Great first episode Martin. I agree with "Are you Experienced" being framed as "proto metal". The aggressiveness and sound of Hendrix's guitar and songs like Purple Haze and Manic Depression hint at what is on the way .... Keep these coming for sure.
Hendrix was the heaviest thing anyone had seen to that point and the inovations in his songwriting and his sound most definitely played a part in the evolution of Rock music into Metal. There are elements of it scattered throughout his catalog. I would say he could be considered Proto-Metal but, he could be considered Proto-Prog as well. He had some of the most adventurous arrangements at the time although he was very much an R&B/Blues player. His sonic palate pushed those influences into overdriven excess and gave birth to the appettite for heavier music. Jimi was thinking so far out of the box that he almost defies classification. There are elements of everything that came before him in his music but, they're transformed in his hands and through his pedal chain. Not enough is said about the choices he made in his rig and how he employed them.
Before Are You Experienced, Cream's Fresh Cream could be considered even if it's more blues oriented. The Who were heavy live but that didn't quite translate to their recorded output.
I think the initial bedrock band who created 'metal' was The Doors. A astounding and very influential band that created a very dark and strong keyboards fused with guitars and driven upon lyrics from their charismatic singer. Rock on Doors.
I like calling this the first proto-metal album for sure! I must say, I am disapppointed that the Yardbirds won't come up in this new series, they were the Judas Priest of their time and deserve to be mentioned as such.
I i would say he wasn't heavy metal but very hard with blues I've always herd the kinks all the day and night was but I'm done know this great serious when i was a teen deep purple cooper steppenwolf was considered heavy lol
it's the 10 or 9 year old who has the radio on and hears some music and hears those distorted guitars..and wants more...we want more distortion, more guitars, more screaming, more of something that sets us apart as people who live on the edge, will take chances other people won't take, and will make something out of nothing...
Being you are a stickler for grammar/punctuation I want to point out pronunciation. I know you're Canadian but raga is not like rag (a piece of cloth) but log (piece of wood)..... raa-ga !! Raga, or Raag, is an important part of musical history and should be pronounced correctly. Appreciate ya!
Most rock and hard rock bands of the late '60's and early '70's would say they were heavily influenced by artists like Chuck Berry, Howlin Wolf, Little Richard, Muddy Waters, Elvis, Eddie Cochran, J.S.Bach, R&B, folk music and the Beatles. So it's logical, historically, that metal came out of the same line, if the argument is consistent.
Not really, considering metal was a firm departure from the optimistic love summer psychedelic stuff most of the bands of that era were into. Both musically and lyrically.
In many ways, Hendrix was the EVH of his time. Both had a massive influence on metal guitarists to come, but neither really played metal themselves for more than a song or two ("Purple Haze" and "On Fire" respectively; people tend to obsess over the instrumental "Eruption" too much imho, "On Fire" had just as much tapping and crazy guitar playing but on top of that it was an actual metal song, even an early speed metal one at that). So for sure, he's worth mentioning in this discussion. But either version of his debut album you pick, I don't think it belongs in it as a whole. "Purple Haze" is really where it's at in terms of proto-metal from Jimi, with a few others like "Foxy Lady" or "Voodoo Chile" being honorable mentions. But 'Are You Experienced' as an album is primarily "acid rock" or "psychedelic rock with hard rock mixed in" (which is more or less the same thing). Honestly, while the discussion of metal's origins and birth fascinates me, I don't think albums are a good metric for this at all. There wasn't really any proto-metal album as a whole before there was a mostly actual metal album out already, except for maybe the first two Led Zeppelin arguably, though they were more the first outright hard rock albums than they were proto-metal, aside from a couple of songs. Things just went too fast for albums during this first big chase for the extreme at the tail-end of the 60s. It's much more understandable to consider individual songs (singles or not) to see the call and response going on, imho.
