187-472: The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in Palo Alto, California in 1965. Known for their eclectic style that fused elements of rock, blues , jazz , folk , country , bluegrass , rock and roll , gospel , reggae , and world music with psychedelia , the band is famous for improvisation during their live performances , and for their devoted fan base, known as " Deadheads ". According to
374-609: A diabetic coma for several days in July 1986, leading to the cancelation of all concerts in the fall of that year. Garcia recovered, the band released In the Dark in July 1987, which became its best-selling studio album and produced its only top-40 single, " Touch of Grey ," Also, that year, the group toured with Bob Dylan , as heard on the album Dylan & the Dead . Mydland died in July 1990 and Vince Welnick , former keyboardist for
561-514: A certain degree doesn't care if it's popular. — Bill Wyman in Vulture (2016) The sound of rock is traditionally centered on the amplified electric guitar, which emerged in its modern form in the 1950s with the popularity of rock and roll. It was also greatly influenced by the sounds of electric blues guitarists. The sound of an electric guitar in rock music is typically supported by an electric bass guitar, which pioneered jazz music in
748-513: A couple of records featuring electric instrumentation. Grateful Dead members have said that it was after attending a concert by the touring New York City band the Lovin' Spoonful that they decided to "go electric" and look for a "dirtier" sound. Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir (both of whom had been immersed in the American folk music revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s), were open-minded about
935-661: A few albums. Hart has toured with his world music percussion ensemble Planet Drum as well as the Mickey Hart Band. Kreutzmann has led several different bands, including BK3 , 7 Walkers (with Papa Mali ), and Billy & the Kids . Donna Godchaux has returned to the music scene, with the Donna Jean Godchaux Band , and Tom Constanten also continues to write and perform music. All of these groups continue to play Grateful Dead music. In October 2014, it
1122-603: A folk music coffeehouse operated by Stanford Medical Center doctors Stuart "Stu" Goldstein and David "Dave" Shoenstadt on University Avenue in Palo Alto (1963). As the Warlocks, the band's first show was at Magoo's Pizza Parlor, at 639 Santa Cruz Avenue in suburban Menlo Park , on May 5, 1965, now a Harvest furniture store. The band continued playing bar shows, like Frenchy's Bikini-A-Go-Go in Hayward and, importantly, five sets
1309-519: A fondness for a good beat, a meaningful lyric with some wit, and the theme of youth, which holds an "eternal attraction" so objective "that all youth music partakes of sociology and the field report ." Writing in Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s (1990), he said this sensibility is evident in the music of folk singer-songwriter Michelle Shocked , rapper LL Cool J , and synth-pop duo Pet Shop Boys —"all kids working out their identities"—as much as it
1496-481: A foundation of simple syncopated rhythms in a 4 meter , with a repetitive snare drum back beat on beats two and four. Melodies often originate from older musical modes such as the Dorian and Mixolydian , as well as major and minor modes. Harmonies range from the common triad to parallel perfect fourths and fifths and dissonant harmonic progressions. Since the late 1950s, and particularly from
1683-628: A frequent addition to the established rock format of guitars, bass, and drums in subsequent progressive rock. Instrumentals were common, while songs with lyrics were sometimes conceptual, abstract, or based in fantasy and science fiction. The Pretty Things ' SF Sorrow (1968), the Kinks' Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) (1969), and the Who 's Tommy (1969) introduced
1870-796: A great deal of their character to his experience playing Scruggs style banjo, an approach which often makes use of note syncopation , accenting , arpeggios , staccato chromatic runs , and the anticipation of the downbeat . Garcia had a distinctive sense of timing , often weaving in and out of the groove established by the rest of the band as if he were pushing the beat. His lead lines were also immensely influenced by jazz soloists : Garcia cited Miles Davis , Ornette Coleman , Bill Evans , Pat Martino , George Benson , Al Di Meola , Art Tatum , Duke Ellington , and Django Reinhardt as primary influences, and frequently utilized techniques common to country and blues music in songs that called back to those traditions. Garcia often switched scales in
2057-630: A key feature of psychedelia. Psychedelic rock reached its apogee in the last years of the decade. 1967 saw the Beatles release their definitive psychedelic statement in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band , including the controversial track " Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds ", the Rolling Stones responded later that year with Their Satanic Majesties Request , and Pink Floyd debuted with The Piper at
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#17327656363782244-573: A loud amplified sound, often centered on the electric guitar, based on the Chicago blues , particularly after the tour of Britain by Muddy Waters in 1958, which prompted Cyril Davies and guitarist Alexis Korner to form the band Blues Incorporated . The band involved and inspired many of the figures of the subsequent British blues boom, including members of the Rolling Stones and Cream , combining blues standards and forms with rock instrumentation and emphasis. The other key focus for British blues
2431-587: A mainstream audience with hits including " Blowin' in the Wind " (1963) and " Masters of War " (1963), which brought " protest songs " to a wider public, but, although beginning to influence each other, rock and folk music had remained largely separate genres, often with mutually exclusive audiences. Early attempts to combine elements of folk and rock included the Animals' " House of the Rising Sun " (1964), which
2618-495: A major element of progressive rock. From about 1967 bands like Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience had moved away from purely blues-based music into psychedelia . By the 1970s, blues rock had become heavier and more riff-based, exemplified by the work of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple , and the lines between blues rock and hard rock "were barely visible", as bands began recording rock-style albums. The genre
2805-429: A major influence on subsequent electronic rock . With the advent of punk rock and technological changes in the late 1970s, progressive rock was increasingly dismissed as pretentious and overblown. Many bands broke up, but some, including Genesis, ELP, Yes, and Pink Floyd, regularly scored top ten albums with successful accompanying worldwide tours. Some bands which emerged in the aftermath of punk, such as Siouxsie and
2992-578: A more accurate picture of any given year's best-selling albums, as a title that hypothetically spent nine weeks at No. 1 in March could possibly have sold fewer copies than one spending six weeks at No. 3 in January. Albums at the peak of their popularity at the time of the November/December chart-year cutoff many times end up ranked lower than one would expect on a year-end tally, yet are ranked on
3179-486: A multibillion-dollar industry and doubling its market while, as Christgau noted, suffering a significant "loss of cultural prestige". "Maybe the Bee Gees became more popular than the Beatles, but they were never more popular than Jesus ", he said. "Insofar as the music retained any mythic power, the myth was self-referential – there were lots of songs about the rock and roll life but very few about how rock could change
3366-412: A musician, Paul McCartney has the most top-10 albums, with 51. This includes 32 with The Beatles , 11 solo albums, seven albums with the group Wings , and one album credited to him and his first wife, Linda McCartney . Note: Swift is the first living artist to chart five albums in the top 10 simultaneously. She was previously the first living soloist to have four albums simultaneously chart in
3553-589: A national phenomenon. It is often argued that the surf music craze and the careers of almost all surf acts was effectively ended by the arrival of the British Invasion from 1964, because most surf music hits were recorded and released between 1960 and 1965. By the end of 1962, what would become the British rock scene had started with beat groups like the Beatles , Gerry & the Pacemakers and
3740-408: A new algorithm with data from all major on-demand audio subscription and online music sales services in the U.S. Starting on the issue dated January 18, 2020, Billboard updated its method again by incorporating video data from YouTube , along with visual plays from digital platforms like Apple Music , Spotify , Tidal , Vevo and, as of the issue dated March 23, 2021, from Facebook . As of
3927-400: A new algorithm, utilizing data from all of the major on-demand audio subscription services, including Spotify , Apple Music , Google Play and Groove Music . Under the new methodology, 10 track sales or 1,500 song streams from an album are treated as equivalent to one purchase of the album. Billboard continues to publish a pure album sales chart, called " Top Album Sales ", that maintains
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#17327656363784114-629: A night, five nights a week, for six weeks, at the In Room in Belmont as the Warlocks, but quickly changed the band's name after finding out that a different band known as the Warlocks had put out a record under that name. ( The Velvet Underground also had to change its name from the Warlocks.) The name " Grateful Dead " was chosen from a dictionary. According to Lesh, Garcia "picked up an old Britannica World Language Dictionary ... [and] ... In that silvery elf-voice he said to me, 'Hey, man, how about
4301-473: A number of concerts that year, releasing a live album, The Strange Remain , the following year. In 2000, the Other Ones toured again, this time with Kreutzmann but without Lesh. After taking another year off, the band toured again in 2002 with Lesh. That year, the Other Ones then included all four living former Grateful Dead members who had been in the band for most or all of its history. At different times
