THE WHO's PETE TOWNSHEND: 'We Sort Of Invented Heavy Metal'

Blabbermouth ^ | December 21, 2019 | N/A

[wardaddy]

I was gonna say that too

Link Wray had the first inkling of what would become metal

And the Kinks were first to use it ..in a big way even though they were no metal band

Yardbirds right with them then

Whoever played on Donovan Hurdy Gordy Man...that was early and it’s a point of contention who played that

Late 60s There were 20 bands doing power chord blast offs

Of course LZ but they were more hard rock blues meets olde English fairytales than metal though they sure ventured into it

Blue Cheer

Sabbath I think did first in 1969 but I never heard it till 1970 fall

Steppenwolf besides using the term first

Peter Green Fleetwood Mac...man how he could play power blues

I think Iron Butterfly actually had a guitar player who rose above that obnoxious organ on occasion

Along those lines let’s not forget Vanilla Fudge which had some good players in it....they could be heavy

Deep Purple was fairly early...the wolf howling was that not cool then

I know I will be pilloried but the Beatles in some of their acid drenched waddling touched on heavy metal....ever so gingerly

Uriah Heep were early too and metalish in their wizard quests

The early giants is a toss up Purple versus Sabbath

Cream could also venture into a heavy sound

A band I not cared for ...Bloodrock....they thought themselves metal early on.....gloomy metal

[wardaddy]

Dead quite recently

[wardaddy]

Denver did Family Dog shows?

Chet Helms

I had the posters

[Drew68]

Poor Pete T. He is steadily destroying his own legacy and seems to not be bothered by it a single bit.

Nothing new. Townsend has been pissing people off in interviews for the past fifty years.

[daltec]

Thanks for posting this -- I was going to myself, but you were a lot faster! Yours is better anyways.

My friends and I have argued Possessed vs Death for many years. I base my opinion on album release date, which means Possessed was the first. But my friends point to the existence of cassettes etc of early rehearsals as evidence that Death was actually doing that type of music, before Possessed was (and certainly before Seven Churches).

As for why Florida, I think at first it was coincidence. However, having grown up in and around Tampa at that time, you are 100% correct that so many pioneers came from not just Florida, but Central Florida. Morrisound recording studio rapidly became the "death metal capitol of the universe," with bands coming from all around the world to record there. Whatever!

BTW if you are unfamiliar, Nile, from South Carolina, still proudly flies the death metal flag. Their lyrics often have to do with ancient Egyptian mythology. "Rough sex" and "Nazi rap," hahahaha.... man oh man. I wonder what that guy would make of Absu, from Plano TX.

[dsc]

There was a venue on Colfax called “The Family Dog.” Back then I didn’t know anything about Chet Helms.

[dsc]

The two I missed were Elvis and the Beatles.

[Repealthe17thAmendment]

With regularity, Townshend says something that makes me scratch my head and say, “Huh?” . But I love their music, so I just have to shrug, and figure Pete is just gonna be who he is.

[OA5599]

Hendrix used it on "Purple Haze" in '67, 3 years prior to Sabbath's first album.

I actually forgot about that! I did know that trivia at one point. Thanks for the reminder. Okay yes, you are technically correct. But it was just the opening chords of one of his songs, and not something he repeated. I don't think anyone would feel Purple Haze is a heavy metal song. So, to paraphrase some dude in a SCOTUS case on pornography:

"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of music I understand to be metal... but I know it when I hear it."

[OA5599]

Hmm. Perhaps he is thinking of industrial music like KMFDM and Rammstein? I don’t know what they sing about, but they seem like German perverts. I’ve read that Rammstein was named after the Ramstein air disaster, but they misspelled it.

As for the Possessed vs Death debate, I’m going to let the scholars battle that out. I’m not sure how they could ever sort out the underground scene however. We might be stuck debating a while.

The central Florida being ground zero for death metal... well after years of listening to those bands, the navy put me through a year of training in Orlando. It was confusing because my first thought was, “This isn’t so bad. Why are they so disgruntled?” Whatever it was, good job central Florida!

Never listened to Absu before. Just put it on Youtube. Not bad. Sounds like a cross between black metal and Judas Priest. Nile is pretty bad ass.

