The Mosh Pit 1.22.10: The History Of Metal – The 60’s

Posted by Dan Haggerty on 01.22.2010

411’s Dan Haggerty takes a look at the history of heavy metal starting with the 60’s. From the technology to the culture issues and finally the music that made music louder and heavier. Plus we have reviews of classic albums from Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Blue Cheer, and Cream.

First off I'm short on space this week as I've pushed the limit on column space, so I'll get to feedback from my annual Top Albums feature next week. Sorry folks but hopefully the extra sized column helps.

Back in the fall, I talked in my column about some features coming up on various bands, like Floyd or Overkill. I also dropped a hint regarding this massive project as well. At the time I got a number of comments and emails regarding other bands I should look at as well, or a few that recommended I do a different band then the ones I mentioned. I like the feedback and try to use those ideas when I can, which is what happened on the way to this feature. As I kept preparing for this, it became real obvious that a multi-part feature could end up running longer. As time went on, it became obvious that all those groups I mentioned, or you guys gave feedback on, could be largely covered in such a feature. While it could never be the whole introspective one band deserves, it did seem obvious to me that I could take the outlines I did for those columns and start meshing them with this project. That is why those columns never materialized.

And that is when this project really got out of hand.

But it's cool. Heavy metal turns 40 this year so to celebrate we're going to do this in the only way metal can be done. To the extreme!

So here we are, starting with the beginning then we're going to cover each year starting with 1970 next week and proceed each week with a new year. At the end of a decade we'll do a recap and include your feedback, then move on. Toss in a vacation or two and if we time it right we'll wrap it up at the end of the year so 2010 will be ready to go as well, leaving 2011 as we enter it next year.

Now let's get this show rolling.


Ground Rules

When preparing for this journey, it immediately became apparent that there was a lot of "grey areas" (a term I detest, but it's the best description) when it comes to defining what exactly is heavy metal. Where do you draw the line with albums or influences? It would be easy if I was doing a single column on one year, or fairly simple for a feature on a decade. For the whole history of metal however?

What is considered metal in the 70's doesn't necessarily match the 80's, and by the 90's both previous decades fall short in areas. This decade is again a whole new beast. This is due to how we perceive music during the time we grew up versus how we look at music older than that period of our lives. For me, the Beatles are classic rock while it was groundbreaking for my parents. To put it bluntly, everyone thinks the music that was active when they came of age and raised hell is the best, with everything older being something your parents (or grandparents) listened to. Further, odds are for many people all the music that came after doesn't live up to "the good old days".

Think of it this way - If I ask a 50 year old guy what he considers metal he would say Deep Purple or AC/DC. A 40 year old guy might say Motley Crue or Metallica. A 25 to thirty-something would say Pantera, Disturbed, or even Soundgarden. Today's generation would same Lamb of God or Mastodon. And the crazy thing is… They're all right! When you toss in the extreme end and all of the subgenres running rampant in the last 10 years, plus the general elitism our beloved music scene loves to hate on what is metal… you get the idea. It's a mess.

So to draw a line I needed to make a realistic way of covering everything that truly needs to be covered (this is the history of metal after all) while making sure everyone isn't confused (or bitching) when I include music that "isn't trve metal". This needs to be done simply because these bands were important for shaping the future of metal even if they wouldn't qualify today.

So, to that end we have some ground rules:

1. The definition of what is metal will change for each decade. For example: Hard rock will be part of the 70's so AC/DC is fair game. The 80's will include sleaze or "hair". The 90's will include grunge. You get the base idea and I'll post this with each decade.
2. If a group qualifies under rule one then their entire catalog is fair game. I'm not going to start splitting hairs to that detail, plus if an album outside the box is worth mentioning then there is a good bet it was influential enough anyway.
3. There is a TON of history, information, and bands. It should go without saying, but this is my one man fan at large look at 40+years of music history. Not if, but when I don't cover something that you think should be covered drop me an email or hit the comment section. That is why I'm doing a decade recap every ten weeks – To add in things you and I think of after the fact.
4. Have fun. I'm doing this for fun because I love this stuff, and I hope your reading it for the same reason.



In The Beginning…

In order to understand where we arrived at the birth of metal in 1970, it's important to understand the origins. For that we need to go back to the beginning.

In the beginning, roughly somewhere around 10,000 years ago when man was a simple hunter-gatherer that scraped by as a primitive beast, since he unfortunately couldn't plug his hair into the ground like other indigenous cultures, music was likely a ritualistic or tribal action. Several drums would have come first, likely nothing more than a few hard surfaces until some observant fellow noticed the effect of pounding his spear on a hollow tree or stump. This would be…

What? Too early?