4488-459: A preacher, prosecutions of Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry and the breaking of the payola scandal (which implicated major figures, including Alan Freed, in bribery and corruption in promoting individual acts or songs), gave a sense that the rock and roll era established at that point had come to an end. Rock quickly spread out from its origins in the US, associated with the rapid Americanization that
4675-444: A prog rock influence and while ranking among the most commercially successful acts of the 1970s, heralding the era of pomp or arena rock , which would last until the costs of complex shows (often with theatrical staging and special effects), would be replaced by more economical rock festivals as major live venues in the 1990s. The instrumental strand of the genre resulted in albums like Mike Oldfield 's Tubular Bells (1973),
4862-549: A psychedelic, kaleidoscopic tapestry in the hopes of elucidating America's national character . At least one of Hunter and Bob Weir's collaborations, " Jack Straw ", was inspired by the work of John Steinbeck . Grateful Dead have been called a "symbol of the counterculture movement of the sixties ". Beginning in the early 1990s, a new generation of bands became inspired by the Grateful Dead's improvisational ethos and marketing strategy , and began to incorporate elements of
5049-446: A rigidly delineated musical definition." In the opinion of music journalist Robert Christgau , "the best rock jolts folk-art virtues—directness, utility, natural audience—into the present with shots of modern technology and modernist dissociation ". Rock and roll was conceived as an outlet for adolescent yearnings ... To make rock and roll is also an ideal way to explore intersections of sex, love, violence, and fun, to broadcast
5236-405: A rock group with electric bass guitar , drums , and one or more singers. Usually, rock is song-based music with a 4 time signature using a verse–chorus form , but the genre has become extremely diverse. Like pop music , lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political. Rock was the most popular genre of music in
5423-399: A second lead guitar. In contrast to most bassists in popular music , Lesh often avoids playing the root of a chord on the downbeat, instead withholding as a means to build tension . Lesh also rarely repeats the same bassline, even from performance to performance of the same song, and often plays off of or around the other instruments with a syncopated , staccato bounce that contributes to
5610-481: A slogan one only began to hear in 1972 or so, mobilized all those eager to believe that idealism had become passe, and once they were mobilized, it had. In popular music, embracing the '70s meant both an elitist withdrawal from the messy concert and counterculture scene and a profiteering pursuit of the lowest common denominator in FM radio and album rock . Rock saw greater commodification during this decade, turning into
5797-431: A standard set, played with minor variations, the Grateful Dead did not prepare in this way. Garcia stated in a 1966 interview, "We don't make up our sets beforehand. We'd rather work off the tops of our heads than off a piece of paper." They maintained this approach throughout their career. For each performance, the band drew material from an active list of a hundred or so songs. The 1969 live album Live/Dead did capture
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5984-527: A unique, complex interplay, balancing Kreutzmann's steady shuffle beat with Hart's interest in percussion styles outside the rock tradition. Kreuzmann has said, "I like to establish a feeling and then add radical or oblique juxtapositions to that feeling." Hart incorporated an 11-count measure to his drumming, bringing a dimension to the band's sound that became an important part of its style. He had studied tabla drumming and incorporated rhythms and instruments from world music , and later electronic music , into
6171-464: A variety of directions, including Dylan and the Byrds, who began to develop country rock . However, the hybridization of folk and rock has been seen as having a major influence on the development of rock music, bringing in elements of psychedelia, and helping to develop the ideas of the singer-songwriter, the protest song, and concepts of "authenticity". Psychedelic music's LSD -inspired vibe began in
6358-529: A variety of sources such as the Tin Pan Alley pop tradition, folk music , and rhythm and blues . Christgau characterizes rock lyrics as a "cool medium" with simple diction and repeated refrains, and asserts that rock's primary "function" "pertains to music, or, more generally, noise ." The predominance of white, male, and often middle class musicians in rock music has often been noted, and rock has been seen as an appropriation of Black musical forms for
6545-445: A week spent at No. 200, two points for a week spent at No. 199, etc., up to 200 points for each week spent at No. 1). Other factors, including an album's total weeks spent on the chart and its peak position, are calculated into an album's year-end total. Since Billboard began obtaining sales information from Nielsen SoundScan, the year-end charts are now calculated by a very straightforward cumulative total of yearlong sales. This gives
6732-501: A young, white and largely male audience. As a result, it has also been seen to articulate the concerns of this group in both style and lyrics. Christgau, writing in 1972, said in spite of some exceptions, "rock and roll usually implies an identification of male sexuality and aggression". Since the term "rock" started being used in preference to "rock and roll" from the late-1960s, it has usually been contrasted with pop music, with which it has shared many characteristics, but from which it
6919-540: Is credited with first using the phrase "rock and roll" to describe the music. Four years later, Bill Haley 's " Rock Around the Clock " (1954) became the first rock and roll song to top Billboard magazine's main sales and airplay charts, and opened the door worldwide for this new wave of popular culture. Other artists with early rock and roll hits included Chuck Berry , Bo Diddley , Fats Domino , Little Richard , Jerry Lee Lewis , and Gene Vincent . Soon rock and roll
7106-472: Is generally agreed that garage rock peaked both commercially and artistically around 1966. By 1968 the style largely disappeared from the national charts and at the local level as amateur musicians faced college, work or the draft . New styles had evolved to replace garage rock. Although the first impact of the British Invasion on American popular music was through beat and R&B based acts,
7293-618: Is in the music of Chuck Berry , the Ramones , and the Replacements . The foundations of rock music are in rock and roll, which originated in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, and quickly spread to much of the rest of the world. Its immediate origins lay in a melding of various black musical genres of the time, including rhythm and blues and gospel music , with country and western . Debate surrounds
7480-411: Is often distanced by an emphasis on musicianship, live performance, and a focus on serious and progressive themes as part of an ideology of authenticity that is frequently combined with an awareness of the genre's history and development. According to Simon Frith , rock was "something more than pop, something more than rock and roll" and "[r]ock musicians combined an emphasis on skill and technique with
7667-399: Is termed as a rock band or a rock group. Furthermore, it typically consists of between three (the power trio ) and five members. Classically, a rock band takes the form of a quartet whose members cover one or more roles, including vocalist, lead guitarist, rhythm guitarist, bass guitarist, drummer, and often keyboard player or another instrumentalist. Rock music is traditionally built on
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7854-535: The Billboard Hot 100 . The British Invasion greatly influenced garage bands, providing them with a national audience, leading many (often surf or hot rod groups) to adopt a British influence, and encouraging many more groups to form. Thousands of garage bands were extant in the United States and Canada during the era and hundreds produced regional hits. Despite scores of bands being signed to major or large regional labels, most were commercial failures. It
8041-497: The Billboard Top LPs (1961–1972), Billboard Top LPs & Tape (1972–1984), Billboard Top 200 Albums (1984–1985), Billboard Top Pop Albums (1985–1991), and Billboard 200 Top Albums (1991–1992). The chart is based mostly on sales – both at retail and digital – of albums in the United States. The weekly sales period was Monday to Sunday when Nielsen started tracking sales in 1991, but since July 2015,
8228-469: 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. In America the genre was pioneered by figures such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and often identified with progressive or labor politics . In the early sixties figures such as Joan Baez and Bob Dylan had come to the fore in this movement as singer-songwriters. Dylan had begun to reach
8415-473: The Billboard 200). A new chart that keeps the previous criteria for the Billboard 200 – dubbed the " Top Current Albums " chart – was also introduced in the same issue. Billboard has adjusted its policies for Christmas and holiday albums several times. The albums were eligible for the main album charts until 1963, when a " Christmas Albums " chart was created. Albums appearing here were not listed on
8602-560: The Billboard 200. "Both Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall should be in the Billboard Top 200," said former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters in 1992. " The Wall still does anything up to four million each year... They've created a catalog chart in which to place all these old albums, leaving the main chart free for all the artists the record companies will want to book advertising space for. It just offers further evidence of
8789-530: The Disco Biscuits . Many of these groups began to look past the American roots music that the Grateful Dead drew inspiration from, and incorporated elements of progressive rock , hard rock , and electronica . At the same time, the Internet gained popularity and provided a medium for fans to discuss these bands and their performances and download MP3s . The Grateful Dead, as well as Phish, were one of
