Coordinates	40°26′30″N80°00′00″N
Name	Rock music
Color	white
Bgcolor	crimson
Stylistic origins	Rock and roll, electric blues, folk music, country, blues, rhythm and blues, soul music
Cultural origins	1950s and 1960s, United Kingdom and United States
Instruments	Vocals, electric guitar, bass guitar, acoustic guitar, drums, synthesizer, keyboards
Popularity	Extremely high worldwide, since 1950s
Derivatives	New Age music – Synthpop
Subgenrelist	List of rock genres
Subgenres	Alternative rock – Art rock – Baroque pop – Beat music – Britpop – Emo – Experimental rock – Garage rock – Glam rock – Grindcore – Group Sounds – Grunge – Hard rock – Heartland rock – Heavy metal – Instrumental rock – Indie rock – Jangle pop – Krautrock – Madchester – Post-Britpop – Power pop – Progressive rock – Protopunk – Psychedelia – Punk rock – Rock noir – Soft rock – Southern rock – Surf – Symphonic rock
Fusiongenres	Aboriginal rock – Afro-rock – Anatolian rock – Bhangra rock – Blues-rock – Country rock – Flamenco-rock – Folk rock – Funk rock – Glam punk – Indo-rock – Industrial rock – Jazz fusion – Pop rock – Punta rock – Raga rock – Raï rock – Rap rock – Rockabilly – Rockoson – Samba-rock – Space rock – Stoner rock – Sufi rock
Regional scenes	Argentina – Armenia – Australia – Belarus – Belgium – Bosnia and Herzegovina – Brazil – Canada – Chile – China – Colombia – Cuba – Croatia – Denmark – Dominican Republic – Ecuador – Estonia – Finland – France – Greece – Germany – Hungary – Iceland – India – Indonesia – Ireland – Israel – Italy – Japan – Spanish-speaking world – Latvia – Lithuania – Malaysia – Mexico – Nepal – New Zealand – Norway – Pakistan – Peru – Philippines – Poland – Portugal – Russia – Serbia – Slovenia – Spain – Sweden – Switzerland – Tatar – Thailand – Turkey – Ukraine – United Kingdom – United States – Uruguay – SFR Yugoslavia – Zambia
Other topics	Backbeat – Rock opera – Rock band – Hall of Fame – Social impact – List of rock music terms}}

Rock music is a genre of popular music that 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. The dominance of rock by white, male musicians has been seen as one of the key factors shaping the themes explored in rock music. Rock places a higher degree of emphasis on musicianship, live performance, and an ideology of authenticity than pop music.

By the late 1960s a number of distinct rock music sub-genres had emerged, including hybrids like blues-rock, folk rock, country rock, and jazz-rock fusion, many of which contributed to the development of psychedelic rock influenced by the counter-cultural psychedelic scene. New genres that emerged from this scene included progressive rock, which extended the artistic elements; glam rock, which highlighted showmanship and visual style, and the diverse and enduring major sub-genre of heavy metal, which emphasized volume, power and speed. In the second half of the 1970s, punk rock both intensified and reacted against some of these trends to produce a raw, energetic form of music characterized by overt political and social critiques. Punk was an influence into the 1980s on the subsequent development of other sub-genres, including New Wave, post punk and eventually the alternative rock movement. From the 1990s alternative rock began to dominate rock music and break through into the mainstream in the form of grunge, Britpop, and indie rock. Further fusion sub-genres have since emerged, including pop punk, rap rock, and rap metal, as well as conscious attempts to revisit rock's history, including the garage rock/post punk revival at the beginning of the new millennium.

Rock music has also embodied and served as the vehicle for cultural and social movements, leading to major sub-cultures including mods and rockers in the UK and the "hippie" counterculture that spread out from San Francisco in the US in the 1960s. Similarly, 1970s punk culture spawned the visually distinctive goth and emo subcultures. Inheriting the folk tradition of the protest song, rock music has been associated with political activism as well as changes in social attitudes to race, sex and drug use, and is often seen as an expression of youth revolt against adult consumerism and conformity.

Characteristics

The sound of rock is traditionally centered 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 synthesizers. 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 vocalist, lead guitarist, rhythm guitarist, bass guitarist, drummer and occasionally that of keyboard player or other instrumentalist.

Rock music is traditionally built on a foundation of simple unsyncopated rhythms in a 4/4 meter, with a repetitive snare drum back beat on beats two and four. Melodies are often derived from older musical modes, including the Dorian and Mixolydian, as well as major and minor modes. Harmonies range from the common triad to parallel fourths and fifths and dissonant harmonic progressions. Rock songs from the mid-1960s onwards often used the verse-chorus structure derived from blues and folk music, but there has been considerable variation from this model. Critics have stressed the eclecticism and stylistic diversity of rock. Because of its complex history and tendency to borrow from other musical and cultural forms, it has been argued that "it is impossible to bind rock music to a rigidly delineated musical definition."

Unlike many earlier styles of popular music, rock lyrics have dealt with a wide range of themes in addition to romantic love: including sex, rebellion against the establishment, social concerns and life styles. These themes were inherited from a variety of sources, including the Tin Pan Alley pop tradition, folk music and rhythm and blues. The predominance of white, male and often middle class musicians in rock music has often been noted and rock has been seen as an appropriation of black musical forms for a young, white and large male audience. As a result it has been seen as articulating the concerns of this group in both style and lyrics.

Since the term rock began to be used in preference to rock and roll from the mid 1960s, it has often been contrasted with pop music, with which it has shared many characteristics, but from which it is often distanced by an emphasis on musicianship, live performance and a focus on serious and progressive themes as part of an ideology of authenticity that is frequently combined with an awareness of the genre's history and development. According to Simon Frith "rock was something more than pop, something more than rock and roll. Rock musicians combined an emphasis on skill and technique with the romantic concept of art as artistic expression, original and sincere". In the new millennium the term ''rock'' has sometimes been used as a blanket term including forms such as pop music, reggae music, soul music, and even hip hop, with which it has been influenced but often contrasted through much of its history.

Background (1950s–early 1960s)

Rock and roll

The foundations of rock music are in rock and roll, which originated in the United States during the late 1940s and 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 rhythm 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 and roll record. One contender is "Rocket 88" by Jackie 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 Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" (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.

It has been argued that "That's All Right (Mama)" (1954), Elvis Presley's first single for Sun Records in Memphis, was the first rock and roll record, but, at the same time, Big Joe Turner's "Shake, Rattle & Roll", later covered by Haley, was already at the top of the Billboard R&B; charts. Other artists with early rock and roll hits included Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Gene Vincent. Soon rock and roll was the major force in American record sales and crooners, such as Eddie Fisher, Perry Como, and Patti Page, who had dominated the previous decade of popular music, found their access to the pop charts significantly curtailed.

Rock and roll has been seen as leading to a number of distinct sub-genres, including rockabilly, combining rock and roll with "hillbilly" country music, which was usually played and recorded in the mid-1950s by white singers such as Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly and with the greatest commercial success, Elvis Presley. In contrast doo wop placed an emphasis on multi-part vocal harmonies and meaningless backing lyrics (from which the genre later gained its name), which were usually supported with light instrumentation and had its origins in 1930s and '40s African American vocal groups. Acts like The Crows, The Penguins, The El Dorados and The Turbans all scored major hits, and groups like The Platters, with songs including "The Great Pretender" (1955), and The Coasters with humorous songs like "Yakety Yak" (1958), ranked among the most successful rock and roll acts of the period. The era also saw the growth in popularity of the electric guitar, and the development of a specifically rock and roll style of playing through such exponents as Chuck Berry, Link Wray, and Scotty Moore.

In the United Kingdom, the trad jazz and folk movements brought visiting blues music artists to Britain. Lonnie Donegan's 1955 hit "Rock Island Line" was a major influence and helped to develop the trend of skiffle music groups throughout the country, many of which, including John Lennon's The Quarrymen, moved on to play rock and roll.

Commentators have traditionally perceived a decline of rock and roll in the late 1950s and early 1960s. By 1959, the death of Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Richie Valens in a plane crash, the departure of Elvis for the army, the retirement of Little Richard to become a preacher, prosecutions of Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry and the breaking of the payola scandal (which implicated major figures, including Alan Freed, in bribery and corruption in promoting individual acts or songs), gave a sense that the initial rock and roll era had come to an end.

The "in-between years"

The period of the later 1950s and early 1960s, between the end of the initial period of innovation and what became known in the USA as the "British Invasion", has traditionally been seen as an era of hiatus for rock and roll. More recently some authors have emphasised important innovations and trends in this period without which future developments would not have been possible. While early rock and roll, particularly through the advent of rockabilly, saw the greatest commercial success for male and white performers, in this era the genre was dominated by black and female artists. Rock and roll had not disappeared at the end of the 1950s and some of its energy can be seen in the Twist dance craze of the early '60s, mainly benefiting the career of Chubby Checker. Having died down in the late 1950s, doo wop enjoyed a revival in the same period, with hits for acts like The Marcels, The Capris, Maurice Williams and Shep and the Limelights. The rise of girl groups like The Chantels, The Shirelles and The Crystals placed an emphasis on harmonies and polished production that was in contrast to earlier rock and roll. Some of the most significant girl group hits were products of the Brill Building Sound, named after the block in New York where many songwriters were based, which included the number 1 hit for the Shirelles "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" in 1960, penned by the partnership of Gerry Goffin and Carole King.

Cliff Richard had the first British rock and roll hit with "Move It", effectively ushering in the sound of British rock. At the start of the 1960s, his backing group The Shadows was the most successful group recording instrumentals. While rock 'n' roll was fading into lightweight pop and ballads, British rock groups at clubs and local dances, heavily influenced by blues-rock pioneers like Alexis Korner, were starting to play with an intensity and drive seldom found in white American acts.

Also significant was the advent of soul music as a major commercial force. Developing out of rhythm and blues with a re-injection of gospel music and pop, led by pioneers like Ray Charles and Sam Cooke from the mid-1950s, by the early '60s figures like Marvin Gaye, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield and Stevie Wonder were dominating the R&B; charts and breaking through into the main pop charts, helping to accelerate their desegregation, while Motown and Stax/Volt Records were becoming major forces in the record industry. All of these elements, including the close harmonies of doo wop and girl groups, the carefully crafted song-writing of the Brill Building Sound and the polished production values of soul, have been seen as influencing the Merseybeat sound, particularly the early work of The Beatles, and through them the form of later rock music. Some historians of music have also pointed to important and innovative technical developments that built on rock and roll in this period, including the electronic treatment of sound by such innovators as Joe Meek, and the elaborate production methods of the Wall of Sound pursued by Phil Spector.

Surf music

The instrumental rock and roll pioneered by performers such as Duane Eddy, Link Wray, and The Ventures was developed by Dick Dale who added distinctive "wet" reverb, rapid alternate picking, as well as Middle Eastern and Mexican influences, producing the regional hit "Let's Go Trippin'" in 1961 and launching the surf music craze. Like Dale and his Del-Tones, most early surf bands were formed in Southern California, including the Bel-Airs, the Challengers, and Eddie & the Showmen. The Chantays scored a top ten national hit with "Pipeline" in 1963 and probably the best known surf tune was 1963's "Wipe Out", by the Surfaris, which hit number 2 and number 10 on the Billboard charts in 1965.

The growing popularity of the genre led groups from other areas to try their hand. These included The Astronauts, from Boulder, Colorado, The Trashmen, from Minneapolis, Minnesota, who had a number 4 hit with "Surfin Bird" in 1964 and The Rivieras from South Bend, Indiana, who reached number 5 in 1964 with "California Sun". The Atlantics, from Sydney, Australia, made a significant contribution to the genre, with their hit "Bombora" (1963). European instrumental bands around this time generally focused more on the more rock and roll style played by The Shadows, but The Dakotas, who were the British backing band for Merseybeat singer Billy J. Kramer, gained some attention as surf musicians with "Cruel Sea" (1963), which was later covered by American instrumental surf bands, including The Ventures.

Surf music achieved its greatest commercial success as vocal music, particularly the work of the Beach Boys, formed in 1961 in Southern California. Their early albums included both instrumental surf rock (among them covers of music by Dick Dale) and vocal songs, drawing on rock and roll and doo wop and the close harmonies of vocal pop acts like the Four Freshmen. Their first chart hit, "Surfin'" in 1962 reached the Billboard top 100 and helped make the surf music craze a national phenomenon. From 1963 the group began to leave surfing behind as subject matter as Brian Wilson became their major composer and producer, moving on to the more general themes of male adolescence including cars and girl in songs like "Fun, Fun, Fun" (1964) and "California Girls" (1965). Other vocal surf acts followed, including one-hit wonders like Ronny & the Daytonas with "G. T. O." (1964) and Rip Chords with "Hey Little Cobra", which both reached the top ten, but the only other act to achieve sustained success with the formula were Jan & Dean, who had a number 1 hit with "Surf City" (co-written with Brian Wilson) in 1963. The surf music craze and the careers of almost all surf acts was effectively ended by the arrival of the British Invasion from 1964. Only the Beach Boys were able to sustain a creative career into the mid-1960s, producing a string of hit singles and albums, including the highly regarded ''Pet Sounds'' in 1966, which made them, arguably, the only American rock or pop act that could rival The Beatles.

Emergence (mid- to late 1960s)

The British Invasion

By the end of 1962, what would become the British rock scene had started with beat groups like The Beatles, Gerry & The Pacemakers and The Searchers from Liverpool and Freddie and the Dreamers, Herman's Hermits and The Hollies from Manchester. They drew on a wide range of American influences including soul, rhythm and blues and surf music, initially reinterpreting standard American tunes and playing for dancers. Bands like The Animals from Newcastle and Them from Belfast, and particularly those from London like The Rolling Stones and The Yardbirds, were much more directly influenced by rhythm and blues and later blues music. Soon these groups were composing their own material, combining US forms of music and infusing it with a high energy beat. Beat bands tended towards "bouncy, irresistible melodies", while early British rhythm and blues acts tended towards less sexually innocent, more aggressive songs, often adopting an anti-establishment stance. There was, however, particularly in the early stages, considerable musical crossover between the two tendencies. By 1963, led by the Beatles, beat groups had begun to achieve national success in Britain, soon to be followed into the charts by the more rhythm and blues focused acts.

In 1964 the Beatles achieved a breakthrough to mainstream popularity in the United States. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was the band's first number 1 hit on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100, spending 7 weeks at the top and a total of 15 weeks on the chart. Their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show on 9 February, drawing an estimated 73 million viewers (at the time a record for an American television program) often is considered a milestone in American pop culture. The Beatles went on to become the biggest selling rock band of all time and they were followed into the US charts by numerous British bands. During the next two years British acts dominated their own and the US charts with Peter and Gordon, The Animals, Manfred Mann, Petula Clark, Freddie and the Dreamers, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, Herman's Hermits, The Rolling Stones, The Troggs, and Donovan all having one or more number 1 singles. Other major acts that were part of the invasion included The Kinks and The Dave Clark Five.

The British Invasion helped internationalize the production of rock and roll, opening the door for subsequent British (and Irish) performers to achieve international success. In America it arguably spelled the end of instrumental surf music, vocal girl groups and (for a time) the teen idols, that had dominated the American charts in the late 1950s and '60s. It dented the careers of established R&B; acts like Fats Domino and Chubby Checker and even temporarily derailed the chart success of surviving rock and roll acts, including Elvis. The British Invasion also played a major part in the rise of a distinct genre of rock music, and cemented the primacy of the rock group, based on guitars and drums and producing their own material as singer-songwriters. Garage rock songs revolved around the traumas of high school life, with songs about "lying girls" being particularly common. The lyrics and delivery were more aggressive than was common at the time, often with growled or shouted vocals that dissolved into incoherent screaming. They ranged from crude one-chord music (like the Seeds) to near-studio musician quality (including the Knickerbockers, the Remains, and the Fifth Estate). There were also regional variations in many parts of the country with flourishing scenes particularly in California and Texas. The Pacific Northwest states of Washington and Oregon had perhaps the most defined regional sound.

The style had been evolving from regional scenes as early as 1958. "Tall Cool One" (1959) by The Wailers and "Louie Louie" by The Kingsmen (1963) are mainstream examples of the genre in its formative stages. By 1963, garage band singles were creeping into the national charts in greater numbers, including Paul Revere and the Raiders (Boise), the Trashmen (Minneapolis) and the Rivieras (South Bend, Indiana). Other influential garage bands, such as the Sonics (Tacoma, Washington), never reached the ''Billboard'' Hot 100. In this early period many bands were heavily influenced by surf rock and there was a cross-pollination between garage rock and frat rock, sometimes viewed as merely a sub-genre of garage rock.

The British Invasion of 1964–66 greatly influenced garage bands, providing them with a national audience, leading many (often surf or hot rod groups) to adopt a British Invasion lilt, and encouraging many more groups to form. Thousands of garage bands were extant in the USA and Canada during the era and hundreds produced regional hits. Examples include: "The Witch" by Tacoma's The Sonics (1965), "Where You Gonna Go" by Detroit's Unrelated Segments (1967), "Girl I Got News for You" by Miami's Birdwatchers (1966) and "1–2–5" by Montreal's The Haunted. Despite scores of bands being signed to major or large regional labels, most were commercial failures. It is generally agreed that garage rock peaked both commercially and artistically around 1966. By 1968 the style largely disappeared from the national charts and at the local level as amateur musicians faced college, work or the draft. New styles had evolved to replace garage rock (including blues-rock, progressive rock and country rock). In Detroit garage rock stayed alive until the early '70s, with bands like the MC5 and The Stooges, who employed a much more aggressive style. These bands began to be labelled punk rock and are now often seen as proto-punk or proto-hard rock.

Pop rock

The term ''pop'' has been used since the early 20th century to refer to popular music in general, but from the mid-1950s it began to be used for a distinct genre, aimed at a youth market, often characterized as a softer alternative to rock and roll. In the aftermath of the British Invasion, from about 1967, it was increasingly used in opposition to the term rock music, to describe a form that was more commercial, ephemeral and accessible. In contrast rock music was seen as focusing on extended works, particularly albums, was often associated with particular sub-cultures (like the counter-culture), placed an emphasis on artistic values and "authenticity", stressed live performance and instrumental or vocal virtuosity and was often seen as encapsulating progressive developments rather than simply reflecting existing trends.

Nevertheless much pop and rock music has been very similar in sound, instrumentation and even lyrical content. The terms "pop-rock" and "power pop" have been used to describe more commercially successful music that uses elements from, or the form of, rock music. Pop-rock has been defined as an "upbeat variety of rock music represented by artists such as Elton John, Paul McCartney, The Everly Brothers, Rod Stewart, Chicago, and Peter Frampton." In contrast, self-published music reviewer George Starostin defines it as a subgenre of pop music that uses catchy pop songs that are mostly guitar-based. Starostin argues that most of what is traditionally called "power pop" falls into the pop rock subgenre and that the lyrical content of pop rock is "normally secondary to the music." The term ''power pop'' was coined by Pete Townshend of The Who in 1966, but not much used until it was applied to bands like Badfinger in the 1970s, who proved some of the most commercially successful of the period. Throughout its history there have been rock acts that have used elements of pop, and pop artists who have used rock music as a basis for their work, or striven for rock "authenticity".

Blues-rock

Although the first impact of the British Invasion on American popular music was through beat and R&B; based acts, the impetus was soon taken up by a second wave of bands that drew their inspiration more directly from American blues, including the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds. British blues musicians of the late 1950s and early '60s had been inspired by the acoustic playing of figures such as Lead Belly, who was a major influence on the Skiffle craze, and Robert Johnson. Increasingly they adopted a loud amplified sound, often centred around the electric guitar, based on the Chicago blues, particularly after the tour of Britain by Muddy Waters in 1958, which prompted Cyril Davies and guitarist Alexis Korner to form the band Blues Incorporated. The band involved and inspired many of the figures of the subsequent British blues boom, including members of the Rolling Stones and Cream, combining blues standards and forms with rock instrumentation and emphasis.

The other key focus for British blues was around John Mayall who formed the Bluesbreakers, whose members included Eric Clapton (after his departure from The Yardbirds) and later Peter Green. Particularly significant was the release of ''Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton (Beano)'' album (1966), considered one of the seminal British blues recordings and the sound of which was much emulated in both Britain and the United States. Eric Clapton went on to form supergroups Cream, Blind Faith and Derek and the Dominos, followed by an extensive solo career that helped bring blues-rock into the mainstream. Green, along with the Bluesbreaker's rhythm section Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, formed Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, who enjoyed some of the greatest commercial success in the genre. In the late '60s Jeff Beck, also an alumnus of the Yardbirds, moved blues-rock in the direction of heavy rock with his band, The Jeff Beck Group. The last Yardbirds guitarist was Jimmy Page, who went on to form ''The New Yardbirds'' which rapidly became Led Zeppelin. Many of the songs on their first three albums, and occasionally later in their careers, were expansions on traditional blues songs.

In America blues-rock had been pioneered in the early 1960s by guitarist Lonnie Mack, but the genre began to take off in the mid-'60s as acts developed a sound similar to British blues musicians. Key acts included Paul Butterfield (whose band acted like Mayall's Bluesbreakers in Britain as a starting point for many successful musicians), Canned Heat, the early Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Johnny Winter, The J. Geils Band and Jimi Hendrix with his power trios, The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Band of Gypsys, whose guitar virtuosity and showmanship would be among the most emulated of the decade. Blues-rock bands from the southern states, like Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and ZZ Top, incorporated country elements into their style to produce distinctive Southern rock.

Early blues-rock bands often emulated jazz, playing long, involved improvisations, which would later be a major element of progressive rock. From about 1967 bands like Cream and The Jimi Hendrix Experience had begun to move away from purely blues-based music into psychedelia. By the 1970s blues-rock had become heavier and more riff-based, exemplified by the work of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, and the lines between blues-rock and hard rock "were barely visible", as bands began recording rock-style albums. The genre was continued in the 1970s by figures such as George Thorogood and Pat Travers, but, particularly on the British scene (except perhaps for the advent of groups such as Status Quo and Foghat who moved towards a form of high energy and repetitive boogie rock), bands became focused on heavy metal innovation, and blues-rock began to slip out of the mainstream.

Folk rock

By the 1960s, the scene that had developed out of the American folk music revival had grown to a major movement, utilising traditional music and new compositions in a traditional style, usually on acoustic instruments. In America the genre was pioneered by figures such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and often identified with progressive or labor politics. In the early sixties figures such as Joan Baez and Bob Dylan had come to the fore in this movement as singer-songwriters. Dylan had begun to reach a mainstream audience with hits including "Blowin' in the Wind" (1963) and "Masters of War" (1963), which brought "protest songs" to a wider public, but, although beginning to influence each other, rock and folk music had remained largely separate genres, often with mutually exclusive audiences.

Early attempts to combine elements of folk and rock included the Animals "House of the Rising Sun" (1964), which was the first commercially successful folk song to be recorded with rock and roll instrumentation and the Beatles "I'm a Loser" (1964), arguably the first Beatles song to be influenced directly by Dylan. The folk rock movement is usually thought to have taken off with The Byrds' recording of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" which topped the charts in 1965. With members who had been part of the cafe-based folk scene in Los Angeles, the Byrds adopted rock instrumentation, including drums and 12-string Rickenbacker guitars, which became a major element in the sound of the genre. Later that year Dylan adopted electric instruments, much to the outrage of many folk purists, with his "Like a Rolling Stone" becoming a US hit single. Folk rock particularly took off in California, where it led acts like The Mamas & the Papas and Crosby, Stills and Nash to move to electric instrumentation, and in New York, where it spawned performers including The Lovin' Spoonful and Simon and Garfunkel, with the latter's acoustic "The Sounds of Silence" (1965) being remixed with rock instruments to be the first of many hits.

These acts directly influenced British performers like Donovan and Fairport Convention. In 1969 Fairport Convention abandoned their mixture of American covers and Dylan-influenced songs to play traditional English folk music on electric instruments. This electric folk was taken up by bands including Pentangle, Steeleye Span and The Albion Band, which turn prompted Irish groups like Horslips and Scottish acts like the JSD Band, Spencer's Feat and later Five Hand Reel, to use their traditional music to create a brand of Celtic rock in the early 1970s.

Folk rock reached its peak of commercial popularity in the period 1967–68, before many acts moved off in a variety of directions, including Dylan and the Byrds, who began to develop country rock. However, the hybridization of folk and rock has been seen as having a major influence on the development of rock music, bringing in elements of psychedelia, and helping to develop the ideas of the singer-songwriter, the protest song and concepts of "authenticity".

Psychedelic rock

Psychedelic music's LSD-inspired vibe began in the folk scene, with the New York-based Holy Modal Rounders using the term in their 1964 recording of "Hesitation Blues". The first group to advertise themselves as psychedelic rock were the 13th Floor Elevators from Texas, at the end of 1965; producing an album that made their direction clear, with ''The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators'' the following year. The Beatles introduced many of the major elements of the psychedelic sound to audiences in this period, with "I Feel Fine" using guitar feedback; in late 1965 the ''Rubber Soul'' album included the use of a sitar on "Norwegian Wood" and they employed backmasking on their 1966 single B-side "Rain" and other tracks that appeared on their ''Revolver'' album later that year.