great topic although sort of misnamed, should be called who invented Hard Rock? Metal is different, never thought of Sabbath as Metal, All metal is heavy. Hendrix was a r&b guy, and loved the blues, but was very versatile getting into a bit of jazz/fusion? Yes lots of bands from the late 60's were heavy Iron Butterfly, Blue Cheer, many others, same with the 70s, as far as Sabbath I think of a few of their albums as more metal sounding compared to others. Sabotage, reminds me more of metal, and or Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Master of Reality is very heavy, and recorded somewhat muffled sounding, plus the tuning is way down. some people think of Zeppelin, were a heavy blues band, at least at the beginning to starting playing a variety of material from country, to folk, to pop, overall I would call them a Hard Rock Band, Deep Purple same sort of thing, not as bluesy , had that classical influence, which most metal bands have, and very fast tunes, tempo wise,
I'm curious, where do you start considering things heavy metal if you don't consider Black Sabbath metal? Something like Maiden's debut album 10 years later? But wait, that's not all that heavy compared to Slayer or Morbid Angel, right? So maybe metal only started in the 90s with the invention of black metal? That's a backwards way of looking at history, imho. Obviously metal kept evolving in many aspects and in different directions after it started being its own thing in 1970, and it eventually led to a kind of big bang in the first half of the 80s. Metal co-existed and cross-pollinated with both hard rock and punk almost from the very beginning. We didn't go from acid rock to hard rock and then to heavy metal in a neat chronological succession. They all emerged almost simultaneously, and kept ties, but they still separated well enough pretty quickly. For most of the mid to late 60s it was a massive blur with only individual songs really qualifying as either metal or hard rock or punk individually, but by 1970 we already had the first two Sabbath albums being clearly metal first and foremost, the first two Zeppelin albums hard rock first and foremost, or the debut by Iggy & The Stooges punk first and foremost. Of course there was still a lot of room for each genre to grow, and a lot of bands and albums that were sitting somewhere in the middle. Of course, 'Led Zep I' isn't all that extreme and prototypical of a hard rock album compared to AC/DC's 'Let There Be Rock' or GnR's 'Appetite for Destruction', but it's still clearly hard rock in that there's more distance on the musical spectrum between that and anything called hard rock that came before, like the Stones, the Doors, the Who and even the Kinks. The Stooges' debut is pretty tame compared to the Ramones' or Discharge's, but it's still punk (at the very least proto-punk). And yeah, 'Black Sabbath' isn't as heavy and in your face metal as Priest's 'Stained Class' let alone Angel Witch's debut or anything after that when things started to branch out so much we had to start coming up with sub-genres. But it was still definitely heavy metal, whether you think of it as such or not. And for its time, it was extremely heavy, especially the debut's title track and pretty much the whole A side of 'Paranoid'. No other band at the time had more than one or a few individual metal songs, like Uriah Heep's "Bird of Prey" or Purple's "Blooduscker" and "Hard Lovin' Man" or Led Zep's "Communication Breakdown", "Heartbreaker" and "Immigrant Song". Black Sabbath were the first and, for quite a few years, the ONLY band to play heavy metal consistently for most of their albums. Budgie have a couple that come close in 71 and 73, then more players entered the picture in 74-75, but it wasn't until right after Sabbath had already concluded their 6 album long seminal first run that 1976 came around and other bands put out unquestionably heavy metal albums. Sabbath were not just heavy metal, they pioneered and immensely developed the genre before it was cool. How you feel based on your tastes likely developed from stuff that came out decades later doesn't change the basics of metal history.
