History of Heavy Metal Thread

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Originally Posted by Seragon Ripper

I Haven't heard you give any credit to The Beatles for their great contribution. The Beatles brought the whole concept of distorted guitars and singing about world issues

I'm trying to think of a Beatles song that predates "Keep On Running" by The Spencer Davis Group - and check out the heavy bass too! It was recorded in 1965, and kicked "Paperback Writer" off the #1 slot in early 1966;



...and, of course, though not as mega-distorted, credit is always given to "You Really Got Me" by The Kinks, released in 1964 - and much "heavier" than anything by The Beatles at the time. Not sure I really agree that it "Opened the Door to Hard Rock", but there's no denying the rifferama;




The Animals were just as important IMHO, as were The Who and The Stones, particularly the latter, with the "Bad Boy" image, which is central to Metal's attitudes.




Check this cover of "Leaving Here" by The High Numbers in 1964 (The High Numbers went on to become The Who!)



(The above is another example of Rock covering Soul, to fuel the earlier implication that Soul plays a part in Metal's history - the earlier citation was Van Halen's cover of "Dancing In The Streets". The original of "Leaving Here" was by Motown artist Eddie Holland, yet it was covered not only by The Who, but 10 years later by Motorhead).


Bad boys The Rolling Stones in 1963, riffing away, with Mick headbanging;




Even badder boys, and root of one of the heaviest sides of metal - The Pretty Things in 1964;




The original Heavy Metal riff, one year before The Kinks (check out the 3rd Sabbath track I posted, "Children of The Grave"!). The music was an original composition, realised by Delia Derbyshire in 1963;




Montrose were mentioned earlier - here's the original of "Good Rockin' Tonight", from 1945 (before the "invention" of Rock and Roll!) by Roy Brown, sounding a bit like Elvis...



No, it's got nothing to do with metal, except that it's at the very foundations of Rock and Roll, the genre that eventually gave rise to metal - and we can comfortably skip over Elvis and all that nonsense. This was first!

Elvis had a some "bad boy" mixed in with the wholesomeness, which was more potent back then, especially against his entirely good boy UK "rival", Cliff Richard, and I think that's got a little significance - but there were far badder guys in rock and roll, especially Gene Vincent.




But it's obvious that 1963/4 was where rock and roll became something a bit darker and harder, and from 1965-9, it got darker still, culminating with Sabbath in 1970.

Around the time of Sabbath, there are plenty of bands that get overlooked or miscategorised as "Prog" - like Uriah Heep, High Tide, Harsh Reality, Bakerloo, May Blitz, Warhorse and Wishbone Ash (and plenty more besides), but it's the period 1963-5 that's really interesting here, as there are many, many bands that recorded demos and did not make it who are well worth a listen as formative to the heavy metal style and sound.

Maybe there's something pre 1963 that I've overlooked here?

I don't mean a song that a metal band covered - there are 1,000s of those, and we all know the huge influence of the likes of Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran and so on - I mean something with a distinctly Metal attitude or style.


...and I'm going to be the one that posts this;




Am I Evil?

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So I was trying to think of a song that predates "Keep On Runnin'" - I mean DUH!!!

The Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction" (1965) is the first big hit to use the Maestro FZ-1 Fuzz Tone, from one of the biggest contributors to the Metal tone, Gibson (Faster than you can say Steven Tyler!).




I had an interesting bout of archeology here, unearthing the earliest use of fuzz;

Turns out that session guitarist Grady Martin plugged into a dodgy channel in the console during the recording of Marty Robbins (best known for his "Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs LP, which is a must-hear) hit "Don't Worry";



Interestingly, it turns out that Pete Townsend is a bit of a Marty Robbins fan - but more of Pete later...

Later that same year (although the Robbins track was recorded in 1960!), Ann Margaret released this rather tasty ballad, with deliberately fuzzed guitar;




...and the year after, The Ventures released this, using the first Fuzzbox;



- a good 2 years before The Kinks


Mind you, plenty of hits come up referring to Johnny Burnette's interpretation of the classic "The Train Kept a-Rollin'" (also later covered by Motorhead);



It has to be said, though, that you can search further back and find "fuzzy" guitar sounds from bluesmen playing through overdriven amps...


Talking of overdriven amps, the big name in Metal is, of course Marshal.