Psychedelic rock particularly took off in California's emerging music scene as groups followed the Byrds from folk to folk rock from 1965. The psychedelic life style had already developed in San Francisco and particularly prominent products of the scene were The Grateful Dead, Country Joe and the Fish, The Great Society and Jefferson Airplane. The Byrds rapidly progressed from purely folk rock in 1966 with their single "Eight Miles High", widely taken to be a reference to drug use. In Britain arguably the most influential band in the genre were The Yardbirds, who, with Jeff Beck as their guitarist, increasingly moved into psychedelic territory, adding up-tempo improvised "rave ups", Gregorian chant and world music influences to songs including "Still I'm Sad" (1965) and "Over Under Sideways Down" (1966). From 1966 the UK underground scene based in North London, supported new acts including Pink Floyd, Traffic and Soft Machine. The same year saw Donovan's folk-influenced hit album ''Sunshine Superman'', considered one of the first psychedelic pop records, as well as the débuts of blues rock bands Cream and The Jimi Hendrix Experience, whose extended guitar-heavy jams became a key feature of psychedelia.

Psychedelic rock reached its apogee in the last years of the decade. 1967 saw the Beatles release their definitive psychedelic statement in ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'', including the controversial track "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and the Rolling Stones responded later that year with ''Their Satanic Majesties Request''. Pink Floyd produced what is usually seen as their best psychedelic work ''The Piper at the Gates of Dawn''. In America the Summer of Love was prefaced by the Human Be-In event and reached its peak at the Monterey Pop Festival, the latter helping to make major American stars of Jimi Hendrix and The Who, whose single "I Can See for Miles" delved into psychedelic territory. Key recordings included Jefferson Airplane's ''Surrealistic Pillow'' and The Doors' ''Strange Days''. These trends climaxed in the 1969 Woodstock festival, which saw performances by most of the major psychedelic acts, but by the end of the decade psychedelic rock was in retreat. Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac and Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd were early "acid casualties", the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Cream broke up before the end of the decade and many surviving acts moved away from psychedelia into more back-to-basics "roots rock", the wider experimentation of progressive rock, or riff laden heavy rock.

Progression (late 1960s to mid-1970s)

Roots rock

Roots rock is the term now used to describe a move away from what some saw as the excesses of the psychedelic scene, to a more basic form of rock and roll that incorporated its original influences, particularly country and folk music, leading to the creation of country rock and Southern rock. In 1966 Bob Dylan went to Nashville to record the album ''Blonde on Blonde''. This, and subsequent more clearly country-influenced albums, have been seen as creating the genre of country folk, a route pursued by a number of, largely acoustic, folk musicians. Other acts that followed the back-to-basics trend were the Canadian group The Band and the California-based Creedence Clearwater Revival, both of which mixed basic rock and roll with folk, country and blues, to be among the most successful and influential bands of the late 1960s. The same movement saw the beginning of the recording careers of Californian solo artists like Ry Cooder, Bonnie Raitt and Lowell George, and influenced the work of established performers such as the Rolling Stones' ''Beggar's Banquet'' (1968) and the Beatles' ''Let It Be'' (1970).

In 1968 Gram Parsons recorded ''Safe at Home'' with the International Submarine Band, arguably the first true country-rock album. Later that year he joined the Byrds for ''Sweetheart of the Rodeo'' (1968), generally considered one of the most influential recordings in the genre. The Byrds continued in the same vein, but Parsons left to be joined by another ex-Byrds member Chris Hillman in forming The Flying Burrito Brothers who helped establish the respectability and parameters of the genre, before Parsons departed to pursue a solo career. Country rock was particularly popular in the Californian music scene, where it was adopted by bands including Hearts and Flowers, Poco and New Riders of the Purple Sage, the Beau Brummels and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Some performers also enjoyed a renaissance by adopting country sounds, including: the Everly Brothers; one-time teen idol Rick Nelson who became the frontman for the Stone Canyon Band; former Monkee Mike Nesmith who formed the First National Band; and Neil Young. The Dillards were, unusually, a country act, who moved towards rock music. The greatest commercial success for country rock came in the 1970s, with artist including the Doobie Brothers, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles (made up of members of the Burritos, Poco and Stone Canyon Band), who emerged as one of the most successful rock acts of all time, producing albums that included ''Hotel California'' (1976).

The founders of Southern rock are usually thought to be the Allman Brothers Band, who developed a distinctive sound, largely derived from blues rock, but incorporating elements of boogie, soul, and country in the early 1970s. The most successful act to follow them were Lynyrd Skynyrd, who helped establish the "Good ol' boy" image of the sub-genre and the general shape of 1970s guitar rock. Their successors included the fusion/progressive instrumentalists Dixie Dregs, the more country-influenced Outlaws, jazz-leaning Wet Willie and (incorporating elements of R&B; and gospel) the Ozark Mountain Daredevils. After the loss of original members of the Allmans and Lynyrd Skynyrd, the genre began to fade in popularity in the late 1970s, but was sustained the 1980s with acts like .38 Special, Molly Hatchet and The Marshall Tucker Band.

Progressive rock

Progressive rock, a term sometimes used interchangeably with art rock, was an attempt to move beyond established musical formulas by experimenting with different instruments, song types, and forms. From the mid-1960s The Left Banke, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys, had pioneered the inclusion of harpsichords, wind and string sections on their recordings to produce a form of Baroque rock and can be heard in singles like Procol Harum's "A Whiter Shade of Pale" (1967), with its Bach inspired introduction. The Moody Blues used a full orchestra on their album ''Days of Future Passed'' (1967) and subsequently created orchestral sounds with synthesisers. Classical orchestration, keyboards and synthesisers were a frequent edition to the established rock format of guitars, bass and drums in subsequent progressive rock.

Instrumentals were common, while songs with lyrics were sometimes conceptual, abstract, or based in fantasy and science fiction. The Pretty Things' ''SF Sorrow'' (1968), The Who's ''Tommy'' (1969) and The Kinks' ''Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)'' (1969) introduced the format of rock operas and opened the door to concept albums, often telling an epic story or tackling a grand overarching theme. King Crimson's 1969 début album, ''In the Court of the Crimson King'', which mixed powerful guitar riffs and mellotron, with jazz and symphonic music, is often taken as the key recording in progressive rock, helping the widespread adoption of the genre in the early 1970s among existing blues-rock and psychedelic bands, as well as newly formed acts.

The vibrant Canterbury scene saw acts following Soft Machine from psychedelia, through jazz influences, toward more expansive hard rock, including Caravan, Hatfield and the North, Gong, and National Health. Greater commercial success was enjoyed by Pink Floyd, who also moved away from psychedelia after the departure of Syd Barrett in 1968, with ''Dark Side of the Moon'' (1973), seen as a masterpiece of the genre, becoming one of the best-selling albums of all time. There was an emphasis on instrumental virtuosity, with Yes showcasing the skills of both guitarist Steve Howe and keyboard player Rick Wakeman, while Emerson, Lake & Palmer were a supergroup who produced some of the genre's most technically demanding work. Jethro Tull and Genesis both pursued very different, but distinctly English, brands of music. Renaissance, formed in 1969 by ex-Yardbirds Jim McCarty and Keith Relf, evolved into a high-concept band featuring the three-octave voice of Annie Haslam. Most British bands depended on a relatively small cult following, but a handful, including Pink Floyd, Genesis and Jethro Tull, managed to produce top ten singles at home and break the American market.

The American brand of prog rock varied from the eclectic and innovative Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart and Blood, Sweat and Tears, to more pop rock orientated bands like Boston, Foreigner, Kansas, Journey and Styx. These, beside British bands Supertramp and ELO, all demonstrated a prog rock influence and while ranking among the most commercially successful acts of the 1970s, issuing in the era of ''pomp'' or ''arena rock'', which would last until the costs of complex shows (often with theatrical staging and special effects), would be replaced by more economical rock festivals as major live venues in the 1990s.

The instrumental strand of the genre resulted in albums like Mike Oldfield's ''Tubular Bells'' (1973), the first record, and worldwide hit, for the Virgin Records label, which became a mainstay of the genre. Instrumental rock was particularly significant in continental Europe, allowing bands like Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Can and Faust to circumvent the language barrier. Their synthesiser-heavy "Kraut rock", along with the work of Brian Eno (for a time the keyboard player with Roxy Music), would be a major influence on subsequent synth rock. With the advent of punk rock and technological changes in the late 1970s, progressive rock was increasingly dismissed as pretentious and overblown. Many bands broke up, but some, including Genesis, ELP, Yes, and Pink Floyd, regularly scored top ten albums with successful accompanying worldwide tours.

Jazz rock

In the late 1960s jazz rock emerged as a distinct sub-genre out of the blues rock, psychedelic and progressive rock scenes, mixing the power of rock with the musical complexity and improvisational elements of jazz. Many early US rock and roll musicians had begun in jazz and carried some of these elements into the new music. In Britain the sub-genre of blues rock, and many of its leading figures, like Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce of Cream, had emerged from the British jazz scene. Often highlighted as the first true jazz-rock recording is the only album by the relatively obscure New York-based The Free Spirits with ''Out of Sight and Sound'' (1966). The first group of bands to self-consciously use the label were R&B; oriented white rock bands that made use of jazzy horn sections, like Electric Flag, Blood, Sweat and Tears and Chicago, to become some of the most commercially successful acts of the later 1960s and early 1970s.

British acts to emerge in the same period from the blues scene, to make use of the tonal and improvisational aspects of jazz, included Nucleus and the Graham Bond and John Mayall spin-off Colosseum. From the psychedelic rock and the Canterbury scenes came Soft Machine, who, it has been suggested, produced one of the artistically successfully fusions of the two genres. Perhaps the most critically acclaimed fusion came from the jazz side of the equation, with Miles Davis, particularly influenced by the work of Hendrix, incorporating rock instrumentation into his sound for the album ''Bitches Brew'' (1970). It was a major influence on subsequent rock-influenced jazz artists, including Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Weather Report. The genre began to fade in the late 1970s, as a mellower form of fusion began to take its audience, but acts like Steely Dan, Frank Zappa and Joni Mitchell recorded significant jazz-influenced albums in this period, and it has continued to be an major influence on rock music.

Glam rock

Glam rock emerged out of the English psychedelic and art rock scenes of the late 1960s and can be seen as both an extension of and reaction against those trends. Musically diverse, varying between the simple rock and roll revivalism of figures like Alvin Stardust to the complex art rock of Roxy Music, and can be seen as much as a fashion as a musical sub-genre. Visually it was a mesh of various styles, ranging from 1930s Hollywood glamor, through 1950s pin-up sex appeal, pre-war Cabaret theatrics, Victorian literary and symbolist styles, science fiction, to ancient and occult mysticism and mythology; manifesting itself in outrageous clothes, makeup, hairstyles, and platform-soled boots. Glam is most noted for its sexual and gender ambiguity and representations of androgyny, beside extensive use of theatrics. It was prefigured by the showmanship and gender identity manipulation of American acts such as The Cockettes and Alice Cooper.

The origins of glam rock are associated with Marc Bolan, who had renamed his folk duo to T. Rex and taken up electric instruments by the end of the 1960s. Often cited as the moment of inception is his appearance on the UK TV programme ''Top of the Pops'' in December 1970 wearing glitter, to perform what would be his first number 1 single "Ride a White Swan". From 1971, already a minor star, David Bowie developed his Ziggy Stardust persona, incorporating elements of professional make up, mime and performance into his act. These performers were soon followed in the style by acts including Roxy Music, Sweet, Slade, Mott the Hoople, Mud and Alvin Stardust. While highly successful in the single charts in the UK, very few of these musicians were able to make a serious impact in the United States; Bowie was the major exception becoming an international superstar and prompting the adoption of glam styles among acts like Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, New York Dolls and Jobriath, often known as "glitter rock" and with a darker lyrical content than their British counterparts. In the UK the term glitter rock was most often used to refer to the extreme version of glam pursued by Gary Glitter and his support musicians the Glitter Band, who between them achieved eighteen top ten singles in the UK between 1972 and 1976. A second wave of glam rock acts, including Suzi Quatro, Roy Wood's Wizzard and Sparks, dominated the British single charts from about 1974 to 1976. Existing acts, some not usually considered central to the genre, also adopted glam styles, including Rod Stewart, Elton John, Queen and, for a time, even the Rolling Stones. It was also a direct influence on acts that rose to prominence later, including Kiss and Adam Ant, and less directly on the formation of gothic rock and glam metal as well as on punk rock, which helped end the fashion for glam from about 1976. Glam has since enjoyed sporadic modest revivals through bands such as Chainsaw Kittens, The Darkness and in R n' B crossover act Prince.

Soft rock, hard rock and early heavy metal

From the late 1960s it became common to divide mainstream rock music into soft and hard rock. Soft rock was often derived from folk rock, using acoustic instruments and putting more emphasis on melody and harmonies. Major artists included Carole King, Cat Stevens and James Taylor. It reached its commercial peak in the mid- to late '70s with acts like Billy Joel, America and the reformed Fleetwood Mac, whose ''Rumours'' (1977) was the best selling album of the decade. In contrast, hard rock was more often derived from blues-rock and was played louder and with more intensity. It often emphasised the electric guitar, both as a rhythm instrument using simple repetitive riffs and as a solo lead instrument, and was more likely to be used with distortion and other effects. Key acts included British Invasion bands like The Who and The Kinks, as well as psychedelic era performers like Cream, Jimi Hendrix and The Jeff Beck Group. Hard rock-influenced bands that enjoyed international success in the later 1970s included Queen, Thin Lizzy, Aerosmith and AC/DC.

From the late 1960s the term heavy metal began to be used to describe some hard rock played with even more volume and intensity, first as an adjective and by the early 1970s as a noun. The term was first used in music in Steppenwolf's "Born to be Wild" (1967) and began to be associated with pioneer bands like Boston's Blue Cheer and Michigan's Grand Funk Railroad. By 1970 three key British bands had developed the characteristic sounds and styles which would help shape the sub-genre. Led Zeppelin added elements of fantasy to their riff laden blues-rock, Deep Purple brought in symphonic and medieval interests from their progressive rock phrase and Black Sabbath introduced facets of the gothic and modal harmony, helping to produce a "darker" sound. These elements were taken up by a "second generation" of heavy metal bands into the late 1970s, including: Judas Priest, UFO, Motörhead and Rainbow from Britain; Kiss, Ted Nugent, and Blue Öyster Cult from the US; Rush from Canada and Scorpions from Germany, all marking the expansion in popularity of the sub-genre. Despite a lack of airplay and very little presence on the singles charts, late-1970s heavy metal built a considerable following, particularly among adolescent working-class males in North America and Europe.

Christian rock

Rock has been criticized by some Christian religious leaders, who have condemned it as immoral, anti-Christian and even demonic. However, Christian rock began to develop in the late 1960s, particularly out of the Jesus movement beginning in Southern California, and emerged as a sub-genre in the 1970s with artists like Larry Norman, usually seen as the first major "star" of Christian rock. The genre has been particularly popular in the United States. Many Christian rock performers have ties to the contemporary Christian music scene, while other bands and artists are closely linked to independent music. Since the 1980s Christian rock performers have gained mainstream success, including figures such as the American gospel-to-pop crossover artist Amy Grant and the British singer Cliff Richard. While these artists were largely acceptable in Christian communities the adoption of heavy rock and glam metal styles by bands like Petra and Stryper, who achieved considerable mainstream success in the 1980s, was more controversial. From the 1990s there were increasing numbers of acts who attempted to avoid the Christian band label, preferring to be seen as groups who were also Christians, including P.O.D and Collective Soul.

Punk and its aftermath (mid-1970s to the 1980s)

Punk rock

Punk rock was developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States and the United Kingdom. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed the perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock. They created fast, hard-edged music, typically with short songs, stripped-down instrumentation, and often political, anti-establishment lyrics. Punk embraces a DIY (do it yourself) ethic, with many bands self-producing their recordings and distributing them through informal channels.

By late 1976, acts such as the Ramones and Patti Smith, in New York City, and the Sex Pistols and The Clash, in London, were recognized as the vanguard of a new musical movement. The following year saw punk rock spreading around the world. Punk quickly, though briefly, became a major cultural phenomenon in the United Kingdom. For the most part, punk took root in local scenes that tended to reject association with the mainstream. An associated punk subculture emerged, expressing youthful rebellion and characterized by distinctive clothing styles and a variety of anti-authoritarian ideologies.

By the beginning of the 1980s, faster, more aggressive styles such as hardcore and Oi! had become the predominant mode of punk rock. Since punk rock's initial popularity in the 1970s and the renewed interest created by the punk revival of the 1990s, punk rock continues to have a strong underground following. This has resulted in several evolved strains of hardcore punk, such as D-beat (a distortion-heavy subgenre influenced by the UK band Discharge), anarcho-punk (such as Crass), grindcore (such as Napalm Death), and crust punk. Musicians identifying with or inspired by punk also pursued a broad range of other variations, giving rise to New Wave, post-punk and the alternative rock movement.

New Wave

Although punk rock was a significant social and musical phenomenon, it achieved less in the way of record sales (being distributed by small specialty labels such as Stiff Records), or American radio airplay (as the radio scene continued to be dominated by mainstream formats such as disco and album-oriented rock). Punk rock had attracted devotees from the art and collegiate world and soon bands sporting a more literate, arty approach, such as Talking Heads, and Devo began to infiltrate the punk scene; in some quarters the description "New Wave" began to be used to differentiate these less overtly punk bands. Record executives, who had been mostly mystified by the punk movement, recognized the potential of the more accessible New Wave acts and began aggressively signing and marketing any band that could claim a remote connection to punk or New Wave. Many of these bands, such as The Cars, and The Go-Go's can be seen as pop bands marketed as New Wave; other existing acts, including The Police, The Pretenders and Elvis Costello, used the New Wave movement as the springboard for relatively long and critically successful careers, while "skinny tie" bands exemplified by The Knack, or the photogenic Blondie, began as punk acts and moved into more commercial territory.

Between 1982 and 1985, influenced by Kraftwerk, David Bowie, and Gary Numan, British New Wave went in the direction of such New Romantics as Spandau Ballet, Ultravox, Duran Duran, A Flock of Seagulls, Culture Club, Talk Talk and the Eurythmics, sometimes using the synthesizer to replace all other instruments. This period coincided with the rise of MTV and led to a great deal of exposure for this brand of synthpop, creating what has been characterised as a second British Invasion. Some more traditional rock bands adapted to the video age and profited from MTV's airplay, most obviously Dire Straits', whose "Money for Nothing" gently poked fun at the station, despite the fact that it had helped make them international stars, but in general guitar-oriented rock was commercially eclipsed.

Post-punk

If hardcore most directly pursued the stripped down aesthetic of punk, and New Wave came to represent its commercial wing, post-punk emerged in the later 1970s and early '80s as its more artistic and challenging side. Major influences beside punk bands were The Velvet Underground, The Who, Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart, and the New York based no wave scene which placed an emphasis on performance, including bands such as James Chance and the Contortions, DNA and Sonic Youth. Early contributors to the genre included the US bands Pere Ubu, Devo, The Residents and Talking Heads.

The first wave of British post-punk included Gang of Four, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Joy Division, who placed less emphasis on art than their US counterparts and more on the dark emotional qualities of their music. Bands like Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, The Cure, and The Sisters of Mercy, moved increasingly in this direction to found Gothic rock, which had become the basis of a major sub-culture by the early 1980s. Similar emotional territory was pursued by Australian acts like The Birthday Party and Nick Cave. Members of Bauhaus and Joy Division explored new stylistic territory as Love and Rockets and New Order respectively. Another early post-punk movement was the industrial music developed by British bands Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire, and New York-based Suicide, using a variety of electronic and sampling techniques that emulated the sound of industrial production and which would develop into a variety of forms of post-industrial music in the 1980s.

The second generation of British post-punk bands that broke through in the early 1980s, including The Fall, The Pop Group, The Mekons, Echo and the Bunnymen and Teardrop Explodes, tended to move away from dark sonic landscapes. Arguably the most successful band to emerge from post-punk was Ireland's U2, who incorporated elements of religious imagery together with political commentary into their often anthemic music, and by the late 1980s had become one of the biggest bands in the world. Although many post-punk bands continued to record and perform, it declined as a movement in the mid-1980s as acts disbanded or moved off to explore other musical areas, but it has continued to influence the development of rock music and has been seen as a major element in the creation of the alternative rock movement.

New waves and genres in heavy metal

Although many established bands continued to perform and record, heavy metal suffered a hiatus in the face of the punk movement in the mid-1970s. Part of the reaction saw the popularity of bands like Motörhead, who had adopted a punk sensibility, and Judas Priest, who created a stripped down sound, largely removing the remaining elements of blues music, from their 1978 album ''Stained Class''. This change of direction was compared to punk and in the late 1970s became known as the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM). These bands were soon followed by acts including Iron Maiden, Vardis, Diamond Head, Saxon, Def Leppard and Venom, many of which began to enjoy considerable success in the USA. In the same period Eddie Van Halen established himself as a metal guitar virtuoso after his band's self-titled 1978 album. Randy Rhoads and Yngwie Malmsteen also became established virtuosos, associated with what would be known as the neoclassical metal style.

Inspired by NWOBHM and Van Halen's success, a metal scene began to develop in Southern California from the late 1970s, based on the clubs of L.A.'s Sunset Strip and including such bands as Quiet Riot, Ratt, Mötley Crüe, and W.A.S.P., who, along with similarly styled acts such as New York's Twisted Sister, incorporated the theatrics (and sometimes makeup) of glam rock acts like Alice Cooper and Kiss. The lyrics of these glam metal bands characteristically emphasized hedonism and wild behavior and musically were distinguished by rapid-fire shred guitar solos, anthemic choruses, and a relatively melodic, pop-oriented approach. By the mid-1980s bands were beginning to emerge from the L.A. scene that pursued a less glam image and a rawer sound, particularly Guns N' Roses, breaking through with the chart-topping ''Appetite for Destruction'' (1987), and Jane's Addiction, who emerged with their major label debut ''Nothing's Shocking'', the following year.

In the late 1980s metal fragmented into several subgenres, including thrash metal, which developed in the US from the style known as speed metal, under the influence of hardcore punk, with low-register guitar riffs typically overlaid by shredding leads. Lyrics often expressed nihilistic views or deal with social issues using visceral, gory language. It was popularised by the "Big Four of Thrash": Metallica, Anthrax, Megadeth, and Slayer. Death metal developed out of thrash, particularly influenced by the bands Venom and Slayer. Florida's Death and the Bay Area's Possessed emphasized lyrical elements of blasphemy, diabolism and millenarianism, with vocals usually delivered as guttural "death growls," high-pitched screaming, complemented by downtuned, highly distorted guitars and extremely fast double bass percussion. Black metal, again influenced by Venom and pioneered by Denmark's Mercyful Fate, Switzerland's Hellhammer and Celtic Frost, and Sweden's Bathory, had many similarities in sound to death metal, but was often intentionally lo-fi in production and placed greater emphasis on satanic and pagan themes. Bathory were particularly important in inspiring the further sub-genres of Viking metal and folk metal. Power metal emerged in Europe in the late 1980s as a reaction to the harshness of death and black metal and was established by Germany's Helloween, who combined a melodic approach with thrash's speed and energy. England's DragonForce and Florida's Iced Earth have a sound indebted to NWOBHM, while acts such as Florida's Kamelot, Finland's Nightwish, Italy's Rhapsody of Fire, and Russia's Catharsis feature a keyboard-based "symphonic" sound, sometimes employing orchestras and opera singers. In contrast to other sub-genres doom metal, influenced by Gothic rock, slowed down the music, with bands like England's Pagan Altar and Witchfinder General and the United States' Pentagram, Saint Vitus and Trouble, emphasizing melody, down-tuned guitars, a 'thicker' or 'heavier' sound and a sepulchral mood.

Heartland rock

American working-class oriented heartland rock, characterized by a straightforward musical style, and a concern with the lives of ordinary, blue collar American people, developed in the second half of the 1970s. The term heartland rock was first used to describe Midwestern arena rock groups like Kansas, REO Speedwagon and Styx, but which came to be associated with a more socially concerned form of roots rock more directly influenced by folk, country and rock and roll. It has been seen as an American Midwest and Rust Belt counterpart to West Coast country rock and the Southern rock of the American South. Led by figures who had initially been identified with punk and New Wave, it was most strongly influenced by acts such as Bob Dylan, The Byrds, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Van Morrison, and the basic rock of '60s garage and the Rolling Stones.

