Music Throughout the Ages

Rock music emerged in the 1940’s from places like, New York City, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Cleveland. According to Allmusic, “In its purest form, Rock & Roll has three chords, a strong, insistent back beat, and a catchy melody. Early rock & roll drew from a variety of sources, primarily blues, R&B, and country, but also gospel, traditional pop, jazz, and folk. All of these influences combined in a simple, blues-based song structure that was fast, danceable, and catchy.” Today, there are different types of Rock.

Different Types of Rock Music

In the late 1960s, rock music was blended with folk music to create folk rock, blues to create blues-rock and with jazz, to create jazz-rock fusion, and without a time signature to create psychedelic rock. In the 1970s, rock incorporated influences from soul, funk, and latin music. Also in the 1970s, rock developed a number of subgenres, such as soft rock, heavy metal, hard rock, progressive rock, and punk rock. Rock subgenres that emerged in the 1980s included synthpop, hardcore punk and alternative rock. In the 1990s, rock subgenres included grunge, Britpop, indie rock, and nu metal.

Steven Tyler from Aerosmith

A group of musicians specializing in rock music is called a rock band or rock group. Many rock groups consist of a guitarist, lead singer, bass guitarist, and a drummer, forming a quartet. Some groups omit one or more of these roles and/or utilize a lead singer who plays an instrument while singing, sometimes forming a trio or duo; others include additional musicians such as one or two rhythm guitarists and/or a keyboardist.

Heavy Metal

Heavy metal (often referred to simply as metal) is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the United Kingdom and the United States. With roots in blues-rock and psychedelic rock, the bands that created heavy metal developed a thick, massive sound, characterized by highly amplified distortion, extended guitar solos, and emphatic beats. Allmusic states that “of all rock & roll’s myriad forms, heavy metal is the most extreme in terms of volume, machismo, and theatricality.”

Early heavy metal bands such as Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath attracted large audiences, though they were often critically reviled, a status common throughout the history of the genre. In the mid-1970s, Judas Priest helped spur the genre’s evolution by discarding much of its blues influence; Motörhead introduced a punk rock sensibility and an increasing emphasis on speed. Bands in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal such as Iron Maiden followed in a similar vein. Before the end of the decade, heavy metal had attracted a worldwide following of fans known as “metalheads” or “headbangers.” In the mid-1980s, glam metal became a major commercial force with groups like Mötley Crüe and thrash metal broke into the mainstream with bands such as Metallica.

Heavy metal is traditionally characterized by loud distorted guitars, emphatic rhythms, dense bass-and-drum sound, and vigorous vocals. The electric guitar and the sonic power that it projects through amplification has historically been the key element in heavy metal. Guitars are often played with distortion pedals through heavily overdriven tube amplifiers to create a thick, powerful, “heavy” sound. In the early 1970s, some popular metal groups began co-featuring two guitarists. Leading bands such as Judas Priest and Iron Maiden followed this pattern of having two or three guitarists share the roles of both lead and rhythm guitar.

A central element of much heavy metal is the guitar solo, a form of cadenza. As the genre developed, more intricate solos and riffs became an integral part of the style. Guitarists use sweep-picking, tapping, and other advanced techniques for rapid playing. The lead role of the guitar in heavy metal often collides with the traditional “frontman” or bandleader role of the vocalist, creating a musical tension as the two “contend for dominance” in a spirit of “affectionate rivalry.” Heavy metal “demands the subordination of the voice” to the overall sound of the band.

More Than Making Noise

Rock music has branched off into different subgenres, creating various types of sounds; some of the harder, rhythmic, extreme beats and others light, melodic, bluesy rhythms. Groups such as Journey, Bon Jovi, Guns N’Roses and Arerosmith are all considered Rock Bands. Yet, some people may shy away from these bands because of them being labeled as such. But for decades these rock groups have made some of the most beautiful music and lyrics of the century. Creating songs that reach the heart and soul of its listeners and changing their lives. Why? Because people choose music that they can relate to. Case in point:

Guns N Roses - November Rain and Patience

Aerosmith - Amazing, I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing, Angel

Bon Jovi - Dead or Alive, Living on a Prayer, You Had Me From Hello

Journey - Open Arms, Who’s Crying Now, Faithfully

Rock Groups such as Van Halen and Def Leppard have spanned over 30 years of Rock and Heavy Metal music and their loyal fan base continues to follow their six strings wherever they go.

