List of music artists and bands from London

Last updated

London has contributed much to the history and development of popular music, from the British Rock revolution of the 1960s to the punk rock explosion of the 1970s to the underground electronic and dance sounds of recent years. The city is often cited as the birthplace of classic rock and the popular music industry. Several genres of rock and pop originated in London throughout the 1960s to the 1990s including British blues, psychedelia, mod, prog, glam, hard rock, punk rock, New Romantic and Britpop. [1] This page includes bands formed and based in London. [2] Below is a list of music artists and bands from London. These are separated by genre. For Drum and Bass and UK Funky House, there are separate entries on Wikipedia.

Contents

Pop

Rock

Famous London-born or -based guitarists

Alternative rock

Punk and ska

Metal

R&B, soul and reggae

Dance

Rap

Folk and singer-songwriter

House and electronic

Synth-pop

Related Research Articles

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 the mid-1960s, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, a style that drew directly from the genres of blues, rhythm and blues, and from 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 has centered on the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with electric bass guitar, drums, and one or more singers. Usually, rock is song-based music with a 4
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 the U.S. and much of the Western world from the 1950s to the 2010s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeff Beck</span> English guitarist (1944–2023)

Geoffrey Arnold Beck was an English guitarist. He rose to prominence as a member of the rock band the Yardbirds, and afterwards founded and fronted the Jeff Beck Group and Beck, Bogert & Appice. In 1975, he switched to an instrumental style with focus on an innovative sound, and his releases spanned genres and styles ranging from blues rock, hard rock, jazz fusion and a blend of guitar-rock and electronica.

Hard rock or heavy rock is a heavier subgenre of rock music typified by aggressive vocals and distorted electric guitars. Hard rock began in the mid-1960s with the garage, psychedelic and blues rock movements. Some of the earliest hard rock music was produced by the Kinks, the Who, the Rolling Stones, Cream, Vanilla Fudge, and the Jimi Hendrix Experience. In the late 1960s, bands such as Blue Cheer, the Jeff Beck Group, Iron Butterfly, Led Zeppelin, Golden Earring, Steppenwolf, and Deep Purple also produced hard rock.

Electric blues is blues music distinguished by the use of electric amplification for musical instruments. The guitar was the first instrument to be popularly amplified and used by early pioneers T-Bone Walker in the late 1930s and John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters in the 1940s. Their styles developed into West Coast blues, Detroit blues, and post-World War II Chicago blues, which differed from earlier, predominantly acoustic-style blues. By the early 1950s, Little Walter was a featured soloist on blues harmonica using a small hand-held microphone fed into a guitar amplifier. Although it took a little longer, the electric bass guitar gradually replaced the stand-up bass by the early 1960s. Electric organs and especially keyboards later became widely used in electric blues.

Popular music of the United Kingdom in the 1970s built upon the new forms of music developed from blues rock towards the end of the 1960s, including folk rock and psychedelic rock movements. Several important and influential subgenres were created in Britain in this period, by pursuing the limitations of rock music, including British folk rock and glam rock, a process that reached its apogee in the development of progressive rock and one of the most enduring subgenres in heavy metal music. Britain also began to be increasingly influenced by third world music, including Jamaican and Indian music, resulting in new music scenes and subgenres. In the middle years of the decade the influence of the pub rock and American punk rock movements led to the British intensification of punk, which swept away much of the existing landscape of popular music, replacing it with much more diverse new wave and post punk bands who mixed different forms of music and influences to dominate rock and pop music into the 1980s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Jeff Beck Group</span> English blues rock band

The Jeff Beck Group was a British rock band formed in London in January 1967 by former Yardbirds guitarist Jeff Beck. Their innovative approach to heavy-sounding blues, rhythm and blues and rock was a major influence on popular music.

Blues rock is a fusion genre and form of rock music that relies on the chords/scales and instrumental improvisation of blues. It is mostly an electric ensemble-style music with instrumentation similar to electric blues and rock. From its beginnings in the early to mid-1960s, blues rock has gone through several stylistic shifts and along the way it inspired and influenced hard rock, Southern rock, and early heavy metal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beck's Bolero</span> Instrumental first recorded by Jeff Beck in 1966

"Beck's Bolero" is a rock instrumental recorded by English guitarist Jeff Beck in 1966. It is Beck's first solo recording and has been described as "one of the great rock instrumentals, epic in scope, harmonically and rhythmically ambitious yet infused with primal energy". "Beck's Bolero" features a prominent melody with multiple guitar parts propelled by a rhythm inspired by Ravel's Boléro.