Exemplified by the commercial success of singer songwriters Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger, and Tom Petty, along with less widely known acts such as Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes and Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers, it was partly a reaction to post-industrial urban decline in the East and Mid-West, often dwelling on issues of social disintegration and isolation, beside a form of good-time rock and roll revivalism. The genre reached its commercial, artistic and influential peak in the mid-1980s, with Springsteen's ''Born in the USA'' (1984), topping the charts worldwide and spawning a series of top ten singles, together with the arrival of artists including John Mellencamp, Steve Earle and more gentle singer/songwriters such as Bruce Hornsby. It can also be heard as an influence on artists as diverse as Billy Joel, Kid Rock and The Killers.

Heartland rock faded away as a recognized genre by the early 1990s, as rock music in general, and blue collar and white working class themes in particular, lost influence with younger audiences, and as heartland's artists turned to more personal works. Many heartland rock artists continue to record today with critical and commercial success, most notably Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty and John Mellencamp, although their works have become more personal and experimental and no longer fit easily into a single genre. Newer artists whose music would perhaps have been labelled heartland rock had it been released in the 1970s or 1980s, such as Missouri's Bottle Rockets and Illinois' Uncle Tupelo, often find themselves labeled alt-country.

The emergence of alternative rock

The term alternative rock was coined in the early 1980s to describe rock artists who did not fit into the mainstream genres of the time. Bands dubbed "alternative" had no unified style, but were all seen as distinct from mainstream music. Alternative bands were linked by their collective debt to punk rock, through hardcore, New Wave or the post-punk movements. Important alternative rock bands of the 1980s in the US included R.E.M., Hüsker Dü, Jane's Addiction, Sonic Youth, and the Pixies, and in the UK The Cure, New Order, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and The Smiths. Artists were largely confined to independent record labels, building an extensive underground music scene based on college radio, fanzines, touring, and word-of-mouth. They rejected the dominant synthpop of the early 1980s, marking a return to group-based guitar rock.

Few of these early bands, with the exceptions of R.E.M. and The Smiths, achieved mainstream success, but despite a lack of spectacular album sales, they exerted a considerable influence on the generation of musicians who came of age in the 1980s and ended up breaking through to mainstream success in the 1990s. Styles of alternative rock in the U.S. during the 1980s included jangle pop, associated with the early recordings of R.E.M., which incorporated the ringing guitars of mid-1960s pop and rock, and college rock, used to describe alternative bands that began in the college circuit and college radio, including acts such as 10,000 Maniacs and The Feelies. In the UK Gothic rock was dominant in the early 1980s, but by the end of the decade indie or dream pop like Primal Scream, Bogshed, Half Man Half Biscuit and The Wedding Present, and what were dubbed shoegaze bands like My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Lush, Chapterhouse, and the Boo Radleys. Particularly vibrant was the Madchester scene, produced such bands as Happy Mondays, the Inspiral Carpets, and Stone Roses. The next decade would see the success of grunge in the United States and Britpop in the United Kingdom, bringing alternative rock into the mainstream.

Alternative goes mainstream (the 1990s)

Grunge

Disaffected by commercialized and highly produced pop and rock in the mid-1980s, bands in Washington state (particularly in the Seattle area) formed a new style of rock which sharply contrasted with the mainstream music of the time. The developing genre came to be known as "grunge", a term descriptive of the dirty sound of the music and the unkempt appearance of most musicians, who actively rebelled against the over-groomed images of popular artists. Grunge fused elements of hardcore punk and heavy metal into a single sound, and made heavy use of guitar distortion, fuzz and feedback. The lyrics were typically apathetic and angst-filled, and often concerned themes such as social alienation and entrapment, although it was also known for its dark humor and parodies of commercial rock.

Bands such as Green River, Soundgarden, the Melvins and Skin Yard pioneered the genre, with Mudhoney becoming the most successful by the end of the decade. However, grunge remained largely a local phenomenon until 1991, when Nirvana‘s ''Nevermind'' became a huge success thanks to the lead single "Smells Like Teen Spirit". ''Nevermind'' was more melodic than its predecessors, but the band refused to employ traditional corporate promotion and marketing mechanisms. During 1991 and 1992, other grunge albums such as Pearl Jam's ''Ten'', Soundgarden's ''Badmotorfinger'' and Alice in Chains' ''Dirt'', along with the ''Temple of the Dog'' album featuring members of Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, became among the 100 top selling albums. The popular breakthrough of these grunge bands prompted ''Rolling Stone'' to nickname Seattle "the new Liverpool." Major record labels signed most of the remaining grunge bands in Seattle, while a second influx of acts moved to the city in the hope of success. However, with the death of Kurt Cobain and the subsequent break-up of Nirvana in 1994, touring problems for Pearl Jam and the departure of Alice in Chains' lead singer Layne Staley in 1996, the genre began to decline, partly to be overshadowed by Britpop and more commercial sounding post-grunge.

Britpop

Britpop emerged from the British alternative rock scene of the early 1990s and was characterised by bands particularly influenced by British guitar music of the 1960s and 1970s. The Smiths were a major influence, as were bands of the Madchester scene, which had dissolved in the early 1990s. The movement has been seen partly as a reaction against various U.S. based, musical and cultural trends in the late 1980s and early 1990s, particularly the grunge phenomenon and as a reassertion of a British rock identity. Britpop was varied in style, but often used catchy tunes and hooks, beside lyrics with particularly British concerns and the adoption of the iconography of the 1960s British Invasion, including the symbols of British identity previously utilised by the mods. It was launched around 1992 with releases by groups such as Suede and Blur, who were soon joined by others including Oasis, Pulp, Supergrass and Elastica, who produced a series of top ten albums and singles. For a while the contest between Blur and Oasis was built by the popular press into "The Battle of Britpop", initially won by Blur, but with Oasis achieving greater long-term and international success, directly influencing a third generation of Britpop bands, including The Boo Radleys, Ocean Colour Scene and Cast. Britpop groups brought British alternative rock into the mainstream and formed the backbone of a larger British cultural movement known as Cool Britannia. Although its more popular bands, particularly Blur and Oasis, were able to spread their commercial success overseas, especially to the United States, the movement had largely fallen apart by the end of the decade.

Post-grunge

The term post-grunge was coined for the generation of bands that followed the emergence into the mainstream, and subsequent hiatus, of the Seattle grunge bands. Post-grunge bands emulated their attitudes and music, but with a more radio-friendly commercially oriented sound. Often they worked through the major labels and came to incorporate diverse influences from jangle pop, pop-punk, alternative metal or hard rock. The term post-grunge was meant to be pejorative, suggesting that they were simply musically derivative, or a cynical response to an "authentic" rock movement. From 1994, former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl's new band, the Foo Fighters, helped popularize the genre and define its parameters.

Some post-grunge bands, like Candlebox, were from Seattle, but the sub-genre was marked by a broadening of the geographical base of grunge, with bands like Los Angeles' Audioslave, and Georgia's Collective Soul and beyond the US to Australia's Silverchair and Britain's Bush, who all cemented post-grunge as one of the most commercially viable sub-genres of the late 1990s. Although male bands predominated, female solo artist Alanis Morissette's 1995 album ''Jagged Little Pill'', labelled as post-grunge, also became a multi-platinum hit. Bands like Creed and Nickelback took post-grunge into the 21st century with considerable commercial success, abandoning most of the angst and anger of the original movement for more conventional anthems, narratives and romantic songs, and were followed in this vein by new acts including Shinedown, Seether and 3 Doors Down.

Pop punk

The origins of 1990s pop punk can be seen in the more song-oriented bands of the 1970s punk movement like The Buzzcocks and The Clash, commercially successful New Wave acts such as The Jam and The Undertones, and the more hardcore-influenced elements of alternative rock in the 1980s. Pop-punk tends to use power-pop melodies and chord changes with speedy punk tempos and loud guitars. Punk music provided the inspiration for some California-based bands on independent labels in the early 1990s, including Rancid, Pennywise, Weezer and Green Day. In 1994 Green Day moved to a major label and produced the album ''Dookie'', which found a new, largely teenage, audience and proved a surprise diamond-selling success, leading to a series of hit singles, including two number ones in the US. They were soon followed by the eponymous début from Weezer, which spawned three top ten singles in the US. This success opened the door for the multi-platinum sales of metallic punk band The Offspring with ''Smash'' (1994). This first wave of pop punk reached its commercial peak with Green Day's ''Nimrod'' (1997) and The Offspring's ''Americana'' (1998).

A second wave of pop punk was spearheaded by Blink-182, with their breakthrough album ''Enema of the State'' (1999), followed by bands such as Good Charlotte, Bowling for Soup and Sum 41, who made use of humour in their videos and had a more radio-friendly tone to their music, while retaining the speed, some of the attitude and even the look of 1970s punk. Later pop-punk bands, including Simple Plan, The All-American Rejects and Fall Out Boy, had a sound that has been described as closer to 1980s hardcore, while still achieving considerable commercial success.

Indie rock

In the 1980s the terms indie rock and alternative rock were used interchangeably. By the mid-1990s, as elements of the movement began to attract mainstream interest, particularly grunge and then Britpop, post-grunge and pop-punk, the term alternative began to lose its meaning. Those bands following the less commercial contours of the scene were increasingly referred to by the label indie. They characteristically attempted to retain control of their careers by releasing albums on their own or small independent labels, while relying on touring, word-of-mouth, and airplay on independent or college radio stations for promotion. Linked by an ethos more than a musical approach, the indie rock movement encompassed a wide range of styles, from hard-edged, grunge-influenced bands like The Cranberries and Superchunk, through do-it-yourself experimental bands like Pavement, to punk-folk singers such as Ani DiFranco. It has been noted that indie rock has a relatively high proportion of female artists compared with preceding rock genres, a tendency exemplified by the development of feminist-informed Riot Grrrl music. Many countries have developed an extensive local indie scene, flourishing with bands with enough popularity to survive inside the respective country, but virtually unknown outside them.

By the end of the 1990s many recognisable sub-genres, most with their origins in the late '80s alternative movement, were included under the umbrella of indie. Lo-fi eschewed polished recording techniques for a D.I.Y. ethos and was spearheaded by Beck, Sebadoh and Pavement. The work of Talk Talk and Slint helped inspire both post rock, an experimental style influenced by jazz and electronic music, pioneered by Bark Psychosis and taken up by acts such as Tortoise, Stereolab, and Laika, as well as leading to more dense and complex, guitar-based math rock, developed by acts like Polvo and Chavez. Space rock looked back to progressive roots, with drone heavy and minimalist acts like Spaceman 3, the two bands created out of its split, Spectrum and Spiritualized, and later groups including Flying Saucer Attack, Godspeed You Black Emperor! and Quickspace. In contrast, Sadcore emphasised pain and suffering through melodic use of acoustic and electronic instrumentation in the music of bands like American Music Club and Red House Painters, while the revival of Baroque pop reacted against lo-fi and experimental music by placing an emphasis on melody and classical instrumentation, with artists like Arcade Fire, Belle and Sebastian and Rufus Wainright.

Alternative metal, rap rock and nu metal

Alternative metal emerged from the hardcore scene of alternative rock in the US in the later 1980s, but gained a wider audience after grunge broke into the mainstream in the early 1990s. Early alternative metal bands mixed a wide variety of genres with hardcore and heavy metal sensibilities, with acts like Jane's Addiction and Primus utilizing prog-rock, Soundgarden and Corrosion of Conformity using garage punk, The Jesus Lizard and Helmet mixing noise-rock, Ministry and Nine Inch Nails influenced by industrial music, Monster Magnet moving into psychedelia, Pantera, Sepultura and White Zombie creating groove metal, while Biohazard and Faith No More turned to hip hop and rap.

Hip hop had gained attention from rock acts in the early 1980s, including The Clash with "The Magnificent Seven" (1981) and Blondie with "Rapture" (1981). Early crossover acts included Run DMC and the Beastie Boys. Detroit rapper Esham became known for his "acid rap" style, which fused rapping with a sound that was often based in rock and heavy metal. Rappers who sampled rock songs included Ice-T, The Fat Boys, LL Cool J, Public Enemy and Whodini. The mixing of thrash metal and rap was pioneered by Anthrax on their 1987 comedy-influenced single "I'm the Man".

In 1990, Faith No More broke into the mainstream with their single "Epic', often seen as the first truly successful combination of heavy metal with rap. This paved the way for the success of existing bands like 24-7 Spyz and Living Colour, and new acts including Rage Against the Machine and Red Hot Chili Peppers, who all fused rock and hip hop among other influences. Among the first wave of performers to gain mainstream success as rap rock were 311, Bloodhound Gang, and Kid Rock. A more metallic sound - ''nu metal'' - was pursued by bands including Limp Bizkit, Korn and Slipknot. Later in the decade this style, which contained a mix of grunge, punk, metal, rap and turntable scratching, spawned a wave of successful bands like Linkin Park, P.O.D. and Staind, who were often classified as rap metal or nu metal, the first of which are the best-selling band of the genre.

In 2001, nu metal reached its peak with albums like Staind's ''Break the Cycle'', P.O.D's ''Satellite'', Slipknot's ''Iowa'' and Linkin Park's ''Hybrid Theory''. New bands also emerged like Disturbed, post-grunge/hard rock band Godsmack and Papa Roach, whose major label début ''Infest'' became a platinum hit. However, by 2002 there were signs that nu metal's mainstream popularity was weakening. Korn's long awaited fifth album ''Untouchables'', and Papa Roach's second album ''Lovehatetragedy'', did not sell as well as their previous releases, while nu metal bands were played more infrequently on rock radio stations and MTV began focusing on pop punk and emo. Since then, many bands have changed to a more conventional hard rock or heavy metal music sound.

Post-Britpop

From about 1997, as dissatisfaction grew with the concept of Cool Britannia, and Britpop as a movement began to dissolve, emerging bands began to avoid the Britpop label while still producing music derived from it. Many of these bands tended to mix elements of British traditional rock (or British trad rock), particularly the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Small Faces, with American influences, including post-grunge. Drawn from across the United Kingdom (with several important bands emerging from the north of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), the themes of their music tended to be less parochially centred on British, English and London life and more introspective than had been the case with Britpop at its height. This, beside a greater willingness to engage with the American press and fans, may have helped some of them in achieving international success.

Post-Britpop bands have been seen as presenting the image of the rock star as an ordinary person and their increasingly melodic music was criticised for being bland or derivative. Post-Britpop bands like The Verve with ''Urban Hymns'' (1997), Radiohead from ''OK Computer'' (1997), Travis from ''The Man Who'' (1999), Stereophonics from ''Performance and Cocktails'' (1999), Feeder from ''Echo Park'' (2001) and particularly Coldplay from their debut album ''Parachutes'' (2000), achieved much wider international success than most of the Britpop groups that had preceded them, and were some of the most commercially successful acts of the late 1990s and early 2000s, arguably providing a launchpad for the subsequent garage rock or post-punk revival, which has also been seen as a reaction to their introspective brand of rock.

The new millennium (the 2000s)

Post-hardcore and emo

Post-hardcore developed in the US, particularly in the Chicago and Washington, D.C areas, in the early-to-mid 1980s, with bands that were inspired by the do-it-yourself ethics and guitar-heavy music of hardcore punk, but influenced by post-punk, adopting longer song formats, more complex musical structures and sometimes more melodic lyrics. Existing bands that moved on from hardcore included Fugazi. From the late 1980s they were followed by bands including Quicksand, Girls Against Boys and The Jesus Lizard. Bands that formed in the 1990s included Thursday, Thrice, Finch, and Poison the Well.

Emo also emerged from the hardcore scene in 1980s Washington, D.C., initially as "emocore", used as a term to describe bands who favored expressive vocals over the more common abrasive, barking style. The style was pioneered by bands Rites of Spring and Embrace, the last formed by Ian MacKaye, whose Dischord Records became a major centre for the emerging D.C. emo scene, releasing work by Rites of Spring, Dag Nasty, Nation of Ulysses and Fugazi. Fugazi emerged as the definitive early emo band, gaining a fanbase among alternative rock followers, not least for their overtly anti-commercial stance. The early emo scene operated as an underground, with short-lived bands releasing small-run vinyl records on tiny independent labels. The mid-'90s sound of emo was defined by bands like Jawbreaker and Sunny Day Real Estate who incorporated elements of grunge and more melodic rock. Only after the breakthrough of grunge and pop punk into the mainstream did emo come to wider attention with the success of Weezer's ''Pinkerton'' (1996) album, which utilised pop punk. Late 1990s bands drew on the work of Fugazi, SDRE, Jawbreaker and Weezer, including The Promise Ring, The Get Up Kids, Braid, Texas Is the Reason, Joan of Arc, Jets to Brazil and most successfully Jimmy Eat World, and by the end of the millennium it was one of the more popular indie styles in the US.

Emo broke into mainstream culture in the early 2000s with the platinum-selling success of Jimmy Eat World's ''Bleed American'' (2001) and Dashboard Confessional's ''The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most'' (2003). The new emo had a much more mainstream sound then in the 90s and a far greater appeal amongst adolescents than its earlier incarnations. At the same time, use of the term emo expanded beyond the musical genre, becoming associated with fashion, a hairstyle and any music that expressed emotion. The term emo has been applied by critics and journalists to a variety of artists, including multi-platinum acts such as Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance and disparate groups such as Paramore and Panic at the Disco, even when they protest the label. By 2003 post-hardcore bands had also caught the attention of major labels and began to enjoy mainstream success in the album charts. A number of these bands were seen as a more aggressive offshoot of emo and given the often vague label of screamo. Around this time, a new wave of post-hardcore bands began to emerge onto the scene that incorporated more pop punk and alternative rock styles into their music, including The Used, Hawthorne Heights, Senses Fail, From First to Last and Emery and Canadian bands Silverstein and Alexisonfire. British bands like Funeral For A Friend, The Blackout and Enter Shikari also made headway.

Garage rock/post-punk revival

In the early 2000s, a new group of bands that played a stripped down and back-to-basics version of guitar rock, emerged into the mainstream. They were variously characterised as part of a garage rock, post-punk or New Wave revival. Because the bands came from across the globe, cited diverse influences (from traditional blues, through New Wave to grunge), and adopted differing styles of dress, their unity as a genre has been disputed. There had been attempts to revive garage rock and elements of punk in the 1980s and 1990s and by 2000 scenes had grown up in several countries. The Detroit rock scene included The Von Bondies, Electric Six, The Dirtbombs and The Detroit Cobras and that of New York Radio 4, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Rapture. Elsewhere, other lesser-known acts such as Billy Childish and The Buff Medways from Britain, The (International) Noise Conspiracy from Sweden, The 5.6.7.8's from Japan, and the Oblivians from Memphis enjoyed underground, regional or national success.

The commercial breakthrough from these scenes was led by four bands: The Strokes, who emerged from the New York club scene with their début album ''Is This It'' (2001); The White Stripes, from Detroit, with their third album ''White Blood Cells'' (2001); The Hives from Sweden after their compilation album ''Your New Favourite Band'' (2001); and The Vines from Australia with ''Highly Evolved'' (2002). They were christened by the media as the "The" bands, and dubbed "The saviours of rock 'n' roll", leading to accusations of hype. A second wave of bands that managed to gain international recognition as a result of the movement included Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Killers, Interpol and Kings of Leon from the US, The Libertines, Arctic Monkeys, Bloc Party, Editors, Franz Ferdinand and Placebo from the UK, Jet from Australia and The Datsuns and The D4 from New Zealand.

Contemporary heavy metal, metalcore and retro metal

Metal remained popular in the 2000s, particularly in continental Europe. By the new millennium Scandinavia had emerged as one of the areas producing innovative and successful bands, while Belgium, Holland and especially Germany were the most significant markets. Established continental metal bands that placed multiple albums in the top 20 of the German charts between 2003 and 2008, including Finnish band Children of Bodom, Norwegian act Dimmu Borgir, Germany's Blind Guardian and Sweden's HammerFall.

Metalcore, originally an American hybrid of thrash metal and hardcore punk, emerged as a commercial force in the mid-2000s. It was rooted in the crossover thrash style developed two decades earlier by bands such as Suicidal Tendencies, Dirty Rotten Imbeciles, and Stormtroopers of Death and remained an underground phenomenon through the 1990s. By 2004, melodic metalcore, influenced by melodic death metal, was sufficiently popular for Killswitch Engage's ''The End of Heartache'' and Shadows Fall's ''The War Within'' to debut at number 21 and number 20, respectively, on the ''Billboard'' album chart. Bullet for My Valentine, from Wales, broke into the top 5 in both the U.S. and British charts with ''Scream Aim Fire'' (2008). Metalcore bands have received prominent slots at Ozzfest and the Download Festival. Lamb of God, with a related blend of metal styles, reached number 2 on the ''Billboard'' charts in 2009 with ''Wrath''.

The success of these bands and others such as Trivium, who have released both metalcore and straight-ahead thrash albums, and Mastodon, who played in a progressive/sludge style, inspired claims of a metal revival in the United States, dubbed by some critics the "New Wave of American Heavy Metal". Its roots have been traced to the music of acts like Pantera, Biohazard and Machine Head, drawing on New York hardcore, thrash metal and punk, helping to inspire a move away from the Nu Metal of the early 2000s and a return to riffs and guitar solos.

The term "retro-metal" has been applied to such bands as Texas-based The Sword, California's High on Fire, Sweden's Witchcraft, and Australia's Wolfmother. The Sword's ''Age of Winters'' (2006), drew heavily on the work of Black Sabbath and Pentagram, while Witchcraft added elements of folk and psychedelic rock and Wolfmother's self-titled 2005 debut album combined elements of the sounds of Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin.

Digital electronic rock

In the 2000s, as computer technology became more accessible and music software advanced, it became possible to create high quality music using little more than a single laptop computer. This resulted in a massive increase in the amount of home-produced electronic music available to the general public via the expanding internet, and new forms of performance such as laptronica These techniques also began to be used by existing bands, as with industrial rock act Nine Inch Nails' album ''Year Zero'' (2007), and by developing genres that mixed rock with digital techniques and sounds, including indie electronic, electroclash, dance-punk and new rave.

Indie electronic, which had begun in the early 1990s with bands like Stereolab and Disco Inferno, took off in the new millennium as the new digital technology developed, with acts including Broadcast from the UK, Justice from France, Lali Puna from Germany and The Postal Service, and Ratatat from the US, mixing a variety of indie sounds with electronic music, largely produced on small independent labels. The electroclash sub-genre began in New York at the end of the 1990s, combining synth pop, techno, punk and performance art. It was pioneered by I-F with their track "Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass" (1998), and pursued by artists including Felix da Housecat, Peaches, Chicks on Speed, and Ladytron. It gained international attention at the beginning of the new millennium and spread to scenes in London and Berlin, but rapidly faded as a recognisable genre. Dance-punk, mixing post-punk sounds with disco and funk, had developed in the 1980s, but it was revived among some bands of the garage rock/post-punk revival in the early years of the new millennium, particularly among New York acts such as Liars, The Rapture and Radio 4, joined by dance-oriented acts who adopted rock sounds such as Out Hud. In Britain the combination of indie with dance-punk was dubbed new rave in publicity for The Klaxons and the term was picked up and applied by the NME to bands including Trash Fashion, New Young Pony Club, Hadouken!, Late of the Pier, Test Icicles and Shitdisco, forming a scene with a similar visual aesthetic to earlier rave music.

Renewed interest in electronic music and nostalgia for the the 1980s led to the beginnings of a synthpop revival, with acts including Adult and Fischerspooner. In 2003-4 it began to move into the mainstream with Ladytron, the Postal Service, Cut Copy, the Bravery and, with most commercial success, The Killers all producing records that incorporated vintage synthesizer sounds and styles which contrasted with the dominant sounds of post-grunge and nu-metal. The style was picked up by a large number of performers, particularly female solo artists, leading the British and other media to proclaim a new era of the female electropop star. Artists named included British acts Little Boots, La Roux and Ladyhawke. Male acts that emerged in the same period included Calvin Harris, Frankmusik, Hurts, Kaskade, LMFAO, and Owl City, whose single "Fireflies" (2009) reached the top of the Billboard chart.

Social impact

The worldwide popularity of rock music meant that it became a major influence on culture, fashion and social attitudes. Different sub-genres of rock were adopted by, and became central to, the identity of a large number of sub-cultures. In the 1950s and 1960s, respectively, British youths adopted the Teddy Boy and Rockers subcultures, which revolved around US rock and roll. The mid-1970s punk subculture began in the US, but it was given a distinctive look by British designer Vivian Westwood, a look which spread worldwide. Out of the punk scene, the Goth and Emo subcultures grew, both of which presented distinctive visual styles.

When an international rock culture developed, it was able to supplant cinema as the major sources of fashion influence. Paradoxically, followers of rock music have often mistrusted the world of fashion, which has been seen as elevating image above substance. Rock has also been associated with various forms of drug use, including the stimulants taken by some mods in the early to mid-1960s, through the LSD linked with psychedelic rock in the late 1960s and early 1970s; and sometimes to cannabis, cocaine and heroin, all of which have been eulogised in song.

