Classic Rock

Classic rock is the canon of guitar-based rock music produced between the mid-1960s and the early 1980s, together with the radio format that has kept it in permanent circulation since the 1980s. Centred on the album as the unit of work, it covers the British and American acts — *The Beatles*, *Led Zeppelin*, *Pink Floyd*, *The Rolling Stones* — who moved rock from singles to long-form statements built on electric guitars, blues-derived harmony and studio craft. As a genre label it is retrospective: it names the body of work that classic rock stations codified and that later generations inherit as the rock tradition itself.