Oh… Alright. We'll skip forward to the 1960's and save the Wagnerian stuff until the book.

Let's do this!









The History Of Metal: The 60's



The 60's is a must for any look at the beginning of heavy metal, simply because heavy metal did not start in 1970 like I'm always harping about.

Yes, I said it.

Metal was officially born in 1970 but like all new life forms it took a period to grow and form. Like a newborn going through gestation to that fateful day when he enters the world, metal spend the 60's going through its own version of the trimesters (tri-riffs?) No, seriously. Music is not born out of a void, just like anything else music as art is like all human knowledge; it is built upon past experiences with the next person adding to or changing what came before. Like a tapestry, it flows continuously forward with the threads crossing and mixing to form new patterns. When someone uses the new pattern to create something new, that simply flows into the design and becomes the base for someone else to come along and weave the next part. That is why what is awesome to us becomes our kid's classic rock.

Metal might have fell upon the scene in 1970, but there was a combination of society, technology, and music that evolved through the 60's to the point it was inevitable that someone would take the music to the next step. We can all just be thankful that Toni Iommi and Richie Blackmore where the ones to put their artist touch on it when the ball got handed to them.

So here we are, in the 60's, a very un-seemingly metal period where metal as a force grew in bits and pieces. A hint here, an idea there, some hardware over there, slowly the pieces grew unobserved through the decade while a world sat unassuming that these forces would eventually collide and kick the Summer of Love into the history books.


Society


If there is one inevitable fact of growing up, it's that you're a kid who wants to grow up and take on the world. You just can't wait to get there and do things your way. With a wave at your parents, teachers, or any nameless authority figure the bare truth is we like to rebel against it because we're damn ready to live on our terms.

To show this trend we can look at the generations of society. You had the "G.I. Generation" that fought World War II and then came home ready to put it's feet up in the nuclear family 50's because, andI can't blame them, they already put a lifetime of work into that monumental task. It's like the 50's where some sleepy retirement part of Florida in that many families had already busted their balls and chilled out.

Wow, what a gross simplification.

Their kids, however, were the baby boomers and they where like every generation and anxious to get out. They where too young to get mixed up into Korea, so they got all the time their parents didn't. By the time the 60's came along, the rebelled against the status quo of the nuclear family. Sure, the ground work was laid in the 50's with civil rights issues and technological advances like "the pill" being invented. But these didn't emerge onto the scene till the 60's right in time for a new generation of hell raisers to take advantage of it.

This generation just didn't open up and say "ah…" to what they were told to do. The nuclear family was good? Free sex sounded better and free love was the mantra. Do your job and obey orders? How about I take the summer off and protest your orders. It's out duty to fight in South-Eastern Asia like we did in Korea? Nuh-uh. We'll protest your war and some of us will just flat out refuse to do it.

Basically the 60's anti-culture hippie movement was one huge middle finger at the 50's. Art, music, and the culture around this generation followed suit, but we'll get to the music in a moment. As for the rest, people grew their hair our, painted on themselves, listened to radical ideas and even looked for other religions. Everything was turned inside out. Those Civil Right cases involving Bus Laws and Segregation from the 50's became huge protests and marches on Washington. That war in Vietnam became so unpopular versus the Korean War a decade earlier that a sitting Presidency was ruined because of it.

The anti-culture movement grew and was at odds against the "establishment", which was basically authority in general including the norms of their parents and those who came before. They even developed voices. You had Dylan or the Beatles along with other musicians being their mainstream voice through art. John Kennedy would represent their voice in some ways, and they flocked to Rob Kennedy for what he promised. Martin Luther King was the man with the plan on the streets and he got shit done.

For your typical rebellious teen, this had to be infectious because the rebellion grew into a national scene that had a political and cultural voice. They where literally poised to win the culture war.

But as the 60's came to a close the far reaching dream started to fall apart. JFK was killed and soon Rob followed. King was gunned down as well. Nixon was elected President with a promise to end the war in Vietnam but as the decade ended the fighting had actually increased. The reality of life started to settle in, and all the "free" living could not be sustained. People had to get jobs, drugs started getting cracked down upon, and the eventual rise of disease even made free love more expensive.

As a culture, the Summer of Love had reached a high point and then proceeded to be systematically suckered punched repeatedly by reality until it fell back to the ground. When the 60's came to a close, things seemed dark as the Summer of Love seemed to be drifting into winter as the good leaders died, the wars kept going, and the good times where over. It was the next morning after the party and the reality of the hangover set in.

