https://www.theguardian.

com/music/2004/may/02/popandrock

Fifty Years of Pop

Sean O’Hagan

This year, pop - or, more accurately, rock'n'roll, a term which suddenly
seems almost quaint - is 50 years old. Its date of birth, like its trajectory,
is difficult to define. What is indisputable is that Elvis Presley, a Southern
white boy inhabiting a black form, was the first, and perhaps the most
dynamic, expression of a music that was raw and primal, charged with a
sexual tension that was best measured by the shrill din of the adult voices
attempting to shout it down.

At that moment the notion of youth, both as a culture and a demographic,

was born; it defines our culture now to a degree that we no longer
question. In the transition, rock'n'roll has lost much of its power to shock
and to galvanise, has become both fragmented and ubiquitous. Yet it
endures.

The following is a collection of moments from the last 50 years of pop,

some of them obvious, some of them, I hope, not so, all of them
possessing some deeper cultural relevance. I have tried to be objective
but, at times, could not resist the urge to be utterly subjective. I have left
out Sgt. Pepper, for instance, because it sounds to me like a period piece
and, I confess, I am tired of the canonical received wisdom that prevents
us from seeing the Beatles - and the Sixties - clearly. Conversely, I have
included the Spice Girls, not out of any fondness for their music or antics,
but because they are unquestionably a modern pop phenomenon. You, of
course, are bound to disagree. Already, I do.

The 50s

1954
Elvis Presley records 'That's All Right Mama' at Sun Studios,
Memphis

Rock'n'roll's big bang. A 19-year-old truck driver fulfils producer Sam

Phillips's dream of finding 'a white guy who sings like a negro'. There were
rock'n'roll records before this one, nearly all of them by black artists, but
this is the moment when the embryonic form found its perfect
embodiment.
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1955
Chuck Berry's 'Maybellene' is released

'Maybellene' was Berry's first paean to cars and girls, two of the constants
of American rock'n'roll. His guitar and songwriting style permeated the
music of the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys and
Bruce Springsteen.

1958
Elvis joins the army

When he was drafted at 23, Elvis's blatant sexual energy was still the
cause of mass moral pandemonium. When he emerged from the army two
years later, he sounded old-fashioned and emasculated. 1960's inflated
tearjerker 'It's Now or Never' was the moment the first rock rebel turned
MOR entertainer.

The 60s

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1961
The miracles' 'Shop Around' is released

The first hit bearing the Tamla Motown imprint. The pop-soul label
owned by Berry Gordy and operating from downtown Detroit produced
more than 100 singles by the likes of Stevie Wonder, the Supremes and
the Temptations. Dubbed the Hit Factory, it defined the pop decade more
than any other label.

1962
Phil Spector invents the Wall of Sound

Spector was the first producer as creative artist - and tyrant - treating his
vocal groups as just another component in the production process. On
multilayered 'wall of sound' songs such as the Crystals' 'He's a Rebel' and
the Ronettes' 'Be My Baby', he was the first person to make pop sound
epic.

1962
James Brown: Live at the Apollo

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The first million-selling r'n'b album, and a dynamic snapshot of the

greatest soul act ever to tread the boards. Brown's influence on modern
music is immeasurable, beginning with his impact on Sixties Mod groups
and continuing apace with his presence in contemporary urban music.

1964
The Beatles take America

Already the most popular pop group in Europe, the Beatles appeared on
Ed Sullivan's television show in early 1964. The following month, 'I
Wanna Hold Your Hand' shot to the top of the US charts, swiftly followed
by their four previous singles. In March 1964, they occupied the top five
chart positions in America. Beatlemania was born.

1964
Bob Dylan turns the Beatles on

The Beatles met Dylan at the Hotel Delmonico in New York on 28 August.
He offered to roll a joint, and the Fab Four had to admit they had never
partaken before. 'Until then we'd been scotch and Coke men,' McCartney
would say later. 'It sort of changed that evening.'

1965
LSD hits the streets

Errant chemist Augustus Stanley Owsley III, completed his first batch of
home-made LSD in May 1965. The hallucinogen would dramatically
transform pop culture over the following two years, making San Francisco
the centre of hippydom and begetting Sgt. Pepper's, Pet Sounds and an
entire genre called acid rock.

