The 1970s
Experience the diverse sounds of the 1970s, from glam rock to progressive rock. Our articles celebrate the era's musical innovation and legendary artists.
1970s Guitar Heroes
The electric guitar and rock'n'roll have been inextricably intertwined since the very beginning, a perfectly natural combination. But the lead guitar only ca...
A Biography of The Bay City Rollers
With their distinctive tartan, hordes of screaming female fans and singalong choruses, they were one of the biggest-selling groups of the 1970s, dominating t...
All About Folk Rock and It's Success in the 1970s
America might try and lay claim to inventing folk rock when the Byrds began playing Dylan’s songs but true folk-rock – the mix of traditional folk music...
All About Progressive Rock
Progressive music had really begun in 1967 - at least that's when the term was first used. But progressive rock was a different animal altogether, one that w...
British Reggae
The first wave of West Indian immigrants arrived in Britain in 1948 with the docking of the Windrush and from that point they continued to arrive. Quite natu...
Hard Rock and Heavy Metal
Pop, progressive, blues-rock, folk-rock…by the beginning of the 70s, music was veering in several different directions. But one of them proved to have wide...
Jazz-Rock Through The Ages
As music explored more and more possibilities at the end of the 1960s and into the 1970s it was inevitable that rock and jazz would eventually cross paths. W...
New Wave Music in The 70s
Punk had barely exploded on the scene when its cleaner more acceptable little brother, New Wave, arrived. Like much punk, it took its music cues from the 196...
Old Grey Whistle Test
It became the most influential music television show of the 1970s. Where radio had John Peel and Top Gear, there was no viewing equivalent for anyone interes...
Pop Idols of British Pop
Every decade has its pop stars, some of whom endure, some of whom vanish very quickly. In many ways the 1970s was a golden age of pop music, and many of the...
Post-Punk Music
By its very limited musical nature punk had a fairly short shelf life. The bands had to grow or die, and most of them died. However, that created a vacuum, a...
Singer-Songwriters
The late 1960s and 1970s brought a number of singer-songwriters to the fore. The Beatles and Bob Dylan had made the idea of writing your own material accepta...
Space Rock
Space, was it really the final frontier? In the late 1960s and early 1970s it certainly seemed that way, both physically and in music. Man landed on the moon...
T Rex- The Rock Band
T Rex was the brainchild of Marc Bolan. Born in 1947, he'd hung around the fringes of the music business since his early teens working as a model, a "face" o...
The Emergence of DIY Record Labels
For the most part, until the middle of the 1970s, the music business was dominated by large established record labels like EMI and Decca. There were a number...
The History of British Punk
Punk was meant to sweep away the bloated dinosaur of progressive rock and the blandness of pop music. In that it succeeded, changing the course of popular mu...
The History of Glam Rock
In pop music, the 70s arrived with a bang, albeit a fairly androgynous one. The first movement to stir the charts was glam rock, where musicians who'd previo...
The Impact of Festivals on The Music Industry
The rock festival first really cranked into life in California, with the 1967 Monterey Festival. It was the natural extension of gigs and touring - bringing...
The Rise & Rise of Elton John
It’s been a long way from plain old Reg Dwight to the superstardom of Sir Elton John, but it’s a journey loaded with hit singles and albums, a veritable...
Two Tone Music Craze
It’s not often that a label also manages to be a musical movement, but Two Tone confounded the stereotypes to be exactly that. Rising out of punk and regga...
Virgin Records - Richard Branson and Nik Powell
Not many companies work up from a record shop to be a huge global brand, but that's exactly what Richard Branson has managed with Virgin. The record shops -...