But the next generation was waiting to take on what their peers had done and what the establishment was doing…


Technology

The Beatles stopped touring for one very well known reason and one that is not. The biggest reason is that, of course, the guys had it with trying to move about under aliases and disguises to avoid getting mobbed. The not so well known reason was, most specifically articulated by McCartney, the frustration that the band had that they couldn't hear themselves play over the screams of the audience. While the popular reason is likely the number one reason still the second little fact shows the gap in technology then from now. A stack of Marshals today could blow any crowd out of the water but back then a wild crowd would drowned out the music, even at it's source.

Technology is always evolving; we all know that. In music it has done the same thing. Rock and roll was born simply because someone plugged a guitar in after all. But the 60's, and especially the second half, would see an explosion of possibilities with equipment.

First up was the sheer volume possible. When the 60's started, a wild crowd in a gymnasium could deaden an amp. By the end of the 60's, they got so loud the sound rooms used to record bands at the time couldn't handle them. That is why Blue Cheers second album is called Outsideinside. They recorded part of it outside. By way of improving vacuum tubes and circuits, and what resisters could handle and all of that jazz, circuits could handle greater load. Speakers developed better as well as manufactures started to develop the cones to handle more power which in turn led to them being able to handle greater frequency ranges.

The sound on a speaker is created by it pulsing. It's the vibrations that determine the size of the wavelength which in turn determines the size of the frequency. Thus, the better the speakers became the more power and more importantly the greater range you got. As speakers where split into subwoofers, middle ranges, and tweeters, their construction improved, many ranges could be produced at once to mix for a fuller sound.

But that range was the real trick. If you have ever listened to songs from the early 60's or 50's, preferably those that have not been re-mastered, you will notice two very important facts: 1) They are in mono because stereo wasn't invented yet and 2) There is a noticeable lack of bass compared to today.

More interestingly those two facts are related.

Bass is heard through a low frequency, which is why speaker improvements where important. You needed a bigger subwoofer to handle the bigger (and longer) sound wave plus get more power to sustain it, then with the other cones to carry the other ranges mix them into a full sound – Otherwise you got more of one than the other. That is why stereos have at least two speakers and preferably three. Obviously, since the technology wasn't there at the time, or too new, you got the higher frequencies more. This is further tied to the second reason which is even more critical for our purposes…

You couldn't record the low ranges well.

If you look at a vinyl record you can see those little grooves that continuously circle the record that the needle tracks through, which is just one groove that circles the record continuously from the outside in. The recording is recorded into that groove. How that is done is through the depth of the groove itself. That is how the technology worked back in the good old days of analog and vinyl. The recording was cut into the groove with the depth of the groove representing the frequency of the sound. The lower the frequency the deeper the groove needed to capture that sound. This also applied to the tapes that recordings were recorded on as well.

And if you cut too far you went right through the master copy.

So if you wanted to hear the bass you where limited because the recording would literally break if you went too far. Thus you had a double punch of musicians not being able to add to much bottom end to their recordings while it was impractical for systems to play them.

The advent of stereo was part of the process in technology evolution. To get the stereo, to make a very hard to communicate subject short, basically the needle on those vinyl's would still track up and down vertically but would also track horizontally (the former being L-R while the other being L+R) to get the stereo definition. At the same time the technology on the tapes improved up the 35mm at the time which could also handle the lower frequency cuts easier (as well as remove top level noise – different column).

Stereo was invented back in 1933, but didn't really become viable for mass use until the beginning of the 60's. It didn't really go into demand, however, until the Beatles launched Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band at the music masses. Overnight, no kid wanted to be the sap that couldn't play the Beatles latest in Stereo. Better to get those crowds and animal sounds in stereo! Not the beginning, but one of the biggest catalysts.

Also duel tracking gave way to four tracking tapes as well, which further made micro-phoning specific instruments and mixing easier. This, like stereo, had been around for a while but real hit mainstream access during this time.

So, after all that flipp'n dry text, what do we have? We enter the 60's with bands unable to record specific instruments or capture and bottom end in the studio, nor was the equipment able to perform or broadcast with enough power to make it matter. By the end of the 60's bands could add bottom end to the recording, turn up the power, target specific instruments instead of it all washing together, and mix those instruments to produce the sound they wanted with better depth in stereo.

Think of it this way, a drummer entered the decade and he had a glass ceiling sound wise. He could only sound like one of those dudes with a single snare and bass you'd see backing up Chuck Berry. But when he left the decade that glass ceiling was shattered to the point he could be John Bonham.

And he did.

The next thing to take stock in is the amp and guitar itself. With better systems and more power, we went from one little amp to the inevitable Wall of Marshals^TM that The Who made famous. Again, it was all about the tech and the power. The Who never had the problem of the Beatles because they took advantage of the new materials handed to them and blasted back at the fans (who loved it).