Both James Marshalls, in fact.


What?


Jim Marshall began tring to pedal his wares in the early 1960s, essentially by copying Fender gear, but ending up with a "hotter" sound. This was noticed by Pete Townsend (see how it KEEPS coming back to The Who?), who had the first "Marshall stack", and used it from 1965-67 - see and hear it in this footage



The other BIG famous early adopter of the Milton Keynes amp maestro was Eric Clapton, who, together with his Gibson Les Paul, brought the big sound to The Bluesbreakers in 1966;



Clapton's more famous metal link is through his group, Cream, that he founded after leaving The Bluesbreakers the next year. Gotta love Cream;




Of course, the guy who (technically!) jumped on the bandwagon, but really made Marshall Amps (and fuzzboxes!) famous - as well as working with manufacturers to improve the products (allegedly, all Hendrix's roadies were given training in maintaining Marshall amps - and Lemmy was one of Hendrix's roadies, although I have yet to ascertain whether Lemmy did, in fact, get this training - nice solid link if it's true!) was Jim's namesake, James Marshall Hendrix.

The clip I chose doesn't show any Marshall amps, it shows mostly Jimi - but hey, it's a mind-blowing clip!




There's an additional link here to my earlier post - in the beginning, Hendrix was managed by Chas Chandler, manager of The Animals - but let's not get into later links with Hendrix. Just about everybody in rock at the time either jammed with or was inspired by Hendrix, because he was that sort of guy and loved to spread it around.

He even covered Cream's "Sunshine of my Love" and several Beatles' numbers, including performing (and improvising around) Sgt Peppers' Lonely Hearts Club band one week after the album was released - such was his genuine admiration for his contemporaries.

Jimi didn't play metal as we know it (too cheerfully coloured, and not quite fantastical enough - too "Blues Rock" of the "up" variety and too improvised), but his influence easily and tangibly stretched into the NWoBHM and beyond, before Black Sabbath became such a major root in Metal (they were actually quite a minor influence on NWoBHM bands).

[Automatic Slim]

Certifi1ed asked:
"Maybe there's something pre 1963 that I've overlooked here?
... I mean something with a distinctly Metal attitude or style."

Schubert's 'Erlkoenig' and 'Tod und das Maedchen' - 2 classic doom metal songs! Seriously though, I just wanted to say that reading this thread has been quite educational.

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Can't say I know Doom Metal well enough as a genre to comment - the 16th note tremolo drone is kinda thrashy in flavour, but the lyrics of Erlkoenig are Prog Rock, surely? There is a little-known Krautrock band from the early 1970s called Erlkoenig - and their one and only album is actually rather good.

Tod und das Machen is largely in D minor - for centuries, traditionally the key of Death (and used by Mozart for both his haunting Requiem and his "horror story" Don Giovanni), so I guess it kinda qualifies...

After all, it was metal uber-God Nigel Tufnell who said "I find D minor to be the saddest of keys..." as he demonstrated his incomplete trilogy "Lick My Love Pump" to Marty DiBergi.

Seriously - it's always good to dig out the Classics - can you provide a stronger link? Is there a particular Doom band whose music directly links back to Schubert, or is this a more generic thing?

[Automatic Slim]

I wasn't being completely serious about Schubert's music being metal. However, neither of those two songs would be out of place on a doom metal album. The themes (especially in Erlkoenig) are completely metal: riding through a storm at night, menacing supernatural beings, and death.

Cirith Ungol had 'Toccata in D Minor' on their King of the Dead album.

I remember listening to someone's record by Erlkoenig (the band) a long time ago. Good, but I don't remember much else.

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Originally Posted by Automatic Slim

The themes (especially in Erlkoenig) are completely metal: riding through a storm at night, menacing supernatural beings, and death.

I still think that sounds like Prog Rock - although Prog tends to be more convoluted, with stories about little boys being accidentally beheaded, then coming back from the dead to rape the little sister that decapitated them (Genesis - "The Musical Box"), mythical giant plants that wreak havoc on the homelands of their captors (Genesis - "The Giant Hogweed") or mysterious robed figures that walk across the lawn pre-empting the apocalypse (sorry, Genesis again - "Supper's Ready").

