The mid 70s in (Hard) Rock

Anyone feel that after around 1971 or so, hard rock became too, well, "rocky"? That a lot of the older artists lost contact with the blues, and a lot of the newer rock artists just played straight rock with only a passing similarity to the blues? I just feel like if you look at the period from say 1968-1971, and albums like This Was, Beggar's Banquet, Morrison Hotel, Led Zeppelin I, Bayou Country, Pearl and so on, and compare it to later stuff both by those bands, and by newer artists who came on the scene in the 70s proper (I really don't consider the 70s to have begun, musically until either '72 or '73), there's a loss of the blues and there's just a very shallow, Arena feel to both the music and the artists themselves. It becomes all about drugs and sex....Less about the blues. Take "Rock N' Roll Hootchie Koo" as an offer in what I'm saying; or the idea of Aerosmith as the successor to the Stones.

I'm not talking about The Beatles material in this period as I don't really consider them to have been Hard Rock.

 

I think Bad Co showed there was money to be made with well placed and well produced songs of strong vocals, tight tunes, and defined guitar crunch. Thus a streamlined less dangerous formula was defined: Cheap Trick, mid period onward BOC, Boston, etc., followed.

 

Looks good to me.

 

Hard rock's golden days ended somewhere around 1974, I think.

Was it Boston's debut album in 1976 that ushered in the era of shallow arena rock?

 

Using your example of R&R Hootchie Koo, I kinda liked what Johnny Winter did on the AND album with
Rick Derringer . More diversity in style, cool dual guitar interplay, etc. Yes some music got too proggy but
Think of the diversity the mid 70s brought in - Blue Oyster, Bowie, pub rock, T Rex, NRBQ, Little Feat,
Robert Palmer, Leon Russell, etc. Fleetwood Mac got away from the blues but there is some good stuff on albums like
Bare Trees, Future Games, Mystery to Me.

 

Aloha
Bad Company !!!!

 

Shallow seems like a put down...and yet, arena seems like a major compliment.
I would think getting your music to the arena stage means you're very popular and good at what you do; but I digress....

Slick rock might be more accurate. Yet, that might come off as a put down as well.
Boston's debut album sounded like it was made by musicians who loved the "rough rock" but really polished it up.
By the mid 70's, the whole rock music industry was a well-oiled machine and I bet they loved product like Boston's debut.

However, I think of 1974 and an album like Bad Company (on Zeppelin's label) was the beginning of that new level of slick rock product.

 

I think the removal of the blues was good for the genre. It was too musically limiting and had all been done already by 1974 or so. IMO, the removal of roots genres was an essential development in hard rock, and allowed for bands that were more also on the heavy metal spectrum. If all hard rock was bluesy, we wouldn't have Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, Van Halen, and a lot of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple's music. Also, the sex and drugs/drinking themes came directly from the blues.

 

60s groups like Iron Butterfly and Vanilla Fudge didn't emphasize the blues as much as other groups either. I actually like the fact that some groups moved away from the blues influence. Jethro Tull is a good example of a group that started with a strong blues influence. While I like the blues influenced 1st album This Was but I much prefer the hard rock and English folk version of Jethro Tull that developed after their first album.

And besides, isn't the usual complaint that too many rock groups were copying the blues style?

Scott

 

Isn't all hard rock rooted in the blues in some form or fashion? If it isn't then it's by all intents and purposes heavy metal.

 

I love all the albums you mentioned but I really enjoyed the follow up albums like Benefit, Sticky Fingers, Exile,
Cosmos Factory, Led Zep II and III. Unfortunately Pearl was Janis' last album but it was a superb album.
Check out Kathi McDonald's album Insane Asylum from 73 or 74.

 

I understand your point. I had always seen British groups as more blues based, like The Who, and American groups more folk based, like the Dead and the Airplane. I understand your feelings about the Rick Derringer song you mentioned. But on the same Rick Derringer album as Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo is this song...

 

Blues wasn't totally removed from rock however...artists like Robin Trower, Rory Gallagher and Gary Moore were making strong blues-rock albums in the late Seventies.

 

I think a lot of these bands needed to move beyond the blues influence to find their own style, or at least beyond the twelve-bar tradition. I would also add that quite a few 70's era bands just weren't suited to playing blues, and would've hit a brick wall if they had tried. The one's that really understood the blues tradition (Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Johnny Winter) never really lost their connection to it.

