First American metal band???

Orion Crystal Ice wrote:

Another question:


I've already outlined why something like the Pink Floyd "drug band" thing in that era doesn't make sense. Here's another one. Today's culture, lots of kids and magazines say that there is a whole bunch of stuff which is heavy metal. I don't think it is. Who's right? They're living it, and the media is current. Halestorm won a Grammy in a metal category. Is Halestorm metal? Today is the future's "back in the day". Are people going to look at the records, or the general outside consensus?

The difference is that the magazines and fans back in the 1970's were at the BEGINNINGS of the style, when it was first being forged and when the label was applied to the sound. There was no "heavy metal" to look back on from decades before. It was those magazines and fans that labeled the 'hard rock bands' as heavy metal. People back then weren't fighting about some big divide between hard rock and heavy metal. It was one and the same. Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, UFO, etc. were the British metal bands. Aerosmith, Kiss, Ted Nugent, etc were the American heavy metal bands. It is simply a fact that those bands were the heavy metal bands of the 70's.

Those magazines and kids labeling or mislabeling things 40+ years later are not at the lead of the genre.

And the grammy's have always been clueless.

Orion Crystal Ice wrote:

In the 1980's, X person did well during the Reagan era...Y person did not. Was Reagan's administration a success?

In the 1970's, X person did drugs while listening to Floyd, Y person did not. Is Pink Floyd a drug band?

In the 2000's, people think Halestorm is heavy metal. That's BS.


Who is right? They are from the era and if viewpoint in itself is the supreme judging point, we have a paradox, which is a conflict of something that can only happen one way or another.

Actual metrics can be applied to an economy, but I am not so sure that metrics can be applied to a description of a band.

However, we all know that genres exist as a shorthand to help someone know what a band sounds like without having to listen to a band. It's a convenient way of communication and also a way to market to a particular demographic.

Of course I am all for discussing these issues because that's the entire point of this board!

SD's definition works well for me, but only because we are of a similar age and experience when it comes to when we first encountered heavy metal. It's probably different for you OCI.

S.D. wrote:

Witchfinder wrote:

I myself would side with those who are from that era and their definition. They actually applied it to the bands and therefore, they would be in the best position to say who was considered a heavy metal band at the time. Anything else is merely revisionist history.

I became focused on heavy metal in 1982. The first bands I became obsessive about were Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath w/Dio and Ozzy's solo band and as far as I was concerned those groups had the definitive "heavy metal" sound.

I was also a big fan of Kiss (since 1976), AC/DC (since 1979) and Van Halen, I considered those bands to be "hard rock".

My opinion of those groups and how I would categorize them hasn't changed over the years.

So is it your opinion that all the people & publications who called bands like Kiss and Van Halen 'heavy metal' back in the 1970's were all wrong? All the printed publications from over the decades that chronicle the history of "heavy metal" are inaccurate? I'm not trying to pick a fight, just trying to understand where you are coming from.

I consider Kiss, AC/DC and Van Halen to be hard rock as well, but the big distinction that they were never heavy metal bands is not something I would make and in fact I would disagree with. Hard rock and heavy metal were synonymous terms in the 1970's. That's not an opinion. It's a well documented fact.

S.D. wrote:

MetalGuy71 wrote:

I thought this little article was intersting.

http://www.classicrockmagazine.com/blog/when-two-tribes-go-to-war-or-how-the-music-press-spoiled-rock/

It's not really directily on point of this discussion about who was the first heavy metal band, but it does discuss how the punk-era of the 70's and the media's take on them started the whole splintering process of rock into all the sub-genres we have today.

The article says basically before punk, everything was just "rock n roll" more-or-less. Noone labeled it otherwise. It covered allot of ground. However, when punk rock started making an impact, it was the antithesis of everything rock'n roll was. The media was forced to take sides. And then that's where the splintering began.

Could you cover Pink Floyd, Aerosmith and The Damned in the same magazine? The answer was no. So they started grouping bands into different categories, either to satisfy their readership, or more directly, influence the readers to also pick sides.

It should be noted too that this article is from Classic Rock magazine, which is a British publication. The whole article has things from an English perspective when punk was much more relevent in society than it's impact on the States. Still valid though.

