THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO MODERN BRITISH MUSIC
Progressive rock With very few exceptions — but also released straight cover namely the multi-zillion-selling versions of classical pieces. Dark Side of the Moon and There was a live album version anything else with the words of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an “Pink†and “Floyd†on the Exhibition in 1971, and chart record sleeve — time has not success with an interpretation been kind to Seventies of Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for progressive rock. Perhaps the Common Man. Guitarist Greg unfairly, the excesses of the Lake was also responsible for I period have swallowed up the Believe in Father Christmas, middle ground. But it’s worth which quoted from Prokoviev’s revisiting some of the defining Lieutenant Kije Suite. It’s still moments of a genre in which a mainstay of festive sincerity trumped irony and compilations. concept albums were at worst In terms of live spectacle, “over-ambitious†rather though, the laurels go to than “pretentiousâ€. Rick Wakeman — the If one artefact can former Yes be said to sum up keyboardist. In the spirit of 1975, he decided progressive rock, to tour his solo it’s Yes’s 1973 album The Myths double-album and Legends of Tales from King Arthur and Topographic the Knights of the Oceans. Its sleeve Round Table as a Greg Lake features an alien theatrical show on ice. landscape by prog’s As well as 50 skaters, house illustrator, Roger Dean, each performance demanded a and there are just four tracks — 45-piece orchestra, two choirs each taking up an entire side. and a seven-piece rock Loosely based on ancient ensemble. The tour was sold out Shastric lore, the songs include and came to be known as one of The Revealing Science of God the most monumental rock (Dance of the Dawn) and Ritual follies of all time, yet it almost (Nous Sommes du Soleil). ruined Wakeman financially. Then there was Emerson, Lake History is written by the and Palmer: prog’s first victors, and convention has it “supergroupâ€. ELP — who that punk killed prog stone dead. shifted more than 30 million But it’s telling that so many of albums — were the leading the post-punk acts went on to exponents of symphonic rock. experiment with forms beyond They incorporated themes from the three-minute pop song. classical music in works such as Many debts to progressive rock Tarkus and Brain Salad Surgery, remain unacknowledged.
The Sex Pistols and, inset, Siouxsie
The chaotic story of punk Few would disagree that the Sex Pistols changed the face of British rock for ever. But it could further be argued that the poster boys of punk started to do so before they had put out a single record — and at least two months before their infamous, expletive-strewn appearance on Thames Television’s Today programme. In the summer of 1976 — punk’s “year zero†— the Pistols played two gigs at Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall that swiftly became part of rock folklore. Among those present, and inspired by the chaotic performances, were Stephen Morrissey, who would go on to form The Smiths; Mark E Smith of The Fall; three future members of Joy Division; a similar complement of Buzzcocks; and, by some accounts, Mick Hucknall. tireless promotion by journalist and drugs activist Caroline Coon — ironically, given punk’s professed hatred of the hippie counterculture, someone who had testified on behalf of the underground magazine Oz at its 1970 obscenity trial. Again, the attendees included a generous sprinkling of future talents, including Shane McGowan (Pogue Mahone/The Pogues), Chrissie Hynde (The Pretenders) and Viv Albertine (The Slits). It was only in November that the Pistols’ debut single, Anarchy in the UK, was finally released. Punk burned itself out quickly, leaving a clutch of definitive recordings — crowned by the Sex Pistols’ one original album, as well as The Clash’s early singles and 1979’s London Calling LP. But its greatest legacy was in the example it set, and the DIY attitude it fostered. It was an attack on the values of pomp rock: suddenly you didn’t have to be a virtuoso musician, cite classical influences, or tour with a Moog synthesizer to make great music. Among those who took the lesson to heart were such newwave acts as Squeeze, XTC, The Cure, Echo and the Bunnymen and the Psychedelic Furs. Punk fanzines Sideburns and Sniffin’ Glue best captured the ethic in a famous illustration of three guitar-chord shapes. The caption read: “This is a chord, this is another, this is a third. Now form a band.â€
Joe Strummer, The Clash That September’s 100 Club Punk Festival in London, at which the Sex Pistols shared billing with The Clash, The Damned, Buzzcocks and Siouxsie & the Banshees, proved equally influential. The two-day event was well hyped, thanks to
Yes
