The Kinks uncorked Arthur in 1969, an album that some fans argue is the rock-opera gold standard, never mind that it's essentially a collection of vignettes-albeit gorgeous and well-drawn ones.Īnd so we come to Tommy, the de facto celebrity in the rock-opera canon, with 20 million copies sold and a place in the Grammy Hall of Fame, never mind that it's not even the best rock opera by the Who. The Pretty Things-who started off as a scuzzy R&B band-got in on the act with S.F. Sadly, for Simon, his operatic journey clocked in at a mere 25-and-a-half minutes, making him somewhat less than Wagnerian in scope. Before there was Nirvana, there was the British band called Nirvana and an early foray into the rock opera sub-genre, with 1967's The Story of Simon Simopath.

The Who normally get tabbed as just that band-and Pete Townshend as just that writer-because of the staggering success of 1969's Tommy, the record most people think of as the first and best rock opera. An aggressive, wailing, almost punk band rages at the album's core But on occasion, you can also get an album that numbers amongst rock's finest, one that is perfectly tailored to the sizable strengths of a singular band and a singular writer. You get a cycle of songs, a main character, and, generally, a pretty trippy, gappy, plot. Rock operas aren't usually acted out, and you won't find much in the way of recitative. Or even a musical, without the choreography. If you're used to kicking back with a little Verdi, and someone comes along and plays you Pink Floyd's The Wall, declaiming, 'Behold! Here is another kind of opera to blow your mind,' you might point out that a rock opera isn't really an opera at all, but more, maybe, like a cantata, or a suite. Unfortunately, the rock opera is also a bit of a cheat, as any classical music fan knows. We're talking narrative, motifs, characters, a journey, and epiphanies, with a few tidy internal monologues mixed in to show us that this is music of the psyche.

The mere undertaking of such an album-which typically sprawls to a double or triple set-is enough to fire the imagination of anyone in search of a recording that's more than a mere collection of songs. Frequently pretentious, occasionally miraculous, and almost always way epic to the high-school stoner contemplating his place in the grand cosmology, the rock opera is pop music's grand, risky bid to prove that it, too, can be capital-A Art.

Rock opera movies