Yeah, that was basically when everything started to go to shit. What I mean by that statement is I think better music was created overall before all the sub-genres got shoved down our throats, when bands had the freedom to be themselves and create whatever music they wanted.

After the sub-genres came into play all of a sudden bands had to "choose sides" as to what sub-genre they were in. That caused the music to become less experimental and more focused in one particular direction, which in turn trained new music fans to only hear certain things within a specific context. That was where moronic viewpoints like "you can't have keyboards in metal" came from.

Basically, the sub-genres latched on by the media and record labels (and the labels only signed bands they could easily market) essentially dumbed down their audience by offering only pre-packaged styles they could easily market and control. They put blinders on us and we let them.

Thankfully the record labels really don't mean much anymore and bands are starting to take over their own careers again, free to experiment in whatever sounds they want. That's a great thing from an artistic standpoint. Hopefully metal will also feel free to experiment a little more and relax some of the ridiculous sub-genre walls a little bit.

Good post. Excellent points.

I agree with the original article to an extent. I got into rock and roll early on, when I was in grade school in the early 70's. I liked everything from Genesis to Black Sabbath, and it was all just rock and roll. However, the distinctions were already there. Genesis and King Crimson were progressive rock bands that intelligent folk listened to. Black Sabbath and Ted Nugent were heavy metal bands that only lunkheads with no intelligence listened to. Those stereotypes were already in place and re-enforced by the media.

It's just SLIGHTLY borderline ageist when I'm trying to get into detail for the sake of maximum clarity but yet it always boils down to such-and-such-because-your-age........I'm just saying, I can count the amount of times it happens in this sort of discussion and I don't think that is valid nor fair.............. I mean, if you want it shorthand, I'm more or less in the same boat as allthingsmetal is in that it simply doesn't seem like CERTAIN American bands were far enough into it whereas others definitely were. It doesn't have to do with whether these artists are respected or contributed, I just hear on the record differences that form a line.

Does anyone think it possible that there is worth in 20/20 sight just as much as there is in the perspective of growing up with something? If not, I might as well sell all my old records, older people should sell all their new ones, because by that logic we'll only ever truly understand whatever is there at the moment, and that's a debilitating view.

ultmetal wrote:

So is it your opinion that all the people & publications who called bands like Kiss and Van Halen 'heavy metal' back in the 1970's were all wrong? All the printed publications from over the decades that chronicle the history of "heavy metal" are inaccurate? I'm not trying to pick a fight, just trying to understand where you are coming from.

I consider Kiss, AC/DC and Van Halen to be hard rock as well, but the big distinction that they were never heavy metal bands is not something I would make and in fact I would disagree with. Hard rock and heavy metal were synonymous terms in the 1970's. That's not an opinion. It's a well documented fact.

No, I was saying I don't give a shit what the mainstream media labeled things as. I was stating my personal opinion of how I view these artists.

When I bought my first KISS record in 1976 I called them "rock 'n' roll", my Stepfather said "that's not rock 'n' roll, that's hard rock". That was the first time I ever remember hearing a subgenre descriptor. The first time I ever remember seeing the term "heavy metal" was the movie of the same name, at that point I still wasn't using it to describe a sound. I didn't start using that term until I discovered Iron Maiden and Judas Priest who were always described as being "heavy metal" that the term stuck and I started to use it.

Other bands like Aerosmith, AC/DC, Van Halen, etc would be described by myriad terms depending on what magazine you read. Sometimes they were heavy metal, sometimes they were hard rock, sometimes they were heavy rock. There was no consensus.

I never said my opinion was correct and others were wrong, I was just stating it the way I saw it at the time and the way I still view it.

The first American heavy metal band was Petra. End thread.

S.D. wrote:

I became focused on heavy metal in 1982. The first bands I became obsessive about were Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath w/Dio and Ozzy's solo band and as far as I was concerned those groups had the definitive "heavy metal" sound.

I was also a big fan of Kiss (since 1976), AC/DC (since 1979) and Van Halen, I considered those bands to be "hard rock".

My opinion of those groups and how I would categorize them hasn't changed over the years.

That pretty much sums it up for me.