1965
Bob Dylan releases 'Like a Rolling Stone'
As momentous in its way as Presley's first single, Dylan's great stream-of-
consciousness song clocked in at six minutes and singlehandedly ended
the era of the formulaic sub-three-minute pop single. Dense, elliptical and
caustic, it marked the high point of Dylan's most intensely creative period
- January 1965 to July 1966. The birth of the modern rock song as we
know it.

July 1965
Dylan plays the Newport Folk Festival

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In leather jacket and shades, Dylan walked on stage clutching an electric

guitar, and all hell broke loose. As a statement of intent, it was direct and
provocative and, while the audience jeered and Pete Seeger tried to chop
though the power cables, Dylan blasted the protest-folk era into pop
prehistory.

1965
The Who: 'My Generation'

The Who were the most aggressive - and the artiest - British pop group of
the mid-Sixties. Pete Townshend dressed in Union Jack suits, smashed
his guitar and wrote songs that perfectly caught the rising tide of teen
frustration. The stuttered teen snarl of 'My Generation' remains one of the
key moments in British pop, and the most potent evocation of Mod elitism
and amphetamine-fuelled aggression ever committed to vinyl.

1965
The Rolling Stones' '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction' is released

Keith Richards creates the most famous riff in rock and a still youthful
Jagger sounds suddenly bored and petulant. The moment the group
transcended their American influences and broke America. In retrospect,
an omen of all the indulgence and dissolution that was to come.

1966
The Beatles record 'Tomorrow Never Knows'

Forget the inflated period piece that is Sgt. Pepper's - this was the
moment when the Beatles went psychedelic. Tucked at the end of
Revolver , 'Tomorrow Never Knows' was an acid trip turned into a pop
song. It still sounds startling in its sonic invention.
1966
Brian Wilson makes Pet Sounds

While the rest of the Beach Boys toured their greatest hits, Brian Wilson
stayed at home in his studio and created pop's enduring masterpiece - and
his swansong. Sad songs tied to the most intricate arrangements, it baffled
the rest of the band though their vocal harmonising has never sounded so
sublime. It was followed by 'Good Vibrations' which still sounds as close
to perfection as a pop single has ever come.

February 1967
The Redlands drug bust

The Rolling Stones enshrined their reputation as rock'n'roll outlaws when

Mick and Keith were arrested in the latter's Surrey mansion for
possession of hash and amphetamines. In court, Richards was given a
one-year jail sentence and Jagger three months, prompting the famous
Times editorial, 'Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?' On appeal, they were
both acquitted.

1967
The Velvet Underground and Nico LP is released

Recorded in new York in 1966 but released the following year, the Velvet
Underground's debut album was the antithesis of the LSD-fuelled
optimism that characterised West Coast rock. Musically, it merged avant-
garde experimentalism with pummelling, repetitive rock, while the often
graphic songs touched on outré subjects such as heroin use and
sadomasochism. Produced by Andy Warhol and wrapped in his now
famous banana sleeve, the album was reviled on initial release, but is now
regarded by many as the most influential rock record ever made.

1969
Jimi Hendrix Plays 'The Star Spangled Banner' at the
Woodstock Festival

Woodstock, which attracted half-a-million rock fans, was the most

dramatic mass flowering of the hippy ideal and, as with all defining
moments, the beginning of the end of that same ideal. Hendrix's startling
assault on the American national anthem was interpreted at the time as a
political statement against the Vietnam war but in retrospect can be read
as a swan song for the era of peace and love, and for Hendrix himself. He
died in his sleep the following year.
1969
The Rolling Stones play Altamont

It seems somehow fitting that the Rolling Stones, by then the self-styled
Satanic Majesties of rock indulgence and excess, should hold the wake for
the death of the Sixties. Altamont was the antithesis of Woodstock,
culminating with the murder of Meredith Hunter, a young black man who
was bludgeoned to death by members of the Californian Hell's Angels who
had been hired to provide security. The end of the hippy era.

