10 Perfect Songs That Started Hard Rock

At the dawn of rock and roll, the '60s can practically be broken up into different categories. While the Beatles may have been one of the most loveable bands when they were first on the Ed Sullivan Show, the Summer of Love brought something new to the table, with every band recontextualizing their style to fit the mood of the times. And for a couple of bluesy troubadours like Cream, that meant tapping into the realm of psychedelia.

Then again, Sunshine of Your Love isn't all that different than any other traditional blues song from around that time, with Jack Bruce pumping out lyrics about the more abstract side of love. The difference was all in the delivery, and Eric Clapton became the kind of guitar god that no one could quite figure out, twisting the traditional blues licks of BB King and Howlin Wolf and turning them into an acid soaked dream whenever they came on your speakers.

Even when he quotes Blue Moon during the beginning of his solo, Slowhand was looking to create different images in your mind whenever he turned his amp up, taking the building blocks of what rock and roll was about and creating something much more rugged than what you heard out of the Rolling Stones. We already had guitar gods like Keith Richards and Brian Jones, and Jeff Beck may have been on the horizon, but if this song hadn't changed the game among the British Blues Boom, there's a good chance that we wouldn't have people like Slash today.