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As summer road trips begin in the U.S., the radio dials and streaming devices in many cars will be tuned in to classic rock stations, particularly among music fans 50 and over. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, a museum and exhibition center for all things classic rock, says the average age of its visitors this year is 53.
As you sing along, consider cranking your road trip up to 11 by visiting some of the destinations highlighted in famous classic rock songs. You could make a pilgrimage, say, to the location of the tune you’ve been humming since the summer of ’72, joining the Eagles in “standin’ on a corner in Winslow, Arizona,” and deciding whether indeed it is “such a fine sight to see.”
“I’ve always been a believer that X marks the spot,” says classic rock YouTuber Robert Reid of Robert’s Record Corner, “so to go to places where things happened, things that have some importance to you, only can add to an appreciation of whatever thing that is. It can be history. But it can also be rock.”
While the definition of “classic rock” is a topic of debate, for the purposes of this story, it spans the era from the mid-1960s to the early ’90s. “My personal definition of ‘classic rock’ is anything that has gotten me up and out of my chair anytime before the release of the first [major label debut] Green Day album [in 1994],” says Rich Cohen, Rolling Stone magazine writer and author of the book The Sun & the Moon & the Rolling Stones. For him, classic rock is more about a state of mind than a requisite number of power chords. “Classic rock is whatever you were listening to before you became an adult,” Cohen says.
So with nostalgia for the fun times of youth — whether your wildest rockin’ days were 1963 or 1993 — here is a greatest-hits compilation of classic rock destinations worth a visit.
Travel along Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles. You can make a stop in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Mike Simons/Tulsa World/AP Photo
Route 66, USA
“Well it winds from Chicago to L.A. / More than 2,000 miles all the way / Get your kicks on Route 66.” —“Route 66,” Bobby Troup, 1946
Many artists have covered this classic road trip song for the ages, from Nat King Cole’s popular 1940s version to Perry Como in the 1950s, Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones in the 1960s, Tom Petty in the 1970s and Depeche Mode in the 1980s. More than a dozen museums and historic sites along the route commemorate the history of the famous highway, from the Route 66 Association Hall of Fame & Museum in Pontiac, Illinois, to the Route 66 Mother Road Museum in Barstow, California.
For a one-stop shop to experience many of the artists who performed the song, fans should check out the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. “We have a really great Chuck Berry exhibit in our Pioneers Gallery,” says Andy Leach, the organization’s senior director of museum and archival collections. “It explores his relationship with St. Louis [Berry’s hometown and one of the cities highlighted in Route 66].”
The back of the “Joshua Tree” album cover shows U2 standing in front of one of the eponymous gnarled trees.
Chris Werner/Stocksy
Joshua Tree, Twentynine Palms, California
“Desert sky, dream beneath a desert sky.” —“In God’s Country,” from The Joshua Tree, U2, 1987
This is a legendary location in the classic rock world. The Doors’ Jim Morrison shot films there, and classic rock pioneer Gram Parsons died and was cremated near the National Park. However, Joshua Tree is perhaps most famous in the classic rock world for U2’s The Joshua Tree album.
The “Joshua Tree” album.
Alamy
The back of the album cover shows the band standing in front of one of the eponymous gnarled trees. While that tree has since collapsed, the area has plenty of band tributes. The park itself boasts vast, undisturbed and otherworldly vistas in which to enjoy a classic rock soundtrack, either playing in your car or on your headphones during a hike.