1969
The Stooges' first album is released

The greatest and most influential garage band ever, Detroit's the Stooges
made stripped-down, dumb and dirty rock'n'roll like no one else. Fronted
by Iggy Pop, the most outrageously self-destructive showman rock has yet
thrown up, their debut album, though dismissed in its day, remains the
template for punk rock in all its manifestations, from the Sex Pistols to the
White Stripes.

The 70s

1970
Black Sabbath release their first album

Though rock critics pinpoint the Kinks' 'You Really Got Me' from 1964 as
the first proto-heavy metal single, this is the moment the form was
defined in all its loud, lumpen, pounding glory. Four hairy lads from
Brum sing improbable songs about Satan, death and apocalypse over
mind-numbingly repetitive riffs. A genre is born.

1971
Marvin Gaye: What's Going On?

One of the few instances of an artist having total creative control and
producing a masterpiece. Dismissed by Berry Gordy, Gaye's boss at
Motown, as commercial suicide, the first soul concept album tackled
Vietnam, racism and inner-city strife. A huge hit, it paved the way for the
radical Seventies soul of Sly Stone, Curtis Mayfield and Stevie Wonder.

1971
King Tubby and Lee Perry create the template for modern
dance music
Osbourne Ruddock, aka King Tubby, was an engineer who experimented
with echo and tape delay as far back as the mid-Sixties when he ran one of
Jamaica's many mobile sound systems. His innovation was to strip a song
down just to the bass pulse, then fade the vocals and instrumentation in
and out at will, leaving space for the toasters - or DJs - to extemporise
over the top. Dub was born and found its most innovative producer in Lee
Perry, who is as influential in his way as Brian Wilson or Phil Spector.
Modern dance music as we know it begins here.

1972
David Bowie creates Ziggy Stardust

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In January, Bowie told an interviewer: 'I'm gay, and always have been.'
Whatever the truth of the statement, it announced the imminent arrival of
his androgynous alter ego, unveiled the following June on Ziggy Stardust
& the Spiders from Mars . The first of Bowie s many exotic personae, and
the moment that launched glam rock. Perhaps the most influential album
of the decade.

1973
Gram Parsons dies at the Joshua Tree Inn

It is debatable whether Parsons invented country rock, but he remains its

most visionary exponent. Only 26 when he died from a heroin overdose,
he left his stamp on three classic albums: Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968),
The Gilded Palace of Sin (1969), and Grievous Angel (1973). Thirty years
on, he remains the defining presence in America's thriving alternative
country scene.

1974
Kraftwerk release 'Autobahn'

Kraftwerk signalled the coming of the machine age, creating sleek

computerised pop in their state-of-the-art Düsseldorf studio. This 22-
minute opus to the monotony of the German motorway system reached
the US and British charts in an edited version, and subsequently became a
huge influence on hip hop, house and techno.

1975
Bob Marley & the Wailers: 'No Woman, No Cry' released
Bob Marley & the Wailers' first hit single, and the beginning of Marley s
reign as an international reggae star. As important a catalyst as Dylan or
Lennon, he remains the only reggae artist to achieve iconic status. His
death in 1981 robbed the music of its one and only global icon.

1975
Patti Smith: Horses

Bearing one of rock's most iconic images - Robert Mapplethorpe's stark

portrait of Smith in an oversized white shirt - Horses merged mysticism,
beat poetry and proto-punk rock, transcending the sum of its influences
by sheer force of will. It remains remarkable in its lyrical ambition and
raw musical simplicity, and signals the coming punk era even as it harks
back to the Romantics. One of rock's great leaps of faith.

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1977
Saturday Night Fever goes on general release

Travolta and the Bee Gees bring disco overground. The film, though cack-
handed and corny in its evocation of New York s downtown disco scene,
propelled a struggling white actor and an unhip vocal group into the
forefront of a global dance phenomenon. The biggest-selling soundtrack
ever.

1977
n 'God Save the Queen' goes to 'Number One'

The last and greatest outbreak of pop-based moral pandemonium, and

punk's crowning glory. Released at the height of the Queen's Jubilee
celebrations, the Sex Pistols' single was deemed so unspeakable that
workers in a record plant refused to press it and official chart compilers
refused to acknowledge its chart-topping position. It sounds gloriously
irreverent now; back then it was nothing short of incendiary.