@@legendmaker694 When I heard the song Black Sabbath from the debut I thought this is super heavy and not like anything else, but when you hear the rest of the album very bluesy, Tony Iommi was blues influenced, even the drum intro to Wicked World is a famous jazz drum or hi hat rhythm. Bill Ward was influenced from jazz drummers. Warning has parts of metal, but then bluesy as well. True Metal Bands are classically influenced. I understand all your points, I bet if the members of Sabbath were interviewed don't think they would call themselves a metal band. I think Tony even said he said he is a blues player that plays heavy riffs, etc
@@thekeysman1 Thanks for the reply. I see where you're coming from as well, although we might have to agree to disagree. First of all, there is a lot of bluesy metal to this day: contrary to popular belief (or rather shortcut) having blues elements doesn't automatically prevents music from being metal. Second of all, I think you're very wrong about classical influence in metal; it's a thing no doubt but unless you listen almost exclusively to classic guitar heroes like Malmsteem, prog metal, symphonic and gothic, you don't hear a lot of direct classical in most "TRUE" metal bands, no. You'd be hard-pressed to find any classical influence in most genres such as thrash, speed, doom, and a large majority of power, death and even black. And even in traditional heavy metal (which largely includes 70s stuff), aside from a few specific bands there's not a lot of it either. Budgie, Lucifer's Friend, Judas Priest, Scorpions, Dio (the band), WASP... The only big metal band with a clear classical influence prior to the 80s was Rainbow. There was a lot more classical influence in non-metal bands that still had a few metal songs like Deep Purple or Uriah Heep. In general only bands that had a full-time keyboard player showed a prominent classical influence (aside from some guitar heroes and instrumental albums mostly). It really started to show in some early proto power/prog bands in the mid 80s. Last but not least, not only was Bill Ward's jazz-influenced drumming highly influential on metal, it often helped enhance and give a larger scope to their doomy, oppressive moments, like on their eponymous track or in "War Pigs". It rarely detracted from the "metal-ness" of their tracks (the one big exception I'd gladly concede would be on the massive thrash riff in "Children of the Grave" when Bill had the not so great idea to use some type of cow bell or another tinny percussion which really didn't go well). And yes, the debut had more blues elements than further albums, and all of their 6 seminal blue prints for heavy metal from 70 to 75 had at least a few experimental or even (proto? ^^) fusion tracks here and there, that was entirely a part of the band's style. But it doesn't change the fact that as a genre, they were primarily playing heavy metal. Including on the debut, I don't feel you're looking at the right tracks besides the opener. "'Behind the Wall of Sleep", "NIB" and "Sleeping Village" are all predominantly metal tracks as well, all showcasing and exploring various aspects that would become staples of the (main) genre. From the deceptively soft but very melancholic acoustic intro, to the massive loud and slow doom riffs, to the sudden tempo changes with crazy fast (for the time) and chaotic soloing, to the then unorthodox song structures with often no chorus and many breaks and different parts instead of the classic pop formula of verse, chorus, verse, verse, chorus, chorus that heavy metal's closest cousin, hard rock, kept following very closely for the most part. Even "The Wizard" has a lot of metal parts, although the harmonica largely ruins it for me (and tellingly, they never used a harmonica ever again after that failed attempt). It's really a matter of putting yourself in the right context historically. Edit: Whatever a musician calls their own music is irrelevant. We have ears to let the music speak for itself. And many artists tend to think of themselves as belonging to their influences' genre rather than the one they actually play, especially influential ones who pioneered new stuff. Many early metal bands called themselves rock, many early power metal bands called themselves just heavy metal, and so on. Hell, Lemmy even went to his grave insisting that Motörhead was "rock 'n roll" when any functioning pair of ears can tell it's early speed metal with some rock 'n roll and punk influence, but definitely metal first and foremost. So it doesn't matter. Iommi will say he thinks of Sabbath as hard rock, whereas someone like Rob Halford embraced the metal tag and correctly says Priest is metal. Either way, they're both metal bands and whether they realize or admit it or not doesn't change it.
@@legendmaker694 I consider Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath the first proper metal album. Everything before that is proto. I consider Kill 'em All to be the first metal album.
Great first episode Martin. I agree with "Are you Experienced" being framed as "proto metal". The aggressiveness and sound of Hendrix's guitar and songs like Purple Haze and Manic Depression hint at what is on the way ....
Keep these coming for sure.
"Purple Haze" also brings the 'devil's interval' really heavily in its intro.
Hendrix was the heaviest thing anyone had seen to that point and the inovations in his songwriting and his sound most definitely played a part in the evolution of Rock music into Metal. There are elements of it scattered throughout his catalog. I would say he could be considered Proto-Metal but, he could be considered Proto-Prog as well. He had some of the most adventurous arrangements at the time although he was very much an R&B/Blues player. His sonic palate pushed those influences into overdriven excess and gave birth to the appettite for heavier music. Jimi was thinking so far out of the box that he almost defies classification. There are elements of everything that came before him in his music but, they're transformed in his hands and through his pedal chain. Not enough is said about the choices he made in his rig and how he employed them.
