Rock music went to college in the Sixties. First it started pilfering from classical music and theater. Then someone had the psychedelic-induced idea to carry a single story over an entire album, just like in opera.
And thus the genie was unleashed: the concept record, simultaneously emblematic of rock at its most ambitious and its most pompous.
Some damn musicologist determined these to be the best examples of this form.
“I thought that it was a crime that these songs were sitting there on the shelf”: In the 1970s, Hayley Williams’ grandfather made an album that nobody heard. Now it’s finally being released through her Paramore bandmate’s label
“He got a kidney infection, so he’s in hospital… That’s a bit of a drag, because he was going to be the lead guitarist”: The iconic charity rock song that missed out on its star guitarist due to illness – and why it could have sounded very different
