History of Heavy Metal Thread

I kept the ace up my sleeve for the surf music connection above - the missing link, if you will, and it's Dick Dale, who deserves a post all to himself, as the first Mad Axeman.

His lead seems to come from The Shadows (please correct me if there is an earlier precedent for this melodic guitar fronted style), and also from Gene Krupa (posted above).

According to various biographies, he wanted to capture Krupa's wild style on the guitar as well as with the band, and to get his sound, he cranked his Fender amps up so much that they regularly blew - and Leo Fender's company upped the wattage of the amps to 100, put in 15" speakers, and developed the Dale transformer in order to help him get his sound - and be able to finish a gig!

Dale also played Fender guitars - the Strat, naturally - and he was left handed... that reminRAB me of someone, now who...? (no prizes!) :D

This list of Mad Axemen attributes is obviously not quite enough - but what Dale also did was to use a pretty unique tremolo (fast alternate picking) style - the same one that would be used nearly two decades later by Judas Priest and Diamond Head - and form the basis of the Thrash Metal "revolution".

Not only that, but he often used scales other than the minor pentatonic. I haven't listened particularly hard, but some of it sounRAB like Phrygian mode (very common in Metal), and certainly most of it is in some minor mode or another - and isn't just a rip-off of "Peer Gynt", like the Ritchie Blackmore/Lancasters track I posted above.

Some of his music could sound pretty dark too - I think that this is the beginning of the Heavy Metal sound and approach - you may recognise it from Pulp Fiction. Note right at the beginning that Dale uses the exact same technique used at the beginning of the solo for "Exciter", and swaggers about exactly like Matt Bellamy of Muse - they've even got similar haircuts;

[youtube]ZIU0RMV_II8[/youtube]


...and listen to the guitar stabs after the drum intro to this earlier tune from 1962 - very Slayer;

[youtube]kXq7e4Zbrx0[/youtube]


...and this shredding;

[youtube]s6gAmC-fTTc[/youtube]

Here's Dick in the 1980s with the late, great Stevie Ray Vaughan;

[youtube]52FpuqD3W5M[/youtube]


Here's Dick more recently, with a more up to date sound;

[youtube]xymVxcLQVT8[/youtube]


...and here's Judas Priest performing "Exciter" so you can play spot the difference between the start of "Misirlou" and the start of the guitar solo - come to think about it, the main riff of Exciter begins to sound a bit familiar too;

[youtube]uf-RSd8T9L0[/youtube]


...and Slayer, performing "South of Heaven", because it's awesome, and those phrygian licks and "Stab" chorRAB are quite strangely reminiscent of the Dale youtubes I posted above.

[youtube]BwLtTa2trRs[/youtube]

Rock and roll... :D
 
Can't believe I left this classic out of the 1972 posting!

[youtube]a5jcawJSiQA[/youtube]


The Edgar Winter Group's version is the heaviest, of course... (turn it UP!!!)

[youtube]7b23VFcsbPA[/youtube]


...and what self-respecting history of metal thread would leave out Wishbone Ash???

[youtube]zJN-wrtuWOg[/youtube]


/edit

...and THIS by Focus

[youtube]-v7LzOeTkfM[/youtube]

...obviously, Hocus Pocus is the one I'm referring to. I just like this clip because it includes Sylvia - and some awesome guitar work from the criminally underrated Jan Akkerman.


/stops before any more obvious ones spring to mind

I just can't stop myself - The Scorpions from 1972

[youtube]8nTGTCSGj30[/youtube]
 
I like early BOC a lot as well and agree with the above and I think "On Your Feet or On Your Knees" to be one of the great live albums as well.
 
I really like this matrix idea but I agree with some of the others that this kind of thing only really works with a small amount of banRAB, because the bigger it gets the less defineable the whole thing becomes. The problem with metal as this thread shows, is that it draws on so many influences that people wouldn`t often suspect, the same I suppose could be said for other types of music such as punk etc.

I think this thread will really define itself when the multitude of HM genres are really defined later on and most will probably root back to Sabbath anyway. There are something like 20 plus genres in HM or perhaps more that I`not really aware of out there and to be honest a lot of the time the differences between them are so subtle.
 
