Posted on 12/31/2021 9:15:33 AM PST by DoodleBob
Heavy metal, or just metal, is a strange genre in the sense that we don’t know exactly where it came from. Much like punk, the genre derived from a wide variety of influences that over time coalesced and merged together to create something new, with no definitive starting point. Some posit that Link Wray’s 1958 classic ‘Rumble’ was where it started to germinate, and others claim that it started with the psychedelic rock movement of the ’60s with bands like Iron Butterfly, Vanilla Fudge, 13th Floor Elevators and Coven and that their loose similarities were tied together under one concise banner the moment that Steppenwolf frontman, John Kay, sung the words “heavy metal thunder” in 1968’s ‘Born to be Wild’.
The topic remains an interesting debate because it’s so multi-faceted. Other commentators argue that it was bands such as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, the ‘unholy trinity’ of heavy metal, who actually, as a group effort, helped to proliferate the new genre. Then, on the peripheries of the argument, you have more niche opinions that wager that it was artists such as Arthur Brown, those with a penchant for the macabre and theatrical that first set foot in the dark side.
Objectively, we’d argue that all those mentioned created heavy metal, as nothing in music is ever definitive. It’s a loose, fluid discipline that has always had an all-encompassing, outward-looking perspective, culminating in it being the most accessible of the creative arts. There’s something about music’s inherent dexterity, which has made it able to recreate itself time and time again, outliving societies and individuals. Going right the way back to classical music, it has taken from other places and augmented itself, creating invincibility that will never wain. If you briefly think about how rock and pop have changed over the past 60 years, you’ll heed our point.
Metal is undoubtedly a bi-product of rock and pop, however, we’d argue that it was first Jimi Hendrix who laid down the sonic blueprint of what would become heavy metal in 1967. He took what came before him, adapted it, and sent rock down a harder and more visceral path. Whilst the going assertion is that Hendrix started heavy metal with tracks such as ‘Purple Haze’ on 1967’s Are You Experienced, I’d argue that it was on that year’s ‘Spanish Castle Magic’ from Axis: Bold as Love, where he really created the genre.
Heavier than anything anyone had heard at the time, it pushed Hendrix’s sound to the limits. We hear him play similar licks on ‘Voodoo Chile’, but this was undoubtedly the heaviest Hendrix ever got. It’s a shame that he never made it past 1970 because it’s sure he would have tread new ground in terms of brain-splitting riffs in that decade. His hard soloing, punishing riff, and guitar tone set a precedent for metal moving forward on ‘Spanish Castle Magic’, and for a track recorded in 1967, it remains mindblowing.
Where you can really hear how pioneering the song was is on the 1969 Olympic Studios version. It hits you like a punch in the face. The middle part is effectively a breakdown, and in terms of song structure, you can hear this all across metal in its different forms today. It builds up to a crescendo that drags you back in for another barrage of licks.
One of the highlights of the track is that the bass used was an eight-string Hagström bass. Played by original Experience bassist Noel Redding after being offered the model whilst the band were touring Sweden, never before had the low end on a track sounded so ominous. Showing just how ahead of their time they were by using the instrument, it was only the seventh H8 model ever made. Whether you listen to the Axis: Bold as Love version or the Olympic Studios version, our point is clear. Strangely, you can hear flecks of sludge and stoner metal in the track, showing just how ahead of the curve Hendrix was.
There’s a power to ‘Spanish Castle Magic’ that was miles ahead of any of the other heavy rock music that was out at the time. Hendrix and Co. pushed the boundaries of rock, and in doing so, created the blueprint for metal, and many of its other offshoots.
Listen to the Olympic Studios version of ‘Spanish Castle Magic’ below.
I’d agree with Black Sabbath.
Honorable mention:
Talk, Talk- The Music Machine
Keep Me Hanging on-Vanilla Fudge
Center of Your Mind-Amboy Dukes
Hush- Deep Purple
Blue Cheer
I should have also stated-IMHO
I’m also good with Blue Cheer. What’s your thought on Mott The Hoople or Humble Pie in regards to this? The timing might be a little off, but they definitely contributed to heavy metal. Of course, Black Sabbath is our influence, broadly, for our realm. And hat tip to my bro Lemmy too.
