The Mosh Pit 1.29.10: The History Of Metal - 1970

Posted by Dan Haggerty on 01.29.2010

This week we look at the birth of heavy metal itself with the themes and music that gave it form. Along the way we’ll also look at some great classic albums from Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, and many more!

Lots of things to cover, but most importantly thanks for the feedback and support. You guys rule and make this kind of labor one that kicks ass. Hey, no labor of love euphemisms here – In the pit you either kick ass or stay clear.

But first, feedback from the head bangers union. I'm pushed for space so I'm just calling the year end column feedback. If you want some thoughts on it then drop me a line, otherwise here is feedback from the 60's.

Yes, I've been waiting to use that line for months.





NICE. These are the kind of articles I love from you, ones where it's a recap of history. I can't wait until next week, when you talk of the disenfranchised factory-town youth that saw the Summer of Love for the sham it was, and decided to get fucking ugly with their intruments. - Posted By: AndrewCrow

These are the columns I love to do, and I'm glad to be past the planning and the holidays (work is hell) so I can get on with it too! Feels like I've been sort of waiting to get back to basics here as of late.

And ugly it is going to get!


That Top 5 list is worthless with Black Sabbath's debut. Blue Cheer over Sabbath??? FAIL. - Posted By: Jesus (Guest)

For that I give you the conscious of the mosh pit, Jeff…


"Black Sabbath" was released in February 1970. KNOWLEDGE FAIL - Posted By: Jeff Modzelewski

Thanks Jeff for taking Jesus to school. Although he should know better since he named the seventh day of the week after them. It's my story and I'm sticking to it.


ALL FAIL - wrong choice for Blue Cheer for one - should have been Vincebus Eruptum. Aside from that, there were other groups to consider from this time period such as the first Deep Purple releases. - Posted By: McCheezy

Yes, twenty pages of history completely failed because I didn't include the arguably weakest albums form one band's catalog or choose one album over another to feature as the best. Seriously though, I like the Deep Purple albums, but they really didn't need more than the cursory glance I gave them in a column about hard rock and metal at this point. Those albums are more rock/psychedelic in the 60's.

For the curious, IF I was going to add bands further afield I first would have started with the band that really bridged the Beatles to Cream, and that is the Yardbirds. From there we would have talked about Iron Butterfly and Vannila Fudge.

And know you know, and knowing is half the battle.


God you so-called metal elitists are so pathetic with your "fails".

Haggerty just gave a clinic about the road that was paved for metal. Show the man the appreciation he deserves for taking us on this trek instead of your mindless sheeple-like bashing and your pathetic trolling.

Good show, Dan - can't wait for the 70's. - Posted By: The 8th Samurai

Thanks man, appreciate the words and support. It really does make the work worth the time. And the 70's are going to be great!


Wonderful mate. I love the time and effort and detail you've put into this. The only thing I probably want to mention is that the hippie culture probably was more an American thing, but didn't affect England that much, and they had darker or deeper reasons in a sense, for playing this kind of music. Nonetheless, that probably is an opinion and I can't wait for the next installment. Great Job! - Posted By: Cyber

Great question. I probably should have gone into Europe more in the last column, but as you'll see I was saving it to lead into a very key European band this week and how they got to their signature sound. I'll have to chew on it though for how I approach future columns. But thanks for keeping me on my toes and reading man!


Hey 8th Samurai - nothing wrong with "elitists" posting opinion - free country and even a moron such as yourself should know that the Blue Cheer title that McCheezy mentioned is considered a definitive pre-metal album over the choice given. Fuck off, pussy. - Posted By: Prophet

I love posts where people grip about free speech then call someone a name for using it. Anyway, I am glad you exercised your right to call me out on Blue Cheer, and frankly I went into this figuring more people would do so. But hey, you got to be true to yourself and all that so I posted what I truly believe.

First of note, yes Blue Cheer's debut is a historical album, which is why it was in the column – Although after re-reading the column I will say I should have called it out better by name in the meat of the piece. I originally didn't because I was going to go back when I listed it in the album section, which didn't happen. Second, if I had the space like I did this week for additional albums of note; it would have been in there. In fact, when I do the 70's recap in ten weeks I'll post the whole list and VE will get the love it deserves. So will Vanilla Fudge as well I might add.

Finally, no, it is not superior to Outsideinside. VE has two songs which are certainly the best songs the band has recorded for sure, but when you match one album as a total piece up against the other album as a total piece, their sophomore album is stronger by numbers. The fact the debut has a popular catchy cover song doesn't erase the stronger writing and performance on the other record. The first album is historically superior for sure, but at the end of the day and pound for pound, the call goes to Outsideinside for sheer quality. I'm also sure this is going to get intense in about a decade or two when I really drop some opinions...

Anyway, I encourage anyone and everyone to give both several honest spins and chime in with their opinion. Actually, it would be a pretty cool exercise.