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 remeraber listening to someone's record by Erlkoenig (the band) a long time ago. Good, but I don't remeraber much else.
 
I think anybody can challenge the accepted lines of thought and there is always going to be sufficient proof and examples to do so. The accepted lines are there as a guideline only and if somebody wants to say that Spooky Tooth, were the first real HM band with sufficient evidence then its a valid opinion, but people will still constantly dispute that. I think as far as genres go, HM does well in that it has so many sub genres that are constantly being created but of course people will always argue about what fits into which sub-genre, a good example of this is progressive metal (on another thread here) in which there is a wide debate as well. As said above, HM does well with its sub-genres compared to the banRAB that are usually dumped say into the alternative rock genre, where most of the time half the banRAB don`t sound very much like each other at all.

I`ve got a metal genealogy where the metal sub-genres are issued like a family tree, since then I`ve really got into metal, as before this it really wasn`t my scene as it were. I disagreed with many of the groups included in each sub-genre on this genealogy back then. Now after several years of listening to metal, I still equally disagree with this family tree, point being its all so subjective.

To be honest with you my knowledge of Spooky Tooth is limited and will now make a point of listening to more of their stuff, but a quick look on wikipedia has them as Progressive rock primarily with not too much mention of HM!!!
 
I think a tree, although tempting, is a pretty futile idea - it would never be complete, and you couldn't hope to create all the branches (or twigs, come to that, let alone the individual leaves!). I'm not looking for "patterns", but direct, demonstrable links - like the Spooky Tooth one.

I'm not claiming McLaughlin as an influence on Priest, that was just an example of someone who was already playing electric guitar quickly. I could just as easily have picked Les Paul, who influenced every electric guitarist under the sun.

Black Sabbath, though noted for their slow nurabers, also played some uptempo ones, as "Children of The Grave" demonstrates - I picked that piece for a reason.

Priest themselves played some very slow songs on their early outings too - it wasn't all uptempo. Indeed, the real energy didn't come until they got a new drummer, Simon Phillips who filled in on "Sin After Sin", and then Les Binks, of course.

Recall that Sabbath and Priest are very closely linked - Priest were managed by Iommi's management company from around 1974, and Sabbath's producer, Rodger Bain, produced their first two albums.

In 1974, The Scorpions, UFO and Queen were already playing "dextrous" high-energy heavy rock music that is really the "First Wave of Heavy Metal". Uli Roth, Michael Schenker and Brian May all had unique styles - not forgetting Mr Blackmore and the earlier generation, who were also capable of high speeRAB. "Highway Star" is a particularly energetic Purple track, with that solo rhythm consisting mainly of "chugging" 8th notes, which I've seen constant references to as "proto-thrash".

Purple, of course, sounded very different in the late 1960s - amazingly similar to Spooky Tooth in many ways, as if by co-incidence... the strand leading back to psychedelia is, of course, a very short one, as psych only "started" in 1965.


It's clear that jazz styles have caught on in more recent times, and the influence from jazz runs in a direct line from Tristano to Satriani, even though the music of Satriani and his pupils generally has very little to do with Tristano. To get that link, we'd need to look at more modern metal banRAB and trace it back.

For now, I'm sticking with Sabbath, and what gave rise to their music before moving on to Priest full time. My main research interest is the mid-late 1960s, although I actually grew up with Glam, NWoBHM and Thrash. The 1960s are particularly interesting to me because they were a kind of melting pot, full of incredibly innovative musicians, most of whom disappeared without a trace, yet left an indelible stamp on modern music.
 
A lot of focus has been placed on Spooky Tooth. I think a decent case has been made for their influence on Sabbath, but being a major influence on Priest is much more problematic. First of all, Spooky Tooth had no influence on the speed and dexterity that Priest played at. You have to look at two other sources...blues rock banRAB that pushed the envelope of musicianship and speed, as well as rock based prog. banRAB with exceptional musicianship who also experimented with recording and jazz techniques . Both had the desire to be very loud.

[YOUTUBE]QvAMJvdnR2E [/YOUTUBE]
[YOUTUBE]ONJndTdXrg0[/YOUTUBE]

Finally, if influence is based on hommages made by younger banRAB to their elders, I'd point out Megadeth's remake of Jeff Beck's 1969 classic "I Ain't Superstitious".