Rock has been credited with changing attitudes to race by opening up African-American culture to white audiences; but at the same time, rock has been accused of appropriating and exploiting that culture. While rock music has absorbed many influences and introduced Western audiences to different musical traditions, the global spread of rock music has been interpreted as a form of cultural imperialism. Rock music inherited the folk tradition of protest song, making political statements on subjects such as war, religion, poverty, civil rights, justice and the environment. Political activism reached a mainstream peak with the "Do They Know It's Christmas?" single (1984) and Live Aid concert for Ethiopia in 1985, which, while successfully raising awareness of world poverty and funds for aid, have also been criticised (along with similar events), for providing a stage for self-aggrandisement and increased profits for the rock stars involved.

Since its early development rock music has been associated with rebellion against social and political norms, most obviously in early rock and roll's rejection of an adult-dominated culture, the counter-culture's rejection of consumerism and conformity and punk's rejection of all forms of social convention, however, it can also be seen as providing a means of commercial exploitation of such ideas and of diverting youth away from political action.

See also

References

External links

100 Great Rock Classics

Category:African American music Category:American styles of music Category:Culture of the Southern United States Category:20th-century music genres Category:21st-century music genres

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Coordinates	40°26′30″N80°00′00″N
Name	Kid Rock
Landscape	Yes
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Robert James Ritchie
Born	January 17, 1971Romeo, Michigan, U.S.
Genre	Rock, hip hop, heavy metal, country
Occupation	Musician, Songwriter, Actor
Years active	1988–present
Associated acts	Uncle Kracker, Joe C., Champtown, Yelawolf, Lynyrd Skynyrd
Label	Atlantic, Jive, Top Dog
Website	}}

Robert James "Bob" Ritchie (born January 17, 1971), known by his stage name Kid Rock, is an American singer-songwriter, musician and rapper with five Grammy Awards nominations. Kid Rock released several studio albums that mostly went unnoticed before his 1998 record ''Devil Without a Cause'', released with Atlantic Records, sold 11 million albums behind the hits, "Bawitdaba", "Cowboy", and "Only God Knows Why". In 2000, he released ''The History of Rock,'' a compilation of remixed and remastered versions of songs from previous albums as well as the hit single, "American Bad Ass" and the previously unreleased "Abortion".

Kid Rock released the follow-up in 2001, ''Cocky''. After a slow start, his country-flavored hit "Picture" with Sheryl Crow resurrected the album and it went gold as a single and pushed the album's sales over 5 million. It was followed by 2003's self-titled release, which did not chart a major hit. In 2006 he released ''Live Trucker'', a live album.

In 2007 Kid Rock released ''Rock n Roll Jesus'', which produced a hit in "All Summer Long". It was his first worldwide smash hit, charting #1 in eight countries across Europe and in Australia. ''Rock N Roll Jesus'' sold 5 million albums worldwide and was certified triple platinum in the U.S. He released ''Born Free'' on November 16, 2010. It was announced on June 16, 2011 that "Born Free" was certified platinum by the 'Recording Industry Association Of America' (RIAA) for selling more than one million copies. This gives Kid Rock his sixth Platinum album certification.

Early life

Robert James "Bob" Ritchie was born on January 17, 1971 in Romeo, Michigan to William "Bill" Ritchie, a car dealer who owned several local dealerships, and Susan Ritchie. His family also owned a six-acre orchard and Ritchie regularly helped pick apples and cared for the family's horses. He has three siblings: two are older, brother William "Billy" Ritchie and sister Carol Ritchie; and one is younger, sister Jill Ritchie who is an actress. Ritchie found small-town life dull; he became interested in rap music, learned how to breakdance and participated in talent shows in the Detroit area. At age eleven he joined a breakdance crew called the Furious Funkers, and taught himself to work a cheap belt-driven turntable. In high school, Ritchie DJed at parties for beer. He eventually joined Bo Wisdom of Groove Time Productions, in Mt. Clemens, Michigan to perform basement parties for thirty dollars a night. He was then given his stage name; club goers dubbed him "Kid Rock" after they had enjoyed watching "that white kid rock."

Rock started rapping and joined a local hip hop group, The Beast Crew. It was composed of The Blackman, Champtown, KDC, Chris "Doc Roun-Cee" Pouncy. Rock befriended producer D-Nice of the legendary hip-hop group Boogie Down Productions. When Rock opened for BDP one night, D-Nice invited an A&R; representative from Jive Records to see him perform. This meeting led to a demo deal, which developed into a full record contract.

Against his parents' wishes, Rock signed the deal at age seventeen. Despite his new record deal, he had a falling out with The Beast Crew when he signed over fellow member Champtown (the two have become friends again since). They left his vocals on the tracks of their debut underground album "Chapter 1: He Don't Want Us No More," against his wishes. Rock later became part of the Straight From The Underground Tour alongside several heavyweights of rap including Ice Cube, Too Short, D-Nice, Mac Dre, and Yo-Yo.

Career

On December 30, 1990 Kid Rock released his debut album ''Grits Sandwiches for Breakfast''. As noted by Insane Clown Posse member Violent J, this album made Kid Rock one of the two biggest rap stars in Detroit in 1990, along with local independent rapper Esham. Though Jive Records did not push the album it gained infamy when radio station WSUC-FM (90.5) of Cortland, NY was fined $23,700 by the FCC for playing the song Yo Da-Lin In the Valley then the largest fine against a radio station. Kid Rock's career had began to decline towards the end of 1990. Jive Records released Kid Rock from his contract in 1991. Once back in Detroit he became friends with Uncle Kracker after battling his brother in a freestyle rapping competition; Uncle Kracker became Kid Rock's DJ.

In late 1991 Kid Rock was picked up by an independent record label called Continuum Records. Though Insane Clown Posse's Violent J disliked Kid Rock's rapping style, he paid Kid Rock to appear on his group's first album, ''Carnival of Carnage'', in an attempt to gain notice for the album. Kid Rock showed up to record the song "Is That You?" intoxicated, but re-recorded his vocals and record scratching the following day. In March 1993, Continuum released his second album ''The Polyfuze Method'', which featured a more rock music-oriented sound with Kid Rock teaching himself how to play several different instruments including guitar, drums, keyboard and organ. The album saw some local college radio success at Central Michigan University with the tracks "Back From The Dead" and "Balls In Your Mouth". He released "U Don't Know Me" as the first single off the album, but it failed to chart, and the music video received little airplay on major music video channels. Kid Rock re-released "Back From The Dead" as a single to mainstream radio, but that too failed as a single. The album has sold around 15,000 copies. In 1992 Kid Rock appeared in the song "Is That You?" of the Carnival of Carnage by the Insane Clown Posse.

He released an Extended play EP called Fire It Up (EP) in 1993 The EP featured the song I Am the Bullgod which wouldn't be a hit until six years later Continuum didn't see a future with Kid Rock after this and released him from his contract in 1994

He moved back to Detroit where his on again off again relationship with Kelly South resulted in a son Robert James Ritchie Jr. Kid Rock released monthly demo tapes dubbed The Bootleg Series which featured demos of him and other up-and coming rappers and garage rock bands in the Detroit area Around the same time Kid Rock formed his back up band Twisted Brown Trucker Band later recruiting Joseph Joe C. Calleja who he met at a 1994 concert as part of the group In 1995 Rock took a job as a janitor at Whiterooms Studios to pay studio fees When he wasn't working, Kid Rock recorded the material that eventually made up his fourth album Early Morning Stoned Pimp which Rock released on his own label Top Dog Records During the recording process he met piano player Jimmie Bones who joined the band soon after The album was released February 12, 1996. A loan from his father aided the release. Kid Rock sold 6,000 copies from the trunk of his car including after his concerts With EMSP local success he released The Polyfuze Method in 1993 with I Am The Bullgod

Lava/Atlantic Records A&R; man Andy Karp was interested, after seeing Kid Rock in Cleveland in December 1996 and again in March 1997 Following a two song demo tape containing Somebody's Gotta Feel This and I Got One For Ya [Jason Flom] supported Karp in signing Kid Rock for $100,000 However when recording sessions began Atlantic wanted more of a rock sound and didn't initially like Cowboy Devil Without A Cause and Only God Knows Why They asked Rock to take out I'm going platinum on Devil Without A Cause's chorus but he refused The conflict slowed down production however the album was completed on schedule with Rock mostly playing all the instruments himself

''Devil Without a Cause'' (1997–2002)

In 1997, Kid Rock added drummer/vocalist Stefanie Eulinberg to his band, joining Kenny Olson, Jason Krause, Jimmie Bones, Uncle Kracker, Misty Love, Shirley Hayden and Joe C.. On August 18, 1998, Atlantic released ''Devil Without a Cause'' behind the single "Welcome 2 The Party." Kid Rock went on the Vans Warped Tour to support the album, performing one of his first New York City shows at Luna Lounge on the Lower East Side during the CMJ convention. "Devil Without Cause Im Goin Platinum" Sales of "Welcome 2 The Party" and ''Devil'' were slow, though the 1998 Warped Tour in Northampton, Massachusetts stimulated regional interest in Massachusetts and New England. This led to substantial airplay in the summer and fall of 1998 on rock staples in Massachusetts WZLX and WAAF for the single "I Am The Bullgod." In December 1998, while dj'ing at a club he met and became friends with MTV host Carson Daly. He performed on ''MTV Fashionably Loud'' in Miami, then on MTV's ''Wanna B A VJ'' doing "My Name Is Rock" and was the DJ for ''TRL'' on the Spring Break Special as well as a judge on ''Say What Karaoke''. This raised his profile so by April 1999 ''Devil Without a Cause'' had achieved a gold disc. In May 1999 the single "Bawitdaba" off the album was released to radio outlets, and by June, ''Devil'' had gone platinum. Kid Rock went on his first major tour, Limptropolis, with Limp Bizkit and Staind. By the time he made his career defining performance at Woodstock 1999 on July 24, 1999, he was double platinum. The following single "Cowboy" was an even bigger hit. It was a mix of southern rock, country and rap that made the Top 40. Rock's next single, the rock ballad "Only God Knows Why", was the biggest hit off the album charting at No 19 on the Billboard Hot 100. By the time the final single "Wasting Time" was released the album had sold 7 million albums, ''Devil Without A Cause'' was certified 11 times platinum by the RIAA on April 17, 2003.

Rock was nominated as Best New Artist at the 2000 Grammy Awards, but lost to Christina Aguilera. He was nominated for "Bawitdaba" for Best Hard Rock Performance, but lost to Metallica's "Whiskey in the Jar."

After reacquiring the rights to his early material in 2000, Rock released ''The History of Rock'', a collection of remixed and re-recorded songs from The Polyfuze Method and Early Mornin Stoned Pimp. "American Bad Ass", one of two new tracks, was released as a single. It sampled the Metallica track "Sad But True".

On May 27 Kid Rock appeared on ''Saturday Night Live'' performing "American Bad Ass" and an acoustic version of "Only God Knows Why" that featured Phish's Trey Anastasio. Kid Rock joined Phish later in the year in Las Vegas, Nevada, for a set of cover songs.

A 2000 tour in which David Allan Coe performed as an opening act for Kid Rock was the subject of criticism from journalist Neil Strauss, who alleged that Coe's songs were racist.

From June 30 to August 22, 2000, Kid Rock joined the Summer Sanitarium Tour with Metallica, Korn, Powerman 5000, and System of a Down. Kid Rock filled in for James Hetfield of Metallica, singing vocals on the songs "Enter Sandman", "Sad But True", and "Nothing Else Matters" and the turntables for "Fuel", for three shows after Hetfield injured his spine riding a jet ski on Lake Lanier the day before the July 7 Atlanta concert.

On November 16, 2000 Joseph "Joe C" Calleja died in his sleep from Coeliac disease in Taylor, MI. The disease stunted his growth and forced him to take 60 pills a day. Joe C's final song was "Cool Daddy Cool" for the ''Osmosis Jones'' soundtrack. The band made a cameo in the movie as the band playing in the club scene. Kid Rock was referred to as Kidney Rock to go along with the cartoon aspect of being a cell in the body of Frank played by Bill Murray.

In early 2001, Rock inducted Aerosmith into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and performed "Sweet Emotion" at the induction ceremony. The same year, Rock landed his first acting role in the David Spade white trash comedy ''Joe Dirt''. His character was Robbie a redneck bully to Joe Dirt who was chasing after Joe's unaware love interest Brandy.

"American Bad Ass" was nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance at the 2001s Grammy Awards. Losing out to Rage Against The Machine's "Guerilla Radio". The ''History of Rock'' would go on to be certified double platinum.

In November, Kid Rock released ''Cocky'', which was marketed as the official follow up to ''Devil Without a Cause''. With the era of rap metal on the decline, Kid Rock included several southern rock and country ballads on the album. The first single, "Forever", featured his standard brash rap-rock sound, but lacked the selling power of "Devil Without A Cause". The songs "Lonely Road of Faith"and "You Never Met a Motherfucker Quite Like Me" were released as singles, but were not successful, and the album struggled to reach platinum a year later. Rock had problems with the release of "Picture", a country-influenced duet with Sheryl Crow: his label felt it was wrong for his image, and was not keen to spend more money promoting a flagging album; then, when they agreed to release it, Sheryl Crow's label initially refused to give permission. Rock, meanwhile, made a radio version with Allison Moorer, which was gaining airplay. When "Picture" was released it introduced Kid Rock to a wider audience, and was ultimately the most successful single on the album. The song would chart at No 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No 17 on Country radio. The song remains his most successful pop song in the U.S. to date.

On December 14, 2001, CMT aired an episode of ''Crossroads'' featuring Rock with Hank Williams, Jr. The episode drew 2.1 million viewers, a record on CMT. He would perform for troops in January 2002 on an MTV USO Special at Germany's Ramstein Air Base along with Ja Rule and Jennifer Lopez.

At the end of 2002, Uncle Kracker left the band to pursue a solo career, and Detroit underground rapper Paradime replaced him. Kid Rock made his second movie, ''Biker Boyz'', with Laurence Fishburne.

''Kid Rock'' to ''Rock n Roll Jesus'' (2003–2009)

In 2003, Kid Rock returned with an eponymous album, almost stripping away the accustomed rap metal sound he had created, opting for southern rock and several country ballads in the wake of "Picture"'s success. The album's lead single was a cover of Bad Company's "Feel Like Makin' Love". A media blitz accompanied the single capped off by the VH-1 special called ''A Kid Rock Christmas'', which aired on December 14, 2003. He would release "Cold and Empty", "Jackson, Mississippi" and "I Am" I Am (Kid Rock song) to minor success on radio. The David Allan Coe-penned "Single Father", became his second charting country song, although like the other singles it was minor hit at #50. Kid Rock would be his lowest selling mainstream studio album of his career with 1.4 million copies sold.

Kid Rock was involved in the halftime show controversy at Super Bowl XXXVIII in Houston, Texas on February 1, 2004. He was criticized by the Veterans of Foreign Wars for desecrating the American flag, by wearing one slit in the middle as a poncho.

The following month, Kid inducted Bob Seger into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In September 2005, Kid Rock filled in for Johnny Van Zant, the lead singer of Lynyrd Skynyrd on the band's hit "Sweet Home Alabama" at the Hurricane Katrina benefit concert.

He performed the theme song for Spike TV's ''Striperella'', which featured Pamela Anderson in 2003, the song was entitled "Erotica".

On February 28, 2006, Kid Rock released his first live album, ''Live Trucker'', comprising songs from his homestead performances in Clarkston (on September 1, 2000, and August 26 through August 28, 2004), and Detroit's Cobo Hall (March 26, 2004). The album contained the last two performances of Joe C. on "Devil Without a Cause" and "Early Mornin' Stoned Pimp," as well as Kid dueting with country star Sheryl Crow on "Picture."

He brought Bob Seger back from semi-retirement during his pre-Super Bowl concerts on February 2 and 3, 2006 in Detroit. The two performed a version of Seger's "Rock 'n' Roll Never Forgets" on both nights. Kid Rock would appear on Bob Seger's album, ''Face the Promise'', on a Vince Gill cover of "Real Mean Bottle," a tribute to country legend Merle Haggard. He would make a cameo in the movie ''Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector'' and was in an episode of ''CSI: New York'' in 2006.

He inducted Lynyrd Skynyrd into the 2006 Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame and performed "Sweet Home Alabama" with them.

''Rock n Roll Jesus'' was released on October 9, 2007, becoming Kid Rock's first album to go number 1, selling 172,000 copies in its first week. He made the cover of ''Rolling Stone'' magazine for the second time, and appeared for the first time on ''Larry King Live'' to discuss the new album.

The album's first two singles were successful on rock radio in "So Hott" and "Amen". The album's third single "All Summer Long", became a global hit. It utilized a mash up of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" and Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London". "All Summer Long" would chart at No. 23 on the Billboard Hot 100.

"Rock n Roll Jesus" returned to the Top 10 for 17 straight weeks. Both "Roll On" and the title track were released as follow-up singles. The album's final single was "Blue Jeans and a Rosary" which was a minor country hit at No. 50.

In 2008, Kid Rock recorded "Warrior" for a National Guard advertising campaign. Kid Rock performed on VH1 ''Storytellers'' on November 27, 2008, giving an insight to how he wrote some of his hit songs. On April 5, 2009 he performed a 5-song medley at WrestleMania XXV.

He was nominated for best rock album and best male pop/rock performance for "All Summer Long" at the 2009 Grammys. He lost to Coldplay's ''Viva La Vida'' for best Rock Album and John Mayer's "Say" for Best Male Pop/Rock Performance. He achieved his first country award winning for Best Wide Open Country Video for "All Summer Long" at the 2009 CMT Awards.

On May 22 Kid Rock's June 8, 2008 concert at Germany's Rock AM Festival was aired on every MTV affiliate around the world on their debut show "World Stage".

At the 2008 Download Festival Kid Rock was meant to appear between Seether and Disturbed on the Main Stage but pulled out at the last minute. It was first announced that this was due to illness. Rock later claimed he left the festival grounds after becoming dissatisfied with the amenities. But, the following year, Download's booker theorized that it had been due to a broken heart.

On July 3, 2009 "Rock N Roll Jesus" was certified triple platinum by the RIAA.

Kid Rock held the largest headline concert of his career the weekend of July 17 and 18, 2009, at Comerica Park in Detroit. 80,000 people attended the two shows.

''Born Free'' (2009–present)

In April 2010 Kid Rock started the Born Free era off with a spring cruise dubbed "The Chillin The Most Cruise". Then he followed that up by hosting the CMT Awards in June and performed "Cowboy".

Kid Rock released ''Born Free'' on November 16, 2010 and it debuted at No 5 selling 189,000 copies in its first week. The album was produced by Rick Rubin and featured David Hildago and Matt Sweeney on guitar as well as Chad Smith on drums and Benmont Tench on keys and piano. The album became his first album without a parental advisory sticker on it. The album's lead single was the patriotic "Born Free."It peaked at No 14 on the mainstream rock charts, it also charted on the country and hot ac chart. It was the theme song to the 2010 MLB playoffs on TBS as well as WWE's Tribute To The Troops Special. The album reached gold status on December 15, 2010. The follow up single was the southern working man's anthem "God Bless Saturday", which peaked at no 37 on the mainstream rock tracks. It is the secondary theme song for College Gameday on ESPN. The third single was "Collide", Sheryl Crow rejoined him along with Bob Seger (on piano). They then went on a joint tour together the song peaked at No 26 on the hot ac chart and no 51 on the country chart. The next single "Purple Sky" a cover of Jason Boland would fail to chart. In November 2011, Kid Rock released "Care" a protest song about current politics in D.C. There were multiple versions released for the single. The album version feat. Martina McBride and T.I., the international single feat. Mary J Blidge. The last version which was released when Martina McBride's label wouldn't let her in on the music video, and the video was shot with the Pistol Annie's Angeleena Pressley. It's currently no 28 on the hot ac chart and no 58 on the country chart. An ep was released in the Detroit area along with the album called the Racing Father Time EP feat. It included remixes of Slow My Roll and Lonely Road Of Faith along with "The Midwest Fall" and "Forty". Born Free went platinum in July 2011.

On January 15, 2011 Kid Rock celebrated his 40th birthday with a performance at Ford Field in Detroit. The marathon concert featured Uncle Kracker, Peter Wolfe, Rev Run, Sheryl Crow, Cindy Crawford, Jimmie Johnson and Anita Baker. In December he went a 12 city club tour and donated proceeds to various charties in each city.

Kid Rock is currently writing songs for his successor to ''Born Free''. "We've already started writing for the next record and talking about the feel and where we want to go with it," Rock told Billboard.com during a press conference Thursday announcing an Aug. 12 stadium show in his home town of Detroit. "I think 'Born Free' was kind of a transitional record with [producer] Rick Rubin and going into the rootsy, American blues/rock 'n' roll vibe. I'd kind of like to go back to something like maybe a 'Cocky' feel -- that record, but knowing more now and trying to put those elements together." Rock's other future plan includes coming to terms with video footage he has accumulated over the years and possibly making some commercially available in the near future. "It's something I struggle with," he acknowledged. "I've probably shot six DVDs, professionally, had them edited and everything. But it's like anything; if you go see a sporting event or whatever, it's always better live. It's just tough to capture it on tape." Rock promised that "there will be something... I think for Christmas" and possibly from his recent show at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, which he called "one of my best performances to date." He added that he may also consider releasing live footage via his web site.

In 2010 he filmed the Born Free video for his song at the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.

On December 7, 2011, Kid Rock joined Metallica on-stage at The Fillmore San Francisco during the ''30 Years of Metallica'' celebration (Day 2) to perform Seger's Turn the Page.

Musical style and influences

Kid Rock's musical style ranges from Midwest hip hop and heavy metal to country rock and rap rock. His influences include Warren Zevon, Jim Croce, Johnny Cash, David Allan Coe, Bob Seger, Run-DMC, Beastie Boys, Whodini, Too Short, Eric B. & Rakim, Esham and Lynyrd Skynyrd .

Twisted Brown Trucker

Twisted Brown Trucker is Kid Rock's band, formed in 1994 in Sterling Heights, Michigan. The original lineup included Kenny Olson on lead guitar, Uncle Kracker on turntables, Andy Gould and George Metropolous on guitar, Paul Anthony on bass and Bob Ebeling on drums. The band's first involvement was on the 1994 demo of "Dark & Gray" on his Bootleg Series Tapes, they would make three more appearances on the tapes in Watch Me Come, Only a Dog and Box #10. Trucker became both Rock's studio and live band in 1997.

Chris Peters was the studio guitarist for The Polyfuze Method and Fire It Up. Matt O'Brien (Bass) and Kenny Tudrick (Guitar, Drums) were studio musicians for Devil Without a Cause.

Kenny Olson went on to form numerous bands for more creative outlets. A Pack of Wolves, The Flask, Five Star Carni, The Motorfly's, and most recent (2010) 7 Day Binge. He has also made appearances on many other recordings such as the song "I Love You More Than You'll Ever Know" which can be found on the Les Paul & Friends CD as well as a version of "Little Wing" with Chaka Khan on "The Power of Soul: A Tribute to Jimi Hendrix" among numerous others.

Tudrick is with the band Detroit Cobras, who he was with before touring on Kid Rock's 'Live' Trucker tour.

Percussionist Larry Frantangelo won a Detroit Music Award in 2009 for Outstanding Urban/Funk Musician.

;Current members

Jimmie "Bones" Trombley – keyboards, piano, organ, harmonica, backing vocals (1996–present)

Marlon Young – lead & rhythm guitar (1996–1997, 2007–present)

Jason Krause – rhythm & lead guitar (1997–present)

Stefanie Eulinberg – drums, percussion, backing vocals (1998–present)

Paradime – turntables, programming, keyboards (2002–present)

Aaron Julison – bass guitar, backing vocals (2003–present)

Shannon Curfman – backing vocal & guitar (2010–present)

''with:''

Larry Frantangelo – percussion (2007–present)

David McMurray – saxophone (2007–present)

Jessica Wagner;– backing vocals (2007–present)

Tyra Juliette -backing vocals (2007–present)

;Former members

Barbara Payton- backing vocals (2007–2009, on and off)

Stacy Michelle- backing vocals (2007–2009)

Kenny Olson – lead guitar (1994–2005)

Uncle Kracker – turntables (1994–2002)

Joe C – backing vocals (1994–2000)

Andy Gould – rhythm guitar (1994–1995)

George Metropolous – rhythm guitar (1994–1995)

Paul Anthony – bass (1994–1995)

Bob Ebeling – drums (1994–1995)

Bill Keros – drums (1995)

Eric Hogemeyer – drums (1995)

Jeff Hall – rhythm guitar (1995–1996)

Chris Zuccaro – drums (1995–1998)

Ray Echlin – bass (1996)

Lonnie Motley – bass (1996–1998)

Chris Lebroux – bongos (1997)

Thornetta Davis – backing vocals (1997–1998)

Mike Bradford – bass (1998–2001)

Misty Love – backing vocals (1998–2001)

Shirley Hayden – backing vocals (1998–2001)

Bobby East – bass (2001–2003)

Smith Curry – dobro (2004–2005)

Karen Newman – backing vocals (2004–2005)

Lauren Creamer – backing vocals (2004–2005)

Kenny Tudrick – lead guitar (2005–2006)

Personal life

Marriage to Pamela Anderson

In 2001 Kid Rock began dating actress Pamela Anderson, after the two met at a VH1 tribute to Aretha Franklin. By April 2002, he and Anderson were engaged, but the engagement was later called off. They later got married in a surprise wedding in July 2006 after it was reported Anderson was pregnant. They divorced five months later because Rock wanted to live in Detroit and Anderson wanted to stay in Los Angeles. It has been suggested that his no-show at the Download Festival 2008 was due to a broken heart.

