50 Years Of Metal

This Monday (4th August) marks the 50th anniversary of the birth of Heavy Metal music – or does it? Certainly The Kinks’ single, You Really Got Me, was released on 4th August 1964 and this has often been referred to as the first Heavy Metal record but it was neither described as Heavy Metal at the time and it was hardly the finished product. However, the distorted guitar, hard riff and power chords where all in place along with the inevitable Gibson Flying V guitar.

The big innovation on You Really Got Me was Dave Davis’s distorted guitar sound which he achieved by the unusual method of attacking the speaker cone of his amplifier with a razor blade. Much to his surprise, not only did the amp still work but produced an unmistakably crunchy metallic sound. However, he was not the first to experiment with distorted guitar. Many of the electric blues players of the 1950s were not averse to turning the amps up beyond what any self-respecting studio engineer would tolerate. One good example is from 1954 with Pat Hare’s delightfully titled I’m Gonna Murder My Baby.

Another element hinted at with The Kinks but would only really be developed by later hard rock bands is the thunderous drumming. This borrowed not so much from the blues but more from Jazz. It’s something that has seemingly disappeared as the genre has progressed and now Heavy Metal is synonymous with what I would call “machine-gun” drumming: fast, hard and highly proficient but somehow lacking the subtlety and creativity of early hard rock drummers. The names Louie Bellson, Elvin Jones, Joe Morello, Buddy Rich and Max Roach are mentioned time and again as influences on hard rock’s early drummers. However, Gene Krupa was doing all this back in the 1930s.

The factors driving the development of Heavy Metal in the 1960s were largely technological. Larger amplifiers and various electronic effects gave a huge array of sonic possibilities. The Who and The Beatles were great innovators in this area: the former with their massive power chords and the latter with heavy riffs and electronic experimentation all of this leading into the development of Psychedelic Rock.  One curiosity recorded around this time was Jeff Beck’s Beck’s Bolero featuring a backing group including The Who’s Keith Moon, session players Nicky Hopkins, Jimmy Page and John-Paul Jones – the latter two would later form Led Zeppelin (the band name was actually a quip from Moon during these sessions)

Cream was formed in 1966 by Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker. A mix of hard blues, heavily distorted guitar riffs, crashing drums and psychedelic imagery. The interesting thing when listening to their first album “Fresh Cream” is how low down the mix the guitar sound was set. The follow-up, "Disraeli Gears” took no prisoners and the single, Sunshine of your Love, would launch a thousand rock and metal bands.

Brought over to Britain in 1966 Jimi Hendrix transformed the art of electric guitar playing. A great player, writer and performer this was a man completely in control of the link between wooden instrument and the electronic brute force of the amplifier. Are You Experienced remains one of the all-time great debut albums but for me the opening track (at least on the original UK release) Foxy Lady still packs a powerful punch with its use of distorted guitar.

By 1968 the increasing power of the Marshall Stack was having an effect on the music that both up and coming musicians and established artist were producing. Deep Purple formed in 1968 and although still very much a pop orientated act at this point their debut single Hush is a statement of intent.

Also appearing in 1968 was Steppenwolf’s Born To Be Wild. As well as being a great hard rock song it featured the lyric “heavy metal thunder” to describe the sound of a motorcycle engine. I had always assumed that this was the origin of the term Heavy Metal as a musical genre as a heavily distorted guitar sounds remarkably similar to a finely tuned internal combustion engine although the exact origin of the phrase seems to be disputed.

Also in 1968, The Beatles produced their eponymous album (often referred to as the “White Album”) Side three of the album contains some of the groups heaviest recordings and, although not their best one, Helter Skelter is possibly the most brutal.

By 1969, this loud overdriven guitar sound was becoming the new standard for rock bands. A good example of this is Pink Floyd’s Nile Song which was recorded in March 1969 for the soundtrack of the film More. Floyd had been experimenting with electronic distortion since their first album in 1967 (check out Interstellar Overdrive) but The Nile Song conformed far more closely with a conventional rock performance – just that much louder.

Led Zeppelin released two albums in 1969. Their debut was recorded in 1968 and was still a very blues orientated affair but with tracks like Communication Breakdown that would be picked up by later Metal bands. The second album was far closer to what may be considered Heavy Metal but still with a variety of influences. Whole Lotta Love is a bit of an oddity but the guitar sound is a blueprint for many of the hard rock bands that would follow.

At the end of 1969 Black Sabbath recorded what is often regarded as the first Heavy Metal album. In fact the album – at least the second side is still very blues orientated but the sound was crushingly different. In fact the bludgeoning style of the guitar was due to the instruments being detuned to loosen the strings to help guitarist Tony Iommi following an industrial accident in which he had lost the tips of his fingers. The choice of chord sequences and the lyrical content were also far darker than previously used – possibly a legacy of their roots in industrial Birmingham.

The key difference with Black Sabbath compared to earlier groups is that the distorted “metallic” sound pervaded the entire album rather than being an occasional effect in the bands armoury. So was this the true birth of the Heavy Metal genre? The band themselves hated the tag and the term “heavy metal” was used mainly as an insult from music journalists who did not understand the music and despised the groups working class origins compared to what they regarded as the more worthy “progressive” rock of the art-school protégés. However, fans of the early metal groups would pick up on the label and other acts would later self-identify with the genre. Who was the first to do this? I expect that’s a whole other area of research.