This post in the series covers things that came before metal and influenced what it would go on to become. This is part of an intended series as I described in this post and I will post no more than one such post per day, with the ultimate goal being to explore the entire metal family tree of things that came before it, added to it, and the various sub-genres that arose from within it.

The reality is that all music that came before metal had some kind of influence upon it. This post focuses on the Metal Evolution Pre-Metal branch.

If you happen to have access to episode 1 of Banger Fims series Metal Evolution by Sam Dunn it covers this from that documentaries perspective. The entire documentary series can be purchased at their official site if you are interested. I will cover similar ground, but my main reason for doing this series was to cover the things they show flashes of, but never actually go into.

There are places you can view it online, though typically you have to purchase the episodes. The episode is available on iTunes in the United States, and muchmore.ca if you are in Canada. If you are interested in metal history, this series is excellent.

Here is the teaser trailer for that...

Let us begin

So how did Heavy Metal come to be? It built off of many things that came before it. It needed driving and powerful percussion/drums. It grabbed onto distortion and distorted guitars with glee. These things made the sound seem to get BIGGER with only a few musicians. At this point what some people call Hard Rock could really be considered some of the earliest examples of what would become Heavy Metal. What else does metal have in its initial conception?

We know so far...

Extensive use of drums and percussion
Distortion and in particular heavily distorted guitars

Why these things, and what inspired them?

The WHY can go back to classical things such as the German Composer Richard Wagner and the extremely BIG and powerful sounds he could get with an orchestra. Could this type of big sound be done by just a few musicians?

You could take some newer composers such as John Williams and some of the music from Star Wars to get a feel for the same BIG sound that metal musicians try to accomplish with just a few musicians rather than needing an entire orchestra.

Drums and Distorted Guitars make this achievable to a degree. The sound is DIFFERENT but it is indeed BIG and HUGE sounding like this.

I was six years old when Star Wars first came out. I saw it in a theater in Aspen, Colorado. I remember the BIG sound of the music was just as important as everything else in the movie. The first crash of music was stunning, and the music was still stunning as you filed out of the theater after the show. Some people simply turned right back around and got into line to watch it again. If you were not there it is truly hard these days to know how truly ground breaking that movie was when it came out on many different levels. A big part of that was the huge and tremendous sound of John Williams score for the movie.

Is it any wonder (I only thought of this as I write this) that I would gravitate towards heavy metal from that time forward. The quest for that big sound, and that feeling that the music from Star Wars gave me. This I believe is a critical component of a lot of metal.

I would also include Johann Sebastian Bach

and Edvard Grieg as classical composers who had a big impact on the big sound of metal.

Bach in particular was trying to make a bigger sound. He accomplished that with the huge pipe organs. Listen to that and it has that same BIG sound that I am referring to.

Drums/Percussion

Where do the drums come into play? They were already a big deal in Rock and Roll and the energy that it gave people, the beat people could move to, etc. Like I said Hard Rock could actually be considered Heavy Metal before the term had really latched onto anything.

Drummers as performers and doing amazing things were popular in Rock Bands, and even earlier than that.

Buddy Rich was an amazing drummer/percussionist and is still admired to this day for his skill and performance on a drum kit.

Percussion was important to so many bands before metal. Some bands would be well known for amazing percussion, and some of these people and bands also influenced metal more than simply by percussion alone.

The Who and their drummer Keith Moon.

The Beatles and their drummer Ringo Starr

Cream and their drummer Ginger Baker

Distortion

Distortion is a key element of Metal. Metal bands may perform songs and ballads that are clean and have no distortion. If this was their norm they would not be metal. Distorted guitars are a key component of heavy metal.

It is said that sound was first created by The Kinks when a box cutter was taken to an amp and they recorded the song. "You really got me".

There were things called Fuzz Pedals that were like the early distortion pedals and would be used by quite a few acts such as Cream and of course the amazing Jimi Hendrix. They were the early attempt to reproduce this sound without having to damage your amp. Once the amp is damaged it cannot play clean sound. With a pedal you have a device that let's you turn distorted sound off and on with the click of a switch.