Thanks for commenting though and sticking up for an album you like, that is what makes this crazy metal scene the cool beast it is. Only real rule is play it because you love it and crank it up.

And before we get into things, notes on how I'm going about this:


Ground Rules

I realized that the best way to approach this is to cover some history when it becomes relevant for our discussion, thus we are adding a rule. Plus, it wouldn't hurt a few of you to read five again.

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. Some bands will come into the equation when it becomes relevant to do so. It's just easier, makes better writing, and occasionally allows me to tease a future column to cover bands when it is relevant to do so.
4. 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 hard rock and metal 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.
5. Have fun. I'm doing this for fun because I love this stuff, and I hope your reading it for the same reason.


For the first chapter on the 60's, you can go here.




The History Of Metal: 1970





With the advent of societal changes and technology, musicians of the 60's built upon past precedents to bring the blues and folk back into rock while bringing out the bottom end. Psychedelic had emerged and played a part of the newer loud scene, as well as some progressive tendencies thanks to those bands breaking with traditional rock formats.

As music entered 1970, bands like Cream and Jimmi Hendrix had paved the way so bands like Blue Cheer and Led Zeppelin could open their amps and rearrange what was possible in music. Into this fray new bands started to emerge that would build on this template, ex-hippies and the next generation of axe slingers ready to take on a world that was at war, economically screwed up, politically jaded and filled with distrust, and certainly louder.

That takes us to the other half of the equation in how history effected the youth: Across the pond…



Europe


One of the things we discussed in the last part was the overall mood of the culture and the tides of generations, or more importantly the free flow of attitudes that would result in the mindset of the hippies and those that would follow them. We talked about the 50's and how this was the "G.I. Generation" that had come from home from World War II and basically retired to the nuclear family. They did their work and in a new boom world of suburbia homes and barbeques found the reward for the ugly battles of the war.

That is a distinctly American point of view because that is what happened here. In Europe this wasn't exactly the case. Instead of going through a lot of narrative on the same generation in Europe, their time in the war and what happened after wards, let me just draw one point that should paint a perfect picture:

When the war ended the American GI Generation came home to a relatively good life in a country with little scars from the war, because his country was half a world away. If you were a European soldier that came home from the big war, you where already there and your homeland was fucked up because their home was the front lines of the war.

The baby boomers in America that would crash into the 60's as the anti-culture movement and protest their Government on collage campuses. The next generation in Europe grew up in cities still destroyed and being rebuilt. We watched people do sit-ins and protest the draft; they watched the Berlin Wall be built. We fretted over the Cold War; they lived in the middle of it. I'm not dogging the hippie generation here, not at all. The point is to show that the youth in Europe grew up with a different culture and state of mind simply because that was what life handed them. In America, the hippies grew up doing nuclear bomb drills at school due to the cold war while the kid in Germany lived with people getting gunned down when trying to cross from east to west. We had people in our family that had been "over there" while German families where missing ten million people alone.

So things were much darker for the kid growing up in this atmosphere. By the 60's buildings were still being rebuilt and at night the youth of Birmingham could hear the factory's presses pounding away 24/7, the dark and soot lined city continuously punching out the bare materials for an industrial economy still recovering. Don't listen to the BS about destruction being good for the economy, as it encourages building. It doesn't, period. All it does is pull the money from somewhere else and spend it on rebuilding. What would have been something new merely replaces what had already been there – a loss overall. World War II was so widespread that there was little "somewhere else" however, so rebuilding means starting over to an extent. Thus by the time a youth by the name of Toni Iommi would travel the streets to the factory the scars of the war were still there, a sort of deterministic grind knowing that your parents expected you to do what they had done: Suck it up and live cradle to grave as a cog in the machine that was trying to go somewhere. Not everyplace was this bleak, much like every youth in American didn't become a hippy or see a race riot, but in these out of the way places with machine press pounding 24/7, the rubble of a world war still visible, and a cold war looming over your shoulder, those machines were a sinister euphemism for life as it was handed to you. In fact, another youth by the name of Bill Ward would actually pick up a drum kit some day and build some beats around the rhythmic pounding of those presses.

Only problem, much like the youth in American called out what it saw as the sham of the 50's, so did the youth in Europe start to rebel. They might have grown up with a little more fatality tossed at them, and certainly a forced work ethic a rebuilding culture forces by necessity, but they were still youths and ready to start doing shit there way.

There is a reason that heavy metal sounds distinctly different from a European standpoint, even if decades and meshing have smoothed the lines considerably. If you take two successful bands of the late 70's, say Van Halen and he Scorpions, you can immediately tell which band's music struts with a California swagger and which one puts it's head down and goes straight there. Both are good, but style wise there is a gulf in attitude and approach. You can hear the direct no nonsense approach of the Germans that is economical and built around a direct "work rate". The California band tosses that economy for some technical flair that would eventually evolve into show boating, all to get you wrapped around a catchy melody. Thus by the 80's you have the merging Sun Set strip scene that had evolved around rhythms and hooks while across the pond you have Accept that goes straight to the riffs and lets them do the talking. Neither is right or wrong, depending on taste, but one would win the hearts of the underground metal scene. We'll get to that later this decade however.