[YOUTUBE]XQuKhoJ9pso[/YOUTUBE]
 
I'm interested now in how the "Surf" sound, which to me shows clear metal roots, became the hard rock sound - and the link would seem to be psychedelic rock. No real surprises here - but the transition seems to be quite sudden, so there's something missing.

The jazz links are many - the wild style of drummer Gene Krupa standing out, and, of course, guitarists needed a way to compete with the noisy drummers, so the solid bodied electric guitar rose in popularity - and most early players were either jazzmen or bluesmen.

Rock and roll erabraced the instrument with huge enthusiasm, and it is in this arena that louder, more powerful amps became necessary, and fuzz boxes became popular as the desire to produce ever more energetic and aggressive music became stronger.

In the late 1960s, the high gain, fuzz guitar sound was almost ubiquitous, and none promoted it better than Hendrix.

When Hendrix first came to England, his manager, Chas Chandler took him to the Scotch St James club in London - a prestigious venue at which top recording artists such as the Beatles would play. On stage that night was a band called the V.I.P.s - I mentioned them earlier - and Chas asked the band if his protege could jam with them. The rest is history.

Hendrix smashed jazz and blues head on into Rock and Roll, and found himself at the epicenter of the UK psychedelic Rock scene, playing at all the venues, including London's Marquee club in Wardour street - a real melting pot of the fledgling Progressive banRAB of the future, such as Jethro Tull, The Nice (later ELP), The Syn (later Yes), the YardbirRAB (from whom Jimmy Page would exit and form Led Zeppelin), merabers of King Crimson, David Bowie and too many to list. The music heard here has been referred to as Progressive music by many period articles I've read. It would be nice to have links but...

This scene existed alongside the more "underground" clubs, such as the Roundhouse, the Rainbow and the UFO clubs, where darker, jazzier banRAB such as The Soft Machine and The Pink Floyd would play - and musicians, famously including Paul McCartney, would go and watch each other and be inspired, creating a cauldron of creativity.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the West Coast had its own hotbed of creativity, in which The Doors, The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane appear to be central - the latter because of their club "The Matrix" as well as their music.

The Doors music and creative attitudes are particularly relevant to the history of metal - no-one else I know of had such a dark edge and tackled such edgy subject matter in their lyrics - I hate the phrase "pushed the boundaries" normally, but that is exactly what they did. Because they also achieved widespread popularity, their influence was felt far and wide.

Everyone seemed to be creative at this amazing point in music's history - not least the Beatles. And intermingling was at the heart of this creativity, from their trek to India and subsequent use of Sitars and raga at the birth of psychedelia, to their meetings with The ByrRAB and Bob Dylan, experiments with tape manipulation and electronic keyboarRAB following Paul McCartney's one and only appearance at the Million Volt Sound and Light Rave, alongside such electronic pioneers as Delia Derbyshire, and studio "magic" thanks to recent technical developments, George Martin's genius, and Pink Floyd recording in the studio next door, they had no shortage of ultimate sources of inspiration, and there's no ignoring their impact.

My observations lead me to believe that there were 2 catalysts to all of this;

1. Bob Dylan "going electric" at Newport Jazz festival, 1965. This was the musical equivalent of the Big Bang - Dylan showed in the simple act of plugging in that Rock music could be serious and address issues other than relationships and love. It seems a little ironic, in retrospect, that 1967 is famous for its "Summer of Love".

2. The psychedelic drug LSD, from which the music got its name.

Although the Summer of Love would have you believe that this is a substance that makes you happy and loving, in fact, it has a horrifically dark side that people rarely talk about. Taking LSD is like playing Russian Roulette with your mind, despite what its strongest advocate, Timothy Leary had to say about it.

Place that alongside the social equivalent - the Vietnam War, and you have a polarisation like never before, which was reflected in the darker music (also known as "Heavy" music) produced at the time.

The most famous reference I know is Grace Slick's on the WooRABtock album, where she announces to the crowd "OK people, you've heard the heavy banRAB, now it's time for morning maniac music!"