The Rock Star

The idea of a rock star was already alive and strong. Yet it was only occasionally for musicianship. There were exceptions. Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, etc. The "Clapton is God!" grafitti you would see places.

The crazy skilled performer with an attitude on stage was becoming a real thing. This would go on to be embraced heavily by Heavy Metal. Where did this start?

The earliest examples of this I am aware of hearken back to the days of Niccolo Paganini. There is a fairly recent movie out that is kind of a take on HIM though definitely with some liberties taken. That movie is called The Devil's Violinist and is quite good. Here are two excerpts from that movie that focus on the Rockstar virtuosity like performance of Paganini.

As you can see from those it is more than just the amazing skill. There is an attitude, a way of moving. The performance is in the body as well as expressed in the amazing skill on the instrument.

This carried over into music long before heavy metal, but in heavy metal it became a pretty important part. Many metal bands will have amazing musicians, and some of them are focused around one particular musician even more than the vocalist. In some styles of metal the vocalist is almost an after thought. This is not always true, in fact it is not even the most common case. Metal still usually has an extravagant front man.

This is often known as a Front Man. The Front Man is not always the vocalist in metal. A very good example of a front man is Elvis Presley even though he wasn't doing any particularly amazing musician skills, he could sing, and he could embody this attitude extremely well.

There were people that took this attitude from Elvis but also applied some craziness to their instrument.

Chuck Berry

Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton

That is an excerpt from a modern movie and not really Hendrix. It recounts an event that really happened.

That is another very cool part from the movie All Is By My Side.

Yes, I am a huge Hendrix fan. I honestly don't think there was anyone that could touch him when he was alive. He burned very bright, and fast and then was gone. I'd like to visit an alternate reality where he lived to see what he would have done to music.

The Devil or the Rebel

There is definitely an attraction to the dark side of the force in attitude and lyrics. This did not start with Heavy Metal. It existed long before Heavy Metal. It just happens to be something that found a comfortable fit with Heavy Metal.

There is a reason the Niccolo Paganini movie is called The Devil's Violinist as this is one of the earliest recorded cases where his extreme skill in his instrument was often attributed with him supposedly selling his soul to the Devil.

This was also a very STRONG motive in the BLUES. Robert Johnson who was one of the first and most influential recorded blues guitarists was extremely influential on Hendrix, Clapton, and most guitarists who came after him. He supposedly made such a deal about selling his soul to the devil as well. He wrote a song about it called Crossroads.

This was the theme behind the movie with Ralph Machio (aka The Karate Kid) called Crossroads which explores this theme at some length. It's actually a fun movie and if you haven't seen it you should check it out.

That is a scene towards the end of the movie with Ralph trying to win his friends soul back with his own soul on the line. The guitar parts were actually all by Rye Cooder and Steve Vai. Ralph was not actually playing. He was playing against Jack Butler the Devil's Guitarist (actually Steve Vai) and it is ironic that the piece that wins the dual was actually written and performed by Steve Vai.

Emotions

We often hear people talk about emotions. They talk about putting your emotions into the music. They usually focus on love, sorrow, happiness. They seem to like to pretend that anger, fear, and excitement are not also emotions. Heavy Metal is a good focus for such emotions, though the other emotions have a place as well.

Contrary to popular belief listening to Heavy Metal does not necessarily make you violent. It actually can provide an outlet to poor your aggression into and suck it right out of you. It did this for me as an angry teen. I suspect I'd have exploded and been in a lot of fights if not for heavy metal. I could be angry, listen to metal, and the anger would just flow out of me into the music and become something else.

Closing

These are but some of the things that make Heavy Metal what it is. I did not focus on vocals, as there are many styles of vocal singing in heavy metal. It runs the gambit. It is not simply screaming contrary to the beliefs of some. That is a style only some heavy metal vocalists and sub-genres explore. We will visit those things in upcoming posts on this subject when we dive into metal itself. There will be some side trails into Progressive Rock, Shock Rock, and Original Punk as those things had huge impact on some of the various metal sub-genres.

I hope you enjoyed this... more will be coming.

Here are some Little Richard, The Beatles, and Cream songs that influenced Heavy Metal to usher you out the door until next time...