Five Years - 1970-1975

Although recorded before Abbey Road, when Let It Be, the final Beatles album was released, it acted as a final full stop to the 1960s. As the sun set on the summer of love, the collective come down ushered in a radical change in direction. 
Artists soon realised that the optimism and dreams of peace, love and understanding were just that, a dream, as the damage done and socioeconomic realities took hold. The quick mudslide from Woodstock to Altamont, the drug deaths of Janis, Jim and Jimi, the piling bodies in Vietnam, all indicated that the utopian 1960s were really a bad trip. 
No man understood this new reality quite like Marvin Gaye. His 60s output were crowning jewels for his label Motown records, who fought with Gaye to continue creating hit singles, but by this point his personal life was in tatters. In a deep depression from the fallout of his first marriage, the brain tumour discovered in his singing partner Tammi Terrel, his increasing dependency on cocaine and difficulties with the IRS, Gaye also saw the social injustices affecting his fellow men, and rebelled against industry pressure to release the famous 1971 concept album, Whats Going On. 
The album is told from the perspective of a Vietnam war veteran who returns from duty, only to find the country he fought for strife with poverty, pollution, crime and civil unrest.

Gaye wasn’t the only black artist to turn their back on pop and move into darker, more mature territory. Once, Sly and the Family Stone were known for their joyous, accessible, good-time funk but the 70s found the group burned out, and their shift in musical direction reflected this. 
Where Sly once sang, "You can make it if you try," his sing-alongs now went: "Look at you fooling you." There 1973 album There’s A Riot Going On was a precursor for the stripped back sound hip-hop would later turn on, and is THE touchstone wasted Brits would cop their grove from in the 1990s. This is the first track of off that album

The artist that, in my opinion embodies the shift of tone for the era best of all is Neil Young. Young had been writing songs and singing about social ills for years already, For What Its Worth, a song he played in his early band Buffalo Springfield, is a well known and hugely popular protest song from 1966. And in 1970 Young wrote, recorded and released the counter culture anthem Ohio in 3 weeks, in reaction to the infamous Kentucky State Shooting. 
But it was in the 70s Young’s output became more introverted and melancholy. The cover of 1974s On The Beach shows Young, back to the camera, facing out to sea. In the foreground are the remains of a party and the tail of a caddilac, buried in the sand. Rolling Stone magazine labelled it the most depressing album of the decade on its release. This is the epic Ambulance Blues

Worry not, though, friends. Salvation did come, but not from this dying planet. A funky cat came down from Mars with a cosmic message of love and hope, and lo, he did say, oh lord, you are not alone, and so it was, and all the children did boogie.

Glam and rock were not just a way to kick the blues. Both genres emphasised a sense of individuality and distance from the establishment. Glam may seem frankly silly now, but looking androgonous, wearing make-up and glitter while simulating oral-sex with a guitar must have been shocking to the older, more conservative generation. And the whole dynamic of rock served to emphasise a personality, to push a voice forward, with strength, emphasis, urgency and power.

Not all rock served to be so positive. My favourite album of the early 1970s is Fun House by The Stooges, and is just this aggressive orgy of guitars, brass, drums and screaming. Released in 1970, the cover shows Iggy and his band of virtuoso thugs writhing in a fiery hell of stimulants, psycho-actives and God knows what else. Like, just listen to this. Whatever they’re on, you don’t want anything do with it.

In the UK, the economic depression was a catalyst for change. In the declining industrial north of England, the gloom of poverty coupled with the boom of machines set the backdrop for a new genre to emerge. Heavier and darker than anything that came before it, the first wave of metal was directly influenced by the social setting of its time. 
When Ozzy Osbourne joined Earth, the band that would later become Black Sabbath, he had no shoes on his feet. Guitarist Tony Iommi had had the tips of his fingers severed off in an accident cutting sheet metal and the bassist, and lead song writer Geezer Butler, learnt to play on a board covered in string. 

For the bored, disillusioned northeners metal wasn’t just a reflection of gloom. So early in its life, metal at this point still resembled rock n roll, just turned up, and the sound of many bands straddled the two genres. Metal gigs became an event, an injection of energy into the lives of the bored, directionless head-bangers.