artist british
The Who
formed 1964 · London
Mod pop turned explosive: power chords, feedback, smashed instruments and rock-opera ambition made the band a bridge to hard rock.
The Who came out of mod London but quickly made volume and conflict part of the music itself. Pete Townshend’s windmill chords, Keith Moon’s lead-drummer chaos, John Entwistle’s bass force and Roger Daltrey’s vocal attack made the band feel larger than the pop single that first contained it.
They connect British Invasion energy to psychedelic and hard rock scale:
“My Generation” is youth music as detonation; Tommy and later work push rock
toward narrative and album-length forms.
Part of
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British Invasion
genreBritish guitar groups returned American blues and rock 'n' roll to the US charts as a new pop language: Beatles melody, Stones grit, mod attack.
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Hard Rock
genreBlues rock hardened into riffs, volume and arena force: distorted guitar, heavy drums and high vocals made rock physically larger.
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Psychedelic Rock
genreRock turned inward and hallucinatory: studio experiment, modal jams, drones, feedback and surreal lyric worlds reshaped the pop song.
Sources
- Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: Pop from the Beginning — Nik Cohn (1969). Weidenfeld & Nicolson · Book
- Psychedelic rock ↗ — Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica · Encyclopedia
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