Folk rock
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Main article: Folk rock
Joan Baez and Bob Dylan in 1963
By the 1960s, the scene that had developed out of the American folk music revival had
grown to a major movement, using traditional music and new compositions in a
traditional style, usually on acoustic instruments.[103] In America the genre was pioneered
by figures such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and often identified
with progressive or labor politics.[103] In the early sixties figures such as Joan
Baez and Bob Dylan had come to the fore in this movement as singer-songwriters.
[104]
Dylan had begun to reach a mainstream audience with hits including "Blowin' in the
Wind" (1963) and "Masters of War" (1963), which brought "protest songs" to a wider
public,[105] but, although beginning to influence each other, rock and folk music had
remained largely separate genres, often with mutually exclusive audiences.[106]
Early attempts to combine elements of folk and rock included the Animals' "House of the
Rising Sun" (1964), which was the first commercially successful folk song to be
recorded with rock and roll instrumentation[107] and the Beatles "I'm a Loser" (1964),
arguably the first Beatles song to be influenced directly by Dylan.[108] The folk rock
movement is usually thought to have taken off with the Byrds' recording of Dylan's "Mr.
Tambourine Man" which topped the charts in 1965.[106] With members who had been part
of the café-based folk scene in Los Angeles, the Byrds adopted rock instrumentation,
including drums and 12-string Rickenbacker guitars, which became a major element in
the sound of the genre.[106] Later that year Dylan adopted electric instruments, much to
the outrage of many folk purists, with his "Like a Rolling Stone" becoming a US hit
single.[106] According to Ritchie Unterberger, Dylan (even before his adoption of electric
instruments) influenced rock musicians like the Beatles, demonstrating "to the rock
generation in general that an album could be a major standalone statement without hit
singles", such as on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963).[109]
Folk rock particularly took off in California, where it led acts like the Mamas & the
Papas and Crosby, Stills, and Nash to move to electric instrumentation, and in New
York, where it spawned performers including the Lovin' Spoonful and Simon and
Garfunkel, with the latter's acoustic "The Sounds of Silence" (1965) being remixed with
rock instruments to be the first of many hits.[106] These acts directly influenced British
performers like Donovan and Fairport Convention.[106] In 1969 Fairport Convention
abandoned their mixture of American covers and Dylan-influenced songs to play
traditional English folk music on electric instruments.[110] This British folk-rock was taken
up by bands including Pentangle, Steeleye Span and the Albion Band, which in turn
prompted Irish groups like Horslips and Scottish acts like the JSD Band, Spencer's Feat
and later Five Hand Reel, to use their traditional music to create a brand of Celtic
rock in the early 1970s.[111]