8976-612: The Hollywood Bowl , in Los Angeles; he died on March 8, 1973, of complications from liver damage. Pigpen's death did not slow down the Grateful Dead. With the help of manager Ron Rakow , the band soon formed its own record label, Grateful Dead Records . Later that year, it released its next studio album, the jazz-influenced Wake of the Flood , which became their biggest commercial success thus far. Meanwhile, capitalizing on
9163-474: The Kennedy Center Honors . The Grateful Dead began their career as the Warlocks, a group formed in early 1965 from the remnants of a Palo Alto, California jug band called Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions and members of The Wildwood Boys (Jerry Garcia, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, David Nelson, Robert Hunter, and Norm Van Maastricht). As The Wildwood Boys they played regularly at The Tangent,
9350-650: The Recording Industry Association of America when Gold, Platinum and Diamond album awards are announced. (RIAA awards reflect wholesale shipments , not retail sales .) Beginning with the December 13, 2014, issue, Billboard updated the methodology of its album chart again, changing from a "pure sales-based ranking" to one measuring "multi-metric consumption". With this overhaul, the Billboard 200 includes on-demand streaming and digital track sales (as measured by Nielsen SoundScan) by way of
9537-498: The Rhythm Devils , Phil Lesh and Friends , RatDog , and Billy & the Kids . Despite having only one Top-40 single in their 30-year career, " Touch of Grey " (1987), the Grateful Dead remained among the highest-grossing American touring acts for decades. They gained a committed fanbase by word of mouth and through the free exchange of their live recordings, encouraged by the band's allowance of taping . In 2024, they broke
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#17327656363789724-422: The garage rock / post-punk revival in the 2000s. Since the 2010s, rock has lost its position as the pre-eminent popular music genre in world culture, but remains commercially successful. The increased influence of hip-hop and electronic dance music can be seen in rock music, notably in the techno-pop scene of the early 2010s and the pop-punk-hip-hop revival of the 2020s. Rock has also embodied and served as
9911-417: The protest song , rock music has been associated with political activism , as well as changes in social attitudes to race, sex, and drug use, and is often seen as an expression of youth revolt against adult consumerism and conformity . At the same time, it has been commercially highly successful, leading to accusations of selling out . A good definition of rock, in fact, is that it's popular music that to
10098-403: The "Top Holiday Albums" list and the Billboard 200. Since May 25, 1991, the Billboard 200's positions have been derived from Nielsen SoundScan sales data; as of 2008 , it is contributed to by approximately 14,000 music sellers. Because these numbers are supplied by a subset of sellers rather than record labels , it is common for these numbers to be substantially lower than those reported by
10285-501: The "Top LPs" chart, and in 1974, this rule was reverted and holiday albums again appeared within the main list. In 1983, the " Christmas Albums " chart was resurrected, but a title's appearance here did not disqualify it from appearing on the "Top Pop Albums" chart. In 1990, the chart was retitled " Top Holiday Albums "; as of 2009 , it holds 50 positions and runs for several weeks during the end-of-calendar-year holiday season. Its current policy allows holiday albums to concurrently chart on
10472-454: The 1950s saw the growth in popularity of the electric guitar, and the development of a specifically rock and roll style of playing through such exponents as Chuck Berry, Link Wray , and Scotty Moore . The use of distortion , pioneered by Western swing guitarists such as Junior Barnard and Eldon Shamblin was popularized by Chuck Berry in the mid-1950s. The use of power chords , pioneered by Francisco Tárrega and Heitor Villa-Lobos in
10659-460: The 1960s . The band's founding members were Jerry Garcia ( lead guitar and vocals), Bob Weir (rhythm guitar and vocals), Ron "Pigpen" McKernan ( keyboards , harmonica , and vocals), Phil Lesh ( bass guitar and vocals), and Bill Kreutzmann ( drums ). Members of the Grateful Dead, originally known as the Warlocks , had played together in various Bay Area ensembles, including the traditional jug band Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions. Lesh
10846-467: The 19th century and later on by Willie Johnson and Pat Hare in the early 1950s, was popularized by Link Wray in the late 1950s. Commentators have traditionally perceived a decline of rock and roll in the late 1950s and early 1960s. By 1959, the death of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens in a plane crash, the departure of Elvis for the army, the retirement of Little Richard to become
11033-497: The Acid Tests and who, in early 1966, became the band's financial backer, renting them a house on the fringes of Watts, Los Angeles , and buying them sound equipment. "We were living solely off of Owsley's good graces at that time. ... [His] trip was he wanted to design equipment for us, and we were going to have to be in sort of a lab situation for him to do it", said Garcia. One of the group's earliest major performances in 1967
11220-477: The Banshees , Ultravox , and Simple Minds , showed the influence of progressive rock, as well as their more usually recognized punk influences. In the late 1960s, jazz-rock emerged as a distinct subgenre out of the blues-rock, psychedelic, and progressive rock scenes, mixing the power of rock with the musical complexity and improvisational elements of jazz. AllMusic states that the term jazz-rock "may refer to
11407-628: 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). 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
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#173276563637811594-554: The Byrds ' shift from folk to folk rock from 1965. The psychedelic lifestyle, which revolved around hallucinogenic drugs, had already developed in San Francisco and particularly prominent products of the scene were Big Brother and the Holding Company , the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane . The Jimi Hendrix Experience 's lead guitarist, Jimi Hendrix did extended distorted, feedback-filled jams which became
11781-431: The Byrds adopted rock instrumentation, including drums and 12-string Rickenbacker guitars, which became a major element in the sound of the genre. 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. According to Ritchie Unterberger , Dylan (even before his adoption of electric instruments) influenced rock musicians like
11968-435: The Dead's unique rhythmic character. Weir, too, was not a traditional rhythm guitarist , but tended to play unique inversions at the upper end of the Dead's sound. Weir modeled his style of playing after jazz pianist McCoy Tyner and attempted to replicate the interplay between John Coltrane and Tyner in his support, and occasional subversion, of the harmonic structure of Garcia's voice leadings. This would often influence
12155-594: The Dominos , followed by an extensive solo career that helped bring blues rock into the mainstream. Green, along with the Bluesbreaker's rhythm section Mick Fleetwood and John McVie , formed Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac , who enjoyed some of the greatest commercial success in the genre. In the late 1960s Jeff Beck , also an alumnus of the Yardbirds, moved blues rock in the direction of heavy rock with his band,
12342-570: The Garcia biography Captain Trips , author Sandy Troy states that the band was smoking the psychedelic DMT at the time. The motif of the "grateful dead" appears in folktales from a variety of cultures. The first show under the name Grateful Dead was in San Jose on December 4, 1965, at one of Ken Kesey 's Acid Tests . Scholar Michael Kaler has written that the Dead's participation in the Acid Tests
12529-507: The Gates of Dawn . Key recordings included Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow and the Doors ' self-titled debut album . These trends peaked in the 1969 Woodstock festival , which saw performances by most of the major psychedelic acts. Sgt. Pepper was later regarded as the greatest album of all time and a starting point for the album era , during which rock music transitioned from
12716-490: The Grateful Dead for 11 years until his death by narcotics overdose in July 1990, becoming the third keyboardist to die. Shortly after Mydland found his place in the early 1980s, Garcia's health began to decline. He became a frequent smoker of "Persian," a type of heroin, and he gained weight at a rapid pace. He lost his liveliness on stage, his voice was strained, and Deadheads worried for his health. After he began to curtail his opiate usage gradually in 1985, Garcia slipped into
12903-622: The Grateful Dead song " Althea ", and that soon Grateful Dead music was all he would listen to. Dead & Company toured every year (except 2020), until announcing that their summer 2023 tour, which saw Kreutzmann replaced by Lane, would be their last. However, they later clarified that it was only their last tour , and they continue to perform concerts. Since 1995, the former members of the Grateful Dead have also pursued solo music careers. Both Bob Weir & RatDog and Phil Lesh and Friends have performed many concerts and released several albums. Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann have also each released
13090-473: The Grateful Dead". The shows were performed on June 27 and 28 at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California , and on July 3, 4 and 5 at Soldier Field in Chicago . The band stated that this would be the final time that Weir, Lesh, Hart, and Kreutzmann would perform together. They were joined by Trey Anastasio of Phish on guitar, Jeff Chimenti on keyboards, and Bruce Hornsby on piano. Demand for tickets
13277-418: The Grateful Dead's live performances into their own shows. These include the nightly alteration of setlists , frequent improvisation, the blending of genres , and the allowance of taping , which would often contribute to the development of a dedicated fanbase. Bands associated with the expansion of the "jam scene" include Phish , The String Cheese Incident , Widespread Panic , Blues Traveler , moe. , and