Kick-em-out...
“Rumble,” Link Wray, 1958. The first intentionally distorted guitar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuAD_sQUgpw
In music historian circles this is the accepted seminal heavy metal song.
Black Sabbath, Geezer Butler is Heavy Metal?
“Butler is an avowed vegan and appeared in an advertisement for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in 2009.”
Yep, a nod to Jim Marshall along with Pete Townshend for the equipment. Townshend pushed for 100 watt amps. Townshend also had Marshall build 8x12 speaker cabs, but roadies balked at trying to move them, thus the Marshall stack of two 4x12 cabs was born. Of course Townshend would later move on to Hiwatt gear, but he used Marshall equipment in the beginning.
I think Sabbath gets the nod, because they tended to be more dark, than just signing bluesy songs about being cheated on. And so it seems to be “Heavy Metal” is to do songs about heavy subjects.
For example, that’s why I would have been hard-pressed to ever call Van Halen “Heavy Metal”, even though for sure EVH had a lot of metal influence in his playing, but I would just classify it as “hard rock”.
But Metal really coalesced into a genre after Motorhead came out - and advanced into its own during the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM, as it is known) - Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Saxon, etc. Metallica, who I had the privilege of seeing live several times in their very early San Francisco days, then became the leading band in trash/speed metal, and along with their peers Megadeth, Slayer, Exodus, and Anthrax refined the metal genre into the familiar sound that still persists today.
Today "metal" encompasses everything from symphonic metal performed by brilliant musicians to Hardcore with Cookie Monster vocals and guitarists who sound like they first picked up the instrument the day before the recording. I kind of checked out of following the genre when Cookie Monster became the default for newer bands - turn on Liquid Metal on Sirius XM at any random time for an example. But there are still some great bands out there, under the radar.
” sludge and stoner metal “
?????
It’s an interesting period in rock and roll. Partly because the genre labels were getting assigned after the fact by the press, the people making the music really weren’t thinking in those terms. The general consensus is that the psychedelic movement really spawned a great expansion in what rock could be. It broke away from the 2:40 3 verses with choruses and a solo structure and just did whatever. Jimi was kind of in the psychedelic movement, in so far as he got away from the structures.
Psychedelic faded out fast but it spawned 2 things. In the London area where you had classically trained musicians you got progressive rock. Taking this freedom into longer wider forms, borrowing from classical and jazz. In the north where you had less “educated” musicians things got loud, metal.
But what was first for what? Who knows. Certainly plenty of Jimi’s stuff showed the way for metal. But of course we can’t discount Dave Davies putting distortion, arguably the most important single sound in hard rock, in years before.
And we have to remember that the band largely credited with creating the genre, Black Sabbath, generally insist that they were never a metal band. When they’re in a good mood they’ll often admit how much metal took from them but as far as they’re concerned they didn’t make metal. They made loud music they liked. And in a fun indication of how close metal and prog really are Sabbath even has songs that have “including” in their title, which is usually the dead give away of prog.
So who knows. Just have fun with it.
I’m with you on Blue Cheer. I have the original Highs of the 60s album with a number of songs that fit the category. Black Sabbath probably wins the title.
im talking dive bombs...volume...feed back.....
saw them opening up for Ozzy and Randy Rhoads at the Masonic Temple Theater in Detroit...1981...i think they could be heard in Toledo that night...
or “pop metal”...
Edvard Grieg did it in Peer Gynt.
"In the Hall of the Mountain King" is heavy metal.
Townshend allegedly moved on to Hiwatt after a billing dispute between Marshall and The Who's management.
That's one story, anyways.
Interesting thing about Townshend's Hiwatts is that he had his amp technician take all of the tone controls out of the circuit, so there was pretty much nothing working except the volume knob, nothing to degrade the signal between the guitar and the amp's power section.
I have a Gibson Les Paul with a similar feature. If you pull up on one of the tone knobs, it takes all four of the knobs out of the signal chain, adding a noticeable bit of boost to the output. Great for solos.
It was Black Sabbath.
It was only Black Sabbath.
The term was coined by a reporter referring to Black Sabbath.
“At first there was...but this guy...on this album...”
No, it was Black Sabbath.
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