1978
Brian Eno releases Ambient 1: Music for Airports

The moment when texture rather than song becomes an essential element
in modern pop. Music for Airports is Eno's first experiment with the
notion of ambience - modern mood music. His influence, like the music
he produced, was slow and pervasive, but is detectable in everyone from
U2 to Massive Attack.

The 80s

8 December 1980
The murder of John Lennon

Mark Chapman's shooting of John Lennon on the doorstep of the star's

New York home shocked the world. That Chapman was a fan, and
someone who craved celebrity himself, only added to the chilling unreality
of the moment. 'The world is not like the Sixties,' Lennon said in the last
interview before his death. 'The world has changed.' The first, and most
chilling, manifestation of the dark side of our obsession with celebrity.

1981
'Ghost Town' goes to Number One

The Specials were the last and greatest flowering of the socially conscious
pop that emerged in Britain in the immediate wake of punk. They
invented the short-lived but vibrant Two Tone movement, whose merging
of reggae rhythms and punk lyricism reflected the multiculturalism of
urban Britain. 'Ghost Town' was a lament for their beleaguered home
town, Coventry, an anti-Thatcherist song that topped the pop charts at the
very moment the country was torn by inner-city riots. Pop as on-the-spot
reportage.

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1981
Grandmaster Flash's 'Adventures on the Wheels of Steel' is
released

Rap's first landmark single, and the first record to use samples. Snippets
of songs by Queen, Blondie and Chic were collaged into one long seamless
groove by DJ Flash. 'The Message', released the following year, was a
chart hit on both sides of the Atlantic, and broke new ground by replacing
the usual lyrical boasting with trenchant social commentary.

1981
The launch of MTV
The pivotal moment when the pop video became as important as the pop
single. The first television channel devoted totally to music, MTV has
grown into a global brand as all-pervasive as Coca-Cola or Nike,
colonising and dulling the collective pop consciousness with the tyranny
of the rotation play.

1982
Michael Jackson: Thriller released

The biggest-selling pop record of all time, Thriller made Michael Jackson
a global icon. Then only 25, he had made his debut at the age of four and
had his first hit at 12 sharing the charts with the likes of Jimi Hendrix and
the Doors, and was already the subject of much media speculation
concerning his eternal childhood. In the light of all that has happened
since, it is worth remembering that he was once a pop genius.

1983
The Smiths: 'This Charming Man'

Their second single and first hit, 'This Charming Man' had a signature
sound that would establish the Smiths as the most important British
group of the Eighties. Johnny Marr's chiming guitar and Morrissey's odd,
genderless lyrics combined to give a new spin to what was essentially a
classic rock sound. Quintessentially English, they singlehandedly
reclaimed guitar pop in a decade when it had almost been consigned to
the dustbin of history.

1983
New Order: 'Blue Monday'

A pivotal moment in British pop, and the bestselling British 12-inch single
ever. New Order were the first indie band to absorb the technical
innovations of American dance music. 'Blue Monday' merged their
trademark detached vocals with a futuristic, computer-driven beat that
harked back to disco, and had a huge influence on the sample-driven hip
hop and house music that would emerge from New York, Chicago and
Detroit later in the decade.

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1984
Ronald Reagan co-opts Bruce Springsteen's 'Born in the USA'
Generally regarded as the world's greatest living rock'n'roll star,
Springsteen's most successful song was also his most bombastic. The
lyrics are about a Vietnam veteran on the poverty line, but it was the
rousing, anthemic chorus that attracted Ronald Reagan, who used it
during his 1984 re-election campaign. Springsteen was appalled. His
music, thankfully, has never sounded so strident since.

1985
Madonnna's 'Material Girl' is released

The single that propelled Madonna beyond the mainstream and made her
the most successful pop brand of modern times. Tied to a video in which
she mimicked Monroe, it was the first and most audacious of her various
self-inventions, a song that caught the consumerist thrust of the Eighties,
even as it supposedly parodied the same.