The guitar was a different matter all together as it received a whole different boon completely. Roger Mayer was an acoustic engineer that developed, and this is cool but a bit wild, underwater weapons for the British Admiralty. He was a smart young guy who loved music and toyed with inventions to enhance recording or instruments. He came up with a cute little gadget called "The Fuzz Box". With its use, the sounds a guitar played could be shaped and distorted into something "more metallic", and the potential for the instrument suddenly went off the chart. When he gave it to a young guitarist by the name of Jimmy Page he watched play in the clubs, that kid stormed the pub scene. Soon, Page's friend Jeff Beck got a hold of it and after his version of "Train Kept A Rollin'" hit everyone had to have the fuzz box.

Beck and Page had a lock on the device for a bit, but soon people started getting their hands on one. But it was an American guitarist burning the scene up that would really explode things. Mayor watched Jimi Hendrix bring the house down with a show one night and immediately hooked up with him to give him a fuzz box. Needless to say, it was like giving an artist who was use to the primary colors a set of a hundred. The possibilities became endless, and soon Mayor had hooked up with Hendrix in the studio to work on "Purple Haze". By 1969 Mayor had also invented limiters and equalizers for the axe player and the foot pedals entered the music lexicon.

This was preceded with working with tapes to do nifty tricks, like running two tapes of a recording slightly out of sync to create a distorted effect called "flanging". Technology was on a roll and it just got handed to the next generation as the 60's were winding down.

So with the power and bottom end, along with the depth of multi-tracking to play it, musicians could now create a more "steel" sound and distort it into all kinds of new creatures. Is it really surprising this technology also mixed with the hippie movement and pop to become psychedelic?

So, as rock evolved through the 60's you can draw a line through the technology and the people who took advantage of it to make the music scene a far more interesting, if noisy place. And with all of this power, volume, range, bottom end, and dynamic options the music followed suit as people entered the scene and added to the musicians that came before. Those musicians came off of a receding anti-culture movement that was being kicked to the curb in the face of societal unrest (and distrust), serious in their craft with a bit of a chip on their shoulders to succeed in the darker days ahead.



The Music

As the 60's moved on, music would jump out here or there that was louder, lower, chaotic, and pounding. A band like the Beatles would experiment with all the technological goodies available to them and (after a joke from Lennon regarding McCartney's tendency to write love songs) put out a cluster crash like "Helter Skelter". Or The Who would toss up something like "My Generation" that would cut through the noise with a direct to the head shot of pounding potential, predicting hard rock, metal, and punk with one massive inebriated middle finger. Plus you have The Kinks with "You Really Got Me" which is pretty stomping for 1964, and one of the earliest songs built around power chords to boot.

These moments would merge into a number of key bands that would take it to the next level. Basically, they would take the rock and roll template, toss in some blues to take advantage of all the bass becoming more available, maybe play with the psychedelic trends, but still ripping out rock and roll that was brash and loud.

The crucible of this going on artistically was that English underground I mentioned earlier. There is a reason why the supergroup Cream was formed, or Jimmy Page joined the Yard Birds and eventual took it over. These guys all new each other in this underground, a sort of pub crawl that was filled with musicians watching or performing. Everyone knew everyone, so you had George Harrison hanging out with Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Richie Blackmore, and many more.

Wouldn't you have loved to be setting around that place on a Friday night!

So these guys where active session players that would perform live or watch, talking or working together. In part they where purely inspired by the active fusion of jazz and folk going on at the time from some brilliant musicians by the name of Bert Jansch and Davy Graham. These guys had spent some time abroad in places in places like the Middle East, and went about changing up the chords, guitar tunings, beats, and generally foreign ideas that were at odds with the scene before meshing them with jazz and rock. This would be the original jazz and folk fusion into the blues and rock and roll. From here started famous friendships and collaborations as well as a healthy dose of competition and inspiration. It was basically a rock Hall of Fame of essential musicians before they were famous.

Jimi Hendrix hit the scene like a nuclear weapon. Supposedly, as the story goes, one musician said "What do we do now?" An apt fear for traditionalist, because Hendrix basically set the stage to open up Pandora's Music Box of Holocausts. Clapton watched the man literally go off and introduced him to the other top players in the British scene, and a friendship was born between two of rocks premier guitar gods. Hendrix even played "Killing Floor' with Cream, which has got to be the golden grail for bootlegs if such a recording still exists. Can you even imagine that?