13464-592: The Grateful Dead, "They're not the best at what they do, they're the only ones that do what they do." Academics Paul Hegarty and Martin Halliwell argued that the Grateful Dead were "not merely as precursors of prog but as essential developments of progressiveness in its early days". Often (both in performance and on recording) the Dead left room for exploratory, spacey soundscapes. Their live shows, fed by an improvisational approach to music, were different from most touring bands. While rock and roll bands often rehearse
13651-461: The Grateful Dead?'" The definition there was "the soul of a dead person, or his angel, showing gratitude to someone who, as an act of charity, arranged their burial." According to Alan Trist, director of the Grateful Dead's music publisher company Ice Nine, Garcia found the name in the Funk & Wagnalls Folklore Dictionary , when his finger landed on that phrase while playing a game of Fictionary . In
13838-471: The Jeff Beck Group . The last Yardbirds guitarist was Jimmy Page , who went on to form The New Yardbirds which rapidly became Led Zeppelin . Many of the songs on their first three albums, and occasionally later in their careers, were expansions on traditional blues songs. In America, blues rock had been pioneered in the early 1960s by guitarist Lonnie Mack , but the genre began to take off in
14025-506: The Joint " (1949), also covered by Bill Haley & His Comets in 1952; and " Rocket 88 " by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats (in fact, Ike Turner and his band the Kings of Rhythm ), recorded by Sam Phillips for Chess Records in 1951. In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music (then termed " race music ") for a multi-racial audience, and
14212-451: 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. These acts directly influenced British performers like Donovan and Fairport Convention . In 1969 Fairport Convention abandoned their mixture of American covers and Dylan-influenced songs to play traditional English folk music on electric instruments. This British folk-rock
14399-476: The Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds , were much more directly influenced by rhythm and blues and later blues music. Soon these groups were composing their own material, combining US forms of music and infusing it with a high energy beat. Beat bands tended towards "bouncy, irresistible melodies", while early British blues acts tended towards less sexually innocent, more aggressive songs, often adopting an anti-establishment stance. There was, however, particularly in
14586-588: The Searchers from Liverpool and Freddie and the Dreamers , Herman's Hermits and the Hollies from Manchester. They drew on a wide range of American influences including 1950s rock and roll, soul, rhythm and blues, and surf music, initially reinterpreting standard American tunes and playing for dancers. Bands like the Animals from Newcastle and Them from Belfast , and particularly those from London like
14773-672: The Seeds ) to near-studio musician quality (including the Knickerbockers , the Remains , and the Fifth Estate ). There were also regional variations in many parts of the country with flourishing scenes particularly in California and Texas. The Pacific Northwest states of Washington and Oregon had perhaps the most defined regional sound. The style had been evolving from regional scenes as early as 1958. "Tall Cool One" (1959) by
14960-703: The Tubes , joined as a band member, while Bruce Hornsby , who had a successful career with his band the Range, joined temporarily as a bridge to help Welnick learn songs. Both performed on keyboards and vocals—Welnick until the band's end, and Hornsby mainly from 1990 to 1992. Saxophonist Branford Marsalis played five concerts with the band between 1990 and 1994. The Grateful Dead performed its final concert on July 9, 1995, at Soldier Field in Chicago. Jerry Garcia died on August 9, 1995. A few months after Garcia's death,
15147-470: The U.S. and much of the Western world from the 1950s to the 2010s. Rock musicians in the mid-1960s began to advance the album ahead of the single as the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption, with the Beatles at the forefront of this development. Their contributions lent the genre a cultural legitimacy in the mainstream and initiated a rock-informed album era in the music industry for
15334-676: The US was becoming dominated by lightweight pop and ballads, British rock groups at clubs and local dances were developing a style more strongly influenced by blues-rock pioneers, and were starting to play with an intensity and drive seldom found in white American acts; this influence would go on to shape the future of rock music through the British Invasion . The first four years of the 1960s has traditionally been seen as an era of hiatus for rock and roll. More recently some authors have emphasised important innovations and trends in this period without which future developments would not have been possible. While early rock and roll, particularly through
15521-619: The USSR and South Africa from 1955 to 1957, influencing the globalisation of rock. Johnny O'Keefe 's 1958 record " Wild One " was one of the earliest Australian rock and roll hits. By the late 1950s, as well as in the American-influenced Western world, rock was popular in communist states such as Yugoslavia, and the USSR, as well as in regions such as South America. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, American blues music and blues rock artists, who had been surpassed by
15708-464: The United States (yet purchased in the U.S. as imports) are not eligible to chart. A long-standing policy rendering titles that are sold exclusively by specific retail outlets (such as Walmart and Starbucks ) ineligible for charting, was reversed on November 7, 2007, and took effect in the issue dated November 17, 2007. On December 13, 2014, Billboard began to include on-demand streaming and digital track sales (as measured by Nielsen SoundScan) using
15895-565: The United States by a single act for 47 years. Keith and Donna Jean Godchaux left the band in February 1979, citing artistic differences. Following the Godchauxs' departure, Brent Mydland joined as keyboardist and vocalist and was considered "the perfect fit." The Godchauxs then formed the Heart of Gold Band , before Keith died in a car accident in July 1980. Mydland was the keyboardist for
16082-708: The United States in 2003, 2004 and 2009. The band's lineups included Jimmy Herring and Warren Haynes on guitar, Jeff Chimenti and Rob Barraco on keyboards, and Joan Osborne on vocals. In 2008, members of the Dead played two concerts, called " Deadheads for Obama " and " Change Rocks ". Following the 2009 Dead tour, Lesh and Weir formed the band Furthur , which debuted in September 2009. Joining Lesh and Weir in Furthur were Chimenti (keyboards), John Kadlecik (guitar), Joe Russo (drums), Jay Lane (drums), Sunshine Becker (vocals), and Zoe Ellis (vocals). Lane and Ellis left
16269-461: The United States. It is published weekly by Billboard magazine to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists. Sometimes, a recording act is remembered for its " number ones " that outperformed all other albums during at least one week. The chart grew from a weekly top 10 list in 1956 to become a top 200 list in May 1967, acquiring its existing name in March 1992. Its previous names include
16456-751: The Wailers and " Louie Louie " by the Kingsmen (1963) are mainstream examples of the genre in its formative stages. By 1963, garage band singles were creeping into the national charts in greater numbers, including Paul Revere and the Raiders (Boise), the Trashmen (Minneapolis) and the Rivieras (South Bend, Indiana). Other influential garage bands, such as the Sonics (Tacoma, Washington), never reached
16643-527: The advent of rockabilly, saw the greatest commercial success for male and white performers, in this era, the genre was dominated by black and female artists. Rock and roll had not disappeared entirely from music at the end of the 1950s and some of its energy can be seen in the various dance crazes of the early 1960s, started by Chubby Checker 's record " The Twist " (1960). Some music historians have also pointed to important and innovative technical developments that built on rock and roll in this period, including
16830-705: The album's success, the band soon went back to the studio, and in June 1974 released another album, From the Mars Hotel . Not long after, the Dead decided to take a hiatus from live touring . The band travelled to Europe for a string of shows in September 1974, before performing a series of five concerts at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco in October 1974, and delved into various other projects. The Winterland concerts were filmed, and Garcia compiled
17017-874: The band modulates to a new tonal center . Some of the Dead's more extended jam vehicles, such as " The Other One ", " Dark Star ", and " Playing in the Band " almost exclusively make use of modulation between modes to accompany simple two-chord progressions. Following the songwriting renaissance that defined the band's early 1970s period, as reflected in the albums Workingman's Dead and American Beauty , Robert Hunter , Jerry Garcia's primary lyrical partner, frequently made use of motifs common to American folklore including trains, guns, elements, traditional musical instruments , gambling, murder, animals, alcohol, descriptions of American geography , and religious symbolism to illustrate themes involving love and loss, life and death, beauty and horror, and chaos and order. Following in
17204-439: The band in 2010, and vocalist Jeff Pehrson joined later that year. Furthur disbanded in 2014. In 2010, Hart and Kreutzmann re-formed the Rhythm Devils , and played a summer concert tour. In the fall of 2015, Hart, Kreutzmann and Weir teamed up with Chimenti, guitarist John Mayer , and bassist Oteil Burbridge to form a band called Dead & Company . Mayer recounted that in 2011 he was listening to Pandora and happened upon
17391-611: The band in-form, but commercial success did not come until Workingman's Dead and American Beauty , both released in 1970. These records largely featured the band's laid-back acoustic musicianship and more traditional song structures. With their rootsy, eclectic stylings, particularly evident on the latter two albums, the band pioneered the hybrid Americana genre. As the band and its sound matured over thirty years of touring, playing, and recording, each member's stylistic contribution became more defined, consistent, and identifiable. Garcia's lead lines were fluid, supple and spare, owing