Whatever - I'm not really arguing, just stating what I think... I know, it looks like the same thing

Originally Posted by Automatic Slim

Cirith Ungol had 'Toccata in D Minor' on their King of the Dead album.

You mean J. S. Bach's Toccata? The one that Ekseption covered?




Then Sky?






Cirith Ungol are an incredibly underrated metal band - Fire and Ice is a lost classic, IMHO. I'll have to track down King of the Dead, as I don't know it.


I can go earlier than J. S. Bach (but admittedly by cheating) - how about Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" (specifically "O Fortuna")?

I know Orff wrote it in the 20th Century, but the songs were written in the 13th Century, and deal with life, luck and death - one is even written from the point of view of a swan roasting on the fire, witnessing all the champing teeth and suchlike. Fine fayre for metal, despite having been written by monks.

However, Ozzy and a host of other metal bands have used it as opening music, ever since its appearance in 1980s cult horror film "Omen".

French Prog Rock band Magma got a lot of mileage out of Carmina (couldn't find the clip I wanted, but this is just excellent and may turn metal fans onto this great if somewhat wierd band;




Personally, I think that Verdi's Requiem has a lot more mileage in it than has so far been exploited by the metal community;




...and no-one has ever come close to the raw scariness of Penderecki's "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima"




...well, maybe the film that gave Black Sabbath their name...




Films are another good source of inspiration for metal - Metallica's "One", which launched them into superstardom, had a video based around the film "Johnny Got His Gun", which in some ways reminded me of scenes from Pink Floyd's "The Wall".

There must be plenty of old horror flicks to dig into

[Unknown Soldier]

I remember seeing a dvd many years ago about Sabbath, where I think Ozzy or Tony Iommi stated that the band were sat in a cafe in Birmingham one day thinking about ideas and names for the group, when one of them remarked on the queue for the nearby cinema that was showing old horror flicks, the group then discussed the importance and influence of horror films on the general public and from there the image of the group was developed, point being that the whole thing seemed rather spontaneous.

Black Sabbath, the name of the 1963 Mario Bava horror film.

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So far I've backtracked from Black Sabbath a little - but I think that their debut album needs a bit of exploring, because nothing appears in a vacuum. Spontaneous as much of it was (as with almost every band in the mid 1960s-early 1970s), there must have been some kind of darker undercurrent that culminated in Black Sabbath.

However, as I said earlier, Sabbath didn't really have that much of a direct influence on the NWoBHM, which is where the rise of Heavy Metal as we now know it starts.

NWoBHM bands typically had a gritty, street brawler type of sound, many bands featuring covers of Rock and Roll classics in their sets, and the pentatonic scale being the one of choice for guitar solos.

Conversely, this was the time when that tradition was being broken away from, and most metal bands I can think of from that time included songs that verged on Prog Rock, particularly on their debut LPs - the music really was very exploratory, before bands began to have chart hits.

The example band I chose to represent the NWoBHM, Iron Maiden, are the best depiction of this process at work;

Their first two LPs are chock full of intricate compositions, some even suggesting Classical connotations, yet the music is downright dirty - the music of a down to earth street level band, not some pretentious Prog Rock noodling.

It's notable that the minor pentatonic is still there in the solos, although these feature more experimentation with deep whammy dive bombs, but the blues is conspicious only by its absence in the riff structures - and the speed quotient is up several fold.

Maiden's cues seem to be Judas Priest and the energy of Punk Rock, and the lyrical subject matter is aggressive - as is the band's image, with the leather jackets and heavily studded wrist bands that were synonymous with Metal in the late 1970s-early 1980s.




It seems quite a leap from Black Sabbath, but putting Priest into the equation, the progression makes a little more sense and some of Maiden's influences become clear;




Particularly when you consider what Priest were doing before "Sin After Sin";



Here the Sabbath connection is plain to hear.


However, the importance of UFO should not be underestimated;



OR The Scorpions;




...especially the latter - the Black Sabbath connection (if there is one) is very hard to hear - the influence on Uli's guitar work is plainly Hendrix - yet this is without doubt Heavy Metal from 1974 - look, there are the Marshall amps, Gibson guitars, fuzz boxes and everything!

And from 1973, The Sweet have everything that typified some NWoBHM bands - and the music is surprisingly complex and tribal sounding - reminding me very much of Iron Maiden (as posted above).