For our purpose, the story is the atmosphere the next musicians grew up in and how that would be reflected in the music. Black Sabbath needed to come from a poor industrial town, the culture would create a more direct method of tackling the axe, agression would effect thrash greater in the 80's, and by the time those bands influenced Sweden death metal would be the natural step.


Punk


Previously I (very) briefly touched on punk music. Since this is a metal history piece, we'll only be going into it enough to keep pace with the evolution of music since punk has a tendency to keep folding pack into metal at various points and influence the form. Punk is just like metal in that it was a reaction to the 60's and continuously evolved from there. I've already mentioned MC5, which is one of the founding pillars from the 60's along with the Stooges, who are better remembered for Iggy Pop. Fun fact, both bands were from Michigan with the former being from Detroit and the other next door in Ann Arbor. I don't know that was so conductive to pre-punk music in the Detroit area, outside of the possible fact it was still a giant industrial city that was hopping and literally twice the population it is now. Sure, they called in Music City but that was for Motown.

Toss in the vital The Velvet Underground, which really deserves their own piece and is outside of this writing, and you have the basics.

For punk, basically like metal you start with 60's rock but instead of putting the blues and folk back in while distorting and amplifying the bottom end, you instead strip it down and focus on the street aggression, then make it loud. Where metal turned the rock and roll car into a freight train, punk chop shopped it into a Mad Max machine. Similar but different, both being designed to break through barriers in their own way.

Three things went down for punk in 1970. The first is that this was the first year the term was first used, thus eventually giving it legs as a genre in its own right. Before, typical cop shows on TV had a punk being the street criminal they dragged in. A punk was something Joe Friday called the bad guy. In homage to that image Ed Sanders of a group called The Fugs described his solo album as "punk rock with redneck sentimentality". After that, a critic called Iggy Pop "That Stooge Punk" in what was suppose to be a clever play on words, but the term got legs and stuck after that.

Second, over in England we had the 60's band The Deviants, which is considered a prelude to the Sex Pistols, become the Pink Furies which would also be influencial on the form.

Finally, also in that country a band called the In-Be-Tweens that had been in action from the mid 60's had changed their name to Ambrose Slade for a release in 1969, then settling in on the name of Slade for the release of Play It Loud in 1970. This had the pre-punk, rock vibe that also played into the mash of metal emerging from the 60's, different though from their rust belt counterparts by sporting a pearly sheen despite the edge. That was the bridge to more bands (including this one) turning that sheen into glam in a couple of years, which will cause all kinds of havoc. Iggy Pop is considered one of the original Glam rockers due to his image, but really the groundwork is here for the music itself.




Power Chords vs. A Hammond Organ


The Kinks might have nailed the punk motif early on in musical style with their power chords run amok, but a rock band with progressive virtuosity would reorganize with the new decade in sound and personnel to become one of the most influential bands for rock, hard rock, and metal. And trust me, this band influenced more kids in Europe to pick up an instrument despite never breaking big here in the states.

I am, of course, talking about Deep Purple.

The band formed in 1968 and originally held Rod Evans on vocals, Ritchie Blackmore on guitar, Nick Simper on bass, Ian Paice playing the skins, and Jon Lord working that now famous Hammond organ. A lot of debate is done over the bands 60's material (the first three albums). Basically, outside of being a bit hard (when not pop rock like big break through hit "Hush") the band was really a psychedelic rock band that pointed towards prog, not that they were prog, but I can see a line running through these songs that will eventually form the base. This odd mix would be due to Blackmore wanting to take the idea of Vanilla Fudge to a new level while writing partner Lord would add classical influences. Good stuff actually.

After firing Evans and losing Simper, the band searched for a new vocalist in 1969. After a tip from Blackmore's friend from his former band (Savages), the band found and hired Ian Gillan from a group called Episode Six. He brought along the bass player Roger Glover to the audition where the band talked him into joining (and effectively killing Episode Six in the process). Can't help but enjoy the irony of Blackmore hooking the band up with Gillan considering the history between these two to come.

This line up would become the iconic Mark II version of the band, but for now they backed a project that was a Jon Lord solo three-movement epic combining symphony pieces and Deep Purple music: Concerto for Group and Orchestra. If you ever wondered about the band that first made combining rock and roll with an orchestra a good idea, here you go. Almost three decades before S&M in fact.

