The rise of rock and roll seems to be married to the amplification of the guitar. With the Fender Telecaster in 1951, Stratocaster in 1954, and Gibson Les Paul in 1952, this hybrid of country and blues music dubbed "Rock and Roll" had found the fuel to drive it's popularity. As the popularity of the music grew, the guitar players became stars in their own right. As the electric guitar became synonomous with the style, the acoustic guitar faded from prominence. Often it was only a prop for the singer. I mean, how much did Elvis actually strum those guitars in all those movies. A verse or two into the song, he got busy singing to the girl and a side man in the production number had taken the guitar away to the background. Well, I'm here to tell you...the acoustic guitar can rock just as hard as it's electrified brother!
Obviously, examples are needed. Let's start with the The Rolling Stones...yes, the World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band knew how to rock the acoustic. Early in their career, they covered the great Buddy Holly song "Not Fade Away". In 1964, the Bo Diddly beat that drives the song was played on an acoustic guitar to great effect. The Stones released Beggars Banquet in 1968. One of the highlights of this album is the hard driving "Street Fighting Man." While the meaning was somewhat ambiguous, the strength and power of the song is undeniable. It opens with an open tuned acoustic guitar ringing out the opening riff and continues with multi-layered acoustics through the end of the song. You think acoustics can't rock? Well on this tune, the only electric instrument on the song is a bass guitar. 
Let's check out another band capable of rocking the acoustic. Yes, off to the left is Jimmy Page playing an acoustic guitar. Led Zeppelin, those iconic hard rockers produced more than a couple of great rock songs driven by acoustic guitars. For Led Zeppelin III Page and Plant adapted a traditional song about that tells the story of a condemned man pleading for someone to buy his freedom in the song "Gallows Pole". Once again, the song features acoustic instruments providing a bulk of the music for this tune and , like Street Fighting Man, the only electric instrument used on the song is a bass guitar. You can also look to Zep for other acoustic rockers like "Ramble On" from Zep II, "The Battle of Evermore" from IV (ok, lots of mandolin on this one), and "Over the Hills and Far Away" from Houses of the Holy.
Who else can we look at as truly acoustic rockers..."Who" indeed.....
The Who and more specifically, Pete Townshend know that the acoustic guitar is as essential to rock and roll as the electric guitar. It started early in their career with the song "Substitute". Pete tended to play with a fury during live performances. This shows in the way he played his trusty Gibson J-200 acoustic guitar. "Magic Bus" is another song featuring a Bo Diddley beat with the guitar. It may be one of the best examples of using the the acoustic to drive the beat of a song. Perhaps the signature song for a rocking out on an acoustic guitar is Pinball Wizard. Townshend impossibly sychopatic strumming throughout the song is as distictive and any electric guitar riff you could name. As a hopeful guitar player, my aspiration is that someday I may be able to duplicate that strum pattern...not likely though. Townshend has performed many of these songs solo with only an acoustic over the years including "Behind Blue Eyes" and "Won't Get Fooled Again".
How did these guys learn to make the acoustic guitar really rock? It actually goes back to before the rock and roll explosion. Let's give credit where credit is due. At the beginning of this piece, I called this rock and roll music we love a hybrid of country and the blues. Just listen to the playing of some of often forgotten and overlooked artists such as Robert Johnson, Leadbelly, Mississippi John Hurt, and blues artists that followed such as Elmore James, Bo Diddly, and John Lee Hooker. These are the people that really are the pioneers of what eventually became rock and roll. And...they did it by playing acoustic guitars.
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