From 1972, Deep Purple demonstrate the crossover from Hard Blues-based Rock to chugging Metal - replete with Townsend-alike Marshall stacks;



1971 - the inimitable Pink Fairies, bringing the energy into metal. There's a very important link in a different metal chain that I hinted at earlier, rooted in the Pretty Things, but that's for a different post;



1970 - Wishbone Ash (any excuse!)



1969 - Colosseum's "Valentyne Suite" - very dark sounding, with fuzzed guitars and jazz tonality several miles away from the blues, with lots of chromatic movement.



1968 - Fifty Foot Hose



also 1968 - Blue Cheer




1967 - Pink Floyd




Before 1966 - "heavy" beat bands and the stuff I posted earlier - it all starts with Floyd. Or The Who. Or The Ventures.

Heavy Metal originating in Surf Music? I think not!.

I posted the Blue Cheer vid simply to show that while BC had the energy, aggression and volume, the reason I don't think they have anything to do with Metal is their lack of skillz - even though there were plenty of metal bands who started out like Blue Cheer, most learned how to play...

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Here I want to tie up the Pretty Things link to metal - and it's a good one, no matter how tenuous. To be fair, the link is the scene that the PTs were part of, far more than the band themselves.

The Pretty Things were part of a notorious drug-riddled scene far removed from Swinging London and Carnaby Street - and very little to do with the Summer of Love - although the "Free Love" thing was always good.

The Ladbroke Grove area of London threw up some amazing characters, including one John Alder, who originally came from Essex, and had played in numerous bands - earning himself a nickname from his curly hair and the bottles of Twink lotion that people kept sending him, and a band name very early on - in 1964, his band was called The Fairies.

Twink played on The Pretty Things' Psych/Prog Rock Opera "S.F.Sorrow", psychedelic nutters "The Aquarian Age" and with Keith West's band Tomorrow (including on their most famous hit "My White Bicycle" before recording his own Space/psych album "Think Pink" in 1970.

For "Think Pink", the band re-recorded The Aquarian Age's number "10,000 Words in a Cardboard Box", which is well worth a listen, even if it's not metal, because it's at the very root of Space Rock;



The musicians that featured on this album went on to become the Pink Fairies, with Mick Farren and Steve Took of The Deviants.

Also wandering around in this scene, desparate to get a band together was a guy from Wales, with a priest for a father, who had been in a band called The Rockin' Vicars, and regularly borrowed money from people using the phrase "Lemme a quid" or "Lemme a fiver".

This dude got a slot roadying for Jimi Hendrix, who was a regular to the Ladbroke Grove area (sadly, Hendrix ultimately died there), then formed a very dark Indian Tabla styled group called Sam Gopal, who released an amazing album called Escalator.

You may recognise the vocal and bass styles




This dude then split Sam Gopal, and joined fellow Ladbroke Groovers, Hawkwind - whose contribution to metal is vastly underrated;






(Hawkwind are/were so much more than a Space Punk Prog band)


...and of course, I'm talking about Ian "Lemmy" Kilmister.





BTW, two of the Pink Fairies, Larry Wallis and Duncan Sanderson, teamed up with Lemmy when Hawkwind kicked him out in 1975. The band was going to be called "Bastards" - my understanding is that this was in reaction to Hawkwind - but UA wouldn't allow this. And neither would UA release the bands album. Much too scary.

Only when the band had success with Chiswick did Bronze sign them up, and UA cynically released "On Parole" in order to cash in on their mistake.




Of course, the classic Motorhead lineup was the one that appeared on their self-titled debut from 1977, which almost didn't get released.

Nice live track from 1979 here - I've always thought that bands who were "influenced by Motorhead" just didn't get what Motorhead were all about, and just where the "speed" lies in their music.




Note: In between The Pink Fairies and Motorhead's first lineup, Guitarist Larry Wallis joined UFO in 1972, before being replaced by an 18 year-old Michael Schenker in 1973. Schenker, of course, cut his guitar teeth with The Scorpions in the previous year with his brother Rudolph. He later joined Thin Lizzy briefly in 1977, to play alongside Gary Moore.

It all ties in very incestuously

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I mentioned Gary Moore at the end of my last post, and in some other threads.