Hendrix would go on to form a power trio and release the devastating Are You Experienced in 1967, and while Jimi replaced the Beatles as the top reason kids wanted to pick up a guitar, his band would actually be the second best power trio to deliver the rock revolution into harder wastelands. Cream was more responsible for creating hard rock and by default metal as Eric Clapton would hook up with two other top players in Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce. Through several albums we would see the band forge a pack through brilliant music where every part of the three man team would contribute gold to an overpowering sound that rocked, grooved, and thumped to mystic journeys and home brewed tales, all a melting of those inspired pub ideas of rock and blues by way of folk. That much talent would also render the band as it devolved into each trying to up stage the other with each man trying to be THE man. It was short, but into its form was the most consistent hard rock to date.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Cream would form the same year, put out three albums proper (unless you count the grudging last live plus three platter from Cream) and be done by the end of the decade. A spontaneous burst of brilliant creativity that changed the direction of rock and roll that ended too soon, as if the universe could only hold so much awesome to change ratio at one time. It had been hinted at and forming for several years, but here was the proper birth of hard rock in all of is concise glory.

But from turning heads in the underground, these louder bands in volume and form would be enough to inspire the new kids picking up the instruments. Cream would rocket to fame through sheer skill and craft and a fuller sound while Jimi Hendrix would burst brightly to cast fireworks at the sky. In their wake others would follow the path given.

Blue Cheer would stroll into this time as a bunch of young guns, loving rock and the blues (Dickie Peterson would go on to form a blues band later), but a mission to be the loudest thing to ever hit society. Considering Dick Clark told the band once they where "What is wrong with rock and roll" I'd say that succeeded. It was raw music that was blasted to the point the equipment still couldn't handle it much less the music structure itself. It was like the songs themselves threatened to fall apart as the plastered walls did.

Not everyone was content to just make rock and blues loader, however. The revolutionist in the anti-culture movement would watch the drifting end of the 60's with its race riots and political unrest and go back to basics with straight rock without all the "pretentious" skill and musical virtuosity of the last decade. Except, of course they did it loudly and caustically befitting their anger. The band was MC5, and by the time they recorded their debut album live in Detroit, at a show featuring the Black Panthers no less, what you got shot back at you was no less than the beginning of punk music. It wasn't punk yet, more of a proto-punk version of rock and roll, but there was no mistaking the theme they brought to the show and the line it would lead to in the next decade. Where Cream were the stars of technical history and darlings of an established music scene, MC5 was the gang with street cred ready to blast the old along with the establishment, an image that wasn't noticed then but soon to become a theme rock would return to so often these guys need a gold medal for the foundations of what they laid.

Other groups sprinkled through this like a stream through a dying landscape. The Amboy Dukes would start out with their brand of guitar driven Grateful Dead tunes, the band really becoming a footnote for their guitarist who would go on to raise hell for over four decades – Ted Nugent. The Golden Earrings would record four albums before they dropped the pop and quirkiness (as well as that "s" on the end, got to love the 60's) to become Golden Earring. Never metal, but if the guys would have put a little feedback and muscle into those leads you would have had a Teutonic version of Deep Purple.

Speaking of Deep Purple, the foundation was there with the first version of the band before Ian Gillan and Roger Glover joined (MK I) working the landscape. While it wasn't the power of the MK II era coming it was still good times and they certainly helped up the anti. The guys opened for Cream on that bands last tour by the way.

And let's see… I think that covers everyone but one band I probably should talk about.

Jeff Beck was down a man for the Yard Birds so he brought in buddy Jimmy Page, and after more personnel changes Page suggested a supergroup of him, Beck, and The Who's Keith Moon and John Entwistle. That is where the famous quote regarding Page's new band going down "like a lead zeppelin" comes from. After some trial and tribulation and no goes, the band split but had obligations so the members gave Page the band name to finish off the tour dates. He got experienced session player John Paul Jones on board, someone else well established in that underground scene that played with him before, then brought in two rookies to fortify the band – A bluesy folk singer who could howl in Robert Plant and skin destroyer John Bonham. The band finished the tour as The New Yard Birds, but completely sounded different from that band. This led to them signing under a new deal with a new band name, and after a recommendation to the label from Dusty Springfield (?!) the label gave them an advance to record a new album that promised to capture the hard rock and blues vibe shaking up the music scene.

Page was one of those guys who saw the potential in all the new technology and how to use it to capture his band. He was disgusted by how buried Bonham was in a recording for the New Yard Birds and supposedly that initial recording session was destroyed as a result. With a little time and a budget, Page would go on to set up in studio how he wanted his new band to sound and this time mic'd up Bonham to the gills. One name change to Led Zeppelin with that heavy beat rumbling out of the speakers and music was never the same.

Cream and Hendrix where the fathers of hard rock, but Led Zeppelin removed the Beatles no less from number one on the charts and the music scene took notice. To paraphrase Bob Dylan, the times just changed. It was inside of the year when the show Top of The Pops actually took "Whole Lotta Love" and made it their new intro.