Jimi Hendrix music was blues influenced hard rock and maybe has
some early sounds of heavy metal in it but I'd call it hard rock.
🎶🎸📻🎸🎶
Great new series. Can fully recommend Martins Book „Who invented Heavy Metal?“, great read, learned a lot from it.
Link Wray, invented heavy metal with songs like Rumble and Switchblade back in 58.
certainly a influence ,
Before Are You Experienced, Cream's Fresh Cream could be considered even if it's more blues oriented. The Who were heavy live but that didn't quite translate to their recorded output.
Nice , going to really enjoy this .,
I think the initial bedrock band who created 'metal' was The Doors. A astounding and very influential band that created a very dark and strong keyboards fused with guitars and driven upon lyrics from their charismatic singer. Rock on Doors.
Cool idea Martin, like it 👍
Jimi Hendrix laid the foundation and Black Sabbath Led Zeppelin and deep purple were the pillars that everyone else built upon
Hendrix, GFR, Zeppelin, Sabbath, Purple, Heep, Funkadelic, Budgie. The start of the kind of music I like.
Pumped for this series!
When I saw this thumbnail my first thought was that Sopranos episode where Hesh claims he saw Hendrix invent heavy metal to a bemused Chris Moltisanti
Blue Cheer has to be in the conversation.
I'd say Mozart or Johan Seb Bach created heavy metal. It was dark, heavy, intricate music. Modern day, I give Blue Cheer credit over Jimi.
Nah, it was actually Orgh the caveman when he growled after stubbing his toe on a mammoth carcass in 10k BC. ^^
@@legendmaker694 Haha, you so funny and cute.
@@bradwalker2724 thanks, man. you too, by the way! ^^
It was invented by Screaming Jay Hawkins influenced by Spike Jonze after he heard Shostakovich.
So Cream would be the second album I assume.
Technically the first Cream album would be the true start instead of Are You Experienced.
I like calling this the first proto-metal album for sure!
I must say, I am disapppointed that the Yardbirds won't come up in this new series, they were the Judas Priest of their time and deserve to be mentioned as such.
I i would say he wasn't heavy metal but very hard with blues I've always herd the kinks all the day and night was but I'm done know this great serious when i was a teen deep purple cooper steppenwolf was considered heavy lol
🔥🔥🔥
it's the 10 or 9 year old who has the radio on and hears some music and hears those distorted guitars..and wants more...we want more distortion, more guitars, more screaming, more of something that sets us apart as people who live on the edge, will take chances other people won't take, and will make something out of nothing...
Being you are a stickler for grammar/punctuation I want to point out pronunciation.
I know you're Canadian but raga is not like rag (a piece of cloth) but log (piece of wood)..... raa-ga !!
Raga, or Raag, is an important part of musical history and should be pronounced correctly.
Appreciate ya!
The kinks maybe?
Most rock and hard rock bands of the late '60's and early '70's would say they were heavily influenced by artists like Chuck Berry, Howlin Wolf, Little Richard, Muddy Waters, Elvis, Eddie Cochran, J.S.Bach, R&B, folk music and the Beatles. So it's logical, historically, that metal came out of the same line, if the argument is consistent.
That's a perfect example of why they were Rock and Hard Rock and they were not Metal.
Not really, considering metal was a firm departure from the optimistic love summer psychedelic stuff most of the bands of that era were into. Both musically and lyrically.
In many ways, Hendrix was the EVH of his time. Both had a massive influence on metal guitarists to come, but neither really played metal themselves for more than a song or two ("Purple Haze" and "On Fire" respectively; people tend to obsess over the instrumental "Eruption" too much imho, "On Fire" had just as much tapping and crazy guitar playing but on top of that it was an actual metal song, even an early speed metal one at that). So for sure, he's worth mentioning in this discussion. But either version of his debut album you pick, I don't think it belongs in it as a whole. "Purple Haze" is really where it's at in terms of proto-metal from Jimi, with a few others like "Foxy Lady" or "Voodoo Chile" being honorable mentions. But 'Are You Experienced' as an album is primarily "acid rock" or "psychedelic rock with hard rock mixed in" (which is more or less the same thing).