17578-408: The band included Tom Constanten (keyboards from 1968 to 1970), John Perry Barlow (non-performing lyricist from 1971 to 1995), Keith Godchaux (keyboards and occasional vocals from 1971 to 1979), Donna Godchaux (vocals from 1972 to 1979), Brent Mydland (keyboards and vocals from 1979 to 1990), and Vince Welnick (keyboards and vocals from 1990 to 1995). Bruce Hornsby (accordion, piano, vocals)
17765-415: The band's intellectual property and merchandising rights. At Kant's recommendation, the group was one of the few rock 'n roll pioneers to retain ownership of their music masters and publishing rights . Rock music Rock is a broad genre of popular music that originated as " rock and roll " in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles from
17952-406: The band's extended, psychedelic improvisation , likely inspired by John Coltrane and other jazz artists' interest in the sitar music of Ravi Shankar . Lesh was originally a classically trained trumpet player with an extensive background in music theory , but did not tend to play traditional blues-based bass forms. He often played more melodic, symphonic and complex lines, often sounding like
18139-409: The band's live performances. The Dead's live performances featured multiple types of improvisation derived from a vast array of musical traditions. Not unlike many rock bands of their time, the majority of the Dead's songs feature a designated section in which an instrumental break occurs over the chord changes . These sections typically feature solos by Garcia that often originate as variations on
18326-479: The band's money; Kreutzmann was once again as the sole percussionist. Hart rejoined the Grateful Dead for good in October 1974. Tom "TC" Constanten was added as a second keyboardist from 1968 to 1970, to help Pigpen keep up with an increasingly psychedelic sound, while Pigpen transitioned into playing various percussion instruments and vocals. After Constanten's departure, Pigpen reclaimed his position as sole keyboardist. Less than two years later, in late 1971, Pigpen
18513-585: The biggest selling rock band of all time and they were followed into the US charts by numerous British bands. During the next two years British acts dominated their own and the US charts with Peter and Gordon , the Animals, Manfred Mann , Petula Clark , Freddie and the Dreamers, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders , Herman's Hermits, the Rolling Stones, the Troggs , and Donovan all having one or more number one singles. Other major acts that were part of
18700-461: The chart. Their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on 9 February 1964, drawing an estimated 73 million viewers (at the time a record for an American television program) is considered a milestone in American pop culture. During the week of 4 April 1964, the Beatles held 12 positions on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, including the entire top five. The Beatles went on to become
18887-462: The consolidated "Top LPs" chart debuted in 1963. In 1982, Billboard began publishing a "Midline Albums" chart (alternatively titled "Midline LPs"), which ranked older or mid-priced titles. The chart held 50 positions and was published on a biweekly (and later triweekly) basis. On May 25, 1991, Billboard premiered the " Top Pop Catalog Albums " chart, the criteria for which were albums that were more than 18 months old and had fallen below no. 100 on
19074-424: The delights and limitations of the regional , and to deal with the depredations and benefits of mass culture itself. — Robert Christgau in Christgau's Record Guide (1981) Unlike many earlier styles of popular music, rock lyrics have dealt with a wide range of themes, including romantic love, sex, rebellion against " The Establishment ", social concerns, and life styles. These themes were inherited from
19261-455: The direction the band's improvisation would take on a given night. Weir and Garcia's respective positions as rhythm and lead guitarist were not always strictly adhered to, as Weir would often incorporate short melodic phrases into his playing to support Garcia and occasionally took solos, often played with a slide . Weir's playing is characterized by a "spiky, staccato" sound. The band's two drummers, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann , developed
19448-428: The dishonesty that's rife in this business." Starting with the issue dated December 5, 2009, however, the catalog limitations – which removed albums over 18 months old that had dropped below No. 100 and had no currently running singles – for the Billboard 200 were lifted, turning the chart into an all-inclusive list of the 200 highest-selling albums in the country (essentially changing " Top Comprehensive Albums " into
19635-638: The dynamic range of the human experience (Heaven and hell, law and crime, dark and light, etc.). Hunter and Garcia's earlier, more directly psychedelic-influenced compositions often make use of surreal imagery, nonsense , and whimsey reflective of traditions in English poetry . In a retrospective, The New Yorker described Hunter's verses as "elliptical, by turns vivid and gnomic ", which were often "hippie poetry about roses and bells and dew". Grateful Dead biographer Dennis McNally has described Hunter's lyrics as creating "a non-literal hyper-Americana" weaving
19822-455: The early 1970s among existing blues-rock and psychedelic bands, as well as newly formed acts. The vibrant Canterbury scene saw acts following Soft Machine from psychedelia, through jazz influences, toward more expansive hard rock, including Caravan , Hatfield and the North , Gong , and National Health . The French group Magma around drummer Christian Vander almost single-handedly created
20009-460: The early 1970s, Robert Christgau wrote in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981): The decade is, of course, an arbitrary schema itself—time doesn't just execute a neat turn toward the future every ten years. But like a lot of artificial concepts—money, say—the category does take on a reality of its own once people figure out how to put it to work. "The '60s are over,"
20196-462: The early stages, considerable musical crossover between the two tendencies. By 1963, led by the Beatles, beat groups had begun to achieve national success in Britain, soon to be followed into the charts by the more rhythm and blues focused acts. " I Want to Hold Your Hand " was the Beatles' first number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 , spending seven weeks at the top and a total of 15 weeks on
20383-782: The electronic treatment of sound by such innovators as Joe Meek , and the elaborate production methods of the Wall of Sound pursued by Phil Spector . In the United States, rock festivals were staged in northern California on consecutive weekends in the summer of 1967: the KFRC Fantasy Fair & Magic Mountain Music Festival on Mount Tamalpais (10–11 June) and the Monterey International Pop Festival (16–17 June). Woodstock Music and Art Fair, commonly referred to as Woodstock , which
20570-581: The example set by the Beatles ' 1965 LP Rubber Soul in particular, other British rock acts released rock albums intended as artistic statements in 1966, including the Rolling Stones ' Aftermath , the Beatles' own Revolver , and the Who 's A Quick One , as well as American acts in the Beach Boys ( Pet Sounds ) and Bob Dylan ( Blonde on Blonde ). Garage rock was a raw form of rock music, particularly prevalent in North America in
20757-419: The first bands to have a Usenet newsgroup. Hal Kant was an entertainment industry attorney who specialized in representing musical groups. He spent 35 years as principal lawyer and general counsel for the Grateful Dead, a position in the group that was so strong that his business cards with the band identified his role as "Czar". Kant brought the band millions of dollars in revenue through his management of
20944-640: The first of over 2,000 concerts known to have been recorded by the band's fans was a show at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco on January 8, 1966. Later that month, the Grateful Dead played at the Trips Festival, a three-day psychedelic rock weekend party and event produced by Ken Kesey , Stewart Brand , and Ramon Sender , that, in conjunction with the Merry Pranksters , brought the nascent hippie movement together for
21131-498: The first record, and worldwide hit, for the Virgin Records label, which became a mainstay of the genre. Instrumental rock was particularly significant in continental Europe, allowing bands like Kraftwerk , Tangerine Dream , Can , Focus (band) and Faust to circumvent the language barrier. Their synthesiser-heavy " krautrock ", along with the work of Brian Eno (for a time the keyboard player with Roxy Music ), would be
21318-538: The first time. Other supporting personnel who joined early included Rock Scully , who heard of the band from Kesey and signed on as manager after meeting them at the Big Beat Acid Test; Stewart Brand , "with his side show of taped music and slides of Indian life, a multimedia presentation" at the Big Beat and then, expanded, at the Trips Festival; and Owsley Stanley , the "Acid King" whose LSD supplied
21505-462: The first week of December to the final week in November. This altered calendar allows for Billboard to calculate year-end charts and release them in time for its final print issue in the last week of December. Prior to Nielsen SoundScan, year-end charts were calculated by an inverse-point system based solely on an album's performance on the Billboard 200 (e.g., an album would be given one point for
21692-455: The folk scene. The first group to advertise themselves as psychedelic rock were the 13th Floor Elevators from Texas. The Beatles introduced many of the major elements of the psychedelic sound to audiences in this period, such as guitar feedback , the Indian sitar and backmasking sound effects . Psychedelic rock particularly took off in California's emerging music scene as groups followed
21879-418: The following year's chart as well, as their cumulative points are split between the two chart-years. In 2015, Billboard compiled a ranking of the 100 best-performing albums on the Billboard 200 over its 52 years, along with the best-performing artists. Shown below are the top 10 albums and top 10 artists over the 52-year period of the Billboard 200, through October 2015. Also shown are the artists placing
22066-403: The footage into The Grateful Dead Movie , a feature-length concert film released in 1977. In September 1975, the Dead released their eighth studio album, Blues for Allah . The band resumed touring in June 1976, playing multiple dates in small theaters, rather than the stadium shows that had become common, and had exhausted them, in 1974. That same year, they signed with Arista Records , and