But, the band as a whole was actually working together to streamline their sound. Less psych and pop rock, tougher, more guitar driven as well as dueling leads even if between the axe and organ. In fact, the album that came out in 1970 was called In Rock precisely because the band wanted to make sure people new it was a rock album and not another orchestra based album. Perhaps a slight case of over correction, us 40 years later thankful none the less, but Glover merged in with Blackmore, who opened up the cords and solos and fought a pitched battle for the stage with Lord, all over Gillan's voice that systematically echoed over the four corners of Europe, the total a clarion call to a new age of rock and roll.

The backbone of Deep Purple before, and know given front stage was the tandem of Blackmore and Lord. There is a reason people have trouble working with Richie Blackmore - The man is particular and demanding, but the fact is he gets away with it because he is that good. He brings virtuosity to the instrument that can unleash classical compositions or just go for the throat with straight up rock. When he combines the two for solos, like the one in "Child of Time" you get the original template for the metal solo as well as any strat slinger filling arenas in a decade. Lord was his equal on the organ and his compositional style bringing the instrument forward to combat Blackmore for leads, the two dueling as if the Hammond was another six-string.

If Black Sabbath is to be given credit for inventing heavy metal, then Deep Purple is responsible for plugging it in. The net effect of both bands in 1970 being the twin engines that rearranged the music world order, both bands beeing responsible for a new music genre and the sheer variety of its wide reach, for every dark riff and extreme corner getting balanced by hook and soaring chords that fly.



Three Notes Of The Devil


The 70's began and the Summer of Love was over. A new generation of jaded youths saw past the simple slogans of peace and love for the reality of modern life. War and death was paraded on TV in world events like Vietnam, and the empty promises of politicians did little to resolve the growing tension. The hippie idealism that fought against the tide collapsed in the face of a reality that the protests couldn't stop and the machinations of man could grind down. The poets that voiced a generation were gone, tragically, Joplin, Morrison, and Hendix lived the lifestyle and they shook off their mortal coil. The final nail in the coffin coming when the tension of the Beatles grooving true when that band broke up in April of 1970, but before that and through this grim landscape in the industrial 24/7 grind of Birmingham , England came four friends.

Two years earlier in 1968 these four formed a blues rock called the Polka Tulk Blues Company, soon renamed Polka Tulk after only two gigs. The played the music that inspired them: The blues, jazz, and rock. The band would eventually adopt the name Earth, as it was a better fit for the band's sound and covers of Hendrix, Blue Cheer, and Cream.

Step one in the evolution of the four from Birmingham came from bassist Geezer Butler, who dabbled with mysticism and the occult. Geezer had received an occult book written in Latin, and thereafter one evening while in bed had a vision of a black hooded figure standing at its foot watching him. After talking to lead singer Ozzy Osbourne about the strange vision, Osbourne wrote the lyrics to what would become "Black Sabbath". The soong was named after the Boris Karloff film of the same name, while lead guitarist Tony Iommi added the now famous darkened riffs that would define the band, and eventually an entire genre of music.

A note on Toni Iommi's playing style. Three years before hooking up with the guys Iommi worked at the factory (17 years old) and had his right hand's middle and ring finger chopped off at the tips. He plays left handed so he made artificial tips (melted plastic soap bottle caps originally) so he could still press the strings. He would use lighter strings to make it easier, but the real historical fact is that he would eventually detune his guitar down by three half steps from E to C sharp. This would be part of the signature Black Sabbath sound, and the idea of downtuning would also become a part of the metal lexicon as a result due to that sound. HOWEVER, and this is the thing that gets lost, that did not happen yet. The bands first two albums are done with the axe traditionally tuned to E. It's all notes and distorition at this point baby!

Moving along, the band had liked the idea of a "horror story" song, contemplating the idea while recording music across from a movie theater that was showing a horror flick and discussing the irony of people paying to be scared. If people would pay to be scared at a theater, would they pay to be scared by music? Would it give the same rush?

As Ozzy so diligently put it once, he was at heart a hippie but the mindset of the Summer of Love was "Full of shit". And after reflecting on the place and time they grew up in, you can see how the four men from Birmingham would listen to the hippie message while looking out window and go "What the fuck?"

Man needed peace and love, but the reality was war and dementia. Instead of ignoring the brutal reality of life and just singing away like clueless idiots, it was time that someone just took that war and madness and shoved it everyone's face. The idea being, this is why we need peace and love. Don't preach to end war, just shove war in people's face so they will stop ignoring it. Here is real life baby, enjoy! So with creepy visions, the ugly evil side of the human experience, and a music take on the horror movie concept, the band would forge the idea of metal with that historical first recording "Black Sabbath".

The music needed to match the mood, and here Iommi found it in constructing the metal riff. The three notes the band built that initial riff around were considered taboo for being historically the three notes of the devil, a medieval superstition carried into modern times due to the questionable "disharmony" from the spacing of the notes, and the tone fit where the band was going with their sound.