Honestly, while the discussion of metal's origins and birth fascinates me, I don't think albums are a good metric for this at all. There wasn't really any proto-metal album as a whole before there was a mostly actual metal album out already, except for maybe the first two Led Zeppelin arguably, though they were more the first outright hard rock albums than they were proto-metal, aside from a couple of songs. Things just went too fast for albums during this first big chase for the extreme at the tail-end of the 60s. It's much more understandable to consider individual songs (singles or not) to see the call and response going on, imho.
great topic although sort of misnamed, should be called who invented Hard Rock? Metal is different, never thought of Sabbath as Metal, All metal is heavy. Hendrix was a r&b guy, and loved the blues, but was very versatile getting into a bit of jazz/fusion? Yes lots of bands from the late 60's were heavy Iron Butterfly, Blue Cheer, many others, same with the 70s, as far as Sabbath I think of a few of their albums as more metal sounding compared to others. Sabotage, reminds me more of metal, and or Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Master of Reality is very heavy, and recorded somewhat muffled sounding, plus the tuning is way down. some people think of Zeppelin, were a heavy blues band, at least at the beginning to starting playing a variety of material from country, to folk, to pop, overall I would call them a Hard Rock Band, Deep Purple same sort of thing, not as bluesy , had that classical influence, which most metal bands have, and very fast tunes, tempo wise,
so who is metal? you don't say
I'm curious, where do you start considering things heavy metal if you don't consider Black Sabbath metal? Something like Maiden's debut album 10 years later? But wait, that's not all that heavy compared to Slayer or Morbid Angel, right? So maybe metal only started in the 90s with the invention of black metal? That's a backwards way of looking at history, imho. Obviously metal kept evolving in many aspects and in different directions after it started being its own thing in 1970, and it eventually led to a kind of big bang in the first half of the 80s. Metal co-existed and cross-pollinated with both hard rock and punk almost from the very beginning. We didn't go from acid rock to hard rock and then to heavy metal in a neat chronological succession. They all emerged almost simultaneously, and kept ties, but they still separated well enough pretty quickly.
For most of the mid to late 60s it was a massive blur with only individual songs really qualifying as either metal or hard rock or punk individually, but by 1970 we already had the first two Sabbath albums being clearly metal first and foremost, the first two Zeppelin albums hard rock first and foremost, or the debut by Iggy & The Stooges punk first and foremost. Of course there was still a lot of room for each genre to grow, and a lot of bands and albums that were sitting somewhere in the middle. Of course, 'Led Zep I' isn't all that extreme and prototypical of a hard rock album compared to AC/DC's 'Let There Be Rock' or GnR's 'Appetite for Destruction', but it's still clearly hard rock in that there's more distance on the musical spectrum between that and anything called hard rock that came before, like the Stones, the Doors, the Who and even the Kinks. The Stooges' debut is pretty tame compared to the Ramones' or Discharge's, but it's still punk (at the very least proto-punk). And yeah, 'Black Sabbath' isn't as heavy and in your face metal as Priest's 'Stained Class' let alone Angel Witch's debut or anything after that when things started to branch out so much we had to start coming up with sub-genres. But it was still definitely heavy metal, whether you think of it as such or not. And for its time, it was extremely heavy, especially the debut's title track and pretty much the whole A side of 'Paranoid'.
No other band at the time had more than one or a few individual metal songs, like Uriah Heep's "Bird of Prey" or Purple's "Blooduscker" and "Hard Lovin' Man" or Led Zep's "Communication Breakdown", "Heartbreaker" and "Immigrant Song". Black Sabbath were the first and, for quite a few years, the ONLY band to play heavy metal consistently for most of their albums. Budgie have a couple that come close in 71 and 73, then more players entered the picture in 74-75, but it wasn't until right after Sabbath had already concluded their 6 album long seminal first run that 1976 came around and other bands put out unquestionably heavy metal albums. Sabbath were not just heavy metal, they pioneered and immensely developed the genre before it was cool. How you feel based on your tastes likely developed from stuff that came out decades later doesn't change the basics of metal history.
