Rock and roll, from the outside in. Each step is a genre and the single record this encyclopedia would put on first. Play them in this order and the last one should sound like a next step rather than a wall.
- 1 The way in
Rock 1954
The whole family: guitar, bass, drums and a beat borrowed from blues and rhythm and blues. Every branch below grows out of this trunk, metal included.
Sung. Melodic singing throughout.
Put on
The Beatles - Revolver, if you want to understand why everything branched so fast.
The Beatles, Revolver (1966) - 2 What you asked about
Rock and roll 1954
Ground zero: twelve-bar blues sped up, piano hammered hard, lyrics about cars and girls. It made the electric guitar the defining instrument of the century.
Sung. Melodic singing throughout.
Put on
Chuck Berry - Johnny B. Goode. That opening riff is the DNA of the entire tree.
Chuck Berry, Chuck (2017) - 3 Where to go next
Beat / British Invasion 1963
The British took American rock and roll, added vocal harmony and shipped it back across the Atlantic. Both hard rock and pop-rock start here.
Sung. Melodic singing throughout.
Put on
The Kinks - You Really Got Me. The first genuinely distorted riff on record.
The Kinks, Kinks (1964)
Assembled from the tree: every genre Rock and roll descends from, in order. The last step is the gentlest of Rock and roll's 4 subgenres - least harsh vocals first, then least heavy.