With a gong and those three notes reverberating back through dark rain filled speakers, Ozzy's wail of horror the band effectively pulled the curtain on the Summer of Love and heralded the chilled fall nights to come. The song struck a cord at Earth's live performances, with crowds having a love it or hate it opinion on the dark muse – Reports say a few people screamed and fled the venue…

Undeterred the band worked on more material and set about finding their audience. The name Earth was soon dropped however after a show where the promoter had mistaken them for another band called Earth. Or as Iommi said regarding the miss-booked show and the crowd's horror to the unexpected songs being played that evening: "We died out there."

The easy solution for a name was to adopt the title of their flagship song: "Black Sabbath".

Much to the horror of critics, parents, many musicians, idealists, and everyone but the kids at the show, heavy metal was born.


The Top Metal Albums From 1970

And here you have it, the birth of metal. Much like the decade to come, especially early on, there is only so much that you can truly call metal. So hear you get metal and those that where loud and pointed the way. Hard rock, loud psychedelic, and music that let the chords and riffs fo the talking even if it didn't go the distance through the amp. Here are the essential classics from 1970 that any collector of metal or hard rock should check out:

This first batch is in no particular order.


Trapeze – Medusa

Another hard rocking classic that does more to bridge metal to rock than most on this list, the band two albums in and despite being from England delivers a big plate of fisted power cords by of way of the south west. From a collectors stand point, the album is a who's who for its members based on where these blokes would wind up. On vocals you got Glen Huges, who would end up working with Deep Purple and Toni Iommi (amongst many projects), Mel Galley on guitar would go on to work for Whitesnake in the 80's up until the American breakthrough, drummer David Holland would spend the 80's with Judas Priest, and finally producer John Lodge is from the Moody Blues.

This is a tight and pounding performance from a band that never really got out of the gate, which is a shame since outside of the mighty Purple this album is the go to point to hard power chords. Quite heavy for the era as well and Glen Huges puts on a performance that shows why he would do vocal duties for a lot of big names through the decades.




Lucifer's Friend – Lucifer's Friend

Man oh man; this comes close to being one of the founding albums of metal. A little consistency and perhaps someone actually hearing of it back in the day, and history might have been a little different. "Ride the Sky" opens with a gallop and that horn blaring to start the album is a piece of fine German engineering, early metal at its finest. Some of the songs have the same metal integrity; others are still finely tuned hard rock, while the rest is some rock ahead of its time. Add in some wandering song construction, not jamming so much as that early 70's guitar rock noodling around, sor of a meandering proto-prog. But when this cooks, it cooks well and as one of the finest early metal/hard rock platters. Sadly, this flew under the radar back in the day, the band themselves doing well enough overseas but never really getting out of the gates overall.

It's a cult classic now amongst old-school hard rock/metal aficionados and a collectible if nothing else. Be warned, modern reprints have bonus tracks from the bands later 70's recordings that, while good, are more pop oriented (and with horns!) and will be jarring after the more proto-metallic album proper. After this the band was off into progressive lands that are different from this debut, but here the band hit the ground hard with a sound ahead of it's time. Overall, really good stuff; if you like the proto-metal of the early 70's you'll dig this well tuned Germanic version of guitar rock.



Sir Lord Baltimore – Kingdom Come

Some people like to link this to the first metal albums with Blue Cheer, but it honestly qualifies as proto-metal like that band as well. Actually, stylistically it is closer to Led Zeppelin I or II, being blues, rock, or psychedelic rock that is played on burned amps and as loud as possible. Zeppelin had variety and dynamics while Sir Lord Baltimore just goes straight for 10 on the dial and stays there until the machinery blows apart. I don't know if this is a missing link in the evolution of hard rock or just a pile of scrap iron, either way the only answer is giving the band a big hearty salute for going there.

This thing is an exercise in crashing through songs, the philosophy being when in doubt… make it heavy. But that being said, it's not metal proper and almost not hard rock outside of the sheer volume. Think Blue Cheer covering Hendrix tunes, then turned up without rhyme or reason until the microphone fries. Cool in a car crash sort of way, sometimes style can work over substance.





Bloodrock – Bloodrock

Another band that really went nowhere and I can't figure out why, their first albums being examples of some damn fine fist pounding hard rock/proto-metal/lean rock and roll. Actually, it's the massive power chords that do it, a few songs going places with power chords uncharted at the time. Still, not metal, more psychedelic hard rock, as if Iron Butterfly stumbled into a Purple concert. German rock at its finest, at times a little worn around the edges and others ahead of the pack in looking the direction of axe licks, full points for being over the top.








Cactus – Cactus

The band was originally going to be a Supergroup that included Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart with the Vanilla fudge rhythm section, but Beck had a car accident that took him out and Stewart ended up signing on with another band. That's probably why the band sounds like Vanilla Fudge, even if that is Vanilla fudge collaborating with Mountain on this pile of riffed up blues. Heavy on the drums and the singer sounds like a biker from the lands the group takes its name after; blasting loud and raw with a few proto-speed metal tunes, but a lot of blues and folk from the 60's done with 70's guitar rock sensibilities. Considering the inspiration and bands referenced, not as dated as one might expect.