1985
Live Aid

A great moment for charity, a dreadful moment for pop. Two all-star
concerts organised by Saint Bob Geldof and beamed live into millions of
homes worldwide, the event raised £50 million for charity. One of the
greatest philanthropic events of all time, but the moment when pop
became enshrined as pure showbiz entertainment.

1987
Prince's 'Sign 'O' the Times'

Prince was the most prodigiously gifted singer-songwriter and multi-

instrumentalist to emerge in the Eighties. Momentarily ditching the
sexual thrust of his earlier music, he created the most perfect merging of
dancefloor funk and social commentary since the heyday of politically
conscious Seventies soul.

1988
Madchester and the second summer of love

The moment that dance culture moved from the clubs of Chicago and
Detroit into the heart of British pop culture and the beginning of the era
of the superstar DJ. Clubs such as London's Shoom and Manchester's
Hacienda became the new temples of ecstasy-fuelled hedonism, and by
the summer illegal raves were attracting druggy revellers in their
thousands. Manchester became the centre of post-rave British pop,
producing the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays, two of the most crucial
bands to emerge from the post-acid house scene.

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1988
NWA: 'Fuck tha Police'

The birth of gangsta rap. A record so extreme it was banned by radio and
MTV and brought the record company, Ruthless, a warning from the FBI.
It kickstarted the career of Dr Dre, the most successful rap producer ever,
and made Los Angeles rather than New York the centre of hip hop. The
machismo and nihilism that fed this record reached an apogee of sorts
with the murders of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls.

The 90s

1992
Nirvana: 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'

The single that catapulted Nirvana into the mainstream. A heady mix of
metal and punk, with a structural dynamic that alternated Cobain's
whisper with his guttural scream, it said all there was to say about
America's lost 'Generation X', defining a strain of solipsistic angst that
continues to echo through white American rock music.

1995
Blur v Oasis

Britpop's big stand-off. Orchestrated by their respective record labels -

and hyped by the pop and mainstream media - Blur and Oasis went head
to head, releasing singles on the same day. Neither were any good, but
Blur's 'Country House' was spectacularly bad. It went straight in at
Number One.A couple of years later, when Oasis had eclipsed Blur as the
biggest band in Britain, Noel Gallagher would be summoned to a New
Labour victory party in Downing Street. The beginning of the end of
Britpop and the hype that was Cool Britannia.

MAY 1995
The Spice Girls meet Simon Fuller

The Spice Girls were the most unlikely teen-pop phenomenon of the
Nineties, not least because they were the first all-girl band in an era
dominated by manufactured boy bands. They fused pop, rap and a
strident, if inconsistent, 'girl power' message, and their meteoric rise was
overseen by Simon Fuller, perhaps the most influential player in modern
British pop. In retrospect, their first single, 'Wannabe', was a harbinger of
all that followed, from Posh to Pop Idol .

The 00s

2000
The birth of Napster

A word that still strikes fear into the heart of music business fat cats.
Launched by 19-year-old Shawn Fanning from his uncle's garage, Napster
was the download service that provided free music to an estimated 100
million users in 2000.Now legal, downloading marks the end of
traditional music formats as we know them.

2001
George Bush declares Eminem 'The biggest threat to American
youth since Polio'

At the height of his notoriety Eminem, who had singlehandedly made rap
a medium for the kind of solipsistic whining usually expressed by
pampered white guys with guitars, received the kind of endorsement even
the biggest promo budget could not buy. Two years later, a poll of
American parents found that 53 per cent agreed that 'America's youth find
more truth in Eminem than George Bush'.

October 2003
Beyonc&#149 and the triumpth of R&B

Last October, for the first time since the dawn of rock'n'roll 50 years ago,
none of the artists in the official Billboard American Top 10 was white.
The ascendancy of rap and contemporary R&B as the music of choice for
young Americans, black and white, was total and irrefutable (most
notably Alicia Keyes, 50 Cent and OutKast). If the music has a figurehead,
it is Beyoncé Knowles, the only woman in that Top 10 and currently the
biggest pop star of the new century.