Original subtitles

- [Narrator] Our history is no more than a series of

incredible events, each one of us can influence it's course.

The tiniest of our decisions can

influence the future of mankind.

To know the past is to anticipate the future.

July 5th, 1954 Nashville Tennessee,

Elvis Presley steps through the

door of the Sun Record Studio.

10 years later hundreds of hysterical fans are waiting

excitedly, they're at the very first Beatles concert.

November 19th, 1976 the Sex Pistols release

"Anarchy in the UK",

the song is a truly anarchist manifesto.

These three different but intimately connected events

are the founding elements of the history of rock.

(rock music)

Music is everywhere.

We listen to it in the subway or when we're out jogging.

It gathers us together for huge concerts

and sometimes it provides a helping hand.

Today we can listen to what we want,

when we want and as we want.

It wasn't always so.

Our story begins in the United States at the

beginning of the 1950s.

It's the age of the Blues, the Cold War and segregation.

The United States is living through a period that is

very different from the one that we know.

Black and white communities live apart from each other.

The period is both rigid and turbulent.

Political tension, Cold War, segregation,

the struggle for equal civil rights.

The whites are in a majority,

they are in command of the country.

The black communities are in the minority,

one of their only means of expression, the Blues,

a music born in the cotton fields and Jazz.

At first they call it race music,

then the name evolved to become Rhythm'N'Blues,

more politically correct.

This music is represented by artists

like BB King or Little Richard.

Black artists playing for a black community.

But music knows no boundaries

and very quickly whites will take an interest,

such is the case of Alan Freed.

A radio DJ, he plays black music, notably the Blues

but not only that,

he broadcasts the first examples of a new genre.

A music that doesn't yet have a name,

very quickly they name it Rock'N'Roll.

Rock'N'Roll is at the crossroads between two separate

worlds, taking inspiration from both the Blues and Country,

it's roots are as black as they are white.

The conservative puritan world is horrified,

for them the radio presenter is trying to bring

whites down to the level of blacks.

Alan Freed will be subject to many threats.

July 5th, 1954 Nashville Tennessee,

a young truck driver wants to give his mother a present.

His name is Elvis Presley.

This young man walks through the door of the Sun Records

Studio to record two songs,

the session costs him four dollars

and he comes away with a record to give to his mother.

Rock'N'Roll is about to explode.

- [Narrator] Welcome to the memory of humanity.

Here we can control time, analyse and compare billions

of events and alter them to rewrite history endlessly.

For example, just imagine that Elvis never went to

Nashville on that July day in '54.

That he never opened the door of the Sun Records Studio.

He would never have known what he'd missed.

This sort of opportunity, the result of chance

and favorable circumstances is so rare and surprising

that we can never know if we have missed one.

Elvis would have continued with his odd jobs

and now and then singing for his mother or himself.

The world would have had a different face,

Rock would have not gone global, at least not so rapidly.

Most importantly it would almost certainly have

exclusively remained within the domain of the black

community with whites preferring country music.

Rock would have become the protest music of black

Americans and would probably have been ghettoized.

We can envisage a militant Rock in support of

the Black Panthers, electrifying the racial riots

of the following decades.

Rock would have taken the place of Rap.

Black communities would express

themselves through Hard Rock.

- [Narrator] Elvis is Rock'N'Roll.

His voice, his music, his energy, his career.

In a few years Elvis turns it all upside down.

No more ballroom dancing, it's now individual hip gyrating

and provocative gestures.

He is the principal agent in the popularization

of Rock among the white American general public.

He will earn 48 gold discs in 1956 alone.

During the course of his career he will sell more

than 700 million records and give more than 1,000 concerts.

The first white man to associate sex appeal with the new

form of music, he adds a more dynamic, more forceful sound.

Very quickly his highly sexual way of dancing

will bring down the wrath of conservatives.

They tried to get him banned, they burned his records

in public, they canceled his concerts.

The church condemns his music.

Parents hate him, kids love him.

And in the '50s kids become a real social group,

with their high purchasing power their opinions count.

For a long, long time the young have classed with taboos

related to sexuality and the American puritan morality.

For too long they've been told to behave

and follow their parents model.

In this prosperous post-war period they need changes,

they want to enjoy life before they get too old.

For the American young, the hour of freedom has arrived.

- [Narrator] No Rock without a guitar.

The history of Rock cannot be disassociated from

its flagship instrument, the guitar.