22253-431: The footsteps of several American musical traditions , these songs are often confessional and feature narration from the perspective of an antihero . Critic Robert Christgau described them as "American myths" that later gave way to "the old karma-go-round". An extremely common feature in both Robert Hunter's lyrics, as well as the band's visual iconography, is the presence of dualistic and opposing imagery illustrating
22440-513: The format of rock operas and opened the door to concept albums , often telling an epic story or tackling a grand overarching theme. King Crimson 's 1969 début album, In the Court of the Crimson King , which mixed powerful guitar riffs and mellotron , with jazz and symphonic music , is often taken as the key recording in progressive rock, helping the widespread adoption of the genre in
22627-458: The impetus was soon taken up by a second wave of bands that drew their inspiration more directly from American blues , including the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds . British blues musicians of the late 1950s and early 1960s had been inspired by the acoustic playing of figures such as Lead Belly , who was a major influence on the Skiffle craze, and Robert Johnson . Increasingly they adopted
22814-399: The increase in album sales as the early 1950s format wars stabilized into market dominance by 45 RPM singles and long-playing 12-inch albums – and with 78 RPM record and long-playing 10-inch album sales decreasing dramatically – Billboard premiered a weekly "Best-Selling Popular Albums" chart on March 24, 1956. The position count varied anywhere from 10 to 30 albums. The first no. 1 album on
23001-467: The invasion included the Kinks and the Dave Clark Five . The British Invasion helped internationalize the production of rock and roll, opening the door for subsequent British (and Irish) performers to achieve international success. In America it arguably spelled the end of instrumental surf music, vocal girl groups and (for a time) the teen idols , that had dominated the American charts in
23188-402: The issue dated November 30, 2024, the number-one album on the chart is Golden Hour: Part.2 by Ateez . Billboard began an album chart in 1945. Initially only five positions long, the album chart was not published on a weekly basis, with weeks sometimes passing before it was updated. A biweekly (though with a few gaps), 15-position "Best-Selling Popular Albums" chart appeared in 1955. With
23375-517: The label were R&B oriented white rock bands that made use of jazzy horn sections, like Electric Flag , Blood, Sweat & Tears and Chicago , to become some of the most commercially successful acts of the later 1960s and the early 1970s. British acts to emerge in the same period from the blues scene, to make use of the tonal and improvisational aspects of jazz, included Nucleus and the Graham Bond and John Mayall spin-off Colosseum . From
23562-446: The late 1950s and 1960s. It dented the careers of established R&B acts like Fats Domino and Chubby Checker and even temporarily derailed the chart success of surviving rock and roll acts, including Elvis. The British Invasion also played a major part in the rise of a distinct genre of rock music, and cemented the primacy of the rock group, based on guitars and drums and producing their own material as singer-songwriters. Following
23749-410: The loudest, wildest, most electrified fusion bands from the jazz camp, but most often it describes performers coming from the rock side of the equation." Jazz-rock "...generally grew out of the most artistically ambitious rock subgenres of the late '60s and early '70s", including the singer-songwriter movement. Many early US rock and roll musicians had begun in jazz and carried some of these elements into
23936-652: The main stereo and mono album charts. Mono albums were moved to the "Essential Inventory – Mono" chart (25 positions) after spending 40 weeks on the "Mono Action Chart", and stereo albums were moved to the "Essential Inventory – Stereo" chart (20 positions) after 20 weeks on the "Stereo Action Chart". In January 1961, the "Action Charts" became "Action Albums – Stereophonic" (15 positions) and "Action Albums – Monophonic" (24 positions). Albums appeared on either chart for up to nine weeks, and were then moved to an "Essential Inventory" list of approximately 200 titles and with no numerical ranking. This list continued to be published until
24123-476: The many recordings which have been suggested as "the first rock and roll record ". Contenders include " Strange Things Happening Every Day " by Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1944); " That's All Right " by Arthur Crudup (1946), which was later covered by Elvis Presley in 1954; " The House of Blue Lights " by Ella Mae Morse and Freddie Slack (1946); Wynonie Harris ' " Good Rocking Tonight " (1948); Goree Carter 's "Rock Awhile" (1949); Jimmy Preston 's " Rock
24310-674: The mid-1950s by white singers such as Carl Perkins , Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly and with the greatest commercial success, Elvis Presley . Hispanic and Latino American movements in rock and roll, which would eventually lead to the success of Latin rock and Chicano rock within the US, began to rise in the Southwest ; with rock and roll standard musician Ritchie Valens and even those within other heritage genres, such as Al Hurricane along with his brothers Tiny Morrie and Baby Gaby as they began combining rock and roll with country- western within traditional New Mexico music . In addition,
24497-609: The mid-1960s the Left Banke , the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys, had pioneered the inclusion of harpsichords , wind , and string sections on their recordings to produce a form of Baroque rock and can be heard in singles like Procol Harum 's " A Whiter Shade of Pale " (1967), with its Bach -inspired introduction. The Moody Blues used a full orchestra on their album Days of Future Passed (1967) and subsequently created orchestral sounds with synthesizers. Classical orchestration, keyboards, and synthesizers were
24684-479: The mid-1960s and so called because of the perception that it was rehearsed in the suburban family garage. Garage rock songs often revolved around the traumas of high school life, with songs about "lying girls" and unfair social circumstances being particularly common. The lyrics and delivery tended to be more aggressive than was common at the time, often with growled or shouted vocals that dissolved into incoherent screaming. They ranged from crude one-chord music (like
24871-435: The mid-1960s as acts developed a sound similar to British blues musicians. Key acts included Paul Butterfield (whose band acted like Mayall's Bluesbreakers in Britain as a starting point for many successful musicians), Canned Heat , the early Jefferson Airplane , Janis Joplin , Johnny Winter , the J. Geils Band and Jimi Hendrix with his power trios , the Jimi Hendrix Experience (which included two British members, and
25058-401: The mid-1960s onwards, rock music often used the verse–chorus structure derived from blues and folk music, but there has been considerable variation from this model. Critics have stressed the eclecticism and stylistic diversity of rock. Because of its complex history and its tendency to borrow from other musical and cultural forms, it has been argued that "it is impossible to bind rock music to
25245-489: The mid-1960s, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. It has its roots in rock and roll, a style that drew directly from the genres of blues , rhythm and blues , and country music . Rock also drew strongly from genres such as electric blues and folk , and incorporated influences from jazz and other musical styles. For instrumentation, rock is centered on the electric guitar , usually as part of
25432-487: The midst of a solo depending upon the chord changes played underneath, though he nearly always finished phrases by landing on the chord-tones . Jerry most frequently played in the Mixolydian mode , though his solos and phrases often incorporated notes from the Dorian and major/minor pentatonic scales . Particularly in the late 1960s, Garcia occasionally incorporated melodic lines derived from Indian ragas into
25619-407: The most albums on the overall "all-time" top 100 album list. Source: Source: Source: List of acts with the most weeks at number one on the Billboard 200 since August 17, 1963. List of acts who reached number one on the Billboard 200 with a new album in consecutive calendar years since August 17, 1963. The following artists are the only ones with 30 or more top-10 albums: Note: As
25806-481: The musician and writer Lenny Kaye , the music of the Grateful Dead "touches on ground that most other groups don't even know exists." For the range of their influences and the structure of their live performances, the Grateful Dead are considered "the pioneering godfathers of the jam band world". The Grateful Dead was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area during the rise of the counterculture of
25993-550: The new contract produced Terrapin Station in July 1977. The band's tour in the spring of that year is held in high regard by its fans, and its concert of May 8 at Cornell University is often considered one of the best performances of its career. Their September 1977 concert at Raceway Park in Old Bridge Township, New Jersey was attended by 107,019 people and held the record for largest-ticketed concert in
26180-414: The new music genre zeuhl with their first albums in the early 1970s. Greater commercial success was enjoyed by Pink Floyd, who also moved away from psychedelia after the departure of Syd Barrett in 1968, with The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), seen as a masterpiece of the genre, becoming one of the best-selling albums of all time. There was an emphasis on instrumental virtuosity, with Yes showcasing
26367-608: The new music. In Britain the subgenre of blues rock, and many of its leading figures, like Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce of the Eric Clapton -fronted band Cream , had emerged from the British jazz scene. Often highlighted as the first true jazz-rock recording is the only album by the relatively obscure New York–based the Free Spirits with Out of Sight and Sound (1966). The first group of bands to self-consciously use
