1970's and 80's Rock N' Roll 

Coming into the 1970s Americans were excited to see what music was going to do for them. The 60s were full of psychedelic rock and hippies. Artists and bands across the country in the 60s wanted to be heard and wanted to be famous but the ways the radio stations were doing things weren't helping. Radio stations at the time weren't playing small-town guys, really if your band name wasn't The Beatles, then you weren't getting much exposure at all. In 1965 The Beatles went on their second tour in the midst of Beatlesmania. Their first performance was one of History's greatest, their performance at Shea Stadium. With The Beatles being at their peak and so well known, Shea Stadium was the largest concert in history for 7 years. On August 15, 55,000 fans saw The Beatles play and start what would be called The Arena Rock era. 

In the late 60s, a group of businessmen decided that they wanted to try and set concerts to new heights and hosted an event known as Woodstock. Woodstock was a multiday outdoor concert that was comprised of dozens of iconic musicians and bands. This event and concerts like Shea Stadium made upcoming musicians and artists think and formulate plans to be able to play in front of massive crowds. In the 1970s a sub-genre of Rock N' Roll was born, Arena Rock. Arena Rock was first introduced by The Beatles in 1965, but it wasn't until the 1970s when music groups started writing and composing their music around the arena atmosphere. Bands like Led Zeplin, Bonjovi, Def Leppard, Foreigner, Journey, Queen, and many others began working on designing their music around a large audience and figuring out ways to get their fans to become encapsulated in their performances, forcing them to want to see and hear more. In the 70s, radio was becoming more and more popular and Arena Rock artists capitalized on it. Queen and Journey and the others really executed and recorded their music in a way that would make it stand out on the radio. Queen was a band that was full of brilliant people, not just musically speaking, but educationally very smart. Queen figured out how to record parts of songs in different orientations using new technology so that when they played it on speakers and on the radio it would come out differently than any other bands. They were able to use advanced instruments to manipulate which speaker certain cords would play through. Other bands eventually did this but Queen was the one that really made it their own. Arena Rock was all about this new way of producing music, but it was also equally about the lights and stage presence bands brought with them. Arena Rock artists didn't just want to play their music, they also wanted to put on a performance that fans would be drawn to which would help popularize them quicker allowing them to sell more records and host more concerts. The 70s were a notable time for the country with presidential changes and it brought an end to the Vietnam war. Musicians wanted to capture Americans' energy and happiness of the positive that was occurring so it gave them a chance to cater to the American people through a high energy, heavy rock n' roll sound. Arena Rock was more than just the playing of music it was a way for Americans to express themselves while being surrounded by tens of thousands of others like them.  

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