Music for meatheads or sonic transcendence through confidence and power? However you perceive hard rock, it's remained a staple of the music mainstream since Kinks guitarist Dave Davies gave us the nasty guitar tone of "You Really Got Me" in 1964. From the suggestive howls of AC/DC to the snarl of Joan Jett to the candy-coated confections of Def Leppard, these classic hard rock albums endure as the foundation of the still-evolving sound.