Last week after I went to see Morbid Angel, back at my friend’s house, she had a band called Craft playing. Swedish black metal. It hooked me right away. She started with a song called F the Universe. I bought two of their albums off of Amazon immediately, and I bet they’re downstairs as I type now that I think about it. Excuse me while I go put some pants on and retrieve them...

[Texan5]

No, I’m not joking and no, I haven’t researched it-I do know that my co-workers’ CDs are from Germany, the vocals are in German and from his translation, they do talk about Nazis, involve sex, and violence to LEOs like a lot of American rap crap does-I only speak English and Spanish-not German or any other language, so I can’t vouch for his translations. It is also obvious that the stuff he is listening to is not exactly mainstream, but underground type music-and that co-worker is a skinhead-and maybe a neo-Nazi for all I know- with tats of skulls, symbols, etc covering arms, neck-and a prison tat on his cheek-no way do I want to know about that- who keeps to himself-he does listen to some American Death Metal-he had us all listening to a CD at work once that had a couple of Death tunes on it-tamer than the German stuff, but I still can’t say I could listen to a diet of that-I don’t even like listening to Bloodrock’s DOA-but since he is an excellent electrician and just edgy enough to be a scary old guy, we humor him...

MrT5 was from the Seattle area-he and one of his sisters got me listening to Seattle punk/grunge/whatever-I still do once in awhile, but not around my employer and best friend or my guy-they both have a pathological hatred of that genre-even the opening bars of Come as You Are or Lithium are enough to send either of them into a frenzy, never mind the more recent tunes-one size does not fit all...

[Texan5]

Thanks-that is interesting-like I said in another post, it is pretty obvious that my skinhead co-worker is not listening to mainstream stuff-the CDs he likes are from Germany and have German lyrics. The American Death Metal he listens to is mainstream, but I really still can’t get into it-one of the few genres of music I don’t like-but it doesn’t make me want to run out into the road screaming-only rap crap does that...

[smvoice]

I saw Elvis at the 1974 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. I don’t know if that really counts though. He was on stage for 20 minutes. And the screams drowned out a LOT of music!

[wardaddy]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chet_Helms

[OA5599]

Hmm well I suppose you can find anything in an underground scene. But that sort of stuff is not typical of the death metal genre, and Germany isn’t a big player in the death metal scene. Like I said, it originated in America. Sweden would be the next country people think about when looking for the big death metal acts, and then the UK, where heavy metal itself started.

Death metal, thrash metal, heavy metal and black metal are my favorites, but don’t worry, your Seattle grunge doesn’t send me into a frenzy. I like any hard, heavy and fast guitar based music. Punk rock, classic rock, hard rock. All of it.

Btw, one of my dear friends just moved back to San Antonio. I met her at a heavy metal bar in Brooklyn. She will be missed!

[Don W]

I have been listening primarily to German music for the last couple of years myself: Rammstein, Oomph, Eisbrecher, Blutengel, Nachtblut, Feuerschwantz, D’Artagnan, Xandria, Megaherz, Nena Hagen, Faun, and many others.

I’ve seen Within Temptation, In Flames, Smash Into Pieces, Amon Amarth, Arch Enemy, and Beyond the Black live in the last year.

The Wacken festival is way up there on my list of “to go”: 3 days, 8 stages, over 120 bands all live in a farmer’s field in the middle of nowhere Germany.

Somewhere between 70K & 100K folks like me all there for a good time! Look up some live performances on youtube. Ghost Love Score by Nightwish is EPIC, yet somehow a fair sample of one style (symphonic metal, if you care to know) of the music played.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYjIlHWBAVo

[Texan5]

I hope your friend will be happy in SA-I guess after NY it seems like a small city-only just over 1 million people...

I used to like SA when I went to college there in the early 70’s-I was fresh off a W Texas ranch so it was the 1st huge city I’d ever lived in-but it has changed so much since I moved back to a rural area that I don’t work on any jobsites there-the only time I go to SA is to stay with my guy-it is crowded, noisy and unsafe compared to here in BFE-plus out here you can see the stars at night, the air smells clean-and you can crank up your music as loud as you want and no one cares-we all just like to be left alone...