26554-753: The new weekly list was Belafonte by Harry Belafonte . The chart was renamed "Best-Selling Pop Albums" later in 1956, and then "Best-Selling Pop LPs" in 1957. Beginning on May 25, 1959, Billboard split the ranking into two charts: "Best-Selling Stereophonic LPs" for stereo albums (30 positions) and "Best-Selling Monophonic LPs" for mono albums (50 positions). These were renamed "Stereo Action Charts" (30 positions) and "Mono Action Charts" (40 positions), respectively, in 1960. In January 1961, they became "Action Albums – Stereophonic" (15 positions) and "Action Albums – Monophonic" (25 positions), and three months later, they became "Top LPs – Stereo" (50 positions) and "Top LPs – Monaural" (150 positions). On August 17, 1963,
26741-571: The next several decades. By the late 1960s " classic rock " period, a few distinct rock music subgenres had emerged, including hybrids like blues rock , folk rock , country rock , Southern rock , raga rock , and jazz rock , which contributed to the development of psychedelic rock , influenced by the countercultural psychedelic and hippie scene . New genres that emerged included progressive rock , which extended artistic elements, heavy metal , which emphasized an aggressive thick sound, and glam rock , which highlighted showmanship and visual style. In
26928-471: The psychedelic rock and the Canterbury scenes came Soft Machine, who, it has been suggested, produced one of the artistically successfully fusions of the two genres. Perhaps the most critically acclaimed fusion came from the jazz side of the equation, with Miles Davis , particularly influenced by the work of Hendrix, incorporating rock instrumentation into his sound for the album Bitches Brew (1970). It
27115-800: The record for most Top-40 albums on the Billboard 200 chart. Rolling Stone ranked the Grateful Dead number 57 on its 2011 list of the " 100 Greatest Artists of All Time ". The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, and a recording of their May 8, 1977 performance at Cornell University 's Barton Hall was added to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress in 2012 for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2024, Weir, Lesh, Kreutzmann, and Hart were recognized as part of
27302-653: The regional hit " Let's Go Trippin ' " in 1961 and launched the surf music craze, following up with songs like " Misirlou " (1962). Like Dale and his Del-Tones , most early surf bands were formed in Southern California, including the Bel-Airs , the Challengers , and Eddie & the Showmen . The Chantays scored a top ten national hit with " Pipeline " in 1963 and probably the best-known surf tune
27489-409: The remaining members of the Grateful Dead decided to disband. Since that time, there have been a number of reunions by the surviving members involving various combinations of musicians. Additionally, the former members have also begun or continued individual projects. In 1998, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, and Mickey Hart, along with several other musicians, formed a band called the Other Ones , and performed
27676-448: The rise of rock and roll in the US, found new popularity in the UK, visiting with successful tours. Lonnie Donegan 's 1955 hit " Rock Island Line " was a major influence and helped to develop the trend of skiffle music groups throughout the country, many of which, including John Lennon 's Quarrymen (later the Beatles ), moved on to play rock and roll. While former rock and roll market in
27863-475: The romantic concept of art as artistic expression, original and sincere". In the new millennium, the term rock has occasionally been used as a blanket term including forms like pop music, reggae music , soul music , and even hip hop , which it has been influenced with but often contrasted through much of its history. Christgau has used the term broadly to refer to popular and semipopular music that caters to his sensibility as "a rock-and-roller", including
28050-522: The same era, and by percussion produced from a drum kit that combines drums and cymbals. This trio of instruments has often been complemented by the inclusion of other instruments, particularly keyboards such as the piano, the Hammond organ , and the synthesizer. The basic rock instrumentation was derived from the basic blues band instrumentation (prominent lead guitar, second chordal instrument, bass, and drums). A group of musicians performing rock music
28237-555: The second half of the 1970s, punk rock reacted by producing stripped-down, energetic social and political critiques. Punk was an influence in the 1980s on new wave , post-punk and eventually alternative rock . From the 1990s, alternative rock began to dominate rock music and break into the mainstream in the form of grunge , Britpop , and indie rock . Further fusion subgenres have since emerged, including pop-punk , electronic rock , rap rock , and rap metal . Some movements were conscious attempts to revisit rock's history, including
28424-412: The shifting lineup of the Other Ones also included guitarists Mark Karan , Steve Kimock , and Jimmy Herring , keyboardists Bruce Hornsby , Jeff Chimenti , and Rob Barraco , saxophonist Dave Ellis , drummer John Molo , bassist Alphonso Johnson , and vocalist Susan Tedeschi . In 2003, the Other Ones, still including Weir, Lesh, Hart, and Kreutzmann, changed their name to the Dead . The Dead toured
28611-546: The singles format to albums and achieved cultural legitimacy in the mainstream. Led by the Beatles in the mid-1960s, rock musicians advanced the LP as the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption, initiating a rock-informed album era in the music industry for the next several decades. Progressive rock, a term sometimes used interchangeably with art rock , moved beyond established musical formulas by experimenting with different instruments, song types, and forms. From
28798-413: The skills of both guitarist Steve Howe and keyboard player Rick Wakeman , while Emerson, Lake & Palmer were a supergroup who produced some of the genre's most technically demanding work. Jethro Tull and Genesis both pursued very different, but distinctly English, brands of music. Renaissance , formed in 1969 by ex-Yardbirds Jim McCarty and Keith Relf, evolved into a high-concept band featuring
28985-473: The song's melody , but go on to create dynamic phrases that resolve by returning to the chord-tones. Not unlike traditional improvisational jazz , they may occasionally feature several solos by multiple instruments within an undecided number of bars , such as a keyboardist, before returning to the melody. At the same time, Dead shows almost always feature a more collective, modal approach to improvisation that typically occurs during segues between songs before
29172-460: The stereo album chart; it was number one for 12 weeks on the mono album chart. ‡ The South Pacific soundtrack ran for 28 weeks at number one on the stereo album chart; it was number one for three weeks on the mono album chart. § This is the Blue Hawaii album's run on the mono album chart; it was number one for four weeks on the stereo album chart. Notes: Here are the albums to complete
29359-428: The stereo and mono charts were combined into a 150-position chart called "Top LPs". On April 1, 1967, the chart was expanded to 175 positions, and then finally to 200 positions on May 13, 1967. In February 1972, the album chart's title was changed to "Top LPs & Tape"; in 1984, it was retitled "Top 200 Albums"; in 1985, it was retitled again to "Top Pop Albums"; in 1991, it became the " Billboard 200 Top Albums"; and it
29546-615: The three-octave voice of Annie Haslam . Most British bands depended on a relatively small cult following, but a handful, including Pink Floyd, Genesis, and Jethro Tull, managed to produce top ten singles at home and break the American market. The American brand of progressive rock varied from the eclectic and innovative Frank Zappa , Captain Beefheart and Blood, Sweat & Tears , to more pop rock orientated bands like Boston , Foreigner , Kansas , Journey , and Styx . These, beside British bands Supertramp and ELO , all demonstrated
29733-401: The top 10 for 5 consecutive weeks. Note: Had the Billboard 200 allowed catalog albums to chart previous to December 5, 2009, Michael Jackson would have claimed six simultaneous top 10 titles for two consecutive weeks and The Beatles would have claimed five simultaneous top 10 titles that year. † The West Side Story soundtrack ran for 53 weeks at number one on
29920-550: The tracking week begins on Friday (to coincide with the Global Release Day of the music industry ) and ends on Thursday. A new chart is published the following Tuesday, post dated to the Saturday of that week, four days later. The chart's streaming schedule is also tracked from Friday to Thursday. Digital downloads of albums are included in Billboard 200 tabulation. Albums that are not licensed for retail sale in
30107-438: The traditional Billboard 200 methodology but is based exclusively on SoundScan's sales data. Beginning on January 18, 2020, Billboard incorporated video and audio data from YouTube , along with visual plays from streaming services like Apple Music , Spotify, Tidal and Vevo , into the Billboard 200. The change has also impacted Billboard 's genre-specific album charts. Billboard 's "chart year" runs from
30294-782: The use of electric guitars. The Grateful Dead's early music (in the mid-1960s) was part of the process of establishing what " psychedelic music " was, but theirs was essentially a "street party" form of it. They developed their "psychedelic" playing as a result of meeting Ken Kesey in Palo Alto, California , and subsequently becoming the house band for the Acid Tests he staged. They did not fit their music to an established category such as pop rock, blues, folk rock, or country & western. Individual tunes within their repertoire could be identified under one of these stylistic labels, but overall their music drew on all of these genres and, more frequently, melded several of them. Bill Graham said of
30481-409: The vehicle for cultural and social movements, leading to major subcultures including mods and rockers in the U.K., the hippie movement and the wider Western counterculture movement that spread out from San Francisco in the U.S. in the 1960s, the latter of which continues to this day. Similarly, 1970s punk culture spawned the goth , punk, and emo subcultures. Inheriting the folk tradition of
