What is the difference between "Rock" and "Rock & Roll"?

[Dr Fate]

I'll give it a shot:

Rock & Roll is youthful, primal, life-affirming & sexual. Rock & Roll can be loud,masculine & macho, but it doesnt always have to be. You dont have to have a record contract to play rock & roll- you just have to know what it is.

"Rock" is always macho & masculine. "Rock" doesnt have to sexual at all-just aggressive. It doesnt have to be youthful either- it can be a bunch of sweaty fat guys with long beards. You have to have a record contract and be played on a corporate radio station before anyone calls you "rock."

Anyway, it's Friday & I feel like splitting hairs....

Is there a difference between "Rock" and "Rock & Roll" or am I just being a music snob?

There are no wrong answers! Your take?

[StrongBad]

1. I have a different take

Rock n' Roll is heavily influenced by and can heavily mimic a typical blues-based I IV V progression. There can also be a heavy amount of country influence depending on the artist or context.

Rock, however has strong influece from folk and often deviates from the above structure, sometimes markedly. It often uses similar instumrents as Rock n' Roll i.e. guitars, bass, drums, and keyboards, but does not follow the traditionalist songwriting pattern of Rock n' Roll.

There's my take.

[Dr Fate]

2. Not bad- seems to describe Rockabilly/Punk/Garage vs. Singer-Song-writer.

n/t

[mitchum]

11. Yes

[billyskank]

3. Backbeat.

Rock and roll has emphasis on the back beat: one TWO three FOUR. Rock has the emphasis more on the downbeat: ONE two THREE four.

[Dr Fate]

4. Could you give me an example of a well-known "Rock" song with that beat?

n/t

[billyskank]

7. Almost all of them.

Take Paradise City by Guns 'n' Roses as an example. (I don't see Rabrrrrrr around, I think it's safe). Like practically all rock, it has heavy emphasis with bass drum on the first beat, and equal emphasis with snare on the third beat.

By contrast, old rock & roll songs (think Shake, Rattle and Roll, Rock Around The Clock, that sort of thing) would usually have snare drums emphasising the second and fourth 'back' beats giving it a light, bouncy feel, without much emphasis on the first and third 'down' beats.

That is my take on it, seen from the perspective of someone learning to dance the jive.

[Dr Fate]

8. Thanks- I like your explanation. n/t

n/t

[Amerigo Vespucci]

5. Rolling Stones = "Rock," Beatles = "Rock & Roll"

And my cutoff point for the Stones is "Exile on Main Street."

[Dr Fate]

6. I would agree that some post Exile Stones should be called "Rock"...

...but I disagree that Beatles & Brian Jones era Stones are not both Rock & Roll...

[Amerigo Vespucci]

9. The Jones Stones drank from the same well as the Beatles, I agree...

...I think the difference is that Keith probably wanted "rock" and Mick wanted "rock & roll"...

The greatest Stones tracks are the ones reeking of attitude. "Rock" is attitude music. "Rock & Roll" is populist. In the tiny little window of the Mick Taylor Stones, they were a ROCK band. "Sticky Fingers" and "Exile" are probably two of the most dangerous albums ever released. With "Goats Head Soup," they were looking for a hit. With "Only Rock & Roll," they found it. Then Mick Taylor left the band, and the Stones spent their career up through the present as a "Rock & Roll" band.

:toast:

[HuskerDU]

23. I think of it more as early Beatles = rock-n-roll, and post-

Revolver Beatles = rock music. To be fair, Let it Be contained some rock-n-roll.

I am very biased but if the Rolling Stones fart, I call it rock-n-roll. They have done wrong, but still can do no wrong in my book if that makes any sense!

[WinkyDink]

10. R&R = Melodic; can dance to; non-aggressive lyrics. Rock = Not.

[Tom Kitten]

12. this is a good question and great topic...

I think rock evolved out of rock and roll in the mid sixties with the introduction of external influences such as middle eastern music, atonality, folk, free form jazz, symphonic music...As youth culture embraced new experiences so did their music...


Parallels can possibly be seen in the transition from swing to bebop to freeform jazz, or r&b to soul to funk to hip-hop, I suppose...

Even the transition from baroque to classical to romantic to the twentieth century avant garde, for that matter...

[mitchum]

17. I agree

[enigmatic]

13. This:

Rock:



Rock N Roll:

[dawgmom]

14. Well...at the risk of being crude...

...I will give you the definition that an old bandmate once used.

Rock and Roll makes you want to dance.
Rock makes you want to fuck.
:blush:

[Tom Kitten]

16. especially prog rock!

:)
Nobody could resist my Gentle Giant "Octopus" or "Free Hand" albums...

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

15. It's attitude. Pure attitude.

Rock on!

[old mark]

18. Dr F: I respect your musical opinion, Question- I recently became

very interested in the Ramones, learned to play a lot of Johnny Ramone guitar, not as easy as it looks.
I find them a real mix of R&R and a little R.
Your opinion of the style and the Ramones perse?