And with that we come to the end of the 60's. To recap everything, for the coming storm of heavy metal we can thank better analog tapes, bigger subwoofers, gadgets for the guitars, more powerful amps, a hippie movement pissed on and pissed off, a bunch of session players partying and playing with the rock and folk music distorted by ideas from Morocco, a weapon engineer, and a bunch of teens wanting to listen to Ringo sing in each speaker.

And music was never the same.


Top Five Hard Rock Albums From The 60's

This is hard rock to the core with some rock and psychedelic in for good measure. Basically the best of everything that is heavier than the typical 60's music. Sadly, I wanted to do a Top 10 but this week but ended up with a Top 5 and an honorable mention due to space limitations. I guess we need to save something for the book.



Jimi Hendrix - Electric Ladyland





Where the Experience's first album was a super charged call to arms that signaled the revolution then proceeded to leave you gaping as you watched it unfold as a spectator, Electric Ladyland took the fireworks then ran it through the analog/direct current counter soundscape. Not the outright hit generating rocker of the debut, no less kissing the sky is this essential platter of histrionics that melts the speakers. The first album was the album you listened to at the bar as you got smashed. This one was the album you got smashed to at home then closed your eyes and drifted into rolling visions Hendrix proceeded to paint for you. A continuous flow of textures and rhythms like a stream that you rode to some distant sea.

Are you getting the idea this is a cerebral and trippy? That is the strength and weakness here, depending on the critic you ask. The Hendrix album that is equally praised and argued, less the jukebox to the revolution people wanted again and more a symphony of hard guitars and psychedelic pictures painted in colors never before seen. Hendrix basically working himself to the burnt edge of creativity in some otherworld version of a soundtrack to an image only he could see, and burning himself out (and used up by friends he was to generous with) in the process of trying to reach immortality as an artist.

But you still get the fisted pounders. "Crosstown Traffic" which stomps holes in the ground while delivering a cheeky lyric about women being like a traffic jam and "hard to get through". This songs on here are built around stand alone singles that range from ballads to jams to rockers, blues noodling singles to heavy hitters like the famous Dylan cover "All Along The Watchtower", but the whole seems to flow together into a unit that isn't a concept album but the tracks seem to fit the trip perfectly. The beautifully moody "1983: A Merman I Should Be" shows the twisted vision of Hendrix in a drifting journey beneath the waves away from war and man, until his guitar shows up to destroy the place (implied cynicism there?), likely a better statement on the parade of characters sprawled over two albums or four sides.

This would be your first hard rock prog album if you really had to try and identify it, but truly it defies classification due to a few pop and pumpers, so you end up outside a big old "It's Jimi" as if that could explain it. In a way, it really does. To bad he never got to finish the journey, Hendirx opening up his head on this one and showing you the good and bad, a glimpse soon to be lost forever.



Led Zeppelin - II





One of the good things about this whole project is that there is a number of popular, no iconic albums that I really should have covered in the last couple of years but haven't. I've avoided some for the reason it was just two easy as well as a drive to just introduce more people to other albums. This feature will solve a lot of that over the next year and it starts right with this album.

If the band's first album turned heads, this one kicked that head. As soon as "Whole Lotta Love" rumbles out of the speakers an entire industry was turned topside into Led Zeppelin's vision of rock by way of the American south, turned to 10.

A combination of traditional licks and giant pounding, from the most metallic rip of the opener and "Living Loving Maid (She's Just A Women) a direct line and chief argument can be made for Led Zeppelin's status as a metal band. You also got the whimsical journeys like "Thank You" that showed the many shades the band could deliver, including Bonham by the way. People like to think of the man as a monster who would pulverized the kit (which he could do), but the reality is that he had a soft touch and a real flair that is captured in the folk and blues numbers that show his depth. It's all about timing, feel, and passion. Something that needs to be reminded in the forgotten man who was the most versatile player in John Paul Jones. In many ways he was the backbone of the band and a great musician in his own right which is highlighted on those rockers his instrument lifts to break beer bottles over heads, or by capturing the blues when the band does one of their (notated) blues tributes. Speaking of the blues, you got that here as a noted tribute in "Bring It On Home" that brings that smokey southern bar groove that can only be found on the lined faces of blues players below the Mason-Dixie line (or the streets of Chicago).

But don't forget one of the most famous instrumentals of all time despite being a drum solo in "Moby Dick". Rumors of Bonham being able to play this thing with his bare hands until they bled should be believed. Damn.

And yet, over time, this is the Zeppelin album I turn to the least. Maybe it's a case of overplaying and super saturation through the airwaves, resulting in knowing every nook and cranny of this thing. Maybe it's simply the rock has become too ham-fisted in a way that just doesn't hold up through many replays over the decades, or at least when compared to the tremendous catalog this band has to explore. but that is just a bit of honesty on my part for why the other album is above this. Truely, this is a classic and a great album so check it out.




