1970s Rock Genres

Arena rock

The Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Who began the practice of live performances for large audiences in stadiums and arenas. The growing popularity of metal and progressive rock led to more bands selling out large venues. Entertainment companies marketed a series of arena rock bands, such as Queen, Pink Floyd, Genesis, and later Boston, Styx, Foreigner, and Journey. The "arena rock" movement became a precursor to the power pop of future decades.

Soft rock

Rock music had a short-lived "bubble gum pop" era, of soft rock, including groups such as The Partridge Family, The Cowsills, The Osmonds, and The Archies. Other bands or artists added more orchestration and created a popular genre known as soft rock. Performers included Manilow, Olivia Newton-John, and Eric Carmen, and groups such as Bread, The Carpenters, Electric Light Orchestra, and England Dan & John Ford Coley. Other well-known artists performing soft rock included Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand.

Classic rock emerging
Meanwhile, groups such as Queen, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Aerosmith, REO Speedwagon, ZZ Top, Van Halen, Golden Earring and The Rolling Stones as well as such solo artists as Peter Frampton were being heard mainly on AM radio and sharing the charts with their soft rock counterparts. These bands are often referred to as hard rock.

For example, Frampton's 1976 live album Frampton Comes Alive, rapidly becoming the best-selling live album of all time, had spawned a number of singles that hit the Top Ten charts, such as "Show Me The Way" and "Baby, I Love Your Way". Aerosmith's rock anthem "Walk This Way", among others, were becoming popular with teens.

Rock crosses borders

In the early 1970s, Mexican singer Rigo Tovar took the musical elements of rock melody and blues and fused it with cumbia, and tropical music. He was one of the early Mexican artists to use the rock and roll image (e.g. long hair, sunglasses, glam outfits, and tattoos). He also started to use electric guitars, synthesizers and electronic effects that were previously little-used in Mexican music. In his live performances he covered songs by Ray Charles and the Beatles