The arrival of MTV in the 1980s signaled a whole new era for rock and roll music. In the 1970s, numerous artists and bands had filmed videos to coincide with the releases of singles. These clips were not widely distributed, however, and were somewhat difficult for fans to view at their leisure. MTV kick-started an age of 24-hour-a-day music video programming. As opposed to the 1950s, when the radio and vinyl embodied a musician's outreach to the public, the 1980s would change this approach entirely. The music video accompanied the song, and in a certain respect, the two were synonymous.
The three-chord song typified the structural simplicity of 1950s rock and roll music. The decades that followed brought attempts to both escape from and return to this format. Examples of both ends of the spectrum included the tremendously convoluted songs of progressive rock, as well as the sounds of punk rock, which exemplified a return to the basics. The 1980s featured both extremes and in addition, a middle ground of music that retained enough pop sensibilities to produce hit songs while at the same time experimenting with more esoteric sounds.
The groups of the 1950s, and in particular the groups that backed up famous artists, mainly comprised the traditional single lead guitar. Since the 1960s, the appearance of a second guitar player, usually playing rhythm guitar, has become quite prevalent. Rhythm guitar players were almost standard in the 1980s --- especially in the fields of hard rock and heavy metal. Some bands, such as Thin Lizzy, used two lead guitar players rather than lead and rhythm guitars. Nevertheless, the appearance of two guitars and one bass guitar was quite common in the 1980s.
The rock and roll songs of the 1950s averaged between two or three minutes in length. The Ramones notably brought about a revival of this style of songwriting in the 1970s. The 1980s featured many rock and roll bands recording songs of four, five and six minutes in length. Thus, the albums were much longer as well. The release of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" in 1975 made it more acceptable to hear songs of a more epic length on the radio. This carryover lasted through the 1980s.