pond. The genre produced some astonishingly powerful and influential albums, like Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, and influenced future glam metal acts such as Quiet Riot, W.A.S.P., Twisted Sister, and Mötley Crüe. Glam rock shimmers with a glittery resonance to this day.

The Singer-Songwriter Movement

Out of 1960s folk and country rock evolved the singer-songwriter movement of the early '70s. Artists like James Taylor, Janice Ian, Jim Croce, Cat Stevens, Jackson Browne, Carole King, Harry Chapin, Joni Mitchell, John Denver, Carly Simon, and Britain's Richard Thompson and Joan Armatrading turned inward, toward self-exploration and autobiography, to write and perform songs that were more confessional in nature. They wrote music that told a story, and used a spare mode of presentation—either a piano or guitar—for accompaniment.

Carole King's 1971 album, Tapestry, was among the decade's most successful. In it she explored her personal growth as a woman of the 1960s. Joni Mitchell became one of the most articulate voices for both the liberation and confusion felt by young women as sexual roles shifted. Even Bob Dylan got in on the act, chronicling the collapse of his marriage in the 1974 classic album, Blood on the Tracks.

Progressive Rock

Progressive rock, a.k.a. prog rock, was an offshoot of '60s psychedelic rock. It originated in Britain as an attempt to give greater artistic weight, sophistication, and credibility to rock music. Prog bands abandoned the three-minute pop song model for music that was more expansive, free-form, and random. It often included long and complex instrumental solos that could stretch a song's length to a whole album side. Prog rock lyrics were much more profound and told a deeper story than those of other rock songs of the day. They often centered around themes found in classical literature, fantasy, folklore, medievalism, and science fiction. While standard rock bands typically employed the guitar/bass/drum paradigm, the more progressive bands experimented with instruments not usually heard in pop songs, such as the violin and cello, the Hammond organ, and brass and woodwind instruments.

Progressive rock was hugely popular throughout the '70s. Bands such as The Moody Blues, Pink Floyd, Yes, King Crimson, Genesis, Jethro Tull, The Alan Parsons Project, and Emerson Lake & Palmer were among the genre's most recognizable acts.

The Birth of Punk Rock

Whether it originated in America or England, as is the debate, it is agreed that punk rock began as an attack on mainstream rock and roll in both countries. The music of bands like the Ramones, the New York Dolls, the Sex Pistols and The Clash hammered its way into the public consciousness in the mid-'70s with its raw energy and overt political and social critiques. This bratty, snot-nosed breed of rock was built on anti-musicianship, the rejection of stadium rock, the denial of technical skill, and the breakdown of the relationship between performer and audience. What made punk so appealing to musicians was that the music was simple, teenage garage band stuff. The emphasis was on energy and attitude, mostly negative, and not so much on virtuosity. Punk completely revolutionized rock's image in its simplicity and level of aggression.


Southern rock, the Southern California sound, disco, Exile on Main Street, the sheer volume of monster bands that came out of the '70s who are still relevant some four decades later, I could go on and on. These are just some of the many touchstones that defined '70s music. For those of you who were front and center in those glory days, and for those who wish you had been, feel free to leave a comment about how the music of the "Me Decade" affected you.

As a kid growing up in the 70s on a island wow I had so much freedom, And the music is so carved in my soul, Jimi Hendrix smash hits was my first album and from the first time I heard whose notes to purple haze still takes me back to standing and watching the needle about to hit the vinyl. I feel blessed to have such great bands to listen to and I just cant stop buying the 60 70s Cds and vinyl.

There were a lot of great stuff happening then. All the "new" things that folks were just plain trying out for the heck of it. Surely the beginning of how music has come together for me and I'm sure a bunch of other folks. Great article.

From 1966 to 1975 were the glory years in my Rock world. I was fortunate enough to live in the NYC area and saw many of the Classics in their early days or at their peak.
Some of the shows were amazing, especially at the Fillmore East. Where else could you see The Allman Brothers playing in their first NY appearance opening for Blood, Sweat and Tears, or John Mayall with (if I remember correctly) Peter Green opening for Alvin Lee and Ten Years After! One of the best was The Electric Flag with Michael Bloomfield and Buddy Miles opening for Jimi Hendrix on his Electric LadyLand Tour. That show made you want to go home and burn your guitar!
Besides the combination of acts I was also fortunate enough to see Yes (1972), The Moody Blues (1970 and 1975), Led Zeppelin on their "Stairway to Heaven" Tour, Cream at MSG, Chicago at Carnagie Hall, Stevie Wonder opening for Three Dog Night, The Loving Spoonful opening for Poco (the original with Jim Messina and Richie Furay), Steppenwolf (my first concert in 1967, 6th row center) and CSNY. There are more, but I can't remember them all - what a time it was!