History of Heavy Metal Thread

[Certif1ed]

Originally Posted by Unknown Soldier

But any enthusiast could go back further, therefore some kind of line has to be drawn.

I think to say HM started with Sabbath and that Judas Priest were the first proper HM band to be fairly correct, from the viewpoint that there has to be some kind of defined starting line. Metallica and some of the other thrash bands of the time were credited with creating thrash, but anybody can go back further and point to Motorhead or Venom, point being there has to be some kind of starting position otherwise you can keep going back.

This is the point really - there are accepted lines, and I'm not disputing them, just using them as the base to explore; The thing with Spooky Tooth is that they were not a minor band - they released several albums and worked with a Classical composer (Pierre Henry) who was pretty influential in pop music himself.

Anyone could go back, and plenty have in the many histories that are dotted about on the Internet and a very few books - but none are specific, except by mentioning particular bands, like The Who and The Kinks, Blue Cheer and so on - but with little real exploration, and little credit to the bands that really paved the way.

Anyone could say that Venom played thrash first, yadda yadda, although it's clear to me that they didn't. You cannot keep going back - someone played 16th note "tremolo" riffs first (probably Brian May of Queen), like someone played with both hands on the neck of the guitar first (the latter was Steve Hackett of Genesis, not Eddie Van Halen, as many like to think! Even Les Paul only played one-handed hammer-on licks, IIRC).


The stuff that happened in the 1980s is reasonably well documented, but again, the histories depend on people who were "there", and "there" was different places for different people, so it tends to be a jumble, with everyone claiming to be an authority but not really being able to describe the music except in exaggerated terms which are and often inaccurate as a result of the exaggerations.

There are loads of loose ends in there to tie together - if you want to accept established histories, then fine. It's possible that all that will happen here is that we'll confirm everything in them - but I doubt it!

There's no point in regurgitating other people's scanty histories - I'm looking to create something with some meat in it and uncover maybe controversial stuff.

Like possibly "Spooky Tooth were the true creators of Heavy Metal" or something along those lines.