I'm giving him his own post not only because I've met him a few times, but because his is an interesting and linked past to that of the growth of Metal. I'll also bring in Jethro Tull and Andrew Lloyd Webber;

The heavier side of Blues rock plays an important part in metal, despite - or maybe because of - the move away from it by the more experimental NWoBHM bands, the kicking to death of it (and its highbrow cousin, Prog Rock) by Punk, and its death rattle in the aggressive hands of Thrash Metal.

As we saw earlier, Eric Clapton appears to rule the roost here, with his Marshall Stack and impeccable Blues credentials, having briefly appeared with the Bluesbreakers in 1966. In 1967, of course, he formed heavy/power Blues Rock trio Cream, whose style was a great influence on the basic musical style of Jimi Hendrix -the two groups fed off each other mutually in many ways.

Blues Rock bands sprang up all over the place, and "heavy" ones were not uncommon - the heavy sound and the Hendrix and Clapton styles became more and more popular, with even the Beatles succumbing to their charm ("Helter Skelter" being their heavy tour-de-force).

We famously get our first reference in a song to "Heavy Metal" in Canadian rock band Steppenwolf's "Born To Be Wild", recorded in 1968, but rising to fame in 1969 via the film "Easy Rider".

However, that is NOT the first reference to Heavy Metal in the context of rock music, as most people mistakenly believe. Nope. That credit belongs to Spooky Tooth, who used it in 1967. In 1967, ST had just changed their name from The V.I.P.s to Art, and recorded a fantastic Heavy psych album (probably THE heaviest) called "Supernatural Fairy Tales".

Well, the guys who designed their striking psychedelic album cover



(and many other album covers and band posters that exemplified the 1960s psychedelic scene) were a small team called Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, who decided they wanted to make a record. Sadly, they couldn't actually play, so they dragged the members of Art and a few other buddies into a studio, forced them to take lots of drugs and made this album;



Squint carefully, groovers - underneath Hapshash and the Coloured Coat is the legend "Featuring The Human Host and The Heavy Metal Kids". The Heavy Metal Kids was Art's pseudonym.

As I've been hinting all along, Spooky Tooth were the first Heavy Metal band - literally.


I nearly forgot - Gary Moore.

Gary bought his first "proper" guitar, a 1959 Gibson Les Paul, from Peter Green of the Bluesbreakers (later Fleetwood Mac), when Green famously quit FM.

In 1967, the 17 year-old Gary Moore joined a band called Skid Row in Ireland, with Brendan Shiels on bass and Noel Bridgeman on drums. Oh, and a guy called Phil Lynott did vocals for a while before Shiels decided that the group should be a power trio and booted Lynott out, taking on the vocals himself. By way of compensation, he gave Lynott some bass lessons...

Gary was VERY impressive - listen to his shredding;



I'm not sure what he did between 1971 and 1972, but in 1973, he cut an album called "Grinding Stone", (which is rather good, coming in somewhere between Santana, Spooky Tooth, Mahavishnu and Wishbone Ash on steroids);



He then joined Thin Lizzy, with his old pal Phil Lynott in 1974;




In 1976, he joined Colosseum II, successors to Colosseum I (see earlier post). This is some AWESOME shredding;




...and Colosseum II teamed up with composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, who had written a set of Variations on Paganini's Caprice in A minor (having lost a bet) and scored them for rock band. Now he needed musicians who were capable of doing justice to the name Paganini;



...check out the Variations in their entireity - they're amazing, and you get to hear more of Gary than the chugging rhythm and hot tones in the above clip - some real fireworks.


Moore teamed up with Phil Lynott again in 1978 - with Paul Cook and Steve Jones of The Sex Pistols (talk about Metal meeting Punk), in a collaboration called The Greedy Bastards. Unbelievablly, this collaboration had a Christmas hit (under the tamer name, The Greedies) with a medly called "A Merry Jingle".

This re-union was hugely fruitful, and Moore and Lynott (with Thin Lizzy this time!) produced the stunning album Black Rose in 1979;




Moore also put out his own album, entitled "Back on the Streets" (with the help of his pals from Thin Lizzy!), and had a hit with the stunning, stunning, stunning anthem (written by Phil) "Parisienne Walkways", with a legendary guitar solo;




1979 is as recent as I go for the time being