Two Bands + Same Frontman = Maximum Talent

Fairly new Hard Rock bands such as Tool has also gathered a loyal fan base for over 15 years with it’s poetic lead singer Maynard James Keenan fronting the vocals and his artistic visualization incorporated in the band’s performances. Tool is an American, Grammy Award winning progressive rock band that was formed in 1990 in Los Angeles, California. The band have sold over 13 million records worldwide, won three Grammy Awards, and consists of drummer Danny Carey, bassist Justin Chancellor, guitarist Adam Jones, and vocalist Maynard James Keenan.

The band emerged with a heavy metal sound on their first LP at a time when the genre was dominated by thrash metal, and later reached the top of the alternative metal movement with the release of their second LP, Ænima, in 1996. Their efforts to unify musical experimentation, visual arts, and a message of personal evolution continued with Lateralus (2001) and their most recent album, 10,000 Days (2006), gaining the band critical acclaim and success around the world. Due to Tool’s incorporation of visual arts and relatively long and complex releases, the band is generally described as a style-transgressing act and part of Progressive metal and art rock. Tool was ranked at number 88 on VH1’s The 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock.

A Perfect Circle (often called APC) is another project of Tool’s frontman Maynard James Keenan and guitarist and musical arrangement genius Billy Howerdel. The band’s latest line-up featured Jeordie White of Marilyn Manson and formerly of Nine Inch Nails tour line-up, on bass, James Iha, formerly of The Smashing Pumpkins on guitar, and prolific session drummer Josh Freese, who is also known from Nine Inch Nails tour line-up.

A Perfect Circle

Billy Howerdel, a former guitar tech for bands such as Nine Inch Nails, The Smashing Pumpkins, Fishbone and Tool played demos of his music to Tool’s singer, Maynard James Keenan, who offered himself as vocalist should Howerdel ever form a band. Although initially hesitant about this, as he originally wanted a female vocalist, Howerdel eventually agreed and A Perfect Circle was formed in 1999. They were then joined by bassist/violinist Paz Lenchantin, guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen.

After finishing their debut album, Mer de Noms (French for “Sea of Names”), and playing a handful of shows in California, they hit the road. To distinguish himself from his persona with Tool, Keenan wore long wigs on his otherwise bald scalp for all of A Perfect Circle’s music videos, photo shoots and live performances. “Judith”, the first single from the Mer de Noms album, is about Keenans’s mother, who suffered a stroke when he was 11. The song “Renholdër” reads Re:D.Lohner backwards, referring to Danny Lohner.

The band released their second album, Thirteenth Step, on September 16, 2003, and toured throughout North America, Europe and Japan for the remainder of the year. In 2004, the band continued touring in Australia, Japan, New Zealand and Europe, concluding touring in the late Spring in the United States.

A third album, Emotive, was released on November 2, 2004, which contains anti-war cover songs of artists such as John Lennon and Joni Mitchell. Emotive was recorded with various different past and present members of the band, but mostly by Keenan and Howerdel. On November 16, 2004, the band released the DVD and CD set entitled aMotion. The set contains music videos of the singles, some previously unreleased videos, and some b-sides and remixes. “Metaphorically speaking” and otherwise, A Perfect Circle’s lyrics are some of the most intrinsic, subconsciously profound collection of words written within a single CD.

Simply put, Rock and Heavy Metal bands are composers, musicians, writers, musical arrangers, producers, and vocalists the same as other bands are or even more so because they actually play instruments and write the majority of their own songs. So the next time you just hear ‘noise’, listen closely, you may be listening to your new favorite band.