A guitar is a string instrument consisting of a wooden

sound box and a sound board,

when the strings vibrate they emit sounds.

It's as simple as that.

You still have to play, Johnny Cash used it like a rifle.

Elvis made it sound like never before.

Very quickly it will evolve and Rock will evolve with it.

At the end of the '50s Leo Fender markets the first

solid body guitar, the Broadcaster.

It's a single piece of solid wood with no sound box,

a cavity dug into the block holds one or several magnetic

microphones connected by a cable to an amplifier this new

tool provides a totally new range of sound.

The electric guitar becomes the symbol of rock,

liberated from acoustic constraints it will take on

the most diverse of shapes and even become a means of

expression itself.

Jimi Hendrix will go as far as to set his on fire

at the end of one of his performances.

As he will say, "You sacrifice the things you love,

"and I love my guitar."

- [Narrator] Elvis breached the wall of puritan society,

other artists flooded through it,

like Jerry Lee Lewis or Chuck Berry.

At the beginning of the '60s Rock has lost its initial

vitality, it's behaving more orderly,

more respectable, more marketable.

Censorship and money have done their work.

A few resisters like Johnny Cash continue to defy

the established order with numbers like,

"Ring of Fire" but even Elvis whose is now dubbed The King

is no longer the same.

America is hoping to return to real values,

no more rebel role models for the young,

it's time for a well behaved Rock.

Although born in the United States it's in England

that Rock will find its second wind.

In 1963 The Beatles hit the scene with "She Loves You",

the world will never be the same.

It's a tidal wave.

They're handsome, they're young, they're tunes are gripping,

it's the start of Beatlemania.

Like many of the Rock bands that followed they came

from the Liverpool working classes, those popular districts

are to be come veritable forges of talent.

Their album "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"

is considered to be one of the best Rock albums of all time.

Their influence will be decisive on the history of Rock.

In an eight year career they will record 13 albums,

200 songs and sell more than 300 million albums,

more than 2 billion to the present day.

But for The Beatles there's no provocation,

no rebellion, that will be the role of The Rolling Stones.

The Stones are not The Beatles, they will even do all they

can to be seen as the exact opposite.

Their image of bad boys priming with arrogance,

rebellion and sexuality very quickly proves profitable.

Parents hate the band, so the kids love it.

The number "Satisfaction" is a revolution.

A perfect synthesis of the Blues, Rhythm and Blues and Rock.

Between The Beatles and The Rolling Stones there's

something for everyone, Rock begins to spread wide.

It takes on a new dimension.

As well as youth emancipation the first political

themes begin to emerge, they start to reject war,

especially the Vietnam War.

These are the first protest songs.

At the Woodstock Music Festival on August 15th, 1969

the genius Jimi Hendrix plays the American national anthem

on an electric guitar.

The incredible sound he manages to draw out of his guitar

allows him to imitate the sounds of bombs,

the message is clear.

- [Narrator] Bigger and bigger, in 1969 Woodstock

is the festival of excess.

At the time there had never been such fervor for music.

For four days braving the rain and the mud 450,000 people

will attend the first great Rock concert of all time.

Nobody anticipated the size of the event.

The infrastructure was vastly insufficient,

the organizers are very quickly overwhelmed.

There will be three deaths,

four miscarriages and two births.

On the last day only 30,000 are left to watch

Jimi Hendrix's concert, Woodstock goes down into legend.

Those who came will be able to say, "I was there."

Years later the monsters of Rock in Moscow will pass

Woodstock by a mile, 1.6 million people traveled to listen

to Metallica and AC/DC, rock craves excess.

Heavier and heavier sound, ever more extravagant costumes,

increasingly gigantic concerts.

Let's count all the records sold around the world.

The top three, the only one's to have sold more

that a billion copies are by Rock stars.

The first is Elvis Presley.

- [Narrator] Rock doesn't stop at borders,

it pushes them wide open.

The '70s demand renewal yet again.

The major bands of the '60s no longer exist

or have become institutions.

It's time for experiments

and it will go off in all directions.

Pink Floyd like Velvet Underground or The Stooges

claim they make art and not just Rock.

They're looking for new sounds, adding experimental

instruments, developing new philosophies.

Artists feel they need to move forward.

Pink Floyd's progressive psychedelic Rock offers

a total, highly immersive spectacle.

It's no longer a question of music

but of images and experience.

We are a long way from Elvis's concerts,

where the singer alone was enough to carry the show.

In 1979 "The Wall" is huge concert during which a

wall is built, gradually blocking off the stage.