Blue Cheer - Outsideinside





The band's debut album Vincebus Eruptum was a landmark album in hard rock and the formation of metal, and a fun jumbled pile of blues, rock, and psych that shook the plaster off the ceiling. Really, it was more of a blunt weapon than an album. The band going so far to even admit they were more interested in being the loudest band, not necessarily the best. In fact, one reason the band fell apart after this jewel of a sophomore effort is that the guitarist left sighting his fear of going deaf (he only appears on half of the third album). This album still shows off the volume by it's recording, which is where it gets its name. The studio couldn't hold the volume of the band. So they ended up renting a warehouse and recorded the thing inside that or out in the open air. Thus it was recorded outside and inside.

What make Outsideinside an interesting album is that it gives a little back on the brashness and blunt bombast of earache or die for some melody; not a lot mind you, just enough to make this album the musical step-brother to the previous outing, but still quite the heavy mother load.

For my money that makes this one significantly different and a whole lot more interesting. It's still a blistering pile of blown wattage but there is more blues and rocking melody to sear the joint, and with that a little more meat to hang onto through the ride. You can wrap your head around a groove to ride out the distorted sound. The album has more character over many spins for that fact. Not that Vincebus Eruptum is bad, it's a good album after all which is why I have covered it. The point being this one is just as good and for my money the better effort, compounded by being sadly overlooked.

Time to rectify that!

This time the token cover comes from "Satisfaction", which predicts the massive pile of plunder that would be Sabbath in several years. And speaking of predicting bands, "The Hunter" points straight to Zeppelin by blasting their roots all over your ears, serving up some blues/rock/noise that could have easily found its way onto Zeppelin I or II. If you want real damage, however, "Come And Get It" launches a bunker-buster of twisted chaos that needs to be listened to, preferably after several drinks, to be believed. This came on in 68? Damn. It stomps a mud-hole in the competition.

Radio friendly with a hit? No. But there is a sense of greater depth amongst the noise here, the band really reaching down and going for it beyond trying to get under the skin of the critics. Think Deep Purple getting wasted and really pissed off, then taking it all out on Hendrix, and you pretty much got it.

You'll have to hunt though, as this classic is something I only see periodically on eBay. But it's worth it for you classic hard rock aficionados and collectors. Make sure you get the reissue with the classic gatefold inspired by Salvador Dali. Truly a missing link in the early days of all that is heavy.




Jimi Hendrix - Are You Experienced




There is no understating the impact of this record on rock and roll. It would be like comparing physics before and after Einstein or the Twentieth Century before and after Hiroshima. It was an entire industry being taken to school then released on bad behavior. Rock, the blues, a little funk by way of psych, mostly just Hendrix recreating energy patters with every backhanded stroke of a guitar not built for what he put it through.

Here we have the man, already a seasoned pro of the circuit and many guest spots with great names, launching his debut in the three man power trio of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Here is also the hits you are already familiar with, a roll call of classics that ripped easily off the man like jewels to good for kings and left for collective history to ponder. "Purple Haze", "Manic Depression", "Hey Joe", "Fire", and "Foxey Lady" jumping off the gatefold like immortal impressions into the psyche of music past and present. More rock driven, to the face, the first songs to ever really blasted forth that you can picture getting blasted to and posting yourself down front at the show to manically head bang with.

Be it the driving churning rhythm of "Purple Haze", demanding you stop on cue and point skyward, the blues gone horribly wrong but so right in "Hey Joe", or the first great bass melody to predict generations snapping their necks in "Fire". And hell, I'm just covering the hits. The title track is a symphonic acid trip that takes you on axe journeys to some place the man can only see, all while sending you in reverse back to where you came from. Listen to the song, you'll get it then.

A certified classic that is easy to get into because the hits are well known, even if played to death. A 10 in composition and form, but an 11 on the history meter.





Cream - Disraeli Gears




Only Cream album to discuss due to those space constraints, all worth a good spin but this is the one that has always stuck to my ribs as a whole statement. Clapton and company now working full storm on the cusp of creative brilliance and starting to build the brick walls that hard abuse and egos would fortify, each trying to own the stage and a world unaware of the scenario to dazzled by the trifecta of history reflecting back. Pound for pound, Hendrix owned everyone as a musician, but as a band Cream was in sum total stronger and the performances proved the point while better technology captured the magic of each part. Brilliant leads and solos rained down over grooving bass lines heretofore unknown while the drums showed a percussion attack could supplement a rhythm section to stellar effect. Each unit greater than the whole yet somehow also being captured on vinyl restrained to the red line so the whole could still rise above each part. Outside of the mighty Zeppelin that was going to again rearrange peoples perceptions in a few short years, here is the essential hard band of the 60's. You might even tip the hat to Cream if you subscribe to the often argued view that Zeppelin didn't hit their stride until 1970's III.