Kid Rock has stated in numerous interviews that he is a lover of hunting and fishing. He has hunted with his good friend Hank Williams Jr. several times. When Rock and Pamela Anderson divorced, it was rumored that Rock's hunting passion was the cause of the relationship's end, Anderson being a keen animal rights activist.

Rock later claimed, however, that the divorce was due to Anderson openly criticizing his mother and sister in front of his son from a previous relationship, Robert Jr., which Rock took offense to. Rock has actively raised Robert Jr., born in 1993, as a single father since birth, and continues to live with him in Michigan. On July 6, 2011, Kid Rock appeared on CNN's ''Piers Morgan Tonight'' show where he said he has no regrets about anything he has done in the past. He declined to say whether his marriage to Pamela Anderson had taught him any lessons.

Legal troubles

Kid Rock has had multiple run-ins with law enforcement:

In March 1991 and September 1997, Kid Rock was arrested in Michigan for alcohol related incidents.

In February 2005, he was arrested on assault charges for punching DJ Jay Campos in 'Christies Cabaret' strip club. Rock pleaded no contest and was sued for $575,000 by Campos.

Kid Rock was cited for assault on Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee on September 9, 2007 at MTV's Video Music Awards, and pled guilty.

In October 2007, Kid Rock was involved in a brawl at a Waffle House in Atlanta and charged with simple battery. He pleaded nolo contendere ("no contest") to one count, was fined $1,000, required to perform 80 hours of community service and complete a 6-hour course on anger management.

Sex tape

Kid Rock and Scott Stapp, singer of the band Creed, appear in a sex tape from 1999 in which the two have sex with four groupies in a mobile home. California pornography company Red Light District planned to release the tape in 2006, but both Rock and Stapp filed with the California courts to sue Red Light District and stop the tape's distribution.

Activism

Kid Rock has been involved with many charitable organizations but his main support has gone to Operation Homefront. Kid Rock has frequently partnered with Jim Beam to make large donations to the organization. He is close friends with Tony Stewart as he helps with charity events, and Kid Rock narrated ''Tony Stewart: Smoke'', a documentary of Stewart's 2002 championship season. Kid Rock has performed for American service men and women in countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait and Kosovo, and has performed for U.S. servicemembers in Great Britain at R.A.F. bases such as RAF Lakenheath.

Discography

1990: ''Grits Sandwiches for Breakfast''

1993: ''The Polyfuze Method''

1996: ''Early Mornin' Stoned Pimp''

1998: ''Devil Without a Cause''

2000: ''The History of Rock''

2001: ''Cocky''

2003: ''Kid Rock''

2006: ''Live Trucker''

2007: ''Rock n Roll Jesus''

2010: ''Born Free''

Tours

1989: Straight From the Underground Tour (opened for Ice Cube, Too $hort, D Nice and Yo-Yo)

1998: Lollapalooza Tour

1998: Vans Warped Tour

1998–99: White Thrash on Dope Tour (with Monster Magnet and Hed PE)

1999: Destroy Your Liver Tour

1999: Limptropolis Tour (with Limp Bizkit and Staind)

1999: European Tour (with Blink-182)

1999: Between the Legs Tour (with Powerman 5000, Professional Murder Music)

1999-00: Millennium Tour (with Metallica, Sevendust and Creed)

2000: Summer Sanitarium Tour (with Metallica, Korn, System of a Down, Powerman 5000)

2000: The History of Rock Tour (with Dope)

2001: The American Bad Ass Tour (with Buckcherry, Fuel and David Allan Coe)

2002: The Cocky Tour (with Lit, Tenacious D and Saliva)

2002: Girls of Summer Tour (opening for Aerosmith with Run-D.M.C.)

2004: Rock n Roll Pain Train Tour (with Puddle of Mudd, Gov't Mule, Jerry Cantrell)

2005: Lazy Muthafuga Tour (only 6 concert dates)

2006: 'Live' Trucker Tour (with Ty Stone, Peter Frampton (opened in Auburn Hills, Michigan) and Whitestarr)

2007–2008: Rock n Roll Revival Tour (with Reverend Run, Dicky Betts, Duane Betts, Peter Wolf, Lynyrd Skynyrd, in a revue style)

2008: Rock n Roll Revival Tour: European Tour

2008: Rock n Rebels Tour (with Lynyrd Skynyrd and Backdoor Slam)

2008: European Tour (with Finger Eleven)

2008: All Summer Long Tour (4 nights at Pine Knob with Uncle Kracker & Rev Run)

2009: Rock n Rebels Tour II (with Lynyrd Skynyrd, Cross Canadian Ragweed, Jonathan Tyler and the Northern Lights, Black Stone Cherry, Alice in Chains, Cypress Hill, Robert Randolph and the Family Band)

2010: The Circle Tour (opening for Bon Jovi)

2011: Ford field, Detroit Michigan 40th Birthday Bash-January

2011: Born Free Tour (with Sheryl Crow)

2011: (Fall) Care - Club Tour for charity

Filmography

''The Howard Stern Show'' (8 episodes, 1999–2008)

''Saturday Night Live'' (Musical Guest, 2000)

''The Simpsons'' (1 episode, 2000)

''WWF Raw is War'' (Musical Guest, 2000)

''Joe Dirt'' (2001)

''Osmosis Jones'' (Voice, 2001)

''Kid Rock: Lonely Road of Faith'' (2001)

''King of the Hill'' (2002)

''Punk'd'' (1 episode, 2003)

''Biker Boyz'' (2003)

''Stripperella'' (You Only Lick Twice, 2003)

''CMT Outlaws'' (2003)

''South Park'' (2004)

''CSI: NY'' (1 episode, 2005)

''Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector'' (2005)

''Motorcycle Mania 3'' (2005)

''Coors Light Mountain Jam'' (2005)

''Stacked'' (1 episode, 2002)

''The 2006 Billboard Music Awards'' (2006)

''VH1 Storytellers'' (2008)

''WrestleMania XXV'' (Musical Guest, 2009)

''2010 Spike Guy Choice Awards'' (Presenter, 2009)

''Top Gear (U.S. TV series)'' (1 episode, 2010)

''Late Night with Jimmy Fallon'' (1 episode, 2011)

''Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives'' (1 episode, 2011)

Awards and nominations

Grammy Awards

*2000 Best New Artist (Nominated)

*2000 Best Hard Rock Performance for "Bawitdaba" (Nominated)

*2001 Best Hard Rock Performance for "American Bad Ass" (Nominated)

*2009 Best Rock Album for ''Rock n Roll Jesus'' (Nominated)

*2009 Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for "All Summer Long" (Nominated)

Academy of Country Music

*2003, Vocal Event of the Year: "Picture" (Nominated)

American Music Awards

*2008, Favorite Male Pop/Rock Artist (Nominated)

*2003, Favorite Male Pop/Rock Artist: (Winner)'''

*2003, Favorite Pop/Rock Album: ''Cocky'' (Nominated)

*2001, Favorite Male Pop/Rock Artist: (Winner)'''

*2000, Favorite Alternative Artist: (Nominated)

*2000, Favorite Pop/Rock New Artist: (Nominated)

Billboard Music Awards

*1999 Best New Artist (Winner)

*1999 Best Hard Rock Performance for "Bawitdaba" (Winner)

*1999 Best New Hard Rock Artist (Winner)

MTV Video Music Awards

*2001, Best Male Video: "Cowboy" (Nominated)

*2001, Best Rock Video: "Cowboy" (Nominated)

*2000, Best Male Video: "Bawitdaba" (Nominated)

*2000, Best New Artist: "Bawitdaba" (Nominated)

Teen Choice Awards

*2003, Choice Love Song: "Picture" (Nominated)

*2003 Choice Hookup Song: "Picture" (Nominated)

Detroit Music Awards

*1999

**Outstanding National Album for ''Devil Without a Cause'' (Winner)

**Outstanding National Single for "I Am the Bullgod" (Winner)

**Outstanding National Single for "Bawitdaba" (Nominee)

**Outstanding National Hip Hop Writer/Producer (Winner)

*2000

**Outstanding National Album for ''History of Rock'' (Nominee)

**Outstanding National Single for "American Bad Ass" (Winner)

**Outstanding National Single for "Cowboy" (Nominee)

**Outstanding National Duet for "Higher" with Robert Bradley (Winner)

**Outstanding National Spokesperson (Winner)

*2001

**Outstanding National Album for ''Cocky'' (Nominated)

**Outstanding National Single for "Forever" (Nominated)

*2003

**Outstanding National Single for "Picture" (Nominated)

*2004

**Outstanding National Album for Kid Rock (Nominated)

**Outstanding National Single for "Cold and Empty" (Nominated)

**Outstanding National Single for "Jackson, Mississippi" (Nominated)

*2006

**Outstanding National Album for ''Live Trucker'' (Nominated)

*2008

**Outstanding National Album for ''Rock n Roll Jesus'' (Winner)

**Outstanding National Single for "So Hott" (Nominated)

**Outstanding National Single for "Amen" (Nominated)

*2009

**Outstanding National Single for ''All Summer Long'' (Winner)

**Outstanding National Single for ''Roll On'' (Nominated)

MTV European Music Awards

*2008 Most Attictive Track for "All Summer Long" (Nominated)

BMI Songwriting Award

*2002 "Picture" (Winner)

CMT Music Awards

*2003 Choice Male Video for "Picture" (Nominated)

*2009 Video of The Year for "All Summer Long" (Nominated)

*2009 Wide Open Country Video of the Year for "All Summer Long" (Winner)

World Music Awards

*2008 Worlds Best Male Pop Artist (Winner)

*2008 Worlds Best Pop/Rock Artist (Winner)

People's Choice Awards

*2009 Best Rock Song for "All Summer Long" (Winner)

Kid's Choice Awards

*2009 Favorite Male Singer (Current Nominee)

Echo Award (Germany)

*2009 Hit Of The Year for "All Summer Long" (Winner)

Other ventures and honors

He has his own clothing line called Made in Detroit which he purchased from its creator, Detroit designer Robert Stanzler, in 2003. Stanzler, a longtime friend of Kid Rock, is mentioned by name in Rock's song "Early Mornin' Stoned Pimp". Wayne State University named a scholarship after Kid Rock for musicians. Kid Rock is using his clothing line to fund it. He was Grand Marshal of the Krewe of Endymion Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans on February 21, 2009 and was accompanied by The Chee-Weez, a local area cover band.

He released his own beer called Bad Ass Beer on July 17, 2009 released over the entire midwestern part of the U.S.

Kid Rock is a steadfast loyal supporter of the United States military. He gave proceeds of a concert to the families affected by the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. He has quietly made numerous trips with the USO, and on his own, to play concerts for soldiers overseas in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kuwait. He also made his album ''Born Free'' available to military members to download for free.

References

Sources

Christe, Ian (2003). ''Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal''. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-380-81127-8

External links

Kid Rock at Imeem.com

Kid Rock Interview on ''The Hour'' with George Stroumboulopoulos

UK Interview (11/8/2008)http://www.thrashhits.com/2008/08/kid-rock-%E2%80%9Ci-was-the-kid-with-the-vial-full-of-rocks%E2%80%A6%E2%80%9D/

Category:1971 births Category:American rock singers Category:American male singers Category:Atlantic Records artists Category:Living people Category:People from Macomb County, Michigan Category:Rap rock musicians Category:Rappers from Detroit, Michigan Category:World Music Awards winners

bg:Кид Рок cs:Kid Rock da:Kid Rock de:Kid Rock es:Kid Rock fa:کید راک fr:Kid Rock it:Kid Rock lv:Kid Rock nl:Kid Rock ja:キッド・ロック no:Kid Rock pl:Kid Rock pt:Kid Rock ru:Кид Рок simple:Kid Rock sk:Kid Rock fi:Kid Rock sv:Kid Rock th:คิด ร็อก tr:Kid Rock

Coordinates	40°26′30″N80°00′00″N
Name	Elvis Presley
Alt	A young man dancing, swiveling his hips. He has dark hair, short and slicked up a bit. He wears an unbuttoned band-collared jacket over a shirt with bold black-and-white horizontal stripes. Behind him, on either side, are a pair of barred frames, like prison doors.
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Elvis Aaron Presley
Birth date	January 08, 1935
Birth place
Death date	August 16, 1977
Death place
Genre	Rock and roll, pop, rockabilly, country, blues, gospel, R&B;
Associated acts	The Blue Moon Boys, The Jordanaires, The Imperials
Occupation	Musician, actor
Instrument	Vocals, guitar, piano
Years active	1953–77
Label	Sun, RCA Victor
Website	}}

Elvis Aaron Presley (, 1935 , 1977) was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King".

Born in Tupelo, Mississippi, Presley moved to Memphis, Tennessee, with his family at the age of 13. He began his career there in 1954, working with Sun Records owner Sam Phillips, who wanted to bring the sound of African American music to a wider audience. Accompanied by guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, Presley was one of the originators of rockabilly, an uptempo, backbeat-driven fusion of country and rhythm and blues. RCA Victor acquired his contract in a deal arranged by Colonel Tom Parker, who would manage the singer for over two decades. Presley's first RCA single, "Heartbreak Hotel", released in January 1956, was a number one hit. He became the leading figure of the newly popular sound of rock and roll with a series of network television appearances and chart-topping records. His energized interpretations of songs, many from African American sources, and his uninhibited performance style made him enormously popular—and controversial. In November 1956, he made his film debut in ''Love Me Tender''.

Conscripted into military service in 1958, Presley relaunched his recording career two years later with some of his most commercially successful work. He staged few concerts however, and guided by Parker, proceeded to devote much of the 1960s to making Hollywood movies and soundtrack albums, most of them critically derided. In 1968, after seven years away from the stage, he returned to live performance in a celebrated comeback television special that led to an extended Las Vegas concert residency and a string of profitable tours. In 1973 Presley staged the first concert broadcast globally via satellite, ''Aloha from Hawaii'', seen by approximately 1.5 billion viewers. Prescription drug abuse severely compromised his health, and he died suddenly in 1977 at the age of 42.

Presley is regarded as one of the most important figures of 20th-century popular culture. He had a versatile voice and unusually wide success encompassing many genres, including country, pop ballads, gospel, and blues. He is the best-selling solo artist in the history of popular music. Nominated for 14 competitive Grammys, he won three, and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award at age 36. He has been inducted into multiple music halls of fame.

Life and career

Early years (1935–53)

Childhood in Tupelo

Elvis Presley was born on January 8, 1935, in Tupelo, Mississippi, to 18-year-old Vernon Elvis and 22-year-old Gladys Love Presley. In the two-room shotgun house built by his father in readiness for the birth, Jesse Garon Presley, his identical twin brother, was delivered 35 minutes before him, stillborn. As an only child, Presley became close to both parents and formed an unusually tight bond with his mother. The family attended an Assembly of God church where he found his initial musical inspiration.

Presley's ancestry was primarily a Western European mix: On his mother's side, he was Scots-Irish, with some French Norman; one of Gladys's great-great-grandmothers was Cherokee. His father's forebears were of Scottish or German origin. Gladys was regarded by relatives and friends as the dominant member of the small family. Vernon moved from one odd job to the next, evidencing little ambition. The family often relied on help from neighbors and government food assistance. In 1938, they lost their home after Vernon was found guilty of altering a check written by the landowner. He was jailed for eight months, and Gladys and Elvis moved in with relatives.

In September 1941, Presley entered first grade at East Tupelo Consolidated, where his instructors regarded him as "average". He was encouraged to enter a singing contest after impressing his schoolteacher with a rendition of Red Foley's country song "Old Shep" during morning prayers. The contest, held at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show on October 3, 1945, saw his first public performance: dressed as a cowboy, the ten-year-old Presley stood on a chair to reach the microphone and sang "Old Shep". He recalled placing fifth. A few months later, Presley received his first guitar for his birthday; he had hoped for something else—by different accounts, either a bicycle or a rifle. Over the following year, he received basic guitar lessons from two of his uncles and the new pastor at the family's church. Presley recalled, "I took the guitar, and I watched people, and I learned to play a little bit. But I would never sing in public. I was very shy about it."

Entering a new school, Milam, for sixth grade in September 1946, Presley was regarded as a loner. The following year, he began bringing his guitar in on a daily basis. He played and sang during lunchtime, and was often teased as a "trashy" kid who played hillbilly music. The family was by then living in a largely African American neighborhood. A devotee of Mississippi Slim's show on the Tupelo radio station WELO, Presley was described as "crazy about music" by Slim's younger brother, a classmate of Presley's, who often took him in to the station. Slim supplemented Presley's guitar tuition by demonstrating chord techniques. When his protégé was 12 years old, Slim scheduled him for two on-air performances. Presley was overcome by stage fright the first time, but succeeded in performing the following week.

Teenage life in Memphis

In November 1948, the family moved to Memphis, Tennessee. After residing for nearly a year in rooming houses, they were granted a two-bedroom apartment in the public housing complex known as the Courts. Enrolled at Humes High School, Presley received only a C in music in eighth grade. When his music teacher told him he had no aptitude for singing, he brought in his guitar the next day and sang a recent hit, "Keep Them Cold Icy Fingers Off Me", in an effort to prove otherwise. A classmate later recalled that the teacher "agreed that Elvis was right when he said that she didn't appreciate his kind of singing." He was generally too shy to perform openly, and was occasionally bullied by classmates who viewed him as a "mama's boy". In 1950, he began practicing guitar regularly under the tutelage of Jesse Lee Denson, a neighbor two-and-a-half years his senior. They and three other boys—including two future rockabilly pioneers, brothers Dorsey and Johnny Burnette—formed a loose musical collective that played frequently around the Courts. That September, he began ushering at Loew's State Theater. Other jobs followed during his school years: Precision Tool, Loew's again, and MARL Metal Products.

During his junior year, Presley began to stand out more among his classmates, largely because of his appearance: he grew out his sideburns and styled his hair with rose oil and Vaseline. On his own time, he would head down to Beale Street, the heart of Memphis's thriving blues scene, and gaze longingly at the wild, flashy clothes in the windows of Lansky Brothers. By his senior year, he was wearing them. Overcoming his reticence about performing outside the Courts, he competed in Humes's Annual "Minstrel" show in April 1953. Singing and playing guitar, he opened with "Till I Waltz Again with You", a recent hit for Teresa Brewer. Presley recalled that the performance did much for his reputation: "I wasn't popular in school ... I failed music—only thing I ever failed. And then they entered me in this talent show ... when I came onstage I heard people kind of rumbling and whispering and so forth, 'cause nobody knew I even sang. It was amazing how popular I became after that."

Presley, who never received formal music training or learned to read music, studied and played by ear. He frequented record stores with jukeboxes and listening booths. He knew all of Hank Snow's songs and he loved records by other country singers such as Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb, Ted Daffan, Jimmie Rodgers, Jimmie Davis, and Bob Wills. The Southern Gospel singer Jake Hess, one of his favorite performers, was a significant influence on his ballad-singing style. He was a regular audience member at the monthly All-Night Singings downtown, where many of the white gospel groups that performed reflected the influence of African American spiritual music. He adored the music of black gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Like some of his peers, he may have attended blues venues—of necessity, in the segregated South, only on nights designated for exclusively white audiences. He certainly listened to the regional radio stations that played "race records": spirituals, blues, and the modern, backbeat-heavy sound of rhythm and blues. Many of his future recordings were inspired by local African American musicians such as Arthur Crudup and Rufus Thomas. B.B. King recalled that he knew Presley before he was popular when they both used to frequent Beale Street. By the time he graduated high school in June 1953, Presley had already singled out music as his future.

First recordings (1953–55)

Sam Phillips and Sun Records

In August 1953, Presley walked into the offices of Sun Records. He aimed to pay for a few minutes of studio time to record a two-sided acetate disc: "My Happiness" and "That's When Your Heartaches Begin". He would later claim he intended the record as a gift for his mother, or was merely interested in what he "sounded like", though there was a much cheaper, amateur record-making service at a nearby general store. Biographer Peter Guralnick argues that he chose Sun in the hope of being discovered. Asked by receptionist Marion Keisker what kind of singer he was, Presley responded, "I sing all kinds." When she pressed him on whom he sounded like, he repeatedly answered, "I don't sound like nobody." After he recorded, Sun boss Sam Phillips asked Keisker to note down the young man's name, which she did along with her own commentary: "Good ballad singer. Hold." Presley cut a second acetate in January 1954—"I'll Never Stand In Your Way" and "It Wouldn't Be the Same Without You"—but again nothing came of it.

Not long after, he failed an audition for a local vocal quartet, the Songfellows. He explained to his father, "They told me I couldn't sing." Songfellow Jim Hamill later claimed that he was turned down because he did not demonstrate an ear for harmony at the time. In April, Presley began working for the Crown Electric company as a truck driver. His friend Ronnie Smith, after playing a few local gigs with him, suggested he contact Eddie Bond, leader of Smith's professional band, which had an opening for a vocalist. Bond rejected him after a tryout, advising Presley to stick to truck driving "because you're never going to make it as a singer."

Phillips, meanwhile, was always on the lookout for someone who could bring the sound of the black musicians on whom Sun focused to a broader audience. As Keisker reported, "Over and over I remember Sam saying, 'If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.'" In June, he acquired a demo recording of a ballad, "Without You", that he thought might suit the teenaged singer. Presley came by the studio, but was unable to do it justice. Despite this, Phillips asked Presley to sing as many numbers as he knew. He was sufficiently affected by what he heard to invite two local musicians, guitarist Winfield "Scotty" Moore and upright bass player Bill Black, to work something up with Presley for a recording session. }} The session, held the evening of July 5, proved entirely unfruitful until late in the night. As they were about to give up and go home, Presley took his guitar and launched into a 1946 blues number, Arthur Crudup's "That's All Right". Moore recalled, "All of a sudden, Elvis just started singing this song, jumping around and acting the fool, and then Bill picked up his bass, and he started acting the fool, too, and I started playing with them. Sam, I think, had the door to the control booth open ... he stuck his head out and said, 'What are you doing?' And we said, 'We don't know.' 'Well, back up,' he said, 'try to find a place to start, and do it again.'" Phillips quickly began taping; this was the sound he had been looking for. Three days later, popular Memphis DJ Dewey Phillips played "That's All Right" on his ''Red, Hot, and Blue'' show. Listeners began phoning in, eager to find out who the singer was. The interest was such that Phillips played the record repeatedly during the last two hours of his show. Interviewing Presley on-air, Phillips asked him what high school he attended in order to clarify his color for the many callers who had assumed he was black. During the next few days the trio recorded a bluegrass number, Bill Monroe's "Blue Moon of Kentucky", again in a distinctive style and employing a jury-rigged echo effect that Sam Phillips dubbed "slapback". A single was pressed with "That's All Right" on the A side and "Blue Moon of Kentucky" on the reverse.

Early live performances and signing to RCA

The trio played publicly for the first time on July 17 at the Bon Air club—Presley still sporting his child-size guitar. At the end of the month, they appeared at the Overton Park Shell, with Slim Whitman headlining. A combination of his strong response to rhythm and nervousness at playing before a large crowd led Presley to shake his legs as he performed: his wide-cut pants emphasized his movements, causing young women in the audience to start screaming. Moore recalled, "During the instrumental parts he would back off from the mike and be playing and shaking, and the crowd would just go wild". Black, a natural showman, whooped and rode his bass, hitting double licks that Presley would later remember as "really a wild sound, like a jungle drum or something". Soon after, Moore and Black quit their old band to play with Presley regularly, and DJ and promoter Bob Neal became the trio's manager. From August through October, they played frequently at the Eagle's Nest club and returned to Sun Studio for more recording sessions, and Presley quickly grew more confident on stage. According to Moore, "His movement was a natural thing, but he was also very conscious of what got a reaction. He'd do something one time and then he would expand on it real quick." Presley made what would be his only appearance on Nashville's ''Grand Ole Opry'' on October 2; after a polite audience response, ''Opry'' manager Jim Denny told Phillips that his singer was "not bad" but did not suit the program. Two weeks later, Presley was booked on ''Louisiana Hayride'', the ''Opry''s chief, and more adventurous, rival. The Shreveport-based show was broadcast to 198 radio stations in 28 states. Presley had another attack of nerves during the first set, which drew a muted reaction. A more composed and energetic second set inspired an enthusiastic response. House drummer D.J. Fontana brought a new element, complementing Presley's movements with accented beats that he had mastered playing in strip clubs. Soon after the show, the ''Hayride'' engaged Presley for a year's worth of Saturday-night appearances. Trading in his old guitar for $8 (and seeing it promptly dispatched to the garbage), he purchased a Martin instrument for $175, and his trio began playing in new locales including Houston, Texas, and Texarkana, Arkansas.

