Folk rock
Rock musicians spent half the 1960s nicking ideas off the folkies. You only have to take a brief listen to Jimmy Page’s Black Mountain Side instrumental on Led Zeppelin’s 1969 debut alongside folk guitarist Bert Jansch’s Black Water Side (see what he done there?) to realise that they are even closer than the (not so) subtle title change suggests.
Fast forward to Led Zeppelin III, and that’s folk rock you’re listening to on Gallows Pole, a traditional folk song given the rock’n’roll treatment. And who’s this bloke Roy Harper they’re taking their hats off to on the last track? Some renegade folkie Zep have adopted, that’s who.
The folk scene had remained suspicious of rock music. Even young Turks like Bert Jansch, John Renbourn and Ralph McTell were wary of ‘selling out’. When Donovan broke cover and shot up the charts with in 1965, the traditionalists denounced