Mountain – Climbing!

A bunch of cowbell cracks and then one of the heaviest riffs of 1970 hits you courtesy of "Mississippi Queen". Several songs on this crunch well, while the rest jams and wanders in 70's guitar (hard) rock lands, most tracks not as heavy and focused as the first song, but still an enjoyable listen. Actually, their next album, Nantucket Sleighride is the better musical construction truth be told, but this album is closer to its proto-metal promise, and of course the aforementioned song being the bands most recognizable track. Ultimately, this was more influential on hard rock, but when it bruises, it bruises well, as the even heavier "Never In My life". Talk about some bottom end rumble. This is a treasure of the early hard rock movement, with moments of brilliant metal to proto metal chunks. Have a few drinks, grow some sideburns, and headbang liberally.







The Top Five Metal Albums From 1970



Uriah Heep – Very 'eavy... Very 'umble





"If this group makes it I'll have to commit suicide. From the first note you know you don't want to hear any more." – Melissa Mills in Rolling Stone

Well, if Rolling Stone says that, you know it's good. Underrated and underappreciated, this is the album that some critics single out as helping to create heavy metal. This is due to a few key cuts that are just amazing when stacked up against the year in music. "Gypsy" and "Bird of Prey" being hands down metal goodness, the tracks being classic monsters of sizable proportions. But that doesn't stop there, "Walking in your Shadow" and "Real Turned On" also add to the cannon being forged this year. I can see why people have made the case for this album, a couple of listens to those tracks and the work ethic put into them, and you start to become a believer. The fact this has the better production of the other two land mark albums (see below) also helps the cause, even if suffering from that distant coolness so many 70's albums seemed to get saddled with.

This band was in realty just influenced by, and influenced in the future prog, rock, hard rock, and even jazz and psychedelic vibes, but the metal is also hiding in there, popping out of the bands arsenal at times in its regal career, and a chunk of this album made a believer out of me.



Led Zeppelin - III





Hard to imagine placing this one on a list of top metal albums for a year, but then again that just shows the state of metal in the 70's. But hard rock there is even if the acoustics come forward and the band also travels through the English country and the American south (usually at the same time).

This one threw fans for a loop; the band's blistering heavy blues and thumping getting rolled back for more liquid journeys but with the long eyed view of history it can be said this is the first real statement from the band that puts them over the top as legends, Led Zeppelin going from history making loud as hell rock to artists that will paint a picture based on any muse they see fit. Dark and light, simple and complex, straight rockers and mythic vistas, it's an album that cofounded everyone and is still an enigma is style and approach.

Side one is the heavy side, opening up with the band's first true metal song in Imigrant Song. The driving beat, Plant wailing away like a man verbally holding back a storm, and the tales of the Norse pointing away to the bands future in legendary tales, all combine for a kick that points to this album going even heavier locations then the last two. Things relax from there however, but continue to rock with the groove of "Celebration Day" and the heavy Bonham showcase of "Out On The Tiles".

After a blues tribute we get side two and that is when life derails with acoustic warm numbers that drift through dreams. From bluegrass to folk to surreal journeys through the lands the hippies wanted but lost, all done with the key eye of simple guitar driven structures that are almost too loose but thrive for being real. "Whole Lotta Love" brought you into the rock stadium while "Gallows Pole" took you 500 hundred miles from the city.

Years later, time rearranging the Zeppelin catalog in style and standard, this has become the first album that is a 10. Wonderfully sublime and still valuable to explore to get lost within its transcending journeys, it stands as a testament to the band and their self derived ideal that a great band can and will do what it wants to put out a great album. If anything, showing that the least heavy album in the catalog packs the most metal attitude for winning by doing what it wants.






Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath





The shot heard around the world, and ground zero for what would become metal. This was a different kind of creature from the hard rock that came before it, the kind of beast that would propagate itself and imprint its heaviness through generations to come, the soul of metal itself being recorded as well as the notes. Blues, jazz, psychedelic, rock, and smoke-filled-room jamming all played a part of this jarring debut (for a group and a genre), but the DNA is here. There is no mistaken the components in the title track, "Black Sabbath" scaring the pop right out of the culture on every wrought note; critics damning the thing simply because they couldn't wrap their brains around the history going down.

But the riff is the ultimate definition of heavy metal, and the characteristic that separates it from other forms of music, extreme or otherwise. And right here on Black Sabbath Tony Iommi created the heavy metal riff. Just kick back with a cold one and think about that for a minute. Almost 40 years of music are all centered on what Iommi did here, those three notes and there pattern that cascaded out over Geezer's bass rumble no less than stopping music evolution in its tracks and sending to permanently on a derailed train ride through Dante's Inferno.

