10 Bands That Started Hard Rock

Any form of hard rock typically comes back to the blues. No matter how hard the genre might try to divorce itself from it, you'll always have acts from ZZ Top to even Greta Van Fleet nowadays who use the same bluesy swagger to get a reaction out of the rock audience. However, if blues was the foundation for hard rock, AC/DC was the moment that it morphed into something different.

That's not to say that you can't hear bits of blues in the Young Brothers' tunes, considering how much Angus Young's solos are based upon the basic scale we all learn when starting the guitar. No, the difference here came all in the delivery, with a backbeat that had the swagger of blues but a much fiercer attack. As Malcolm Young laid into the groove, both Bon Scott and Brian Johnson sounded like they were about to unleash hell whenever they sang, giving the whole band a jolt of energy from the word go.

Aside from the great backing track, both Scott and Johnson created the blueprint for what the hard rock lyric sheet would become, as each song included a guidebook to the world of hellraising, both onstage and off. While it still has that down and out soul to it, AC/DC is what happens when blues gets a couple different shots of adrenaline.