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Classic Rock was a 31-volume series issued by Time Life during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The series spotlighted popular music played on Top 40 radio stations of the mid-to-late-1960s.
Much like Time-Life's other series chronicling popular music, volumes in the "Classic Rock" series covered a specific time period, including single years in some volumes and stylistic trends in others. Each volume was issued on a compact disc, cassette or (on volumes issued through 1990) 2-LP vinyl record set. Individual volumes generally contained 22 tracks, and represented the highlighted time period's most popular and noteworthy tracks. Also included was a booklet, containing liner notes written by some of the most respected historians of the genre, photographs of the artists, and information on the songs (writers, performers and peak position on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart).
"Classic Rock" was first issued in the winter of 1988, with the first volume in the series titled Classic Rock: 1965. Like most compilation albums, songs by two of the era's most successful groups – The Beatles and The Rolling Stones – were not included due to licensing issues; however, several albums had cover art with drawings of male rock singers resembling The Beatles.
As was the case with Time-Life's other series, "Classic Rock" was advertised in television and magazine advertisements. The series was available by subscription (by calling a 1-800 number); those who purchased the series in that fashion received a new volume roughly every other month (on the format of their choice), and had the option of keeping the volumes they wanted.
Each volume was also offered for individual sale. When the series was fully issued, a customer could purchase the entire series at once (or a group of albums, as packaged by Time-Life as part of a promotion), often at a discounted price.
New volumes continued to be issued through 1991, the final one being a volume titled Classic Rock: Rock Renaissance IV (an album of hard rock from the mid- to late-1960s). An additional volume, titled Totally Fantastic '60s, was released in 1996.
Time-Life continued to offer "Classic Rock" through the early-2000s (decade), after which it was replaced by other series.
In 1999, Time-Life issued a "budget" box set, "Classic '60s: Greatest Hits", containing three CDs or cassettes of 12 songs each, for retail sale.
As with many of Time-Life Records' multi-volume releases, the volumes were not issued in a logical, sequential order by date or era of the subject; that is, issuing volumes covering 1964 before progressing to 1965. In the track information section, the volumes will be listed sequentially by era; the following list is the order in which the volumes were released.