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MOST of us born in and around the 1950s probably never got much time, in later years, to sit back and ponder the impact that growing up in the 1960s and 1970s – when there was an unprecedented outpouring of innovative music – had on our lives.
We were raised on vinyl records, starting, for me anyway, with the Big Five – the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix – but obviously overlapping with a whole host more.
For most of us this phenomenon was simply part of our upbringing. While many “lived” for their music – like kids today are obsessed with computer games, cellphones, iPods and the Net – few of us had the time or inclination to make even a half-serious study of it. Now, as we mature like a good cabernet, those legends are literally a dying breed. And suddenly we come to realise that we lived through two incredible decades of music.
This is an attempt, by one whose life was shaped by the sounds of that era, to make sense of those special times. By taking each group, or artist, and looking at their biographies and music – especially the lyrics – I hope to rekindle a delight in the soundtrack of our youth. These were the rock pioneers, the people who turned music on its head. There is probably not a band or solo artist today who doesn’t owe a substantial debt of gratitude to the legends covered here.
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On a personal note, having been born in 1956 and with two older brothers, my childhood was steeped in the A to Z of the good stuff – from Audience to ZZ-Top. Over the coming months and years I will investigate each group from my personal perspective – and in so doing hope to build up a case for this period to be recognised as the musical equivalent of the Italian Renaissance in art.
I begin by looking at my own early childhood, when my parents’ records were the dominant factor, and follow that with the next stage, when most of our sounds came via the radio. I then plunge into the vast list of brilliant groups and solo artists who shaped our lives. This not only includes rock groups, but also has a strong bias towards folk music.
As this is a blog, you’ll find the sequence in which the articles should be read will be from the bottom up. The Blog Archive below is a useful guide. – Kin Bentley