Although German rock music (Deutschrock) didn't come into its own until the late 1960s, it spawned many innovative and influential bands spanning genres such as krautrock, New Wave, heavy metal, punk, and industrial.
Rock and roll itself arose in the United States in the 1940s, and spread across the world beginning in about 1956. There were few German performers at that time, even though American rock was popular in (West) Germany. Rockabilly stars like Bill Haley & His Comets were of particular popularity. The reasons for this lack of German musical innovation were the suppression of "degenerate" forms of music by the Nazis and/or the traumatic effects of the war—while Germany was a center of several forms of modern music before the Nazi era, it had difficulty developing its own music culture after its occupation.
Read more about German Rock: 1960s and 70s: Krautrock, Neue Deutsche Welle, Ostrock, German Heavy Metal, Punk Rock, Hamburger Schule, Neue Deutsche Härte, Medieval Metal
Famous quotes containing the words german and/or rock:
“She had exactly the German way: whatever was in her mind to be delivered, whether a mere remark, or a sermon, or a cyclopedia, or the history of a war, she would get it into a single sentence or die. Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of the Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palaces built upon the sand.”
—Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950)