Osbourne, while not the greatest actual voice in the world, was a front man through and through, and his emotive wail adding to the horror show in directions rock wasn't meant to go. And really, his voice exceeds other s by being able to combine multiple emotions and project it. Geezer adds a heavy amount of bottom end, and lyrically combines into the soul of heavy metal proper. Bill War, part percussionist, part unsung musical genius takes things on a left had turn from rock and roll into the chilled autumn night.

Nothing highlights this more than the famous title track - The song that named the album and the band, simply because the song became the first for the bands new direction and a calling card at those early live shows. For 1970, this was just plain creepy, dark, and terrifying. Those long low notes crawling out of the speakers, the wind and gong going off. Ozzy's terrified voice as the victim of some dark ritual (notice the band plays up the fact that meeting old Lucifer is a bad thing). And then, Iommi just brings down that galloping riff, it shakes the earth with more bottom end than the world had seen to date, and after scaring the sensibilities out of a complacent post-Woodstock culture it moves on with defiant force. An almost cinematic energy that wraps you up and makes you part of the unfolding story, for better or worse, implanting emotion along with the vision just to insure you can't look away.

Geezer had a hell of a time getting the studio engineer to record him distorted. But that was the point; he was not just the rhythm, but the bottom end of their sound and played along with Iommi to generate the complete tone. As Iommi has frequently said, the bands unique guitar sound was a sum of units coming off as one. To underscore that fact, some of the leads were written on the bass. The engineer battled Butler at the time, however, because that was not how the bass "was supposed" to be played. Obviously, to the benefit of everyone, the right man got his way in the studio.

"Black Sabbath" was the world's first look at the heavy metal riff. Further, and this does NOT get the recognition it should, but right there is your first look as what would be doom metal AND the British invasion. That gallop has 1979 written all over it even if it is dragged down to hell. Later, Sabbath would expand on doom even more, if that is possible with the wall of doom that this song produced, but overall few people got their brains wrapped around either sound for almost a decade. Most just tried to get the hell out of the way.

That blues comes down courtesy of "The Wizard", and despite the cries of occultism the song was actually inspired by Gandalf from Lord of the Rings. The song was a stand out for the band, which played it for years live and also included it on their early compilations as well. It oscillates between a rumble through the American south and the hard thump of Sabbath's new vision, and actually has a sharper more power driven riff set than the famous title track. Also it is a more progressive hard rock song, leaning to proto-metal for the infusion, but really it's Bill Ward's drumming the defines the song. He's less of a rhythm section and more skin pummeling that propels the tune forward by sheer force.

"Wasp" is the name of the suite of songs, which were "Behind the Wall of Sleep" and "N.I.B." on the original release but tied together on the American release, which is why they are unrelated in subject matter, both power riff songs with a sort of lengthy strut to them, dark chord propping up the tales. For the truly curious, "Basically" is nothing more than the American releases name for the bass intro to "N.I.B."

"Evil Women" is a cover of a Crow song which was, unknown to us Americans, the bands first single. We didn't do to legal issues with the song's copyright in the states, which is why that singles B-Side "Wicked World" is on our version of the record (fun fact: It is the first song the band ever wrote). "Sleeping Village" and "Warning" are also independent songs, tied together on the American release with the suite name of "A Bit of Finger". A snap shot at the complications from the wild old days of labels and how things were managed on opposing sides of the pond.

Now, the reality is that this is a great album but not a masterpiece of performance. The band still struggling through its sound and direction, the wheel a little square, but damn that just doesn't endear this hopeless yet hopeful pile of evil idiosyncrasies to the ear. Years later, I actually play it more than the other album they released this year simply because within its dark alleys I'm still surprised by the licks and performance since the longer suites haven't been thrust down my throat. The blues and jazz infusion dark but compelling enough to earn it top spot in any year that didn't have the weight of the two albums we'll talk about next.

Don't go into this album thinking your going to get the be-all end-all of heavy metal albums. You're not. This has just as much hard rock and heavy blues layered between the heavily distorted riffs. A lot of influences layered into the evil. What you are going to get is a historical moment in heavy metal history and the album that "launched a thousand ships" to steal a metaphor. But even more so, you get the reason why all of that happened. You get a great album that works precisely because creative minds took those elements and applied the magic of the artist's credo – "What If…"

Put it on and turn it up.



Deep Purple – Deep Purple In Rock





If Black Sabbath put the "Heavy" in heavy metal, then this put the "Metal" into it. The guitars are let loose and open up new vistas that would influence arena bands decades to come, hard rockers of the 80's and on, plus the genre the band would actually distance itself from – Heavy metal. But its here, its here in spades with sharp forward thinking power chords extraordinaire that whip up and deliver the reaction of a band dripped in talent and chemically balanced into the purest money shot rock delivery system of 1970. Sabbath might be on balance more heavy metal, but that is only because Purple carpet bombed a great area of the great rock landscape with their influences.