<i>Having a Rave Up with the Yardbirds</i> 1965 album by the Yardbirds

Having a Rave Up with the Yardbirds, or simply Having a Rave Up, is the second American album by the English rock group the Yardbirds. It was released in November 1965, eight months after Jeff Beck replaced Eric Clapton on guitar. It includes songs with both guitarists and reflects the group's blues rock roots and their early experimentations with psychedelic and hard rock. The title refers to the driving "rave up" arrangement the band used in several of their songs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Happenings Ten Years Time Ago</span> 1966 song by the Yardbirds

"Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" is a song by the English rock group the Yardbirds. Written and recorded in 1966, it is considered one of their most progressive works. The song was the group's first to feature the dual-lead guitar line-up of Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. The two contribute an array of guitar parts during the instrumental sections, described as "a full-on six-string apocalypse". Lyrically, it deals with notions of past life and déjà vu.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shapes of Things</span> Song first recorded by the Yardbirds in 1966

"Shapes of Things" is a song by the English rock group the Yardbirds. With its Eastern-sounding, feedback-laden guitar solo and environmentalist, antiwar lyrics, several music writers have identified it as the first popular psychedelic rock song. It is built on musical elements contributed by several group members in three different recording studios in the US, and was the first Yardbirds composition to become a chart hit; when released as a single on 25 February 1966, the song reached number three in the UK and number eleven in the US.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Train Kept A-Rollin'</span> Song first recorded by Tiny Bradshaw in 1951

"Train Kept A-Rollin'" is a song first recorded by American jazz and rhythm and blues musician Tiny Bradshaw in 1951. Originally performed in the style of a jump blues, Bradshaw borrowed lyrics from an earlier song and set them to an upbeat shuffle arrangement that inspired other musicians to perform and record it. Johnny Burnette and the Rock and Roll Trio made an important contribution in 1956 – they reworked it as a guitar riff-driven song, which features an early use of intentionally distorted guitar in rock music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mike Pinera</span> Musical artist

Mike Pinera is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter and producer who started professionally in the late 1960s with the group Blues Image, which had a number 4 hit in 1970 with their song "Ride Captain Ride". After the breakup of that group, he joined Iron Butterfly, and later formed the group Ramatam. Pinera was then the founding member of the band New Cactus, a later incarnation of the band Cactus. He was the lead guitarist for Alice Cooper from 1980 to 1982. He is currently performing with his solo band and The Classic Rock All-Stars.

Since the dawn of rock music in the 1950s and continuing through the 1960s, various artists pushed the boundaries of the genre to emphasize speed, aggression, volume, theatricality, and other elements that became staples of the heavy metal style. In the late 1960s, this experimentation coalesced into various rock subgenres like hard rock, acid rock, and psychedelic rock, which were all influential in the development of heavy metal. These albums would later be retroactively categorised as proto-metal.

Anthony "Top" Topham was an English musician and visual artist who was best known as a blues guitarist and also for being the first lead guitarist of The Yardbirds. Topham left the band before they achieved mainstream popularity and was replaced by Eric Clapton, the first of three lead guitarists from the Yardbirds to gain an international reputation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Seven Ages of Rock</span>

Seven Ages of Rock is a BBC Two series, co-produced by BBC Worldwide and VH1 Classic in 2007 about the history of rock music.

I'm in a Rock 'n' Roll Band! is a documentary television series broadcast on BBC Two, narrated by Mark Radcliffe and first broadcast from 1 May to 5 June 2010. The series charts the history of rock music, with the first five episodes focusing on different members of a typical band, such as the singer or the guitarist. The final episode is special live episode, featuring "industry experts discuss their favourite musicians before creating the ultimate fantasy band." This will also feature the result of a public vote, which will ask viewers who they think are the greatest rock bands and band members.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Todd Wolfe</span> American singer-songwriter

Todd Stewart Wolfe is an American blues rock guitarist and singer-songwriter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Yardbirds</span> English blues and psychedelic rock band

The Yardbirds are an English rock band, formed in London in 1963. The band started the careers of three of rock's most famous guitarists: Eric Clapton (1963–1965), Jeff Beck (1965–1966) and Jimmy Page (1966–1968), all of whom ranked in the top five of Rolling Stone magazine's list of 100 greatest guitarists. The band's other members during 1963–1968 were vocalist/harmonica player Keith Relf, drummer Jim McCarty, rhythm guitarist Chris Dreja, and bassist Paul Samwell-Smith, with Dreja switching to bass when Samwell-Smith departed in 1966. The band had a string of hits throughout the mid-1960s, including "For Your Love", "Heart Full of Soul", "Shapes of Things", and "Over Under Sideways Down".

References

  1. https://www.ealingclub.com/
  2. Schuermann, Michael (11 June 2013). "Five Mythical Places from Rock Music History in London's West End". The Huffington Post . Retrieved 21 July 2015.
  3. Rogers, Becky. "Island Of Love: Meet the first band signed to Jack White's Third Man Records London imprint". NME . Retrieved 16 March 2022.

Further reading