30668-480: The work of the Beach Boys , formed in 1961 in Southern California. Their early albums included both instrumental surf rock (among them covers of music by Dick Dale) and vocal songs, drawing on rock and roll and doo wop and the close harmonies of vocal pop acts like the Four Freshmen . The Beach Boys first chart hit, " Surfin ' " in 1961 reached the Billboard top 100 and helped make the surf music craze
30855-406: The world, except as a new brand of painkiller ... In the '70s the powerful took over, as rock industrialists capitalized on the national mood to reduce potent music to an often reactionary species of entertainment—and to transmute rock's popular base from the audience to market." Billboard 200 The Billboard 200 is a record chart ranking the 200 most popular music albums and EPs in
31042-432: The youngest original member of the group, played rhythm guitar . Ron "Pigpen" McKernan played keyboards , percussion , and harmonica until shortly before his death in 1973 at the age of 27 . Garcia, Weir, and McKernan shared the lead vocal duties more or less equally; Lesh sang only a few leads, but his tenor was a key part of the band's three-part vocal harmonies. Bill Kreutzmann played drums , and in September 1967
31229-582: Was John Mayall ; his band, the Bluesbreakers , included Eric Clapton (after Clapton's departure from the Yardbirds) and later Peter Green . Particularly significant was the release of Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton (Beano) album (1966), considered one of the seminal British blues recordings and the sound of which was much emulated in both Britain and the United States. Eric Clapton went on to form supergroups Cream, Blind Faith , and Derek and
31416-681: Was 1963's " Wipe Out ", by the Surfaris , which hit number 2 and number 10 on the Billboard charts in 1965. Surf rock was also popular in Europe during this time, with the British group the Shadows scoring hits in the early 1960s with instrumentals such as " Apache " and " Kon-Tiki ", while Swedish surf group the Spotnicks saw success in both Sweden and Britain. Surf music achieved its greatest commercial success as vocal pop music, particularly
31603-613: Was a touring member from 1990 to 1992, as well as a guest with the band on occasion before and after the tours. After Garcia's death in 1995, former members of the band, along with other musicians, toured as The Other Ones in 1998, 2000, and 2002, and as The Dead in 2003, 2004, and 2009. In 2015, the four surviving core members marked the band's 50th anniversary in a series of concerts in Santa Clara, California , and Chicago that were billed as their last performances together. There have also been several spin-offs featuring one or more core members, such as Dead & Company , Furthur ,
31790-473: Was a major influence on subsequent rock-influenced jazz artists, including Herbie Hancock , Chick Corea and Weather Report . The genre began to fade in the late 1970s, as a mellower form of fusion began to take its audience, but acts like Steely Dan , Frank Zappa and Joni Mitchell recorded significant jazz-influenced albums in this period, and it has continued to be a major influence on rock music. Reflecting on developments that occurred in rock music in
31977-575: Was announced that Martin Scorsese would produce a documentary film about the Grateful Dead, to be directed by Amir Bar-Lev . David Lemieux supervised the musical selection, and Weir, Hart, Kreutzmann, and Lesh agreed to new interviews for the film. Bar-Lev's four-hour documentary, titled Long Strange Trip , was released in 2017. Barlow died in 2018 and Hunter in 2019. Lesh died in 2024. In 2015, Weir, Lesh, Kreutzmann, and Hart reunited for five concerts called "Fare Thee Well: Celebrating 50 Years of
32164-424: Was continued in the 1970s by figures such as George Thorogood and Pat Travers , but, particularly on the British scene (except perhaps for the advent of groups such as Status Quo and Foghat who moved towards a form of high energy and repetitive boogie rock ), bands became focused on heavy metal innovation, and blues rock began to slip out of the mainstream. By the 1960s, the scene that had developed out of
32351-511: Was crucial both to the development of their improvisational vocabulary and to their bonding as a band, with the group having set out to foster an intra-band musical telepathy. Kaler has further pointed out that the Dead's pursuit of a new improvisatory rock language in 1965 chronologically coincided with that same goal's adoption by Jefferson Airplane , Pink Floyd and the Velvet Underground . Earlier demo tapes have survived, but
32538-575: Was founded in Britain), and Band of Gypsys , whose guitar virtuosity and showmanship would be among the most emulated of the decade. Blues rock bands from the southern states, like the Allman Brothers Band , Lynyrd Skynyrd , and ZZ Top , incorporated country elements into their style to produce the distinctive genre Southern rock . Early blues rock bands often emulated jazz, playing long, involved improvisations, which would later be
32725-673: Was given its current title of the " Billboard 200" on March 14, 1992. From the end of 1970 to 1985, Billboard also printed a " Bubbling Under the Top LPs " albums chart paired with the " Bubbling Under the Hot 100 " singles chart, which listed albums that had not yet charted on what was then the "Top LPs & Tape" chart. In 1960, Billboard began concurrently publishing album charts that ranked sales of older or mid-priced titles. These "Essential Inventory" charts were divided by stereo and mono albums, and featured titles that had already appeared on
32912-457: Was held from August 15 to 18, 1969 on Max Yasgur 's dairy farm in Bethel, New York , was one of the largest music festivals in history and became synonymous with the counterculture of the 1960s . The instrumental rock and roll of performers such as Duane Eddy , Link Wray and the Ventures was further developed by Dick Dale , who added distinctive "wet" reverb , rapid alternate picking, and Middle Eastern and Mexican influences. He produced
33099-411: Was joined by a second drummer, New York City native Mickey Hart , who also played a wide variety of other percussion instruments . 1970 included tour dates in New Orleans , where the band performed at The Warehouse for two nights. On January 31, 1970, the local police raided their hotel on Bourbon Street and arrested and charged 19 people with possession of various drugs. The second night's concert
33286-411: Was joined by another keyboardist, Keith Godchaux , who played grand piano alongside Pigpen's Hammond B-3 organ . In early 1972, Keith's wife, Donna Jean Godchaux , joined the Grateful Dead as a backing vocalist. Following the Grateful Dead's " Europe '72 " tour, Pigpen's health had deteriorated to the point that he could no longer tour with the band. His final concert appearance was June 17, 1972, at
33473-455: Was performed as scheduled after bail was posted. Eventually, the charges were dismissed, except those against sound engineer Owsley Stanley , who was already facing charges in California for manufacturing LSD. This event was later memorialized in the lyrics of “ Truckin' ", a single from American Beauty that reached number 64 on the charts. Hart took time off from the band in February 1971, after his father, an accountant, absconded with much of
33660-496: Was released on Warner Brothers in 1967. On May 3, 1968, the band played a free concert at Columbia University during the anti–Vietnam War student protests during which students occupied several campus buildings. In order to play, the band, equipment and all, had to be “smuggled” on campus in the back of a bread delivery truck. “We were already jamming away before the security and police could stop us.” Classically trained trumpeter Phil Lesh performed on bass guitar . Bob Weir ,
33847-411: 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. Folk-rock reached its peak of commercial popularity in the period 1967–68, before many acts moved off in
34034-548: Was taking place globally in the aftermath of the Second World War . Cliff Richard is credited with one of the first rock and roll hits outside of North America with " Move It " (1959), effectively ushering in the sound of British rock . Several artists, most prominently Tommy Steele from the UK, found success with covers of major American rock and roll hits before the recordings could spread internationally, often translating them into local languages where appropriate. Steele in particular toured Britain, Scandinavia, Australia,
34221-421: Was the Mantra-Rock Dance , a musical event held on January 29, 1967, at the Avalon Ballroom by the San Francisco Hare Krishna temple. The Grateful Dead performed at the event along with the Hare Krishna founder Bhaktivedanta Swami , poet Allen Ginsberg , bands Moby Grape and Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin , donating proceeds to the temple. The band's first LP, The Grateful Dead ,
34408-439: Was the first commercially successful folk song to be recorded with rock and roll instrumentation and the Beatles " I'm a Loser " (1964), arguably the first Beatles song to be influenced directly by Dylan. 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. With members who had been part of the café-based folk scene in Los Angeles,
34595-426: Was the last member to join the Warlocks before they changed their name to Grateful Dead, replacing Dana Morgan Jr., who had played bass for a few gigs. Drummer Mickey Hart and non-performing lyricist Robert Hunter joined in 1967. With the exception of McKernan, who died in 1973, and Hart, who left the band from 1971 to 1974, the core of the band stayed together for its entire 30-year history. Other official members of
34782-430: Was the major force in American record sales and crooners , such as Eddie Fisher , Perry Como , and Patti Page , who had dominated the previous decade of popular music, found their access to the pop charts significantly curtailed. Rock and roll has been seen as leading to a number of distinct subgenres, including rockabilly, combining rock and roll with "hillbilly" country music, which was usually played and recorded in
34969-527: Was very high. The concerts were simulcast via various media. The Chicago shows have been released as a box set of CDs and DVDs. The Grateful Dead formed during the era when bands such as the Beatles , the Beach Boys and the Rolling Stones were dominating the airwaves. "The Beatles were why we turned from a jug band into a rock 'n' roll band", said Bob Weir. "What we saw them doing was impossibly attractive. I couldn't think of anything else more worth doing." Former folk-scene star Bob Dylan had recently put out
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