At end of the show, the wall collapses.

At the other extreme of this creative explosion

Rock gets harder.

Returning to it's Blues roots they add guitar distortion

and aggressively loud vocals.

It's the birth of Hard Rock.

Queen, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple

and of course, AC/DC.

Hard Rock will itself give birth to Heavy Metal,

even heavier more saturated.

Bands like KISS or Metallica will

hurl themselves into the arena.

(heavy rock music)

As in the '50s and then the '60s the Rock of the '70s

will also spark controversy.

- [Narrator] To create is to dare.

The Rock movement is continually questionings itself.

Artists are constantly seeking renewal,

a race to innovation Rock takes it's inspiration from

Jazz, the Blues and Country.

Country itself is descended from traditional Irish songs

so there's some bagpipe DNA in every number

by Elvis or Metallica.

In the end it soon becomes impossible to use the word

Rock without being simplistic.

There isn't one Rock but a number of Rocks.

Where artistic creation is concerned nothing is invented,

everything is inspired by something else.

If we go far enough back up the family tree of Rock

we can certainly connect it to Beethoven's compositions

or classical literature.

So there's a common point between a Hard Rock fan

and a Renaissance poet.

The history of art is an uninterrupted series of

creations taking mutual inspiration, one from another.

Sometimes cultural marriages can prove to be unexpected.

In 1967 Andy Warhol, a great figure of Modern Art,

decides to experiment with a new form of art and produces

the first album by psychedelic band Velvet Underground.

Pink Floyd had a similar attitude with painters,

like Pierre Soulages, break the codes, dare to try

new material, claim a truly artistic approach.

- [Narrator] Out of the creative chaos

of the '70s Punk is born.

Oil crisis, massive strikes, unemployment and inflation,

the rise of the far right.

The young once again have had enough.

They experienced daily life as a lead weight,

to them the future is a dead end and necessarily bleak.

The watch word, no future.

Punk denounces, criticizes, rejects,

the reactions is brutal, the music is screamed.

For the Sex Pistols the scene is too tame,

subjected to what they now call the Rock Industry.

Opposed to the consumer society they want pure music,

reject studio arrangement and prefer raw live performances.

The dirtier then music is the more they consider it to

be authentic, for the first time the music counts

for less then the message.

Fashion codes fit the music, Mohican hair cuts, black ripped

clothing, skulls, bovver boots and fishnet stockings.

On November 19th, 1976 the release of "Anarchy in the UK"

by The Sex Pistols is a truly anarchist manifesto.

The message, anti-conformity and rejection

of the established order.

Politicians and churchmen rush to the ramparts yet again.

Naturally this is the best publicity

the movement could have.

Punk becomes increasingly popular,

selling more and more records, more clothing.

In the 1980s the Punk style is widely adopted

by fashion houses, record companies and the media,

pushing cynicism to the limit.

The success of Punk dug the movements own grave.

Opposed to the consumer society it is finally standardized,

packaged and sold in supermarkets.

But the young need a rebel music,

if one dies another takes over.

Today Rock has more faces then ever,

it's influence has been spreading

throughout the world for decades.

What face will it have tomorrow?

But that is another story.

- [Narrator] When it emerges at the beginning of the '50s

Rock immediately sparks a strong reaction of rejection

for some and genuine fascination for others.

To the powers that be it's amoral, subversive

and rebellious character constitutes a real threat.

The sudden bursting upon the public stage of communities

until then kept apart, revives ancient fears.

But it is also an innocent form of entertainment.

The first Rock musicians never seek to disturb public order,

on the contrary they want to be accepted.

From the '60s Rock artists will gradually build a

counter-culture, but the more publicity the movements

attract the closer their affinity

becomes with the model they criticize.

Then new voices are raised to scream their revolt

against the system, louder and louder until these

early pioneers in turn are taken up by the consumer society.

The Rock audience then becomes a consumer of rebellion,

Rock becomes an industry.

You could think that Rock allowed itself to be perverted

by the very model it claimed to be fighting.

You could see in it a sort of cynicism.

You could believe that Rock is dead.

But that is attribute too much intention to a music that

from the very first hip gyrating from Elvis

to the guitar riffs of AC/DC never claimed anything

more than to please it's audience.

To provide a breath of fresh air.

Some landmarks, Rock is a traditional escape valve

for the young, it didn't put an end to wars,

it didn't change the world, it just offered the right

to be young and to stay that way.

(dramatic music)