As for those bands labeled as hard rock (KISS,AC/DC,Van Halen, etc. etc.),how about the label proto-metal or neo-metal? Maybe then one of those bands could be listed as the first.

007 wrote:

As for those bands labeled as hard rock (KISS,AC/DC,Van Halen, etc. etc.),how about the label proto-metal or neo-metal?

Those terms never existed in the 80s, they are just revisionist descriptions that mean nothing. I also find terms like "post rock" to be equally inane.

As a kid I read Hit Parader and Circus, once in awhile Rolling Stone, but I was not a cool hipster, who's ear was to the underground. I liked Venom and bought a Venom because I read about it. I was only clued in about the NWOBHM due to an article I read in Creem long after the scene had died or was at least on life support.

AC/DC the first band I ever loved was labeled metal, and that is how I saw them, back in 1982, I never heard music like that. No internet, no MTV, radio in my area barely played them (how times have changed!!) and calling them hard rock, I had visions of Reo Speedwagon and shades of Styx, so the term heavy metal was a way to set apart bands I loved to, those AOR bands I hated.

Quote :

It's just SLIGHTLY borderline ageist when I'm trying to get into detail for the sake of maximum clarity but yet it always boils down to such-and-such-because-your-age........I'm just saying, I can count the amount of times it happens in this sort of discussion and I don't think that is valid nor fair.............. I mean, if you want it shorthand, I'm more or less in the same boat as allthingsmetal is in that it simply doesn't seem like CERTAIN American bands were far enough into it whereas others definitely were. It doesn't have to do with whether these artists are respected or contributed, I just hear on the record differences that form a line.

Does anyone think it possible that there is worth in 20/20 sight just as much as there is in the perspective of growing up with something? If not, I might as well sell all my old records, older people should sell all their new ones, because by that logic we'll only ever truly understand whatever is there at the moment, and that's a debilitating view.

Let me see if i'm understanding you. Because something morphed it no longer is to be called what it was called then?

S.D. wrote:

007 wrote:

As for those bands labeled as hard rock (KISS,AC/DC,Van Halen, etc. etc.),how about the label proto-metal or neo-metal?

Those terms never existed in the 80s, they are just revisionist descriptions that mean nothing. I also find terms like "post rock" to be equally inane.

I felt those were rather apt descriptions....but that's just my opinion.

S.D. wrote:

ultmetal wrote:

So is it your opinion that all the people & publications who called bands like Kiss and Van Halen 'heavy metal' back in the 1970's were all wrong? All the printed publications from over the decades that chronicle the history of "heavy metal" are inaccurate? I'm not trying to pick a fight, just trying to understand where you are coming from.

I consider Kiss, AC/DC and Van Halen to be hard rock as well, but the big distinction that they were never heavy metal bands is not something I would make and in fact I would disagree with. Hard rock and heavy metal were synonymous terms in the 1970's. That's not an opinion. It's a well documented fact.

No, I was saying I don't give a shit what the mainstream media labeled things as. I was stating my personal opinion of how I view these artists.

When I bought my first KISS record in 1976 I called them "rock 'n' roll", my Stepfather said "that's not rock 'n' roll, that's hard rock". That was the first time I ever remember hearing a subgenre descriptor. The first time I ever remember seeing the term "heavy metal" was the movie of the same name, at that point I still wasn't using it to describe a sound. I didn't start using that term until I discovered Iron Maiden and Judas Priest who were always described as being "heavy metal" that the term stuck and I started to use it.

Other bands like Aerosmith, AC/DC, Van Halen, etc would be described by myriad terms depending on what magazine you read. Sometimes they were heavy metal, sometimes they were hard rock, sometimes they were heavy rock. There was no consensus.

I never said my opinion was correct and others were wrong, I was just stating it the way I saw it at the time and the way I still view it.

Thanks for clarifying. That's what I thought you were saying, but just wanted to make sure.

I didn't actually start using the term heavy metal until the late 70's. I started writing it all over my book covers in school with band names like Thin Lizzy, UFO, Scorpions, Aerosmith, etc. I was obsessed from an early age and by 1980 was a bonafide denim-vest wearing metalhead. (My first vest had giant Aerosmith wings painted on the back.) To this day I still call Aerosmith and Ted Nugent hard rock bands, but I don't deny their lineage and history in heavy metal history either. The thing that irks me is those who deny that heavy metal even existed until Iron Maiden or who think that heavy metal wasn't a widely used term in the 1970's to describe hard rock bands like UFO, Black Sabbath and Ted Nugent. That's not up for debate, it's a well-documented fact.