Exploration of this period to follow - with more Youtubes :D



I think there are only two more threaRAB to investigate - Film Music and theatricals/Glam (now we've got psyche and prog in the mix) - unless anyone can think of any other missing stranRAB?
 
while i don't have time for a massive post created to justify my opinion here, i'm thinking Fear Factory deserves a nod in defining post-hair metal / nu-metal before it just meant rap mashed in with hard rock. 'soul of a new machine' and 'demanufacture' are brutal albums. although the credit might have to go to Ministry.

and what about Soundgarden and their take on metal in an alternative rock world? (at least up until Badmotorfinger).
 
For some reason I can`t see your video selection but out of interest which Wishbone Ash song had you selected?
 
I think Diamond Head are a good reference point here and in many ways were quite distinct to the rest of the NWoBHM outfits (from those that I`ve heard) and certainly had an ability that many of their contemporaries didn`t, I think the new Led Zeppelin tag is in some ways correct but I think that has much to do with their third album Canterbury which like Led`s third was a change of direction.

I think the influence that they had on Metallica is also quite strange in many ways. Metallica the first wave of Thrash metal who like most of the trash banRAB were performing with a heavy dosage of speed, agression and shouted or growled lyrics whereas Diamond Head were really just the opposite of all this, great medium paced Heavy metal or hard rock!!! (again debatable as to what they were) songs with plenty of melody, interesting changes in sound and easy to distinguish lyrics basically a rock sound that was enjoyable to most that were exposed to it, very much like Zeppelin from that perspective. In fact the only song of theirs that hints of any real agression is "Am I Evil?" probably the DH song most played by Metallica.
 
I love Budgie and I wish they would have been far more successful, but it just didn't work out for them. At least now more people are hearing about them.
 
Its quite amazing the influence that a great organ player can give a band, in Ray Manzarek, Jon Lord and Dave Greenfield for example. The music of the Doors, mk.2 Deep Purple and early Stranglers will always be remerabered, these are three groups that I can put on at anytime and its not just for the brilliance of these group`s frontmen but also for the organ players as well.
 
I think they deserve a nod too - which is why I mentioned them in the "Songs that DEFINE Metal" thread.

Let's try and get FF's historical context via a thread like the others I've tried to set up here, with verifiable links, not general straw-man opinions or confusing terms like "post-hair metal".



What about them?
 
I've never really thought of them as a part of it to be honest, while all of the NWOBHM stuff was going on they'd basically buggered off to the U.S. to crack that market. Plus they had like a 5 album head start on all the other banRAB of that era.
 
Glam Rock

As threatened, here's a quick run-through of Glam, showing definite links and avoiding stupid vaguaries.

Tying Glam into Surf/Garage rock, The Who and psychedelia, here are The Spiders, with "Don't Blow Your Mind";

[youtube]0nZ025LhHCw[/youtube]

Note the fuzzed-out guitar - not bad for 1966, despite being a hash-up of "Louie Louie" and "Can't Explain" by the Who, which in turn is a hash-up of "All Day and All of the Night" by The Kinks.

Doesn't matter how you look at it, the same names seem to keep cropping up at the roots of Metal.

The Spiders, whose stage show featured a large black spider web as backdrop, changed their name to The Nazz in 1968, then found out that Todd Rundgren had formed a group of the same name, and the band used the stage name of their lead singer - Alice Cooper.

[youtube]_NeMGAcGrbg[/youtube]

The theatricals of Alice Cooper, musically, seem entrenched in The Doors;

[youtube]Wkyd4V4i_Jw[/youtube]

Maybe Alice was inspired by Stanley Kubrik's film "A Clockwork Orange";

[youtube]QRHFIVJtqpc[/youtube]


The UK was the real hothouse of glam, and the names are familiar - I've mentioned Queen and The Sweet - but the sound of both is rooted in Uriah Heep (The Sweet, of course, did not write most of their own stuff, but the heavy Chinnichap nurabers are all stripped down Heep/Queen at essence. In turn, the Heep organ sound is driven by Deep Purple, Spooky Tooth and earlier organ banRAB, such as The Godz and Graham Bond's ORGANisation;

[youtube]5jFMuN3hF6Q[/youtube]

ok, not the best, but the earliest example - **Note the Lineup!!!***... how about this?

