5 modern acts that owe a debt to classic rock 'n' roll

BBC Music is currently celebrating all things 50s with our Rock 'n' Roll America season across BBC Four, Radio 2 and 6 Music. So here's a selection of very modern musical performers who are all partial to a bit of shake, rattle and roll.

It's all about Alex Turner's Elvis quiff, especially when you remember the Beatley moptop he had when the band first started. The move to an older, sharper cut was more than likely borne out of an abiding love of the similarly bequiffed Richard Hawley, but the interesting thing is the huge affect it had on his listening taste, as he told ContactMusic in 2011: "We all went to the barbers in Austin (Texas) I said, 'Just give me that Gene Vincent, mate.' Once you've got it you sort of have to listen to rock 'n' roll. And it's introduced a few new moves on stage."

Even before all that, there was young Alex on stage, belting out tongue-twisting songs about kids getting up to mischief over needle-sharp guitars, and showing a clear love of wordplay and storytelling. Doesn't that sound like a description of the entire Chuck Berry songbook?

Carl Barat as Gene Vincent and Con O'Neill as Joe Meek in 'Telstar'

The messy spirit of early rock 'n' roll is alive and well in the wilder moments of The Libertines' work, and we all know about Pete and Carl's love of Chas & Dave, who gave Jerry Lee Lewis's rollicking rhythm a North London accent. But there are more direct musical clues too. The "shoop shoop" refrain and four-chord turnaround in What Katie Did comes from doo wop, and Pete's hiccupy vocal in Don't Look Back Into The Sun is pure Buddy Holly. Carl even played Gene Vincent in the movie Telstar, the story of British record producer Joe Meek.

And as an aside, there was a spoof news story doing the rounds in 2006, from an email supposedly sent by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty of rave art-prankers the KLF, that Pete Doherty was their invention, and that his real name is Trevor McDermott. The email claimed that his day job was as a Buddy Holly impersonator.

For all that young Benjamin talks about his formative influences being blues and punk, one listen to the opening bars of Violent Shiver and you can tell someone's cocked an ear to Chuck Berry, particularly the introduction to Roll Over Beethoven. Granted, after that Benjamin's torn-paper larynx tends to dominate proceedings, but as a performer he delivers the swing and the spark of primal R&B, in which you say what you need to in as short a time as possible and get the hell on with the next song.

Or, as he explained to Noisey: "I'm coming for you, Eric Clapton. I don't play that kind of stuff at all. There's, like, two solos on the record, and they're 10 seconds long. I didn’t do eight-minute-long solos. We didn't do that all. I guess people just assume if you like blues then you like all those things."

The classic Vaccines sound is that breathless guitar rush, pushing a mournful melody skywards. It's a noise that is as reassuring as it is exciting and was probably described most economically by Rolling Stone as "a cross between The Ramones and a late-50s jukebox jam."

And the band have played up to that image, mentioning Frankie Avalon in Teenage Icon, throwing the term "going steady" into Nørgaard, and generally reminding everyone of the early youthful innocence of the rock 'n' roll era.

Justin Heyward-Young is understandably resistant to claims that theirs is an entirely retro sound, however, especially with their third album English Graffiti: "All these influences from Buddy Holly to The Clash often get laid on us, but when they were around, they weren’t looking backward, they were looking forward".

There again, English Graffiti has to be a reference to the movie American Graffiti - a look back at 50s teen culture made in the 70s - and the album contains the single Dream Lover, which shares a title with a song by Bobby Darin, so a little bit of looking backward clearly does them good.

While the music of Kanye West rarely acknowledges 50s rock 'n' roll in particular, and he doesn't rock a quiff or wear brothel-creepers (yet), he does share one key element with at least one of his rocking forebears.

Anyone who has ever experienced the full force of a Little Richard interview will know what it's like to be in a room with a collossal ego. Take this quote for example: "A lot of people call me the architect of rock 'n' roll. I don't call myself that, but I believe it's true." Sound familiar?

Little Richard was the most outrageous, the most powerful performer in early rock 'n' roll. You could hear his explosive personality burst out of the speakers without needing to see him, but seeing him perform in a sharply cut suit, hair up in a quiff, pencil moustache and big rolling eyes, was something else. Here was style and personality and music (and ego) rolled up into a big stick of charisma dynamite with a lit fuse burning down towards the top. And at the time, some people found him to be a bit much, while others adored him. Anyone witnessing Kanye's performance at Glastonbury with their parents will know that feeling well.