By early 1955, Presley's regular ''Hayride'' appearances, constant touring, and well-received record releases had made him a substantial regional star, from Tennessee to West Texas. In January, Neal signed a formal management contract with Presley and brought the singer to the attention of Colonel Tom Parker, whom he considered the best promoter in the music business. Parker—Dutch-born, though he claimed to be from West Virginia—had acquired an honorary colonel's commission from country singer turned Louisiana governor Jimmie Davis. Having successfully managed top country star Eddy Arnold, he was now working with the new number one country singer, Hank Snow. Parker booked Presley on Snow's February tour. When the tour reached Odessa, Texas, a 19-year-old Roy Orbison saw Presley for the first time: "His energy was incredible, his instinct was just amazing. ... I just didn't know what to make of it. There was just no reference point in the culture to compare it." Presley made his television debut on March 3 on the KSLA-TV broadcast of ''Louisiana Hayride''. Soon after, he failed an audition for ''Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts'' on the CBS television network. By August, Sun had released ten sides credited to "Elvis Presley, Scotty and Bill"; on the latest recordings, the trio were joined by a drummer. Some of the songs, like "That's All Right", were in what one Memphis journalist described as the "R&B; idiom of negro field jazz"; others, like "Blue Moon of Kentucky", were "more in the country field", "but there was a curious blending of the two different musics in both". This blend of styles made it difficult for Presley's music to find radio airplay. According to Neal, many country music disc jockeys would not play it because he sounded too much like a black artist and none of the rhythm and blues stations would touch him because "he sounded too much like a hillbilly." The blend came to be known as rockabilly. At the time, Presley was variously billed as "The King of Western Bop", "The Hillbilly Cat", and "The Memphis Flash".

Presley renewed Neal's management contract in August 1955, simultaneously appointing Parker as his special adviser. The group maintained an extensive touring schedule throughout the second half of the year. Neal recalled, "It was almost frightening, the reaction that came to Elvis from the teenaged boys. So many of them, through some sort of jealousy, would practically hate him. There were occasions in some towns in Texas when we'd have to be sure to have a police guard because somebody'd always try to take a crack at him. They'd get a gang and try to waylay him or something." The trio became a quartet when ''Hayride'' drummer Fontana joined as a full member. In mid-October, they played a few shows in support of Bill Haley, whose "Rock Around the Clock" had been a number one hit the previous year. Haley observed that Presley had a natural feel for rhythm, and advised him to sing fewer ballads.

At the Country Disc Jockey Convention in early November, Presley was voted the year's most promising male artist. Several record companies had by now shown interest in signing him. After three major labels made offers of up to $25,000, Parker and Phillips struck a deal with RCA Victor on November 21 to acquire Presley's Sun contract for an unprecedented $40,000. Presley, at 20, was still a minor, so his father signed the contract. Parker arranged with the owners of Hill and Range Publishing, Jean and Julian Aberbach, to create two entities, Elvis Presley Music and Gladys Music, to handle all of the new material recorded by Presley. Songwriters were obliged to forego one third of their customary royalties in exchange for having him perform their compositions. By December, RCA had begun to heavily promote its new singer, and before month's end had reissued many of his Sun recordings.

Commercial breakout and controversy (1956–58)

First national TV appearances and debut album

On January 10, 1956, Presley made his first recordings for RCA in Nashville. Extending the singer's by now customary backup of Moore, Black, and Fontana, RCA enlisted pianist Floyd Cramer, guitarist Chet Atkins, and three background singers, including Gordon Stoker of the popular Jordanaires quartet, to fill out the sound. The session produced the moody, unusual "Heartbreak Hotel", released as a single on January 27. Parker finally brought Presley to national television, booking him on CBS's ''Stage Show'' for six appearances over two months. The program, produced in New York, was hosted on alternate weeks by big band leaders and brothers Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. After his first appearance, on January 28, Presley stayed in town to record at RCA's New York studio. The sessions yielded eight songs, including a cover of Carl Perkins' rockabilly anthem "Blue Suede Shoes". In February, Presley's "I Forgot to Remember to Forget", a Sun recording initially released the previous August, reached the top of the ''Billboard'' country chart. Neal's contract was terminated and, on March 2, Parker became Presley's manager. RCA Victor released Presley's self-titled debut album on March 23. Joined by five previously unreleased Sun recordings, its seven recently recorded tracks were of a broad variety. There were two country songs and a bouncy pop tune. The others would centrally define the evolving sound of rock and roll: "Blue Suede Shoes"—"an improvement over Perkins' in almost every way", according to critic Robert Hilburn—and three R&B; numbers that had been part of Presley's stage repertoire for some time, covers of Little Richard, Ray Charles, and The Drifters. As described by Hilburn, these "were the most revealing of all. Unlike many white artists ... who watered down the gritty edges of the original R&B; versions of songs in the '50s, Presley reshaped them. He not only injected the tunes with his own vocal character but also made guitar, not piano, the lead instrument in all three cases." It became the first rock and roll album to top the ''Billboard'' chart, a position it held for 10 weeks. While Presley was not an innovative instrumentalist like Moore or contemporary African American rockers Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry, cultural historian Gilbert B. Rodman argues that the album's cover image, "of Elvis having the time of his life on stage ''with a guitar in his hands'' played a crucial role in positioning the guitar...as the instrument that best captured the style and spirit of this new music."

''Milton Berle Show'' and "Hound Dog"

Presley made the first of two appearances on NBC's ''Milton Berle Show'' on April 3. His performance, on the deck of the USS ''Hancock'' in San Diego, prompted cheers and screams from an audience of sailors and their dates. A few days later, a flight taking Presley and his band to Nashville for a recording session left all three badly shaken when an engine died and the plane almost went down over Arkansas. Twelve weeks after its original release, "Heartbreak Hotel" became Presley's first number one pop hit. In late April, Presley began a two-week residency at the New Frontier Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. The shows were poorly received by the conservative, middle-aged hotel guests—"like a jug of corn liquor at a champagne party", wrote a critic for ''Newsweek''. Amid his Vegas tenure, Presley, who had serious acting ambitions, signed a seven-year contract with Paramount Pictures. He began a tour of the Midwest in mid-May, taking in 15 cities in as many days. He had attended several shows by Freddie Bell and the Bellboys in Vegas, and was struck by their cover of "Hound Dog", a hit in 1952 for blues singer Big Mama Thornton by songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. It became the new closing number of his act. After a show in La Crosse, Wisconsin, an urgent message on the letterhead of the local Catholic diocese's newspaper was sent to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. It warned that "Presley is a definite danger to the security of the United States. ... [His] actions and motions were such as to rouse the sexual passions of teenaged youth. ... After the show, more than 1,000 teenagers tried to gang into Presley's room at the auditorium. ... Indications of the harm Presley did just in La Crosse were the two high school girls ... whose abdomen and thigh had Presley's autograph."

The second ''Milton Berle Show'' appearance came on June 5 at NBC's Hollywood studio, amid another hectic tour. Berle persuaded the singer to leave his guitar backstage, advising, "Let 'em see you, son." During the performance, Presley abruptly halted an uptempo rendition of "Hound Dog" with a wave of his arm and launched into a slow, grinding version accentuated with energetic, exaggerated body movements. Presley's gyrations created a storm of controversy. Television critics were outraged: Jack Gould of ''The New York Times'' wrote, "Mr. Presley has no discernible singing ability. ... His phrasing, if it can be called that, consists of the stereotyped variations that go with a beginner's aria in a bathtub. ... His one specialty is an accented movement of the body ... primarily identified with the repertoire of the blond bombshells of the burlesque runway." Ben Gross of the New York ''Daily News'' opined that popular music "has reached its lowest depths in the 'grunt and groin' antics of one Elvis Presley. ... Elvis, who rotates his pelvis ... gave an exhibition that was suggestive and vulgar, tinged with the kind of animalism that should be confined to dives and bordellos". Ed Sullivan, whose own variety show was the nation's most popular, declared him "unfit for family viewing". To Presley's displeasure, he soon found himself being referred to as "Elvis the Pelvis", which he called "one of the most childish expressions I ever heard, comin' from an adult."

''Steve Allen Show'' and first Sullivan appearance

The Berle shows drew such high ratings that Presley was booked for a July 1 appearance on NBC's ''Steve Allen Show'' in New York. Allen, no fan of rock and roll, introduced a "new Elvis" in a white bow tie and black tails. Presley sang "Hound Dog" for less than a minute to a basset hound wearing a top hat and bow tie. As described by television historian Jake Austen, "Allen thought Presley was talentless and absurd... [he] set things up so that Presley would show his contrition". Allen, for his part, later wrote that he found Presley's "strange, gangly, country-boy charisma, his hard-to-define cuteness, and his charming eccentricity intriguing" and simply worked the singer into the customary "comedy fabric" of his program. Presley would refer back to the Allen show as the most ridiculous performance of his career. Later that night, he appeared on ''Hy Gardner Calling'', a popular local TV show. Pressed on whether he had learned anything from the criticism to which he was being subjected, Presley responded, "No, I haven't, I don't feel like I'm doing anything wrong. ... I don't see how any type of music would have any bad influence on people when it's only music. ... I mean, how would rock 'n' roll music make anyone rebel against their parents?"

The next day, Presley recorded "Hound Dog", along with "Any Way You Want Me" and "Don't Be Cruel". The Jordanaires sang harmony, as they had on ''The Steve Allen Show''; they would work with Presley through the 1960s. A few days later, the singer made an outdoor concert appearance in Memphis at which he announced, "You know, those people in New York are not gonna change me none. I'm gonna show you what the real Elvis is like tonight." In August, a judge in Jacksonville, Florida, ordered Presley to tame his act. Throughout the following performance, he largely kept still, except for wiggling his little finger suggestively in mockery of the order. The single pairing "Don't Be Cruel" with "Hound Dog" ruled the top of the charts for 11 weeks—a mark that would not be surpassed for 36 years. Recording sessions for Presley's second album took place in Hollywood during the first week of September. Leiber and Stoller, the writers of "Hound Dog", contributed "Love Me".

Allen's show with Presley had, for the first time, beaten CBS's ''Ed Sullivan Show'' in the ratings. Sullivan, despite his June pronouncement, booked the singer for three appearances for an unprecedented $50,000. The first, on September 9, 1956, was seen by approximately 60 million viewers—a record 82.6 percent of the television audience. Actor Charles Laughton hosted the show, filling in while Sullivan recuperated from a car accident. Presley appeared in two segments that night from CBS Television City in Los Angeles. According to Elvis legend, Presley was shot only from the waist up. Watching clips of the Allen and Berle shows with his producer, Sullivan had opined that Presley "got some kind of device hanging down below the crotch of his pants–so when he moves his legs back and forth you can see the outline of his cock. ... I think it's a Coke bottle. ... We just can't have this on a Sunday night. This is a family show!" Sullivan publicly told ''TV Guide'', "As for his gyrations, the whole thing can be controlled with camera shots." In fact, Presley was shown head-to-toe in the first and second shows. Though the camerawork was relatively discreet during his debut, with leg-concealing closeups when he danced, the studio audience reacted in customary style: screaming. Presley's performance of his forthcoming single, the ballad "Love Me Tender", prompted a record-shattering million advance orders. More than any other single event, it was this first appearance on ''The Ed Sullivan Show'' that made Presley a national celebrity of barely precedented proportions.

Accompanying Presley's rise to fame, a cultural shift was taking place that he both helped inspire and came to symbolize. Igniting the "biggest pop craze since Glenn Miller and Frank Sinatra ... Presley brought rock'n'roll into the mainstream of popular culture", writes historian Marty Jezer. "As Presley set the artistic pace, other artists followed. ... Presley, more than anyone else, gave the young a belief in themselves as a distinct and somehow unified generation—the first in America ever to feel the power of an integrated youth culture."

Crazed crowds and movie debut

The audience response at Presley's live shows became increasingly fevered. Moore recalled, "He'd start out, 'You ain't nothin' but a Hound Dog,' and they'd just go to pieces. They'd always react the same way. There'd be a riot every time." At the two concerts he performed in September at the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show, 50 National Guardsmen were added to the police security to prevent crowd trouble. ''Elvis'', Presley's second album, was released in October and quickly rose to number one. Assessing the musical and cultural impact of Presley's recordings from "That's All Right" through ''Elvis'', rock critic Dave Marsh wrote that "these records, more than any others, contain the seeds of what rock & roll was, has been and most likely what it may foreseeably become."

Presley returned to the Sullivan show at its main studio in New York, hosted this time by its namesake, on October 28. After the performance, crowds in Nashville and St. Louis burned him in effigy. His first motion picture, ''Love Me Tender'', was released on November 21. Though he was not top billed, the film's original title—''The Reno Brothers''—was changed to capitalize on his latest number one record: "Love Me Tender" had hit the top of the charts earlier that month. To further take advantage of Presley's popularity, four musical numbers were added to what was originally a straight acting role. The movie was panned by the critics but did very well at the box office. Presley would receive top billing on every subsequent film he made.

On December 4, Presley dropped into Sun Records where Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis were recording and jammed with them. Though Phillips no longer had the right to release any Presley material, he made sure the session was captured on tape. The results became legendary as the "Million Dollar Quartet" recordings—Johnny Cash was long thought to have played as well, but he was present only briefly at Phillips' instigation for a photo opportunity. The year ended with a front-page story in ''The Wall Street Journal'' reporting that Presley merchandise had brought in $22 million on top of his record sales, and ''Billboard''s declaration that he had placed more songs in the top 100 than any other artist since records were first charted. In his first full year on RCA, one of the music industry's largest companies, Presley had accounted for over 50 percent of the label's singles sales.

Leiber and Stoller collaboration and draft notice

Presley made his third and final ''Ed Sullivan Show'' appearance on January 6, 1957—on this occasion indeed shot only down to the waist. Some commentators have claimed that Parker orchestrated an appearance of censorship to generate publicity. In any event, as critic Greil Marcus describes, Presley "did not tie himself down. Leaving behind the bland clothes he had worn on the first two shows, he stepped out in the outlandish costume of a pasha, if not a harem girl. From the make-up over his eyes, the hair falling in his face, the overwhelmingly sexual cast of his mouth, he was playing Rudolph Valentino in ''The Sheik'', with all stops out." To close, displaying his range and defying Sullivan's wishes, Presley sang a gentle black spiritual, "Peace in the Valley". At the end of the show, Sullivan declared Presley "a real decent, fine boy". Two days later, the Memphis draft board announced that Presley would be classified 1A and would probably be drafted sometime that year. Each of the three Presley singles released in the first half of 1957 went to number one: "Too Much", "All Shook Up", and "(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear". Already an international star, he was attracting fans even where his music was not officially released. Under the headline "Presley Records a Craze in Soviet", ''The New York Times'' reported that pressings of his music on discarded X-ray plates were commanding high prices in Leningrad. Between film shoots and recording sessions, the singer also found time to purchase an 18-room mansion eight miles (13 km) south of downtown Memphis for himself and his parents: Graceland. ''Loving You''—the soundtrack to his second film, released in July—was Presley's third straight number one album. The title track was written by Leiber and Stoller, who were then retained to write four of the six songs recorded at the sessions for ''Jailhouse Rock'', Presley's next movie. The songwriting team effectively produced the ''Jailhouse'' sessions and developed a close working relationship with Presley, who came to regard them as his "good-luck charm". The title track was yet another number one hit, as was the ''Jailhouse Rock'' EP.

Presley undertook three brief tours during the year, continuing to generate a crazed audience response. A Detroit newspaper suggested that "the trouble with going to see Elvis Presley is that you're liable to get killed." Villanova students pelted him with eggs in Philadelphia, and in Vancouver, the crowd rioted after the end of the show, destroying the stage. Frank Sinatra, who had famously inspired the swooning of teenaged girls in the 1940s, condemned the new musical phenomenon. In a magazine article, he decried rock and roll as "brutal, ugly, degenerate, vicious. ... It fosters almost totally negative and destructive reactions in young people. It smells phoney and false. It is sung, played and written, for the most part, by cretinous goons. ... This rancid-smelling aphrodisiac I deplore." Asked for a response, Presley said, "I admire the man. He has a right to say what he wants to say. He is a great success and a fine actor, but I think he shouldn't have said it. ... This is a trend, just the same as he faced when he started years ago."

Leiber and Stoller were again in the studio for the recording of ''Elvis' Christmas Album''. Toward the end of the session, they wrote a song on the spot at Presley's request: "Santa Claus Is Back In Town", an innuendo-laden blues. The holiday release stretched Presley's string of number one albums to four and would eventually become the best selling Christmas album of all time. After the session, Moore and Black—drawing only modest weekly salaries, sharing in none of Presley's massive financial success—resigned. Though they were brought back on a per diem basis a few weeks later, it was clear that they had not been part of Presley's inner circle for some time. On December 20, Presley received his draft notice. He was granted a deferment to finish the forthcoming ''King Creole'', in which $350,000 had already been invested by Paramount and producer Hal Wallis. A couple of weeks into the new year, "Don't", another Leiber and Stoller tune, became Presley's tenth number one seller. It had been only 21 months since "Heartbreak Hotel" had brought him to the top for the first time. Recording sessions for the ''King Creole'' soundtrack were held in Hollywood mid-January. Leiber and Stoller provided three songs and were again on hand, but it would be the last time they worked closely with Presley. A studio session on February 1 marked another ending: it was the final occasion on which Black was to perform with Presley. He died in 1965.

Military service and mother's death (1958–60)

On March 24, Presley was inducted into the U.S. Army as a private at Fort Chaffee, near Fort Smith, Arkansas. His arrival was a major media event. Hundreds of people descended on Presley as he stepped from the bus; photographers then accompanied him into the base. Presley announced that he was looking forward to his military stint, saying he did not want to be treated any differently from anyone else: "The Army can do anything it wants with me."

Soon after Presley commenced basic training at Fort Hood, Texas, he received a visit from Eddie Fadal, a businessman he had met on tour. According to Fadal, Presley had become convinced his career was finished—"He firmly believed that." During a two-week leave in early June, Presley cut five sides in Nashville. In early August, his mother was diagnosed with hepatitis and her condition swiftly worsened. Presley, granted emergency leave to visit her, arrived in Memphis on August 12. Two days later, she died of heart failure, aged 46. Presley was devastated; their relationship had remained extremely close—even into his adulthood, they would use baby talk with each other and Presley would address her with pet names.

After training, Presley joined the 3rd Armored Division in Friedberg, Germany, on October 1. Introduced to amphetamines by a sergeant while on maneuvers, he became "practically evangelical about their benefits"—not only for energy, but for "strength" and weight loss, as well—and many of his friends in the outfit joined him in indulging. The Army also introduced Presley to karate, which he studied seriously, later including it in his live performances. Fellow soldiers have attested to Presley's wish to be seen as an able, ordinary soldier, despite his fame, and to his generosity. He donated his Army pay to charity, purchased TV sets for the base, and bought an extra set of fatigues for everyone in his outfit.

While in Friedberg, Presley met 14-year-old Priscilla Beaulieu. They would eventually marry after a seven-and-a-half-year courtship. In her autobiography, Priscilla says that despite his worries that it would ruin his career, Parker convinced Presley that to gain popular respect, he should serve his country as a regular soldier rather than in Special Services, where he would have been able to give some musical performances and remain in touch with the public. Media reports echoed Presley's concerns about his career, but RCA producer Steve Sholes and Freddy Bienstock of Hill and Range had carefully prepared for his two-year hiatus. Armed with a substantial amount of unreleased material, they kept up a regular stream of successful releases. Between his induction and discharge, Presley had ten top 40 hits, including "Wear My Ring Around Your Neck", the best-selling "Hard Headed Woman", and "One Night" in 1958, and "(Now and Then There's) A Fool Such as I" and the number one "A Big Hunk o' Love" in 1959. RCA also generated four albums compiling old material during this period, most successfully ''Elvis' Golden Records'' (1958), which hit number three on the LP chart.

Focus on movies (1960–67)

''Elvis Is Back''

}} Presley returned to the United States on March 2, 1960, and was honorably discharged with the rank of sergeant on March 5. The train that carried him from New Jersey to Tennessee was mobbed all the way, and Presley was called upon to appear at scheduled stops to please his fans. On the night of March 20, he entered RCA's Nashville studio to cut tracks for a new album along with a single—"Stuck on You" was rushed into release and swiftly became a number one hit. Another Nashville session two weeks later yielded a pair of his best-selling singles, the ballads "It's Now or Never" and "Are You Lonesome Tonight?", along with the rest of ''Elvis Is Back!'' The album features several songs described by Greil Marcus as full of Chicago blues "menace, driven by Presley's own super-miked acoustic guitar, brilliant playing by Scotty Moore, and demonic sax work from Boots Randolph. Elvis's singing wasn't sexy, it was pornographic." As a whole, the record "conjured up the vision of a performer who could be all things", in the words of music historian John Robertson: "a flirtatious teenage idol with a heart of gold; a tempestuous, dangerous lover; a gutbucket blues singer; a sophisticated nightclub entertainer; [a] raucous rocker". Released only days after recording was complete, it reached number two on the album chart.

Presley returned to television on May 12 as a guest on ''The Frank Sinatra Timex Special''—ironic for both stars, given Sinatra's not-so-distant excoriation of rock and roll. Also known as ''Welcome Home Elvis'', the show had been taped in late March, the only time all year Presley performed in front of an audience. Parker secured an unheard-of $125,000 fee for eight minutes of singing. The broadcast drew an enormous viewership.

''G.I. Blues'', the soundtrack to Presley's first film since his return, was a number one album in October. His first LP of sacred material, ''His Hand in Mine'', followed two months later. It reached number 13 on the U.S. pop chart and number 3 in Great Britain, remarkable figures for a gospel album. In February 1961, Presley performed two shows for a benefit event in Memphis, on behalf of 24 local charities. During a luncheon preceding the event, RCA presented him with a plaque certifying worldwide sales of over 75 million records. A 12-hour Nashville session in mid-March yielded nearly all of Presley's next studio album, ''Something for Everybody''. As described by John Robertson, it exemplifies the Nashville sound, the restrained, cosmopolitan style that would define country music in the 1960s. Presaging much of what was to come from Presley himself over the next half-decade, the album is largely "a pleasant, unthreatening pastiche of the music that had once been Elvis's birthright." It would be his sixth number one LP. Another benefit concert, raising money for a Pearl Harbor memorial, was staged on March 25, in Hawaii. It was to be Presley's last public performance for seven years.

Lost in Hollywood

Parker had by now pushed Presley into a heavy moviemaking schedule, focused on formulaic, modestly budgeted musical comedies. Presley at first insisted on pursuing more serious roles, but when two films in a more dramatic vein—''Flaming Star'' (1960) and ''Wild in the Country'' (1961)—were less commercially successful, he reverted to the formula. Among the 27 movies he made during the 1960s, there were few further exceptions. His films were almost universally panned; one critic dismissed them as a "pantheon of bad taste". Nonetheless, they were virtually all profitable. Hal Wallis, who produced nine of them, declared, "A Presley picture is the only sure thing in Hollywood."

Of Presley's films in the 1960s, 15 were accompanied by soundtrack albums and another 5 by soundtrack EPs. The movies' rapid production and release schedules—he frequently starred in three a year—affected his music. According to Jerry Leiber, the soundtrack formula was already evident before Presley left for the Army: "three ballads, one medium-tempo [number], one up-tempo, and one break blues boogie". As the decade wore on, the quality of the soundtrack songs grew "progressively worse". Julie Parrish, who appeared in ''Paradise, Hawaiian Style'' (1966), says that he hated many of the songs chosen for his films. The Jordanaires' Gordon Stoker describes how Presley would retreat from the studio microphone: "The material was so bad that he felt like he couldn't sing it." Most of the movie albums featured a song or two from respected writers such as the team of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman. But by and large, according to biographer Jerry Hopkins, the numbers seemed to be "written on order by men who never really understood Elvis or rock and roll." Regardless of the songs' quality, it has been argued that Presley generally sang them well, with commitment. Critic Dave Marsh heard the opposite: "Presley isn't trying, probably the wisest course in the face of material like 'No Room to Rumba in a Sports Car' and 'Rock-a-Hula Baby.'"

In the first half of the decade, three of Presley's soundtrack albums hit number one on the pop charts, and a few of his most popular songs came from his films, such as "Can't Help Falling in Love" (1961) and "Return to Sender" (1962). ("Viva Las Vegas", the title track to the 1964 film, was a minor hit as a B-side, and became truly popular only later.) But, as with artistic merit, the commercial returns steadily diminished. During a five-year span—1964 through 1968—Presley had only one top ten hit: "Crying in the Chapel" (1965), a gospel number recorded back in 1960. As for non-movie albums, between the June 1962 release of ''Pot Luck'' and the November 1968 release of the soundtrack to the television special that signaled his comeback, only one LP of new material by Presley was issued: the gospel album ''How Great Thou Art'' (1967). It won him his first Grammy Award, for Best Sacred Performance. As Marsh described, Presley was "arguably the greatest white gospel singer of his time [and] really the last rock & roll artist to make gospel as vital a component of his musical personality as his secular songs."