 

People keep mentioning arena rock, specifically Boston. As far as I can tell, bands like Boston, Styx, Queen, Kansas, etc. are an offshoot of prog rock, not of blues rock. Also, I think the first generation of these bands (Boston, Queen, Kansas) are pretty genuine, with the shallower bands taking influence from these first bands.

 

Right, I was referring only to the development of heavy metal and later hard rock as a genre, not rock as a whole.

 

Deep Purple Mark II maintained a blues element up through June '73 although admittedly, Who Do We Think We Are has less of a blues edge than In Rock.

 

I don't think artists like CCR, The Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, or The Doors have anything to do with hard rock. I consider them to be integral parts of the late 60's sound. The way I see it, this era of rock started from 1968 to roughly 1972 and was built upon roots rock and bits of lingering psychedelia. As the era progressed, these sounds sort of coalesced into a more unified sound that didn't show as much influence from roots rock or psychedelia, culminating in the early 70's when the veteran artists developed a signature sound. After that, rock split into singer/songwriter, prog, hard rock, glam rock, southern rock, etc.

 

Kansas was a great band. As time moves on their catalog has not diminished in any way for me personally. They could never sell out the big arenas and I got to see them in some small venues. I think they are a cut above some of the other bands we are talking about here.

Boston, made for the arena. I saw them in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas in 1979, and in Fort Worth in an enclosed arena, also in 1979. It was their element.

Queen. Just saw them once in 1980. Great band. Musicianship was stellar.

What about Dire Straits? Where do they fit in this conversation?

 

Dire Straits is hard to pin down. I don't think you could call them either arena rock or hard rock. I hear them as rather slick imitators of 60's era classic rock that still managed to have an original sound.

 

I can dig that. I guess I find that '68 to '72 period kind of magical. I like what came before and what came after, but I feel prior to around '68 you have too much of an emphasis on the pop/psychedelia angle, and then after around '71 or '72 you have too much of the riff driven, arena rock angle.

As far as the tree branching out to prog, glam rock, and so often...I feel that was one of the worst things that happened to rock music as artists became stuck within "their" genres. You wouldn't expect Yes to do a "heavy metal" album. When Black Sabbath tried changing things up a bit, they were criticized for going soft (I think it was with one of the later Ozzy albums IIRC). In that magical '67 or '68 to '71 or '72 period, that didn't really matter. Look at The Beatles. Sgt. Pepper's was insanely different from their early stuff but The Beatles weren't crucified for it.

I think after the early '70s rock became too diversified and began to lose steam. The subcultures became too insular and too divided. Like, a Prog guy probably wouldn't hang with a Glam person. Too divisive, too divided . It isolated both the fans and the artists. You can say "Punk came and changed that" but Punk was in and itself very insular and not that tolerant of outsiders.

IMO while there was a lot of great, masterworks after the early 1970s, rock as a whole was never as interesting as it had been before then. It became too commercialized even by that point. I like Alice Cooper, but when you have an artist who has shocking people as part of their thing - to the extent that the shock factor and the elaborate stage show is more a selling point than the music - something's wrong.

 

How about the artists listed in this poll?

Poll: your favourite 2nd wave hard-rock acts of 1973-79 (but not beyond)

 

IMHO opinion Rock got stale around 78......sure there some good things happening, but over all, staleness set in....

 

I agree with almost everything you said. 1968-1972 is probably my favorite period of music because it had the innovation and cross-pollination of styles that is associated with the 60's, while still being based in classic style rock & roll. I love the psychedelic pop era that immediately preceded it, as well as the diversified era of the 70's but for me, nothing beats the late 60's and early 70's. Where I differ in opinion is that I think that the diversification and genre splitting present in the 70's was essential to the development of these genres. While I prefer the musical unity of the 60's, prog rock, for example, wouldn't have been the same if it had been swapping ideas with southern rock. There was less creativity and innovation, but I think that would have happened anyway. As talented as a lot of 70's musicians were, the talent was less "across the board" so to speak compared to the 60's IMO.

 

Of that list I probably only like Rainbow, Blue Oyster Cult, and Foghat.