Since the topic will inevitably rise up, we might as well address it strait away. It's not as easy a question to answer as it would appear. It can be looked at from two different angles. The first is the literal definition, where as "hard" is an adjective to describe how rockin' the rock is. The other is from the genre point of view, where as the music conforms to a certain style in addition to being rockin'. Examples of hard rock from a genre point of view would be AC/DC, UFO, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin,...ect. But from a literal point of view, you only need to ask two questions,...."Does It Rock?"....yes!..."Does it Rock Hard?"....yes!....Then it's hard rock. Under this definition, many of the bands that aren't normally thought of as hard rock,...are. To further complicate the question, we have bands that are literally hard rock, but have primary genres such as Progressive Rock or Southern Rock. A prime example of this is Rush (early Rush). Rush started out as a strait forward hard rock band, a dead ringer for the hard rock genre. But only two albums later, they ventured into progressive rock territory. So are Rush a hard rock band or a progressive rock band? To me at least, the answer is "both". The same question can be asked about Lynryd Skynyrd or Molly Hatchet. Are they Southern Rock, or are they hard rock? Again, to me the answer is both. I choose to define hard rock from a literal point of view rather than define it from a strict genre point of view. This is why I've posted band/album threads on this forum that some would not consider hard rock.
Another consideration to the question, "Is it, or is it not, hard rock?" is the era in time the rock was recorded. If you look at the 1950's, the roots era, they had their hard rockers. Consider Bill Haley And His Comets, the song "Rock Around the Clock" was hard as nails for the 1950's, as was Elvis' "Jailhouse Rock", Jerry Lee Louis' "Great Balls of Fire", and Gene Vincent's "Be-Bop-A-Loula. Would these be considered hard rock now? no way!, but for the time period, they definitely were. People tend to judge music from a retrospective, today's point of view. With every generation, the rock gets harder, and the rock gets faster. The bar gets raised until you have what we have today, fifty different sub-genres for heavy metal.
There will always be some to where it's not hard rock unless it's the hardest rock the world has ever seen. I think these are the same people who eat habenro peppers and complain that "it's not hot enough for me". Every hard rock band from the 1970's made mellow songs from time to time. Even those listed above had mellow tunes (excluding AC/DC), Black Sabbath made some mellow music, and they invented heavy metal as we know it today. There are very few 70's hard rock bands who never made a mellow song, Motorhead, AC/DC, and maybe Ted Nugent are about all I can think of.
Bottom line for me, if it rocks hard, it's hard rock.
The views and opinons expressed above are solely those of the OP, and may or may not reflect the views of HRF.
Another consideration to the question, "Is it, or is it not, hard rock?" is the era in time the rock was recorded. If you look at the 1950's, the roots era, they had their hard rockers. Consider Bill Haley And His Comets, the song "Rock Around the Clock" was hard as nails for the 1950's, as was Elvis' "Jailhouse Rock", Jerry Lee Louis' "Great Balls of Fire", and Gene Vincent's "Be-Bop-A-Loula. Would these be considered hard rock now? no way!, but for the time period, they definitely were. People tend to judge music from a retrospective, today's point of view. With every generation, the rock gets harder, and the rock gets faster. The bar gets raised until you have what we have today, fifty different sub-genres for heavy metal.
There will always be some to where it's not hard rock unless it's the hardest rock the world has ever seen. I think these are the same people who eat habenro peppers and complain that "it's not hot enough for me". Every hard rock band from the 1970's made mellow songs from time to time. Even those listed above had mellow tunes (excluding AC/DC), Black Sabbath made some mellow music, and they invented heavy metal as we know it today. There are very few 70's hard rock bands who never made a mellow song, Motorhead, AC/DC, and maybe Ted Nugent are about all I can think of.
Bottom line for me, if it rocks hard, it's hard rock.
The views and opinons expressed above are solely those of the OP, and may or may not reflect the views of HRF.
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