Garage door openers

So you want to be a rock and roll star? Well, listen now to what I say. Get yourself an electric guitar and take some time to learn how to play."

Such was the advice offered in the 1967 song "Rock 'n' Roll Star," by The Byrds – one of the great garage-rock bands of the genre's original heyday.

Today, bands like The Strokes, The Hives, The Vines, and The White Stripes are picking up where The Byrds left off, taking their homemade rock from the garage to the top of the charts. (See CD reviews at right.)

The Strokes' first album, "Is This It," has gone gold, selling more than 500,000 copies. The Vines' debut, "Highly Evolved," launched at No. 11 on Billboard's albums charts earlier this month.

"Garage rock is music for older people with young spirits and young people with old souls," says Steven Van Zandt, legendary E Street rocker and actor ("The Sopranos"). "These days, it is also again becoming the property of younger fans."

Spawned from the electrification of instruments (especially the guitar), garage rock came out of the garages and small clubs and bars of America and Western Europe in the 1960s.

Armed with a few chords and a lot of heart and attitude, these young rockers took the music scene by storm with their stories of working-class life and love.

"I see garage rock as a form of folk music," says music journalist Ted Drozdowski, "because it's made by unskilled people who are using music to speak about what affects them."

"Louie, Louie" by The Kingsmen is one of the classics of the genre. Others include "Destroyer" by The Kinks and "Gloria" by Them (featuring Van Morrison).

As with traditional folk, garage rock represents "the rock and roll underdog," says Mr. Drozdowski, who is also the frontman for The Devil Gods, a blues-rock band in Boston. However, he adds, today's garage rock is not being created by people who have authentic blue-collar backgrounds.

"They have had the advantages of following a gilded path," Drozdowski says, citing Julian Casablancas, frontman of nouveau-garage rockers The Strokes.

Mr. Casablancas is a product of private school and classical music lessons whose father founded the Elite Modeling Agency.

"That's contradictory to what garage rock is all about," Drozdowski adds.

Nonetheless, with their proclivities for black leather, overdriven amplifiers, and (dare it be said?) fun, bands like The Strokes and The White Stripes hark back to the days of The Kinks and The Blue Magoos.

Some say their stripped-down sound might hew a little too closely to their predecessors – rehashing more than reinventing the genre.

"The garage-rock scene hasn't changed in 40 years," says Jeff Conolly of the rock band Lyres, who considers the new rockers to be "pale examples."

"It's just younger people getting on the bandwagon," he says.

Lots and lots of younger people. Even though they are relatively young bands, many of the new generation of garage rockers are already selling out at clubs and arenas around the country.

Songs such as "Alone Together," by The Strokes, have been heavily rotated on Top 40 stations. The White Stripes' video "Fell in Love with a Girl" has been nominated for four MTV Video Music Awards, including Best Video of the Year.

"It's good to see something more real and visceral on the charts," says Graham Shaw, singer and songwriter for Petrol, a San Francisco band that records for Garage Rock Records.

Some of the bands with the biggest buzz strike him as just a bridge between boy bands and real garage.

"But if that's what it takes to swing things around from the boy-band thing," Mr. Shaw concedes, "that's fine with me."

Petrol itself has yet to reap the financial benefits of the resurgence.

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