"Strange Brew" is the song we all remember, somehow managing to sound like a radio friendly pop song despite the rock groove delicately supporting the fragile harmony. "Sunshine of Your Love" bent the bottom end back at the listener with a skin rolled bass line in the chorus to perfectly show off all three men. Keith Richards always says that the success in rock is to know when to let the spaces to the talking, or in other words don't fill up the silence for the sake of doing so (hopefully he doesn't listen to death or black metal). This song captures how Cream added incredible depth while still letting there be space to breath. Listen close and you'll get.

Special mention goes to "Tales of Brave Ulysses", an awesome song that if it didn't predict metal than I don't know what did. In fact, the reason I've heard it covered so easy (We'll get to Trouble's version in about 14 weeks) is a testament to how close the guys where, no matter what Clapton thinks. Combining a grand tale and a pummeling bottom end that jumps and rolls with deliberate purpose, not smashing but still driving, with guitar licks that are delicate but in command to the point you stand up and salute. Great song and certainly a roadmap to the future of hard rock and metal.




Led Zeppelin - I




And here we have it, the grand institution itself. A band that is held so highly, yet like all greats seen through the haze of time, they are also an enigma to many today. Loud, seemingly imperfect in how they would crash through rhythms, yet so precise in what they did.

And what exactly is it that they did? That's a difficult question, but one ironically tied to the bands first album. Led Zeppelin being the exact enigma that band can be. It's not the best album the band did, the most dated album at times in fact, but yet combines the essentials that made Led Zeppelin so… well Led Zeppelin. Are they hard rock? Are they metal? The blues? Folk? Psychedelic? Just the next stop in the rock and roll express?

The answer is "Yes".

In a world still winding down from the "Summer of Love" era and high off of Woodstock, come four English blokes to blow the perceptions out between the collective ears of the entire scene, and that is after Cream and Hendrix did it a two years earlier. Two veterans of the biz hook up with two new guys, all looking to strike it big. But what they did was exactly the opposite of a band necessary looking to strike it big. They took some of that psychedelic muse, added a whole lot of bottom end, and took you there on a long road marrying English folk to American blues. All those sounds collide here in an imperfect collage, a loud boisterous attack. If that wasn't enough, then it turns the volume up until the Marshalls fry.

It's a bit fuzzy and free-based, and unlike some of the more ethereal music this band has done this is raw around the edges and bites back, not that is a bad thing. There are some great songs but there are also some acid trip showers as well. But what this lacks in total tonnage it more than makes up for as a statement as well as swagger and electricity. Blues, rock, folk, all rolled into a package that would breathe life into a whole new movement of music. People think of Led Zeppelin as a metal band, but that they are not. In fact, you really can't quantify Zeppelin precisely because they are many things. A proper definition of Zeppelin is not what they were, but what they did. They we're not a metal or hard rock band simply because they were the ones to influence them like some musical missing link.

Like all great musical acts, the secret behind their success and who they were was beyond the music. It was the idea of Led Zeppelin that was propagated into such a juggernaut. Further, the secret of that sound is fully on display in this splattering debut – Led Zeppelin made the music they wanted to make, they wrote for themselves and challenged themselves to move forward, invent, create, and do simply because they wanted to. It wasn't always pretty, but always contained a quiet immortal beauty.

The music? You get "Communication Breakdown", arguably the world's first speed-riff. "Good Times, Bad Times" thump mightily with a deep blues-rock groove. Iommi and co. must have been listening to "How Many More Times". "Black Mountain Side" is Page at his country acoustic best – Old school, raw in a "playing on the front porch" sort of way. And who can forget the monolithic psychedelic dirge of "Dazed And Confused", a tribute to excess in all the right and wrong corners of the rock landscape, some of us still struggling to find our way out of it's dark labyrinths.

Ultimately, Led Zeppelin is a monolithic testament to a band going for it. Flawed and charmed for it, the imperfections making the band raw and real, a moment in time when music got dragged toward the modern era. It's not metal, but yet that kind of music is inexplicably tied to his album because it is real, with Hendrix and Cream grinning from behind pushing the band forward as the beginning.

Easily one of the best albums of this time due to song and construct, the raw passion on display in all of its glory.

***



And somewhere in the middle of this, Deep Purple was reorganizing and four blokes from Birmingham where touring as Earth, ready to change their name to match their new dark song based on the three notes of the devil.

But that is a story, one we'll get to in seven days…