Folk rock came into being in the summer of 1965 when Bob Dylan employed an electric backing band during the Newport Festival in 1965 shortly after The Byrds released their cover of Mr.Tambourine Man, which succesfully melded the song's folk origins with the sounds of the British invasion. Bands such as Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Poco and many others took up the sound and ran with it, their overwhelming popularity effectively ending the American folk music revival.

The Byrds own songwriting tended to veer towards the psychedelic, so ex-Byrd Gram Parsons took the music in a different direction with the Flying Burrito Brothers creating country rock, a style which was not merely electrified country music but also dealt with issues from the 1960's counter-culture. Following Parsons' death in 1973 the sound was picked up by The Eagles, who jettisoned rebellion and moved toward mainstream soft rock. It was left to Bruce Springsteen to recapture the genre's gritty texture with his brand of hard-hitting blue collar rock, followed by Steve Earle, who brought it right back to its roots by powerfully melding a country sound with the protest of the folk tradition.
Country rock fed into the offshoot Southern rock led by The Allman Brothers Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd, a genre which has since split into several strands, merging country with punk, grunge and metal, and remains vibrant to this day.

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