His forlorn falsetto/ tenor is the antithesis of the ‘rock snarl’ and draws a firm line between genre and sub-genre styles and mores.
Guitar Man, (a sentimental ditty about a journeyman Guitarist past his glory days), looks exactly like a Rock song until David Gates starts singing. The band, a staple of easy listening radio, struggled with egos and eventually called it quits in the late 70s, reforming from time to time to shore up the finances with reunion concerts and such. Their 1973 compilation album, The Best Of Bread, sold 6 million copies on release and has sold a whole more since. Under the tutelage of chief songwriter David Gates, Bread scored 13 US Top 40 Hits between 19. With a laid back beat and emphasis on melody, Californian band Bread were the quintessential Soft Rock act. Less guitar driven, more keyboard and melody orientated. Peter McIlwaine- Broadcaster and Educator: Soft Rock is Rock with the hard edges taken off. Soft Rock is first and foremost an American musical movement with its hey-day in the 1970s and 80s, an AM Radio format concerned with themes of sex, love and romance. It can sound like Rock, it can taste like Pop, but it remains something different with a vibe all its own. It fuses pop and with subtle infusions of rock. Soft Rock has a definitive core surrounded by fuzzy outlines where it touches other styles in that strange murky place where musical ideas mix and blend. Over beers with Musician Matthew Bannister I poised the question:Īfter some thought Matthew replied: “Soft Rock is pop music for adults.” Popular music emerged from the 60s innocence lost but altogether more knowing and self-aware and by the end of the decade Rock and Roll’s bad little brother Rock was flexing its muscles and giving birth to a diverse wealth of sub-genres that included the burgeoning Soft Rock scene.
Rebellious fantasy with a hint of danger, it was mostly dance and make-out music for kids that by the early 1960s had gone from shouting ‘Golly Gee’ to whispering ‘Fuck You’. By the mid-1950s it was firmly established as a stand-alone genre.
Rock and Roll evolved from the ‘white hot mix’ of sounds that defined the American musical landscape through 1940s- swing, jazz, country and blues.
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