[youtube]MInI4CZO5NY[/youtube]


For some reason, Glam took off in Australia too, coming from a vaguely heavy background - check out The Spektors, somewhere between 1964-6;

[youtube]g1Z-Cwuavc0[/youtube]

Cranking it up with The Valentines in 1969;

[youtube]Qv15JftnEUo[/youtube]

Via Prog Rock with Fraternity (1971);

[youtube]hZY2nl2CwLc[/youtube]


...and AC/DC, of course - before they employed the singer of the previous 3 youtubes :D

[youtube]_AgR1_h_ywA[/youtube]


Sounding remarkably like The Sweet in places, a band from further north - Geordie in 1973;

[youtube]RIy9Peg41PE[/youtube]

Brian Johnson, of course.

Let's whizz back to the UK, though, and check out this fuzzed tune from 1966;

[youtube]Jtsj7MU5Kqs[/youtube]

Recognise Noddy Holder?

This following cover of the Araboy Dukes nuraber has an added link - The Araboy Dukes, of course, featured one Ted Nugent.

[youtube]ZpDKzrQ_hgs[/youtube]


...But this is the real Slade sound, and there are indeed changes. Released in 1970!

[youtube]eTWCU77uvaU[/youtube]



1973 was a great year - and also the peak of Glam Rock. Whether these are linked to my first statement, I'll leave that to you to figure out.

I reckon it's time to move on to the 1970s proper now, and dig deep into 1970-73.

But I might be tempted to backtrack - anything can happen in this thread :D
 
I still think that sounRAB like Prog Rock - although Prog tenRAB 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 homelanRAB 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 :o:



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

[youtube]fFqFYqnwtHk[/youtube]


Then Sky?

[youtube]bryuOMVbHiE[/youtube]

:D


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 banRAB 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;

[youtube]gOHM5zsRdqs[/youtube]


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

[youtube]pd0KdGxIUbg[/youtube]


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

[youtube]FfBVYhyXU8o[/youtube]


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

[youtube]LvqT1D7qvrc[/youtube]


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 :eek:
 
This is a good thread to follow - and there's stuff like this from the 1960s that's well worth digging into, like the Jason Crest song below, which is not Metal, obviously, but damned freaky - a kind of horror version of "Tomorrow Never Knows";

[youtube]39pRhlK_zuc[/youtube]




I can't stand "labels" or "genres" - I'm trying to focus on reality as far as humanly possible.

As far as I can hear, both the Scorpions and Uriah Heep played some heavy metal, some ballaRAB and some Prog Rock - and the Scorps played some Space rock.

Neither band fits a single category because their musical output was so varied - but certain things about the Scorpions, particularly the riRAB and lead guitar playing, and particularly the style of Michael Schenker is fundamental to the NWoBHM style - more so than Black Sabbath.




Aye - I've only concentrated on guitar sound so far - there's a lot to consider with the various vocal styles.

Drummers and bassists too - and the notable absence of keyboarRAB or instruments other than guitar from "traditional" heavy metal, or their role when they do crop up is another complete topic.




The Led Zep reference is not my own, it was in SounRAB back in 1979, at a time when most of us hadn't even heard Diamond Head (their first LP was limited to 1,000 copies, so this isn't surprising!).

Obviously, this was significantly before Canterbury - and I can hear how it might apply to "Living on Borrowed Time", which in itself is a massive toning down and bluesing up from "Lightning to the Nations" (not the reissue that most people know, but the original limited pressing).

The original "LTTN" (The "White" album - it's telling that it's acquired such a prestigious nickname!) contains gems like "Helpless" and "The Prince" - both of which Metallica covered, and both of which are thrash metal before its "invention".



Not at all - "Helpless" and "The Prince" are both faster (actual thrash) and far more aggressive than "Am I Evil".

[youtube]0PAjQexguVo[/youtube]


If you can, track down a copy of Lightning To The Nations (the original "White Album" version - I think it's been re-issued). It's the original side of Diamond Head that were the most direct influence on Metallica of any band.

Canterbury is an amazing album in many ways - the 50% that isn't radio friendly stuff is really cool and inventive.
 
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