Who Invented Heavy Metal Music?: A Search for Origins

Where exact­ly did “heavy met­al” start? Like a sim­i­lar question—“what is the first rock and roll song?”–there’s not so much a direct answer as a spread­ing of ingre­di­ents over a num­ber of years, all of which com­bine to cre­ate “heavy met­al,” and its numer­ous sub-gen­res that have sprung forth from it. There’s not so much a year of ori­gin as there is a year after which one can­not claim a begin­ning. (Now that’s a sen­tence!)

If you’re con­fused, this quick his­to­ry by Poly­phon­ic will answer all of your ques­tions, and hope­ful­ly turn you on to a few tracks you’ve nev­er heard before.

So what makes a heavy met­al track? Well, first you have to have some loud, heavy, dis­tort­ed gui­tars. Poly­phon­ic goes back to blues musi­cians, as so many rock gui­tarists con­tin­ue to do, to sug­gest the gui­tar sounds of Pat Hare and Joe Hill Lewis as pre­cur­sors to that sound. Next you have to have some light­ing-fast fin­ger­work all over the frets—maybe the hyper­fast riffage of surf rock leg­end Dick Dale will do?

That’s all fine and good. But we need to get *heavy* in this met­al. And it was the Brits who took on this job. Cre­at­ing a mood and exper­i­ment­ing with sound marked bands like the Bea­t­les, Stones, and The Who, as they tried to out-do each oth­er. When Paul McCart­ney heard that The Who had deliv­ered the heav­i­est song so far in “I Can See for Miles” (which now sounds sur­pris­ing­ly twee com­pared to lat­er Who songs), he sat down with the band and blast­ed out “Hel­ter Skel­ter.” Take that, Pete Town­shend.

The Bea­t­les weren’t steeped in the blues, but so many oth­er British bands were, and here’s where blues picked up the gaunt­let thrown down by these heavy, dron­ing, bass-laden sounds. While the British Inva­sion bands wore their Eng­lish­ness on their (record) sleeves, trad- and psych-blues bands like Cream and Led Zep­pelin want­ed to sound Amer­i­can. Things got loud­er, crunchi­er, slow­er, and dark­er. They got real­ly dark with Black Sab­bath, which named them­selves after the Mario Bava hor­ror film, and brought anoth­er ingre­di­ent to the stew: dark, fan­tas­tic, Satan­ic imagery. Final­ly, Deep Pur­ple brought the ban­shee screech­ings of Ian Gillan as a final part to the puz­zle. Put it all togeth­er and what you have is heavy met­al, man.

Heavy Met­al has gone on to delight gen­er­a­tions and piss off all the right peo­ple at the same time. It’s giv­en rise to a new sub genre every year, and come out of it with a hard-earned respectabil­i­ty.

The above ani­mat­ed video from Pitch­fork will get you caught up with the evo­lu­tion into chart dom­i­na­tion and back out into purist obscu­ri­ty.

And for those who would rather lis­ten to a his­to­ry rather than watch one, check this out.

Poly­phon­ic hits most of the well known sign­posts on the jour­ney, but if you think an essen­tial song is miss­ing, let us know in the com­ments.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dev­il­ish His­to­ry of the 1980s Parental Advi­so­ry Stick­er: When Heavy Met­al & Satan­ic Lyrics Col­lid­ed with the Reli­gious Right

Watch Heavy Met­al Park­ing Lot, the Cult Clas­sic Film That Ranks as One of the “Great Rock Doc­u­men­taries” of All Time

Punk & Heavy Met­al Music Makes Lis­ten­ers Hap­py and Calm, Not Aggres­sive, Accord­ing to New Aus­tralian Study

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.