The immortal man in black himself, Ritchie Blackmore delivers his classically constructed guitar work, even if plugged into high voltage, on newcomer Ian Gillian's voice, be it soaring or working the low end. Glover and Paice single handedly establish the arena rocker rhythm section, or at least evolving what Zeppelin started and sharpening it into focus. Finally, Lord's keyboards are part melody, part texture, at times a benediction on the whole affair, a lead instrument that would duel with Blackmore for the spotlight to stellar effect.

The difference between Black Sabbath/Deep Purple and the rest of the music scene, the metal difference in this year and more to come, is that the other bands really qualified as hard rock (at best). You'll notice a common musical description running through these album descriptions in the 70's, and that is the presence of blues, rock, psychedelic, and even jazz. Bands flirted around the edges of metal, but didn't usually go the whole way. It took Sabbath to give it the heavy and Purple to give it the power.

It would be six years before the next band would match and ratchet up the machine these two created.

Just sit back and listen to this album and think about it being released in 1970. "Hard Lovin Man" is practically power metal, years before the sound. "Speed King", "Into The Fire", and Bloodsucker" could be release from one of those retro-metal bands now, and that is meant in a good way to show the music for its worth then and forward thinking. "Speed king" predicts speed metal for all the right rocking reasons, that bass line trampling left and right. "Child In Time" is the classic that would define MK II of the band and the concert staple for years to come – All with its long non-stop artistry in motion, the first true metal epic clocking in over ten minutes. Plus, Blackmore delivers the first true epic metal solo within it's hallowed halls, so that song gets a spot in the museum for that alone.

This thing is pure state of the art, an almost untouchable album that the band would even exceed amazingly enough, is great and stands head and shoulders above so much music. Not only in sound, but in history for the five men should be enshrined on Rushmore as the cover shows.




Black Sabbath – Paranoid





Later the same year of this bands history making debut, despite critics and apathy, or more likely to the horror of the critics, Sabbath releases their sophomore album and what is the world's first true metal album proper front to back. Where Deep Purple conquered with power with par excellent song construction, Sabbath just crushed you with heaviness, choking you with Iommi's riffs of simple but planetary orbit changing weight. This had a rhythm section in Ward and Geezer, but Butler seemed destined to also prop up Tony's guitar to keep the mass in motion, while Ward is part time drummer, part time percussionist in just beating the beast into perpetual motion. The guys galloping and forcing riffs along like inevitable tides of history. Don't get me wrong with the Purple comment, this brings the songs, it's just that you get into them after recovering from bucket of iron smacked up your head. No one went here in 1970. No one else went here for years after 1970.

Their debut had metal, but also other hard rock and psychedelic conventions as well, while here they are forced under the metal sheen of a band more focused on their signature sound. Whether it's the classic war drumming of "Warpigs" (original album title until the label got cold feet – that's why the album cover doesn't match the actual title of the album) that recaptured the doom rumble of the debut, or the proto-speed of "Paranoid" that does point to speed metal and becomes the first break away hit for the band. Another fun fact, the band wrote this at the last minute in the studio when they still had space to fill on a side. Tony just came up with the riff and after 15 minutes the band put it together.

The second most recognizable riff in the history of heavy metal is here on the shell-shock explorations of "Iron Man", a science fiction tale of an astronaut who sees the future of the world destroyed and goes back in time to warn humanity. Only problem, the trip through time renders him into steel and he stands incapable of warning people who in turn ignore him. Finally, our hero snaps and attacks mankind in a fit of madness at his predicament, thus becoming the holocaust he thought to prevent but in reality causes. Sort of gives the song a whole new image, doesn't it.

And don't worry; we'll get to the most recognized riff in a couple of years.

"Planet Caravan" is an acid trip, until you hear the fuck it attitude of the lyrics with their apathetic vision of giving up on this world and starting over. "Hand of Doom" brings revelations to your door, and incidentally also creating the doom subgenre of metal (the name doom comes from the title of this song). Sabbath couldn't just create the metal riff and help birth heavy metal – they had to start influencing subgenres right out of the gates with projecting doom and speed on one opus. And finally, what can be said about "Fairies Wear Boots"; it rocks, rolls, gallops, riff construction at its trail blazing finest, Ozzy delivering visions at the edges of reality that engages in a way we all bitch about a traffic jam but really want to see the accident that caused it.

Yes, these tracks have been played to death, and I don't visit this album as much these days due to sheer overload, but there is no mistaking its greatness, historical relevance, and grandiose gravitas in the great schemes of things. It is everything the marquee says and one of the essential classics of heavy metal, rising above the rest in a year that is filled with so many classics the year should be given a national holiday in its own right.




***



In the middle of this, a band on Frank Zappa's private label was to start working on their third album. They played a fuzzy rock and psych, but they where ready to take Sabbath's horror show on the road and become the "villains of rock and roll."

But we will get to that story next year.