1970s A golden era of blues-rock
The explosion of the 60s led to a golden era as bands such as Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and more became popular
With bands such as Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath on the rise, by the 1970s the distorted guitar was taking centre stage. Dirty tones still came mostly from cranked Marshalls – later aided by the development of the master volume, meaning guitarists could overdrive the preamp with a gain control to give a different flavour of distortion without splitting as many ears. It wasn’t all about gain though; bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd and Allman Brothers Band dialled in cleaner ‘hot country’ tones. Dire Straits took a similar approach. On the technique side, Deep Purple’s Ritchie Blackmore brought rock solid timing and impressive speed picking to the table and in 1978 Van Halen’s debut album rewrote the rule book for rock guitar, influencing scores of later players.