The Age of Classic Rock

I am a big fan of classic rock, having grown up with it.  The era between the early 60s and mid 70s was a golden era that featured a meld of great new tunes, terrific covers, great vocal harmonies, and the rise of electricity!  This is the era when the amplifiers were turned up to 11!  The guitars went from the background to the forefront and never stepped back.

There is no clear agreement on the classic rock period.  So, I have my own milestones.  Those are the appearance of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964 and the tragic death of Stevie Ray Vaughan 20 years ago in August 1990.

Why the Beatles and why the Ed Sullvan Show?  A case can be made for the Beach Boys.  They are definitely classic rock artists riding the surfing craze of the early 60s and hanging ten alongside the British invasion.  'Surfin' USA' was a rework of Chuck Berry's classic 'Sweet Little Sixteen'. However, the surf music didn't last and the Beatles took rock and roll music one step forward, bringing the guitars up front and centre with the vocals.  The Fab Four covered a lot of older Rock and Roll songs by artists like Little Richard and Chuck Berry.  They also wrote their own songs in the same style and played hard.

The Beatles were popular before their famous appearance on Ed Sullivan.  They had concurred England beginning with Love Me Do in 1962 and were on the charts in the US before they got off the plane in New York.  However, their Ed Sullivan performances with the girls screaming sent shock waves throughout North America.  Just as we all remembered where we were a few months before when JFK was assassinated so too we could never forget the 'four moptops' opening salvo. The Rolling Stones and The Animals would come a few months later playing covers of American Blues but they would bring the same hard charging style that the Beatles first showed on the Ed Sullivan Show.

At the other end of the spectrum, Classic Rock's demise was much like the end of the Roman Empire.  It's hard to define a point at which Rome no longer existed although 476 AD is generally considered to be the end.  For me, it was the death of Stevie Ray Vaughan who re-energized the blues in the early 80s.  SRV's 'The House is a Rockin'' was the last classic rock and roll song to climb up the charts.  It's a great song in the tradition of 'Rock and Roll Music' and 'Rock Around the Clock'.  That it didn't sit on top of the charts for 16 weeks is an indication that an era had ended. Rap, alternative, grunge, and other forms would take over for a newer generation.

On the other hand as Pete Townshend so aptly put it:
'Rock is dead they say,
Love Live Rock'.