Shortly before Christmas 1966, more than seven years since they first met, Presley proposed to Priscilla Beaulieu. They were married on May 1, 1967, in a brief ceremony in their suite at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas. The flow of formulaic movies and assembly-line soundtracks rolled on. It was not until October 1967, when the ''Clambake'' soundtrack LP registered record low sales for a new Presley album, that RCA executives recognized a problem. "By then, of course, the damage had been done", as historians Connie Kirchberg and Marc Hendrickx put it. "Elvis was viewed as a joke by serious music lovers and a has-been to all but his most loyal fans."

Comeback (1968–73)

''Elvis'': the '68 Comeback Special

Presley's only child, Lisa Marie, was born on February 1, 1968, during a period when he had grown deeply unhappy with his career. Of the eight Presley singles released between January 1967 and May 1968, only two charted in the top 40, and none higher than number 28. His forthcoming soundtrack album, ''Speedway'', would die at number 82 on the ''Billboard'' chart. Parker had already shifted his plans to television, where Presley had not appeared since the Sinatra Timex show in 1960. He maneuvered a deal with NBC that committed the network to both finance a theatrical feature and broadcast a Christmas special.

Recorded in late June in Burbank, California, the special, called simply ''Elvis'', aired on December 3, 1968. Later known as the '68 Comeback Special, the show featured lavishly staged studio productions as well as songs performed with a band in front of a small audience—Presley's first live performances since 1961. The live segments saw Presley clad in tight black leather, singing and playing guitar in an uninhibited style reminiscent of his early rock and roll days. Director and coproducer Steve Binder had worked hard to reassure the nervous singer and to produce a show that was far from the hour of Christmas songs Parker had originally planned. The show, NBC's highest rated that season, captured 42 percent of the total viewing audience. Jon Landau of ''Eye'' magazine remarked, "There is something magical about watching a man who has lost himself find his way back home. He sang with the kind of power people no longer expect of rock 'n' roll singers. He moved his body with a lack of pretension and effort that must have made Jim Morrison green with envy." Dave Marsh calls the performance one of "emotional grandeur and historical resonance."

By January 1969, the single "If I Can Dream", written for the special, reached number 12. The soundtrack album broke into the top ten. According to friend Jerry Schilling, the special reminded Presley of what "he had not been able to do for years, being able to choose the people; being able to choose what songs and not being told what had to be on the soundtrack. ... He was out of prison, man." Binder said of Presley's reaction, "I played Elvis the 60-minute show, and he told me in the screening room, 'Steve, it's the greatest thing I've ever done in my life. I give you my word I will never sing a song I don't believe in.'"

''From Elvis In Memphis'' and the International

}} Buoyed by the experience of the Comeback Special, Presley engaged in a prolific series of recording sessions at American Sound Studio, which led to the acclaimed ''From Elvis in Memphis''. Released in June 1969, it was his first secular, non-soundtrack album from a dedicated period in the studio in eight years. As described by Dave Marsh, it is "a masterpiece in which Presley immediately catches up with pop music trends that had seemed to pass him by during the movie years. He sings country songs, soul songs and rockers with real conviction, a stunning achievement." The album featured the hit single "In the Ghetto", issued in April, which reached number three on the pop chart—Presley's first non-gospel top ten hit since "Bossa Nova Baby" in 1963. Further hit singles were culled from the American Sound sessions: "Suspicious Minds", "Don't Cry Daddy", and "Kentucky Rain".

Presley was keen to resume regular live performing. Following the success of the Comeback Special, offers came in from around the world. The London Palladium offered Parker $28,000 for a one-week engagement. He responded, "That's fine for me, now how much can you get for Elvis?" In May, the brand new International Hotel in Las Vegas, boasting the largest showroom in the city, announced that it had booked Presley. He was scheduled to perform 57 shows over four weeks beginning July 31. Moore, Fontana, and the Jordanaires declined to participate, afraid of losing the lucrative session work they had in Nashville. Presley assembled new, top-notch accompaniment, led by guitarist James Burton and including two gospel groups, The Imperials and Sweet Inspirations. Nonetheless, he was nervous: his only previous Las Vegas engagement, in 1956, had been dismal. Parker, who intended to make Presley's return the show business event of the year, oversaw a major promotional push. For his part, hotel owner Kirk Kerkorian arranged to send his own plane to New York to fly in rock journalists for the debut performance.

Presley took to the stage without introduction. The audience of 2,200, including many celebrities, gave him a standing ovation before he sang a note and another after his performance. A third followed his encore, "Can't Help Falling in Love" (a song that would be his closing number for much of the 1970s). At a press conference after the show, when a journalist referred to him as "The King", Presley gestured toward Fats Domino, who was taking in the scene. "No," Presley said, "that's the real king of rock and roll." The next day, Parker's negotiations with the hotel resulted in a five-year contract for Presley to play each February and August, at an annual salary of $1 million. ''Newsweek'' commented, "There are several unbelievable things about Elvis, but the most incredible is his staying power in a world where meteoric careers fade like shooting stars." ''Rolling Stone'' called Presley "supernatural, his own resurrection." In November, Presley's final non-concert movie, ''Change of Habit'', opened. The double album ''From Memphis To Vegas/From Vegas To Memphis'' came out the same month; the first LP consisted of live performances from the International, the second of more cuts from the American Sound sessions. "Suspicious Minds" reached the top of the charts—Presley's first U.S. pop number one in over seven years, and his last.

Cassandra Peterson, later television's Elvira, met Presley during this period in Las Vegas, where she was working as showgirl. She recalls of their encounter, "He was so anti-drug when I met him. I mentioned to him that I smoked marijuana, and he was just appalled. He said, 'Don't ever do that again.'" Presley was not only deeply opposed to recreational drugs, he also rarely drank. Several of his family members had been alcoholics, a fate he intended to avoid.

Back on tour and meeting Nixon

Presley returned to the International early in 1970 for the first of the year's two month-long engagements, performing two shows a night. Recordings from these shows were issued on the album ''On Stage''. In late February, Presley performed six attendance-record–breaking shows at the Houston Astrodome. In April, the single "The Wonder of You" was issued—a number one hit in Great Britain, it topped the U.S. adult contemporary chart, as well. MGM filmed rehearsal and concert footage at the International during August for the documentary ''Elvis: That's the Way It Is''. Presley was by now performing in a jumpsuit, which would become a trademark of his live act. During this engagement, he was threatened with murder unless $50,000 was paid. Presley had been the target of many threats since the 1950s, often without his knowledge. The FBI took the threat seriously and security was stepped up for the next two shows. Presley went onstage with a Derringer in his right boot and a .45 pistol in his waistband, but the concerts went off without incident.

The album ''That's the Way It Is'', produced to accompany the documentary and featuring both studio and live recordings, marked a stylistic shift. As music historian John Robertson notes, "The authority of Presley's singing helped disguise the fact that the album stepped decisively away from the American-roots inspiration of the Memphis sessions towards a more middle-of-the-road sound. With country put on the back burner, and soul and R&B; left in Memphis, what was left was very classy, very clean white pop—perfect for the Las Vegas crowd, but a definite retrograde step for Elvis." After the end of his International engagement on September 7, Presley embarked on a week-long concert tour, largely of the South, his first since 1958. Another week-long tour, of the West Coast, followed in November.

On December 21, 1970, Presley engineered a meeting with President Richard Nixon at the White House, where he expressed his patriotism and his contempt for the hippie drug culture. He asked Nixon for a Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs badge, to add to similar items he had begun collecting and to signify official sanction of his patriotic efforts. Nixon, who apparently found the encounter awkward, expressed a belief that Presley could send a positive message to young people and that it was therefore important he "retain his credibility". Presley told Nixon that The Beatles, whose songs he regularly performed in concert during the era, exemplified what he saw as a trend of anti-Americanism and drug abuse in popular culture. (Presley and his friends had had a four-hour get-together with The Beatles five years earlier.) On hearing reports of the meeting, Paul McCartney later said that he "felt a bit betrayed. ... The great joke was that we were taking [illegal] drugs, and look what happened to him", a reference to Presley's death, hastened by prescription drug abuse.

The U.S. Junior Chamber of Commerce named Presley one of its annual Ten Most Outstanding Young Men of the Nation on January 16, 1971. Not long after, the City of Memphis named the stretch of Highway 51 South on which Graceland is located "Elvis Presley Boulevard". The same year, Presley became the first rock and roll singer to be awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award (then known as the Bing Crosby Award) by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the Grammy Award organization. Three new, non-movie Presley studio albums were released in 1971, as many as had come out over the previous eight years. Best received by critics was ''Elvis Country'', a concept record that focused on genre standards. The biggest seller was ''Elvis Sings the Wonderful World of Christmas'', "the truest statement of all", according to Greil Marcus. "In the midst of ten painfully genteel Christmas songs, every one sung with appalling sincerity and humility, one could find Elvis tom-catting his way through six blazing minutes of 'Merry Christmas, Baby,' a raunchy old Charles Brown blues. ... If [Presley's] sin was his lifelessness, it was his sinfulness that brought him to life".

Marriage breakdown and ''Aloha from Hawaii''

MGM again filmed Presley in April 1972, this time for ''Elvis on Tour'', which went on to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Documentary Film that year. His gospel album ''He Touched Me'', released that month, would earn him his second Grammy Award, for Best Inspirational Performance. A 14-date tour commenced with an unprecedented four consecutive sold-out shows at New York's Madison Square Garden. The evening concert on July 10 was recorded and issued in LP form a week later. ''Elvis: As Recorded at Madison Square Garden'' became one of Presley's biggest-selling albums. After the tour, the single "Burning Love" was released—Presley's last top ten hit on the U.S. pop chart. "The most exciting single Elvis has made since 'All Shook Up'", wrote rock critic Robert Christgau. "Who else could make 'It's coming closer, the flames are now licking my body' sound like an assignation with James Brown's backup band?"

Presley and his wife, meanwhile, had become increasingly distant, barely cohabiting. In 1971, an affair he had with Joyce Bova resulted—unbeknownst to him—in her pregnancy and an abortion. He often raised the possibility of her moving in to Graceland, saying that he was likely to leave Priscilla. The Presleys separated on February 23, 1972, after Priscilla disclosed her relationship with Mike Stone, a karate instructor Presley had recommended to her. Priscilla relates that when she told him, Presley "grabbed ... and forcefully made love to" her, declaring, "This is how a real man makes love to his woman." Five months later, Presley's new girlfriend, Linda Thompson, a songwriter and one-time Memphis beauty queen, moved in with him. Presley and his wife filed for divorce on August 18. According to Joe Moscheo of the Imperials, the failure of Presley's marriage "was a blow from which he never recovered."

In January 1973, Presley performed two benefit concerts for the Kui Lee Cancer Fund in connection with a groundbreaking TV special, ''Aloha from Hawaii''. The first show served as a practice run and backup should technical problems affect the live broadcast two days later. Aired as scheduled on January 14, ''Aloha from Hawaii'' was the first global concert satellite broadcast, reaching approximately 1.5 billion viewers live and on tape delay. Presley's costume became the most recognized example of the elaborate concert garb with which his latter-day persona became closely associated. As described by Bobbie Ann Mason, "At the end of the show, when he spreads out his American Eagle cape, with the full stretched wings of the eagle studded on the back, he becomes a god figure." The accompanying double album, released in February, went to number one and eventually sold over 5 million copies in the United States. It proved to be Presley's last U.S. number one pop album during his lifetime.

At a midnight show the same month, four men rushed onto the stage in an apparent attack. Security men leapt to Presley's defense, and the singer's karate instinct took over as he ejected one invader from the stage himself. Following the show, he became obsessed with the idea that the men had been sent by Mike Stone to kill him. Though they were shown to have been only overexuberant fans, he raged, "There's too much pain in me ... Stone [must] die." His outbursts continued with such intensity that a physician was unable to calm him, despite administering large doses of medication. After another two full days of raging, Red West, his friend and bodyguard, felt compelled to get a price for a contract killing and was relieved when Presley decided, "Aw hell, let's just leave it for now. Maybe it's a bit heavy."

Health deterioration and death (1973–77)

Medical crises and last studio sessions

Presley's divorce took effect on October 9, 1973. He was now becoming increasingly unwell. Twice during the year he overdosed on barbiturates, spending three days in a coma in his hotel suite after the first incident. Toward the end of 1973, he was hospitalized, semicomatose from the effects of Demerol addiction. According to his main physician, Dr. George C. Nichopoulos, Presley "felt that by getting [drugs] from a doctor, he wasn't the common everyday junkie getting something off the street." Since his comeback, he had staged more live shows with each passing year, and 1973 saw 168 concerts, his busiest schedule ever. Despite his failing health, in 1974 he undertook another intensive touring schedule.

Presley's condition declined precipitously in September. Keyboardist Tony Brown remembers the singer's arrival at a University of Maryland concert: "He fell out of the limousine, to his knees. People jumped to help, and he pushed them away like, 'Don't help me.' He walked on stage and held onto the mike for the first thirty minutes like it was a post. Everybody's looking at each other like, Is the tour gonna happen?" Guitarist John Wilkinson recalled, "He was all gut. He was slurring. He was so fucked up. ... It was obvious he was drugged. It was obvious there was something terribly wrong with his body. It was so bad the words to the songs were barely intelligible. ... I remember crying. He could barely get through the introductions". Wilkinson recounted that a few nights later in Detroit, "I watched him in his dressing room, just draped over a chair, unable to move. So often I thought, 'Boss, why don't you just cancel this tour and take a year off...?' I mentioned something once in a guarded moment. He patted me on the back and said, 'It'll be all right. Don't you worry about it.'" Presley continued to play to sellout crowds. As cultural critic Marjorie Garber describes, he was now widely seen as a garish pop crooner: "in effect he had become Liberace. Even his fans were now middle-aged matrons and blue-haired grandmothers."

On July 13, 1976, Vernon Presley—who had become deeply involved in his son's financial affairs—fired "Memphis Mafia" bodyguards Red West (Presley's friend since the 1950s), Sonny West, and David Hebler, citing the need to "cut back on expenses". Presley was in Palm Springs at the time, and some suggest the singer was too cowardly to face the three himself. Another associate of Presley's, John O'Grady, argued that the bodyguards were dropped because their rough treatment of fans had prompted too many lawsuits. However, Presley's stepbrother David Stanley has claimed that the bodyguards were fired because they were becoming more outspoken about Presley's drug dependency. Presley and Linda Thompson split in November, and he took up with a new girlfriend, Ginger Alden. He proposed to Alden and gave her an engagement ring two months later, though several of his friends later claimed that he had no serious intention of marrying again.

RCA, which had enjoyed a steady stream of product from Presley for over a decade, grew anxious as his interest in spending time in the studio waned. After a December 1973 session that produced 18 songs, enough for almost two albums, he did not enter the studio in 1974. Parker sold RCA on another concert record, ''Elvis: As Recorded Live on Stage in Memphis''. Recorded on March 20, it included a version of "How Great Thou Art" that would win Presley his third and final competitive Grammy Award. (All three of his competitive Grammy wins—out of 14 total nominations—were for gospel recordings.) Presley returned to the studio in Hollywood in March 1975, but Parker's attempts to arrange another session toward the end of the year were unsuccessful. In 1976, RCA sent a mobile studio to Graceland that made possible two full-scale recording sessions at Presley's home. Even in that comfortable context, the recording process was now a struggle for him.

}} For all the concerns of his label and manager, in studio sessions between July 1973 and October 1976, Presley recorded virtually the entire contents of six albums. Though he was no longer a major presence on the pop charts, five of those albums entered the top five of the country chart, and three went to number one: ''Promised Land'' (1975), ''From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee'' (1976), and ''Moody Blue'' (1977). The story was similar with his singles—there were no major pop hits, but Presley was a significant force in not just the country market, but on adult contemporary radio as well. Eight studio singles from this period released during his lifetime were top ten hits on one or both charts, four in 1974 alone. "My Boy" was a number one AC hit in 1975, and "Moody Blue" topped the country chart and reached the second spot on the AC in 1976. Perhaps his most critically acclaimed recording of the era came that year, with what Greil Marcus described as his "apocalyptic attack" on the soul classic "Hurt". "If he felt the way he sounded", Dave Marsh wrote of Presley's performance, "the wonder isn't that he had only a year left to live but that he managed to survive that long."

Final year and death

Journalist Tony Scherman writes that by early 1977, "Elvis Presley had become a grotesque caricature of his sleek, energetic former self. Hugely overweight, his mind dulled by the pharmacopoeia he daily ingested, he was barely able to pull himself through his abbreviated concerts." In Alexandria, Louisiana, the singer was on stage for less than an hour and "was impossible to understand". Presley failed to appear in Baton Rouge; he was unable to get out of his hotel bed, and the rest of the tour was cancelled. Despite the accelerating deterioration of his health, he stuck to most touring commitments. In Rapid City, South Dakota, "he was so nervous on stage that he could hardly talk", according to Presley historian Samuel Roy, and unable to "perform any significant movement." Guralnick relates that fans "were becoming increasingly voluble about their disappointment, but it all seemed to go right past Elvis, whose world was now confined almost entirely to his room and his spiritualism books." A cousin, Billy Smith, recalled how Presley would sit in his room and chat for hours, sometimes recounting favorite Monty Python sketches and his own past escapades, but more often gripped by paranoid obsessions that reminded Smith of Howard Hughes. "Way Down", Presley's last single issued during his lifetime, came out on June 6. His final concert was held in Indianapolis at the Market Square Arena, on June 26.

The book ''Elvis: What Happened?'', cowritten by the three bodyguards fired the previous year, was published on August 1. It was the first exposé to detail Presley's years of drug misuse. He was devastated by the book and tried unsuccessfully to halt its release by offering money to the publishers. By this point, he suffered from multiple ailments: glaucoma, high blood pressure, liver damage, and an enlarged colon, each aggravated—and possibly caused—by drug abuse.

Presley was scheduled to fly out of Memphis on the evening of August 16, 1977, to begin another tour. That afternoon, Alden discovered him unresponsive on his bathroom floor. Attempts to revive him failed, and death was officially pronounced at 3:30 pm at Baptist Memorial Hospital.

President Jimmy Carter issued a statement that credited Presley with having "permanently changed the face of American popular culture". Thousands of people gathered outside Graceland to view the open casket. One of Presley's cousins, Billy Mann, accepted $18,000 to secretly photograph the corpse; the picture appeared on the cover of the ''National Enquirer''s biggest-selling issue ever. Alden struck a $105,000 deal with the ''Enquirer'' for her story, but settled for less when she broke her exclusivity agreement. Presley left her nothing in his will.

Presley's funeral was held at Graceland, on Thursday, August 18. Outside the gates, a car plowed into a group of fans, killing two women and critically injuring a third. Approximately 80,000 people lined the processional route to Forest Hill Cemetery, where Presley was buried next to his mother. Within a few days, "Way Down" topped the country and UK pop charts. Following an attempt to steal the singer's body in late August, the remains of both Elvis Presley and his mother were reburied in Graceland's Meditation Garden on October 2.

Since 1977

Between 1977 and 1981, six posthumously released singles by Presley were top ten country hits. Graceland was opened to the public in 1982. Attracting over half a million visitors annually, it is the second most-visited home in the United States, after the White House. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2006.

Presley has been inducted into four music halls of fame: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1986), the Country Music Hall of Fame (1998), the Gospel Music Hall of Fame (2001), and the Rockabilly Hall of Fame (2007). In 1984, he received the W. C. Handy Award from the Blues Foundation and the Academy of Country Music's first Golden Hat Award. In 1987, he received the American Music Awards' Award of Merit.

A Junkie XL remix of Presley's "A Little Less Conversation" (credited as "Elvis Vs JXL") was used in a Nike advertising campaign during the 2002 FIFA World Cup. It topped the charts in over 20 countries, and was included in a compilation of Presley's number one hits, ''ELV1S'', that was also an international success. In 2003, a remix of "Rubberneckin'", a 1969 recording of Presley's, topped the U.S. sales chart, as did a 50th-anniversary re-release of "That's All Right" the following year. The latter was an outright hit in Great Britain, reaching number three on the pop chart.

In 2005, another three reissued singles, "Jailhouse Rock", "One Night"/"I Got Stung", and "It's Now or Never", went to number one in Great Britain. A total of 17 Presley singles were reissued during the year; all made the British top five. For the fifth straight year, ''Forbes'' named Presley the top-earning deceased celebrity, with a gross income of $45 million. He placed second in 2006, returned to the top spot the next two years, and ranked fourth in 2009. The following year, he was ranked second, with his highest annual income ever—$60 million—spurred by the celebration of his 75th birthday and the launch of Cirque du Soleil's ''Viva Elvis'' show in Las Vegas. In November 2010, ''Viva Elvis: The Album'' was released, setting his voice to newly recorded instrumental tracks. As of mid-2011, there were an estimated 15,000 licensed Presley products. He was again the second-highest-earning deceased celebrity.

Presley holds the records for most songs charting in ''Billboard''s top 40 and top 100: chart statistician Joel Whitburn calculates the respective totals as 104 and 151; Presley historian Adam Victor gives 114 and 138. Presley's rankings for top ten and number one hits vary depending on how the double-sided "Hound Dog/Don't Be Cruel" and "Don't/I Beg of You" singles, which precede the inception of ''Billboard''s unified Hot 100 chart, are analyzed. According to Whitburn, Presley holds the record for most top ten hits with 38; per ''Billboard''s current assessment, he ranks second with 36, behind Madonna's 37. Whitburn and ''Billboard'' concur that The Beatles hold the record for most number one hits with 20 and that Mariah Carey is second with 18. Whitburn has Presley also with 18 and thus tied for second; ''Billboard'' has him third with 17. Presley retains the record for cumulative weeks at number one: alone at 80, according to Whitburn and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; tied with Carey at 79, according to ''Billboard''. He holds the records for most British number one hits, with 21, and top ten hits, with 76.

Musical style

Influences

Presley's earliest musical influence came from gospel. His mother recalled that from the age of two, at the Assembly of God church in Tupelo attended by the family, "he would slide down off my lap, run into the aisle and scramble up to the platform. There he would stand looking at the choir and trying to sing with them." In Memphis, Presley frequently attended all-night gospel singings at the Ellis Auditorium, where groups such as the Statesmen Quartet led the music in a style that, Guralnick suggests, sowed the seeds of Presley's future stage act: }} As a teenager, Presley's musical interests were wide-ranging, and he was deeply informed about African American musical idioms as well as white ones (see "Teenage life in Memphis"). Though he never had any formal training, he was blessed with a remarkable memory, and his musical knowledge was already considerable by the time he made his first professional recordings in 1954 at the age of 19. When Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller met him two years later, they were astonished at his encyclopedic understanding of the blues. At a press conference the following year, he proudly declared, "I know practically every religious song that's ever been written."

Genres

Presley was a central figure in the development of rockabilly, according to music historians. Katherine Charlton calls him "rockabilly's originator". "Rockabilly crystallized into a recognizable style in 1954 with Elvis Presley's first release, on the Sun label", writes Craig Morrison. Paul Friedlander describes the defining elements of rockabilly, which he similarly characterizes as "essentially ... an Elvis Presley construction": "the raw, emotive, and slurred vocal style and emphasis on rhythmic feeling [of] the blues with the string band and strummed rhythm guitar [of] country". In "That's All Right", the Presley trio's first record, Scotty Moore's guitar solo, "a combination of Merle Travis–style country finger-picking, double-stop slides from acoustic boogie, and blues-based bent-note, single-string work, is a microcosm of this fusion."

At RCA, Presley's rock and roll sound grew distinct from rockabilly with group chorus vocals, more heavily amplified electric guitars and a tougher, more intense manner. While he was known for taking songs from various sources and giving them a rockabilly/rock and roll treatment, he also recorded songs in other genres from early in his career, from the pop standard "Blue Moon" at Sun to the country ballad "How's the World Treating You?" on his second LP to the blues of "Santa Claus Is Back In Town". In 1957, his first gospel record was released, the four-song EP ''Peace in the Valley''. Certified as a million seller, it became the top-selling gospel EP in recording history. Presley would record gospel periodically for the rest of his life. }} After his return from military service in 1960, Presley continued to perform rock and roll, but the characteristic style was substantially toned down. His first post-Army single, the number one hit "Stuck on You", is typical of this shift. RCA publicity materials referred to its "mild rock beat"; discographer Ernst Jorgensen calls it "upbeat pop". The modern blues/R&B; sound captured so successfully on ''Elvis Is Back!'' was essentially abandoned for six years until such 1966–67 recordings as "Down in the Alley" and "Hi-Heel Sneakers". The singer's output during most of the 1960s emphasized pop music, often in the form of ballads such as "Are You Lonesome Tonight?", a number one in 1960. While that was a dramatic number, most of what Presley recorded for his movie soundtracks was in a much lighter vein.