@@legendmaker694 When I heard the song Black Sabbath from the debut I thought this is super heavy and not like anything else, but when you hear the rest of the album very bluesy, Tony Iommi was blues influenced, even the drum intro to Wicked World is a famous jazz drum or hi hat rhythm. Bill Ward was influenced from jazz drummers. Warning has parts of metal, but then bluesy as well. True Metal Bands are classically influenced. I understand all your points, I bet if the members of Sabbath were interviewed don't think they would call themselves a metal band. I think Tony even said he said he is a blues player that plays heavy riffs, etc
@@thekeysman1 Thanks for the reply. I see where you're coming from as well, although we might have to agree to disagree. First of all, there is a lot of bluesy metal to this day: contrary to popular belief (or rather shortcut) having blues elements doesn't automatically prevents music from being metal. Second of all, I think you're very wrong about classical influence in metal; it's a thing no doubt but unless you listen almost exclusively to classic guitar heroes like Malmsteem, prog metal, symphonic and gothic, you don't hear a lot of direct classical in most "TRUE" metal bands, no.
You'd be hard-pressed to find any classical influence in most genres such as thrash, speed, doom, and a large majority of power, death and even black. And even in traditional heavy metal (which largely includes 70s stuff), aside from a few specific bands there's not a lot of it either. Budgie, Lucifer's Friend, Judas Priest, Scorpions, Dio (the band), WASP... The only big metal band with a clear classical influence prior to the 80s was Rainbow. There was a lot more classical influence in non-metal bands that still had a few metal songs like Deep Purple or Uriah Heep. In general only bands that had a full-time keyboard player showed a prominent classical influence (aside from some guitar heroes and instrumental albums mostly). It really started to show in some early proto power/prog bands in the mid 80s.
Last but not least, not only was Bill Ward's jazz-influenced drumming highly influential on metal, it often helped enhance and give a larger scope to their doomy, oppressive moments, like on their eponymous track or in "War Pigs". It rarely detracted from the "metal-ness" of their tracks (the one big exception I'd gladly concede would be on the massive thrash riff in "Children of the Grave" when Bill had the not so great idea to use some type of cow bell or another tinny percussion which really didn't go well). And yes, the debut had more blues elements than further albums, and all of their 6 seminal blue prints for heavy metal from 70 to 75 had at least a few experimental or even (proto? ^^) fusion tracks here and there, that was entirely a part of the band's style.
But it doesn't change the fact that as a genre, they were primarily playing heavy metal. Including on the debut, I don't feel you're looking at the right tracks besides the opener. "'Behind the Wall of Sleep", "NIB" and "Sleeping Village" are all predominantly metal tracks as well, all showcasing and exploring various aspects that would become staples of the (main) genre. From the deceptively soft but very melancholic acoustic intro, to the massive loud and slow doom riffs, to the sudden tempo changes with crazy fast (for the time) and chaotic soloing, to the then unorthodox song structures with often no chorus and many breaks and different parts instead of the classic pop formula of verse, chorus, verse, verse, chorus, chorus that heavy metal's closest cousin, hard rock, kept following very closely for the most part. Even "The Wizard" has a lot of metal parts, although the harmonica largely ruins it for me (and tellingly, they never used a harmonica ever again after that failed attempt).
It's really a matter of putting yourself in the right context historically.
Edit: Whatever a musician calls their own music is irrelevant. We have ears to let the music speak for itself. And many artists tend to think of themselves as belonging to their influences' genre rather than the one they actually play, especially influential ones who pioneered new stuff. Many early metal bands called themselves rock, many early power metal bands called themselves just heavy metal, and so on. Hell, Lemmy even went to his grave insisting that Motörhead was "rock 'n roll" when any functioning pair of ears can tell it's early speed metal with some rock 'n roll and punk influence, but definitely metal first and foremost. So it doesn't matter. Iommi will say he thinks of Sabbath as hard rock, whereas someone like Rob Halford embraced the metal tag and correctly says Priest is metal. Either way, they're both metal bands and whether they realize or admit it or not doesn't change it.
@@legendmaker694 I consider Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath the first proper metal album. Everything before that is proto. I consider Kill 'em All to be the first metal album.