Instrumental Rock

Instrumental rock is rock music performed without vocals, in which the melody and the showmanship are carried by instruments — above all the electric guitar. It crystallised in the late 1950s, when *Link Wray*'s distorted "Rumble", *Duane Eddy*'s reverberating twang and hits by *The Ventures* and *The Shadows* proved that a guitar group could top the charts without a singer. The style powered the surf boom of the early 1960s, ran through soul and beat instrumentals, and survived the vocal-group era in the work of guitar virtuosos such as *Jeff Beck*, becoming a permanent, if secondary, strand of rock practice.