1969

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon in July, and half the planet watched it on television. Earlier in the year Richard Nixon took office in Washington, and the Boeing 747 and Concorde both made their first test flights, so the future looked large and fast.

Rock was getting heavier, longer and stranger. Heavy metal had no name worth arguing over yet, but the groundwork was going down: Judas Priest formed as Freight, and Uriah Heep, UFO, Hawkwind, Thin Lizzy, Grand Funk Railroad and ZZ Top all started up. Led Zeppelin arrived in March with their debut, then came back in October with Led Zeppelin II, and between them they set the template for hard rock's weight and swagger. Pink Floyd, meanwhile, went exploring. More arrived in June as a soundtrack, and Ummagumma followed in November, a double album that stretched psychedelic rock towards the progressive kind. King Crimson's In the Court of the Crimson King was helping to turn prog from a mood into a genre. Down in Detroit, The Stooges and MC5 were making a noise that would matter a great deal later.

The year's music also had its darker moments. At Altamont, a fan was stabbed to death by Hells Angels hired as security at a Rolling Stones concert, and many have since read it as the moment the hippie dream soured. Woodstock, by contrast, had already shown it at its best. The Beatles played their last public show on a rooftop.