Thanks - sorry if this is OT.

mark

[harmonicon]

20. I'd say the Ramones are pure Rock 'n' Roll

I think they were a sort of revival of the music, which had been destroyed by "rock" for 5 - 10 years before they came around. And you're right about those Ramones guitar parts. I've played music forever, but just recently started playing guitar, and Johnny Ramone's parts are really tricky in a strange sort of way - all of that very fast shifting between different bar chords, muting/not muting, etc. I read an interview with him years ago, where he said that on recordings, he would overdub multiple guitar tracks, and then make a version of the song to play live that combined elements from those different parts.

[old mark]

24. I have been wtching old live Ramones performances on

Youtube...His hands are so fast you can't see them, many times faster than the studio recordings, and what he is playing is really fine work.
FWIW, Rolling Stone rated Johnny Ramone #16 in their all time guitarists list, right after Carlos Santana and before Jack White.

To me, they saved R&R from disco poisoning in the 1970's.

mark

[mitchum]

28. I never considered the Ramones to be rockandroll or rock...

but rather pop instead

[harmonicon]

29. I've never thought of "pop" as a genre

I just think "pop" means popular music.

[mitchum]

30. So do I, but "pop"practitioners would disagree with us

I consider all music available in the marketplace to be pop whether it's Brian Eno or Ornette Coleman or Britney Spears or whoever

When the Ramones started they considered The Bay City Rollers to be their peers/competition

[mitchum]

27. He was still no Johnny Thunders or Steves Jones, though

Ramone's playing was somewhat...for lack of a better word...sexless...in comparison to those two

[RadiationTherapy]

19. What's the difference between Yang and Yin and Yang?

It lacks the flow. It lacks the roll. It's the drums without the dancing. Blecgh.

[harmonicon]

21. Jimmy Page killed Rock and Roll

That's how I see it. Rock and Roll is fun, accessible, proletarian music. The focus was on ensemble play (working within a certain style), song writing, and something that I think I would say involves something like "feeling" or "soul" over any kind of studio perfectionism. Rock and Roll, I guess, is a live music inspired by living folk traditions, where as Rock(!) is a studio-based music, brought to us by corporations for the purpose of generating profit. One is played in clubs, parties and dance halls, the other is played in stadiums, arenas, and - later in life - county fairs.

Wanking: Rock and Roll is not about wanking, Rock is. Great Rock and Roll (lead) guitarists: Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Brian Jones, Jimmie Hendrix, Syd Barrett, Mick Jones, Robert Smith, etc. - people who played exciting music which drove the songs, and were integral to them. Famous "ROCK" guitarists: Jimmy Page, Eddie Van Halen, whoever other shitty wanking guitarists are that are all about making some lame facial expression while they play a million notes a minute no matter what the song is. Amplification is also part of this. The Rock and Roll guitarist will play through an amp loud enough to get attention and make the music exciting. Rock guitarists will play through a stadium full of amplifiers loud enough to kill a duck at 500 yards.

The same could go for drummers. Great rock and roll drummer: Ringo Starr - ROCK drummer: Neil Pert.

Some notable artists in Rock and Roll: Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Cuck Berry, Bo Diddley, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Jimmie Hendrix, Pink Floyd (pre Dark Side of the Moon), The Ramones, The Clash, The Cure, My Bloody Valentine

Notable Rock people and things: stadiums, date-rape, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, Bon Jovi, monster trucks, Van Halen, Pink Floyd (post Dark Side of the Moon), U2.

Also, one style has songs about wizards, dragons, viking gods, sex with groupies, and the troubles of being incredibly wealthy. I'll let you decide which that is.

Another important thing: Rock and Roll is enjoyed people the world over, regardless of religion, race, or creed. Rock is performed, and listened to, by white people, almost exclusively.

[Bossy Monkey]

22. One lives long, the other is here to stay, is loved by Joan Jett

and in its old-time form, liked by Bob Seger.

Rock is the generic term for nearly all of the pop music from about the mid-50s to the mid-80s. Rock-and-roll is the term for the same music but only through maybe the mid-60s. I don't really have the kind of ear to be able to discern the differences among backbeats, time signatures or minor chord use between, say, Chuck Berry and the Buffalo Springfield, but suspect that it was more a matter of critics, record labels, Billboard and especially the public generally becoming tired of adding the "& roll" when "rock" seemed to sum it up sufficiently.

[Tikki]

25. I'm a fanatical psychobilly music fan and no one would ever call...

psychobilly...Rock...that I know for sure.


Tikki

[Ivan Sputnik]

26. The fifties and the sixties

[mitchum]

31. Rockandroll has many fathers, but Bob Dylan invented rock music

Amazing that a folkie did that, but then again, he is Bob Dylan