While Presley performed several of his classic ballads for the '68 Comeback Special, the sound of the show was dominated by aggressive rock and roll. He would record few new straight-ahead rock and roll songs thereafter; as he explained, they were "hard to find". A significant exception was "Burning Love", his last major hit on the pop charts. Like his work of the 1950s, Presley's subsequent recordings reworked pop and country songs, but in markedly different permutations. His stylistic range now began to embrace a more contemporary rock sound as well as soul and funk. Much of ''Elvis In Memphis'', as well as "Suspicious Minds", cut at the same sessions, reflected his new rock and soul fusion. In the mid-1970s, many of his singles found a home on country radio, the field where he first became a star.

Vocal style and range

Music critic Henry Pleasants observes that "Elvis Presley has been described variously as a baritone and a tenor. An extraordinary compass ... and a very wide range of vocal color have something to do with this divergence of opinion." He identifies Presley as a high baritone, calculating his range as two octaves and a third, "from the baritone low G to the tenor high B, with an upward extension in falsetto to at least a D-flat. Presley's best octave is in the middle, D-flat to D-flat, granting an extra full step up or down." In Pleasants' view, his voice was "variable and unpredictable" at the bottom, "often brilliant" at the top, with the capacity for "full-voiced high Gs and As that an opera baritone might envy." Scholar Lindsay Waters, who figures Presley's range as two and a quarter octaves, emphasizes that "his voice had an emotional range from tender whispers to sighs down to shouts, grunts, grumbles and sheer gruffness that could move the listener from calmness and surrender, to fear. His voice can not be measured in octaves, but in decibels; even that misses the problem of how to measure delicate whispers that are hardly audible at all." Presley was always "able to duplicate the open, hoarse, ecstatic, screaming, shouting, wailing, reckless sound of the black rhythm-and-blues and gospel singers," writes Pleasants, and also demonstrated a remarkable ability to assimilate many other vocal styles.

Questions over cause of death

"Drug use was heavily implicated" in Presley's death, writes Guralnick. "No one ruled out the possibility of anaphylactic shock brought on by the codeine pills ... to which he was known to have had a mild allergy." A pair of lab reports filed two months later each strongly suggested that polypharmacy was the primary cause of death; one reported "fourteen drugs in Elvis' system, ten in significant quantity." Forensic historian and pathologist Michael Baden views the situation as complicated: "Elvis had had an enlarged heart for a long time. That, together with his drug habit, caused his death. But he was difficult to diagnose; it was a judgment call."

The competence and ethics of two of the centrally involved medical professionals were seriously questioned. Before the autopsy was complete and toxicology results known, medical examiner Dr. Jerry Francisco declared the cause of death as cardiac arrhythmia, a condition that can be determined only in someone who is still alive. Allegations of a cover-up were widespread. While Presley's main physician, Dr. Nichopoulos, was exonerated of criminal liability for the singer's death, the facts were startling: "In the first eight months of 1977 alone, he had [prescribed] more than 10,000 doses of sedatives, amphetamines and narcotics: all in Elvis's name." His license was suspended for three months. It was permanently revoked in the 1990s after the Tennessee Medical Board brought new charges of over-prescription.

In 1994, the Presley autopsy was reopened. Coroner Dr. Joseph Davis declared, "There is nothing in any of the data that supports a death from drugs. In fact, everything points to a sudden, violent heart attack." Whether or not combined drug intoxication was in fact the cause, there is little doubt that polypharmacy contributed significantly to Presley's premature death.

Racial issues

When Dewey Phillips first aired "That's All Right" on Memphis radio, many listeners who contacted the station by phone and telegram to ask for it again assumed that its singer was black. From the beginning of his national fame, Presley expressed respect for African American performers and their music, and disregard for the norms of segregation and racial prejudice then prevalent in the South. Interviewed in 1956, he recalled how in his childhood he would listen to blues musician Arthur Crudup—the originator of "That's All Right"—"bang his box the way I do now, and I said if I ever got to the place where I could feel all old Arthur felt, I'd be a music man like nobody ever saw." ''The Memphis World'', an African American newspaper, reported that Presley, "the rock 'n' roll phenomenon", "cracked Memphis's segregation laws" by attending the local amusement park on what was designated as its "colored night". Such statements and actions led Presley to be generally hailed in the black community during the early days of his stardom. By contrast, many white adults, according to ''Billboard''s Arnold Shaw, "did not like him, and condemned him as depraved. Anti-negro prejudice doubtless figured in adult antagonism. Regardless of whether parents were aware of the Negro sexual origins of the phrase 'rock 'n' roll', Presley impressed them as the visual and aural embodiment of sex."

Despite the largely positive view of Presley held by African Americans, a rumor spread in mid-1957 that he had at some point announced, "The only thing Negroes can do for me is buy my records and shine my shoes." A journalist with the national African American weekly ''Jet'', Louie Robinson, pursued the story. On the set of ''Jailhouse Rock'', Presley granted him an interview, though he was no longer dealing with the mainstream press. He denied making such a statement or holding in any way to its racist view. Robinson found no evidence that the remark had ever been made, and on the contrary elicited testimony from many individuals indicating that Presley was anything but racist. Blues singer Ivory Joe Hunter, who had heard the rumor before he visited Graceland one evening, reported of Presley, "He showed me every courtesy, and I think he's one of the greatest." Though the rumored remark was wholly discredited at the time, it was still being used against Presley decades later. The identification of Presley with racism—either personally or symbolically—was expressed most famously in the lyrics of the 1989 rap hit "Fight the Power", by Public Enemy: "Elvis was a hero to most / But he never meant shit to me / Straight-up racist that sucker was / Simple and plain".

The persistence of such attitudes was fueled by resentment over the fact that Presley, whose musical and visual performance idiom owed much to African American sources, achieved the cultural acknowledgment and commercial success largely denied his black peers. Into the 21st century, the notion that Presley had "stolen" black music still found adherents. Notable among African American entertainers expressly rejecting this view was Jackie Wilson, who argued, "A lot of people have accused Elvis of stealing the black man's music, when in fact, almost every black solo entertainer copied his stage mannerisms from Elvis." And throughout his career, Presley plainly acknowledged his debt. Addressing his '68 Comeback Special audience, he said, "Rock 'n' roll music is basically gospel or rhythm and blues, or it sprang from that. People have been adding to it, adding instruments to it, experimenting with it, but it all boils down to [that]." Nine years earlier, he had said, "Rock 'n' roll has been around for many years. It used to be called rhythm and blues."

Influence of Colonel Parker and others

Parker and the Aberbachs

Once he became Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker insisted on exceptionally tight control over his client's career. Early on, he and his Hill and Range allies, the brothers Jean and Julian Aberbach, perceived the close relationship that developed between Presley and songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller as a serious threat to that control. Parker effectively ended the relationship, deliberately or not, with the new contract he sent Leiber in early 1958. Leiber thought there was a mistake—the sheet of paper was blank except for Parker's signature and a line on which to enter his. "There's no mistake, boy, just sign it and return it", Parker directed. "Don't worry, we'll fill it in later." Leiber declined, and Presley's fruitful collaboration with the writing team was over. Other respected songwriters lost interest in or simply avoided writing for Presley because of the requirement that they surrender a third of their usual royalties.

By 1967, Parker's contracts with Presley gave him 50 percent of most of the singer's earnings from recordings, films, and merchandise. Beginning in February 1972, he took a third of the profit from live appearances; a January 1976 agreement entitled him to half of that as well. Priscilla Presley noted that "Elvis detested the business side of his career. He would sign a contract without even reading it." Presley's friend Marty Lacker regarded Parker as a "hustler and a con artist. He was only interested in 'now money'—get the buck and get gone."

Lacker was instrumental in convincing Presley to record with Memphis producer Chips Moman and his handpicked musicians at American Sound Studio in early 1969. The American Sound sessions represented a significant departure from the control customarily exerted by Hill and Range. Moman still had to deal with the publisher's staff on site, whose song suggestions he regarded as unacceptable. He was on the verge of quitting, until Presley ordered the Hill and Range personnel out of the studio. Although RCA executive Joan Deary was later full of praise for the producer's song choices and the quality of the recordings, Moman, to his fury, received neither credit on the records nor royalties for his work.

Throughout his entire career, Presley performed in only three venues outside the United States—all of them in Canada, during brief tours there in 1957. Rumors that he would play overseas for the first time were fueled in 1974 by a million-dollar bid for an Australian tour. Parker was uncharacteristically reluctant, prompting those close to Presley to speculate about the manager's past and the reasons for his apparent unwillingness to apply for a passport. Parker ultimately squelched any notions Presley had of working abroad, claiming that foreign security was poor and the venues unsuitable for a star of his magnitude.

Parker arguably exercised tightest control over Presley's movie career. In 1957, Robert Mitchum asked Presley to costar with him in ''Thunder Road'', on which Mitchum was writer and producer. According to George Klein, one of his oldest friends, Presley was offered starring roles in ''West Side Story'' and ''Midnight Cowboy''. In 1974, Barbra Streisand approached Presley to star with her in the remake of ''A Star is Born''. In each case, any ambitions the singer may have had to play such parts were thwarted by his manager's negotiating demands or flat refusals. In Lacker's description, "The only thing that kept Elvis going after the early years was a new challenge. But Parker kept running everything into the ground." The operative attitude may have been summed up best by the response Leiber and Stoller received when they brought a serious film project for Presley to Parker and the Hill and Range owners for their consideration. In Leiber's telling, Jean Aberbach warned them to never again "try to interfere with the business or artistic workings of the process known as Elvis Presley".

Memphis Mafia

In the early 1960s, the circle of friends with whom Presley constantly surrounded himself until his death came to be known as the "Memphis Mafia". "Surrounded by the[ir] parasitic presence", as journalist John Harris puts it, "it was no wonder that as he slid into addiction and torpor, no-one raised the alarm: to them, Elvis was the bank, and it had to remain open." Tony Brown, who played piano for Presley regularly in the last two years of the singer's life, observed his rapidly declining health and the urgent need to address it: "But we all knew it was hopeless because Elvis was surrounded by that little circle of people ... all those so-called friends". In the Memphis Mafia's defense, Marty Lacker has said, "[Presley] was his own man. ... If we hadn't been around, he would have been dead a lot earlier."

Larry Geller became Presley's hairdresser in 1964. Unlike others in the Memphis Mafia, he was interested in spiritual questions and recalls how, from their first conversation, Presley revealed his secret thoughts and anxieties: "I mean there ''has'' to be a purpose...there's got to be a reason...why I was chosen to be Elvis Presley. ... I swear to God, no one knows how lonely I get. And how empty I really feel." Thereafter, Geller supplied him with books on religion and mysticism, which the singer read voraciously. Presley would be preoccupied by such matters for much of his life, taking trunkloads of books with him on tour.

Sex symbol

Presley's physical attractiveness and sexual appeal were widely acknowledged. "He was once beautiful, astonishingly beautiful", in the words of critic Mark Feeney. Television director Steve Binder, no fan of Presley's music before he oversaw the '68 Comeback Special, reported, "I'm straight as an arrow and I got to tell you, you stop, whether you're male or female, to look at him. He was that good looking. And if you never knew he was a superstar, it wouldn't make any difference; if he'd walked in the room, you'd know somebody special was in your presence." His performance style, as much as his physical beauty, was responsible for Presley's eroticized image. Writing in 1970, critic George Melly described him as "the master of the sexual simile, treating his guitar as both phallus and girl." In his Presley obituary, Lester Bangs credited him as "the man who brought overt blatant vulgar sexual frenzy to the popular arts in America." Ed Sullivan's declaration that he perceived a soda bottle in Presley's trousers was echoed by rumors involving a similarly positioned toilet roll tube or lead bar.

While Presley was marketed as an icon of heterosexuality, some cultural critics have argued that his image was ambiguous. In 1959, ''Sight and Sound''s Peter John Dyer described his onscreen persona as "aggressively bisexual in appeal". Brett Farmer places the "orgasmic gyrations" of the title dance sequence in ''Jailhouse Rock'' within a lineage of cinematic musical numbers that offer a "spectacular eroticization, if not homoeroticization, of the male image". In the analysis of Yvonne Tasker, "Elvis was an ambivalent figure who articulated a peculiar feminised, objectifying version of white working-class masculinity as aggressive sexual display."

Reinforcing Presley's image as a sex symbol were the reports of his dalliances with various Hollywood stars and starlets, from Natalie Wood in the 1950s to Connie Stevens and Ann-Margret in the 1960s to Candice Bergen and Cybill Shepherd in the 1970s. June Juanico of Memphis, one of Presley's early girlfriends, later blamed Parker for encouraging him to choose his dating partners with publicity in mind. Presley, however, never grew comfortable with the Hollywood scene, and most of these relationships were insubstantial.

Legacy

Presley's rise to national attention in 1956 transformed the field of popular music and had a huge effect on the broader scope of popular culture. As the catalyst for the cultural revolution that was rock and roll, he was central not only to defining it as a musical genre but in making it a touchstone of youth culture and rebellious attitude. With its racially mixed origins—repeatedly affirmed by Presley—rock and roll's occupation of a central position in mainstream American culture facilitated a new acceptance and appreciation of black culture. In this regard, Little Richard said of Presley, "He was an integrator. Elvis was a blessing. They wouldn't let black music through. He opened the door for black music." Al Green agreed: "He broke the ice for all of us." Presley also heralded the vastly expanded reach of celebrity in the era of mass communication: at the age of 21, within a year of his first appearance on American network television, he was one of the most famous people in the world.

Presley's name, image, and voice are instantly recognizable around the globe. He has inspired a legion of impersonators. In polls and surveys, he is recognized as one of the most important popular music artists and influential Americans. "Elvis Presley is the greatest cultural force in the twentieth century", said composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein. "He introduced the beat to everything and he changed everything—music, language, clothes. It's a whole new social revolution—the sixties came from it." Bob Dylan described the sensation of first hearing Presley as "like busting out of jail".

A ''New York Times'' editorial on the 25th anniversary of Presley's death observed, "All the talentless impersonators and appalling black velvet paintings on display can make him seem little more than a perverse and distant memory. But before Elvis was camp, he was its opposite: a genuine cultural force. ... Elvis's breakthroughs are underappreciated because in this rock-and-roll age, his hard-rocking music and sultry style have triumphed so completely." Not only Presley's achievements, but his failings as well, are seen by some cultural observers as adding to the power of his legacy, as in this description by Greil Marcus:

Elvis Presley is a supreme figure in American life, one whose presence, no matter how banal or predictable, brooks no real comparisons. ... The cultural range of his music has expanded to the point where it includes not only the hits of the day, but also patriotic recitals, pure country gospel, and really dirty blues. ... Elvis has emerged as a great ''artist,'' a great ''rocker,'' a great ''purveyor of schlock,'' a great ''heart throb,'' a great ''bore,'' a great ''symbol of potency,'' a great ''ham,'' a great ''nice person,'' and, yes, a great American.

Discography

A vast number of recordings have been issued under Presley's name. The total number of his original master recordings has been variously calculated as 665 and 711. His career began and he was most successful during an era when singles were the primary commercial medium for pop music. In the case of his albums, the distinction between "official" studio records and other forms is often blurred. For most of the 1960s, his recording career focused on soundtrack albums. In the 1970s, his most heavily promoted and best-selling LP releases tended to be concert albums. This summary discography lists only the albums and singles that reached the top of one or more of the following charts: the main U.S. ''Billboard'' pop chart; the ''Billboard'' country chart, the genre chart with which he was most identified (there was no country album chart before 1964); and the official British pop chart. In the United States, Presley also had five or six number one R&B; singles and seven number one adult contemporary singles; in 1964, his "Blue Christmas" topped the Christmas singles chart during a period when ''Billboard'' did not rank holiday singles in its primary pop chart. He also had number one hits in many countries beside the United States and United Kingdom.

Number one albums

Year	Album	Type	Chart positions
!style="width: 60px;"	!style="width: 60px;"	!style="width: 60px;"
	style="text-align:left;"	studio/comp.	1	n.a.	1
style="text-align:left;"	studio	1	n.a.	3
	style="text-align:left;"	sound./studio	1	n.a.	1
	studio	1	n.a.	2
		studio	2	n.a.	1
style="text-align:left;"	soundtrack	1	n.a.	1
		studio	1	n.a.	2
style="text-align:left;"	soundtrack	1	n.a.	1
1962	style="text-align:left;"	studio	4	n.a.	1
1964	style="text-align:left;"	soundtrack	1	—	12
1969		studio	13	2	1
1973		live	1	1	11
1974		compilation	43	1	20
1975	style="text-align:left;"	studio	47	1	21
1976		studio	41	1	29
		compilation	—	—	1
	studio/live	3	1	3
style="text-align:left;"	live	5	1	13
2002	style="text-align:left;"	compilation	1	1	1
2007		compilation	—	—	1

Number one singles

Year	Single	Chart positions
!style="width: 45px;"	!style="width: 45px;"	!style="width: 45px;"
		—	1	—
	1	1	2
	1	1	14
	1	1	2
style="text-align:left;"	1	1	2
style="text-align:left;"	1	3	11
	style="text-align:left;"	1	3	6
	1	1	1
style="text-align:left;"	1	1	3
style="text-align:left;"	1	1	1
	style="text-align:left;"	1	2	2
	1	2	2
	style="text-align:left;"	4/8	24/—	1
style="text-align:left;"	2/4	—	1
	1	—	4
	style="text-align:left;"	1	27	3
style="text-align:left;"	1	—	1
style="text-align:left;"	1	22	1
		—	—	1
style="text-align:left;"	1	—	1
style="text-align:left;"	4/5	—	1
		2/23	—	1
	1	—	1
	5	—	1
style="text-align:left;"	2	—	1
1963		3	—	1
1965		3	—	1
1969		1	—	2
1970		9	37	1
	style="text-align:left;"	31	1	6
	18	1	1
1981	style="text-align:left;"	28	1	43
2002	style="text-align:left;"	50	—	1
		—	—	1
	—	—	1
	—	—	1

Filmography

See also

Elvis Presley Enterprises

Honorific nicknames in popular music

List of artists by total number of UK number one singles

List of best-selling music artists

Personal relationships of Elvis Presley

Notes

Although some pronounce his surname "PREZ-lee", Presley himself used the pronunciation of the American South, "PRESS-lee", as did his family and those who worked with him. The correct spelling of his middle name has long been a matter of debate. The physician who delivered him wrote "Elvis Aaron Presley" in his ledger. The state-issued birth certificate reads "Elvis Aron Presley". The name was chosen after the Presleys' friend and fellow congregation member Aaron Kennedy, though a single-A spelling was probably intended by Presley's parents in order to parallel the middle name of Presley's stillborn brother, Jesse Garon. It reads Aron on most official documents produced during his lifetime, including his high school diploma, RCA record contract, and marriage license, and this was generally taken to be the proper spelling. In 1966, Presley expressed the desire to his father that the more traditional biblical rendering, Aaron, be used henceforth, "especially on legal documents." Five years later, the Jaycees citation honoring him as one of the country's Outstanding Young Men used Aaron. Late in his life, he sought to officially change the spelling to Aaron and discovered that state records already listed it that way. Knowing his wishes for his middle name, Aaron is the spelling his father chose for Presley's tombstone, and it is the spelling his estate has designated as official. According to a third cousin of Presley's, one of Gladys's great-grandmothers was Jewish. There is no evidence that Presley or his mother shared this belief in a Jewish heritage. Syndicated columnist Nate Bloom has challenged the cousin's account, which he calls a "tall tale". Of the $40,000, $5,000 covered back royalties owed by Sun. In 1956–57, Presley was also credited as a cowriter on several songs where he had no hand in the writing process: "Heartbreak Hotel"; "Don't Be Cruel"; all four songs from his first film, including the title track, "Love Me Tender"; "Paralyzed"; and "All Shook Up". He received credit on two other songs to which he did contribute: he provided the title for "That's Someone You Never Forget" (1961), written by his friend Red West; Presley and West collaborated with another friend, guitarist Charlie Hodge, on "You'll Be Gone" (1962). Whitburn follows actual ''Billboard'' history in considering the four songs on the "Don't Be Cruel/Hound Dog" and "Don't/I Beg of You" singles as distinct. He tallies each side of the former single as a number one (''Billboard''s sales chart had "Don't Be Cruel" at number one for five weeks, then "Hound Dog" for six) and reckons "I Beg of You" as a top ten, as it reached number eight on the old Top 100 chart. ''Billboard'' now considers both singles as unified items, ignoring the historical sales split of the former and its old Top 100 chart entirely. Whitburn thus analyzes the four songs as yielding three number ones and a total of four top tens. ''Billboard'' now states that they yielded just two number ones and a total of two top tens, voiding the separate chart appearances of "Hound Dog" and "I Beg of You". VH1 ranked Presley #8 among the "100 Greatest Artists of Rock & Roll" in 1998. The BBC ranked him as the #2 "Voice of the Century" in 2001. ''Rolling Stone'' placed him #3 in its list of "The Immortals: The Fifty Greatest Artists of All Time" in 2004. CMT ranked him #15 among the "40 Greatest Men in Country Music" in 2005. The Discovery Channel placed him #8 on its "Greatest American" list in 2005. ''Variety'' put him in the top ten of its "100 Icons of the Century" in 2005. ''The Atlantic Monthly'' ranked him #66 among the "100 Most Influential Figures in American History" in 2006. (1) The year given is the year the record first reached number one, rather than its original year of release. For instance, in 1974, ''Elvis' 40 Greatest'', a compilation on the budget Arcade label, was the fourth highest selling album of the year in the United Kingdom; at the time, the main British chart did not rank such compilations, relegating them to a chart for midpriced and TV-advertised albums, which ''Elvis' 40 Greatest'' topped for 15 weeks. The policy was altered in 1975, allowing the album to hit number one on the main chart in 1977, following Presley's death. (2) Before late 1958, rather than unified pop and country singles charts, ''Billboard'' had as many as four charts for each, separately ranking records according to sales, jukebox play, jockey spins (i.e., airplay), and, in the case of pop, a general Top 100. ''Billboard'' now regards the sales charts as definitive for the period. Widely cited chart statistician Joel Whitburn accords historical releases the highest ranking they achieved among the separate charts. Presley discographer Ernst Jorgensen refers only to the Top 100 chart for pop hits. All of the 1956–58 songs listed here as number one U.S. pop hits reached the top of both the sales and, with three exceptions, the Top 100 charts: "I Want You, I Need You, I Love You" (three), "Hound Dog" (two, behind its flip side, "Don't Be Cruel"), and "Hard Headed Woman" (two). (3) Several Presley singles reached number one in the United Kingdom as double A-sides; in the United States, the respective sides of those singles were ranked separately by ''Billboard''. Whitburn calculates a total of six number one R&B; singles, including "Don't Be Cruel", released as a double A-side with "Hound Dog"; ''Billboard''s Keith Caulfield excludes "Don't Be Cruel".

Citations

References

Further reading

Allen, Lew (2007). ''Elvis and the Birth of Rock''. Genesis. ISBN 1905662009.

Ann-Margret and Todd Gold (1994). ''Ann-Margret: My Story''. G.P. Putnam's Sons. ISBN 0399138919.

Cantor, Louis (2005). ''Dewey and Elvis: The Life and Times of a Rock 'n' Roll Deejay''. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 025202981X.

Dickerson, James L. (2001). ''Colonel Tom Parker: The Curious Life of Elvis Presley's Eccentric Manager''. Cooper Square Press. ISBN 0815412673.

Finstad, Suzanne (1997). ''Child Bride: The Untold Story of Priscilla Beaulieu Presley''. Harmony Books. ISBN 0517705850.

Goldman, Albert (1981). ''Elvis''. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0070236577.

Goldman, Albert (1990). ''Elvis: The Last 24 Hours''. St. Martin's. ISBN 0312925417.

Klein, George (2010). ''Elvis: My Best Man: Radio Days, Rock 'n' Roll Nights, and My Lifelong Friendship with Elvis Presley''. Virgin Books. ISBN 9780307452740

Marcus, Greil (1999). ''Dead Elvis: A Chronicle of a Cultural Obsession''. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674194225.

Marcus, Greil (2000). ''Double Trouble: Bill Clinton and Elvis Presley in a Land of No Alternative''. Picador. ISBN 057120676X.

Nash, Alanna (2010). ''Baby, Let's Play House: Elvis Presley and the Women Who Loved Him''. It Books. ISBN 0061699845.

West, Red, Sonny West, and Dave Hebler (as told to Steve Dunleavy) (1977). ''Elvis: What Happened?'' Bantam Books. ISBN 0345272153.

External links

Elvis Presley Enterprises official site of the Elvis Presley brand

Elvis The Music official record label site

Elvis Presley Interviews on officially sanctioned Elvis Australia site

Elvis Presley Ancestry at Genealogy.com

Elvis Presley 1955 interview material on ''Pop Chronicles''

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