Aerosmith

Aerosmith were America’s feisty retort to hard-rocking British groups like the Rolling Stones,The Yardbirds,The Who,Cream, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin. Almost alone among American bands, Aerosmith matched those British legends in power, intensity, and notoriety. Moreover, they’ve long since surpassed many of their influences in terms of longevity and popularity. In the words of vocalist Steven Tyler, “We weren’t too ambitious when we started out. We just wanted to be the biggest thing that ever walked the planet, the greatest rock band that ever was.”

“We were America’s band,” Joe Perry proclaimed with no false modesty. “We were the garage band that made it really big - the ultimate party band.” No less an authority than Jimmy Page has called them “the ideal rock and roll band.” Thirty years after forming, the “bad boys from Boston” remain a vital, ongoing force whose unshakable spirit and boundless energy virtually define rock and roll. Surviving shifting tastes and trends in popular music, Aerosmith has solidly epitomized the bedrock virtues and raucous magic that comes from a simple yet combustible recipe of guitars, bass, drums, vocals and attitude.

Red Hot Chili Peppers

Few rock groups of the '80s broke down as many musical barriers and were as original as the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Creating an intoxicating new musical style by combining funk and punk rock together (with an explosive stage show to boot), the Chili Peppers spawned a slew of imitators in their wake, but still managed to be the leaders of the pack by the dawn of the 21st century. The roots of the band lay in a friendship forged by three school chums, Anthony Kiedis, Michael Balzary, and Hillel Slovak, while they attended Fairfax High School in California back in the late '70s/early '80s. While Balzary and Slovak showed great musical promise (on trumpet and guitar, respectively), Kiedis focused on poetry and acting during his high-school career. During this time, Slovak taught Balzary how to play bass, while the duo encouraged Kiedis to start putting his poetry to music, which he soon did. Influenced heavily by the burgeoning L.A. punk scene (the Germs, Black Flag, Fear, Minutemen, X, etc.) as well as funk (Parliament-Funkadelic, Sly & the Family Stone, etc.), the trio began to rehearse with another friend, drummer Jack Irons, leading to the formation of Tony Flow & the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem, a quartet that played strip bars along the Sunset Strip during the early '80s. It was during this time that the four honed their sound and live act (as they stumbled across a stage gimmick that would soon become their trademark -- performing on-stage completely naked, except for a tube sock covering a certain part of their anatomy). By 1983, Balzary had begun to go by the name "Flea," and the group changed its name to the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Guns N' Roses Biography

At a time when pop was dominated by dance music and pop metal, Guns N' Roses brought raw, ugly rock & roll crashing back into the charts. They were not nice boys; nice boys don't play rock & roll. They were ugly, misogynist, violent; they were also funny, vulnerable, and occasionally sensitive, as their breakthrough hit "Sweet Child O' Mine" showed. While Slash and Izzy Stradlin ferociously spit out dueling guitar riffs worthy of Aerosmith or the Stones, Axl Rose screeched out his tales of sex, drugs, and apathy in the big city; bassist Duff McKagan and drummer Steven Adler were a limber rhythm section that kept the music loose and powerful. Guns N' Roses' music was basic and gritty, with a solid hard, bluesy base; they were dark, sleazy, dirty, and honest -- everything that good hard rock and heavy metal should be.
Guns N' Roses released their first EP in in 1986, which led to a contract with Geffen; the following year, the band released their debut album, Appetite for Destruction. They started to build a following with their numerous live shows, but the album didn't start selling until almost a year later, when MTV started playing "Sweet Child o' Mine." Soon, the album shot to number one and Guns N' Roses became one of the biggest bands in the world. By the end of 1988, they released G N' R Lies, which paired four new, acoustic-based songs with their first EP.

Led Zeppelin

Inductees: John “Bonzo” Bonham (drums; born May 31, 1948, died September 25, 1980), John Paul Jones (bass, keyboards; born January 3, 1946), Jimmy Page (guitar; born January 9, 1944), Robert Plant (vocals; born August 20, 1948)
Combining the visceral power and intensity of hard rock with the finesse and delicacy of British folk music, Led Zeppelin redefined rock in the Seventies and for all time. They were as influential in that decade as The Beatles were in the prior one. Their impact extends to classic and alternative rockers alike. Then and now, Led Zeppelin looms larger than life on the rock landscape as a band for the ages with an almost mystical power to evoke primal passions. The combination of Jimmy Page’s powerful, layered guitar work, Robert Plant’s keening, upper-timbre vocals, John Paul Jones’ melodic bass playing and keyboard work, and John Bonham’s thunderous drumming made for a band whose alchemy proved enchanting and irresistible. “The motto of the group is definitely, ‘Ever onward,’” Page said in 1977, perfectly summing up Led Zeppelin’s forward-thinking philosophy.
The group formed in 1968 from the ashes of the Yardbirds , for which guitarist Jimmy Page had served as lead guitarist after Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. Page’s stint in the Yardbirds (1966-1968) followed a period of years as one of Britain’s most in-demand session guitarists. As a generally anonymous hired gun, Page performed on mid-Sixties British Invasion records by the likes of Donovan (“Hurdy Gurdy Man”), Them (“Gloria”), the Who (“I Can’t Explain”) and hundreds of others. Page assembled a “New Yardbirds” in order to fulfill contractual obligations that, once served, allowed him to move on to his blues-based dream band, Led Zeppelin.