Hard, heavy... and in a league of their own The early Seventies saw the rise became the shambling rock ‘n’ of a harder, louder sound in roll dad of reality TV, Ozzy British rock, as Led Zeppelin Osbourne and his group were became seen as fathers (albeit putting in place all the unwilling ones) of heavy metal. ingredients that would become Their fourth album identified with the genre: released in 1971 ultra-macho posturing contained both the on stage, with frenetic riffing of debauchery away Black Dog and the from it; dark, signature track occult imagery; Stairway to sneering vocals; Heaven. This, thunderous drum along with their lines and distorted 1975 masterpiece power chords. It’s Physical Graffiti, all there on the two cemented their status Ozzy Osbourne 1970 albums Black as “best rock band in Sabbath and Paranoid. the worldâ€, with only the Stones Meanwhile, the second and and The Who — both of whom most successful line-up of Deep they outsold at the time — in the Purple turned their attention same league. from orchestral collaborations If Led Zeppelin rejected the to a more heavy sound. The title metal label, Black Sabbath of 1970’s Deep Purple In Rock embraced it. Long before he stated as much — though it was Machine Head, released almost two years later, that produced one of the most famous riffs of all time in Smoke on the Water. The mid-Seventies brought massive success for Judas Priest. Their dual-guitar sound and faster tempo were hugely influential: not least with the “New Wave of British Heavy Metal†that ended the decade. Spearheaded by Iron Maiden, Saxon and Def Leppard, this marked a further departure from the blues roots of Led Zeppelin and Sixties rock. Not that the original hard-rock pioneers should have cause to care. Last year, some 25 million fans applied for just 20,000 tickets at the Led Zeppelin reunion gig in London.
Led Zeppelin and, right, Ritchie Blackmore of Deep Purple
THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO MODERN BRITISH The Daily Telegraph Saturday, October 18, 2008 telegraph.co.uk /gordonsgin In association with
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60 N o decade lends itself to parody quite like the Sixties. So many of its characteristics, musical or otherwise, have hardened into cliché: Swinging London; psychedelic guitar jams; mini skirts; tie-dye; frilled shirts; twanging sitars. The Austin Powers caricature of the decade distracts attenti
THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO MODERN BRITISH MUSIC The psychedelic experience “This is it! The next Projected Sound of ’67!†screamed the writing on the sleeve of Pink Floyd’s debut single, Arnold Layne. It was a bold claim but not an inaccurate one: 1967 was to be the year when psychedelic rock
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THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO MODERN BRITISH MUSIC Progressive rock With very few exceptions — but also released straight cover namely the multi-zillion-selling versions of classical pieces. Dark Side of the Moon and There was a live album version anything else with the words of Mussorgsky’s Pictures
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80 I f the Seventies ended with a whimper, the Eighties arrived with a bang: an explosion of gaudy fashions, innovative sounds and boundless energy. Yet our response to the music of the time remains equivocal: a mixture of fondness and faint embarrassment. There’s no doubting it was a time that de
THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO MODERN BRITISH MUSIC Indie explodes in Manchester It wasn’t just would-be musicians who took to heart the punk ethos of “get up there and do it yourselfâ€. In the late Seventies, small record labels had started to spring up in the UK — among them Chiswick, Stiff, Roug
90 T wo words sum up the musical Nineties: Cool Britannia. British guitar bands rediscovered their suburban roots and swaggered on stage to thrash out three-minute pop songs; the Spice Girls’ Geri Halliwell sported a Union Jack dress; and pop stars were invited to Downing Street by Tony Blair. The
THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO MODERN BRITISH MUSIC Girl Power and boy bands “Yo... I’ll tell you what I want, what I really, really want. I want a record deal with a sevenfigure advance, the fastestselling album since The Beatles, six number ones in two years, success in countless countries, a film,
00 R eality TV, multichannel TV, MP3 players, MySpace, YouTube, the mobile web – technology changed our lives in first decade of the 21st century, and the music industry was powerless to resist. It was the decade when the internet made its first serious impact on the charts – when everyone had a
THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO MODERN BRITISH MUSIC Urban is universal The Noughties was the decade when British urban acts — in particular, soul, R&B and hip-hop artists — broke through into the mainstream in numbers. At the start of the decade, young R&B singersongwriters dominated the scene. While