The Beatles biography

Inspired by the "skiffle boom", a student at Quarry Bank School in Liverpool named John Lennon decided to form a group in 1957 which laid the foundation to what was to become the most famous rock band of all time. John's original name was "The Blackjacks". However, this name only lasted a week and John used the school name as inspiration for the later name "The Quarry Men" in March 1957. John sang and played guitar, Colin Hanton played drums, Eric Griffiths on guitar, Pete Shotton on washboard, Rod Davis on banjo and Bill Smith on tea-chest bass. Bill was soon replaced by Ivan Vaughan.
John was inspired by "Heartbreak Hotel" and became a fan of American rock 'n' roll music. He introduced songs by Buddy Holly , Carl Perkins, The Coasters, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Gene Vincent into their repertoire. On July 6, 1957, Ivan Vaughan invited Paul McCartney to see their gig at The Woolton Parish Church Fete. The fifteen-year-old McCartney was introduce to sixteen-year-old Lennon and a unique song writing partnership began.
The line-up of The Quarry Men increased to seven with Paul on guitar and vocals, John Lowe on piano and George Harrison on guitar and vocals. Soon Griffiths and another member would leave, leaving a five-piece band. The group appeared at several local talent contests but had very few gigs. By January 1959, the group wasn't operating. Although John and Paul kept in touch, George had joined the Les Stewart Quartet.

Elvis Presley

Elvis Aaron Presley was born to Vernon and Gladys Presley in a two-room house in Tupelo, Mississippi, on January 8, 1935. His twin brother, Jessie Garon, was stillborn, leaving Elvis to grow up as an only child. He and his parents moved to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1948, and Elvis graduated from Humes High School there in 1953.

Elvis’ musical influences were the pop and country music of the time, the gospel music he heard in church and at the all-night gospel sings he frequently attended, and the black R&B he absorbed on historic Beale Street as a Memphis teenager.

In 1954, Elvis began his singing career with the legendary Sun Records label in Memphis. In late 1955, his recording contract was sold to RCA Victor. By 1956, he was an international sensation. With a sound and style that uniquely combined his diverse musical influences and blurred and challenged the social and racial barriers of the time, he ushered in a whole new era of American music and popular culture.

Rock and roll (1950s–early 1960s)

The foundations of rock music are in rock and roll, which originated in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s by African-Americans. It gained popularity in the early 1950s, and quickly spread to much of the rest of the world. Its immediate origins lay in a mixing together of various black musical genres of the time, including rhythym and blues and gospel music , with country and western.In 1951, Cleveland,Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music for a multi-racial audience, and is credited with first using the phrase "rock and roll" to describe the music.

Debate surrounds which record should be considered the first rock n roll record One contender is “ Rocket 88" by Jacky Brenston and his Delta Cats (in fact,Ike Turner and his band The Kings of Rhythm), recorded by Sam Phillips for Sun Records in 1951.Four years later, Bill Halley's “ Rocks Arround The Clocks" (1955) became the first rock and roll song to top Billboard magazine's main sales and airplay charts, and opened the door worldwide for this new wave of popular culture.

Characteristics

    

 <<== Red Hot Chili Peppers in 2006, showing a quartet lineup for a rock band of a lead vocalist, guitarist, bassist, and drummer

The sound of rock is traditionally centred around the electric guitar, which emerged in its modern form in the 1950s with the popularization of rock and roll. The sound of the electric guitar in rock music is typically supported by the electric bass guitar pioneered in jazz music in the same era,and percussion produced from a drum kit that combines drums and cymbals.This trio of instruments has often been complemented by the inclusion of others, particularly keyboards such as the piano,hammond organ and shynthesizers . A group of musicians performing rock music is termed a rock band or rock group and typically consists of between two and five members. Classically, a rock band takes the form of a quartet whose members cover one or more roles, including,lead guitarist,rhythm guitaris,bass guitarist and drummer occasionally that of keyboard player or othe instrumentalist.

History Of Rock

Rock music is a genre of popular musicthat developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music. Rock music also drew strongly on a number of other genres such as blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz, classical and other musical sources. Musically, rock has centred around the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with bass guitar and drums. Typically, rock is song-based music with a 4/4 beat utilizing a verse-chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse and common musical characteristics are difficult to define. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political in emphasis.