007 wrote:

S.D. wrote:

007 wrote:

As for those bands labeled as hard rock (KISS,AC/DC,Van Halen, etc. etc.),how about the label proto-metal or neo-metal?

Those terms never existed in the 80s, they are just revisionist descriptions that mean nothing. I also find terms like "post rock" to be equally inane.

I felt those were rather apt descriptions....but that's just my opinion.

Proto-metal is a term used to describe bands that came out of the 1960's. Bands like Cream, Iron Butterfly and Jimi Hendrix are often referred to as proto-metal due to their major influence on the 70's heavy metal bands.

Dark Horseman wrote:

Quote :

It's just SLIGHTLY borderline ageist when I'm trying to get into detail for the sake of maximum clarity but yet it always boils down to such-and-such-because-your-age........I'm just saying, I can count the amount of times it happens in this sort of discussion and I don't think that is valid nor fair.............. I mean, if you want it shorthand, I'm more or less in the same boat as allthingsmetal is in that it simply doesn't seem like CERTAIN American bands were far enough into it whereas others definitely were. It doesn't have to do with whether these artists are respected or contributed, I just hear on the record differences that form a line.

Does anyone think it possible that there is worth in 20/20 sight just as much as there is in the perspective of growing up with something? If not, I might as well sell all my old records, older people should sell all their new ones, because by that logic we'll only ever truly understand whatever is there at the moment, and that's a debilitating view.

Let me see if i'm understanding you. Because something morphed it no longer is to be called what it was called then?

No. not at all even close to what I said/meant. I made a tree analogy in an earlier post..... Not at all this....Or you could also use a caterpillar/pupa/butterfly analogy. I think certain American bands belong in the first, certain in the second, and certain others in the third, and that actually sitting and analyzing the records helps make the point, rather than a marketing term that relies more on other things like how many guitars, how long is the hair, how loud.

ult: I really hope there are not people here who think that there was not metal before Iron Maiden or that Sabbath/UFO are not metal..........

ultmetal wrote:

007 wrote:

S.D. wrote:

007 wrote:

As for those bands labeled as hard rock (KISS,AC/DC,Van Halen, etc. etc.),how about the label proto-metal or neo-metal?

Those terms never existed in the 80s, they are just revisionist descriptions that mean nothing. I also find terms like "post rock" to be equally inane.

I felt those were rather apt descriptions....but that's just my opinion.

Proto-metal is a term used to describe bands that came out of the 1960's. Bands like Cream, Iron Butterfly and Jimi Hendrix are often referred to as proto-metal due to their major influence on the 70's heavy metal bands.

Again, very apropriate.

I say, Blue Cheer as well.

Orion Crystal Ice wrote:

it's not "null and void", I just think it's more relevant what something actually is then the perspective in of itself. I don't know your experience so I can't say you're wrong. I'm just saying how it looks is not always how it is and there are pros and cons to certain perspectives.

In the 70's Pink Floyd was a "drug band", yet the majority of the chemical intake was by Syd Barrett and that debut record wasn't even in that decade. Is Pink Floyd a "drug band" because the founder chugged them and because people with that habit listened to them? What about their records INHERENTLY make Pink Floyd a "drug band"? That to me is how to place and judge music. The records.

Also, because I'm being more centrist and not necessarily jumping on some side doesn't make me dismissive of some huge thing, I realize there is this paranoia that some people have that the young folks are out to revision all this history, and that even in my 50s I will probably have to listen to it, but it's simply not true.

Actually Pink Floyd was labeled a drug band in the late 1960's and that label was more due to the pyschodelic style of music they played. Gilmore played on his first Floyd album in 1968 and the dynamic of the band changed somewhat with each subsequent release after Syd left. The bands sound departed from that psychodelic sound into progressive tendacies with each album after Syd's departure. Again, the drug reference could apply in certain music buyers perception towards Floyd even with the stylistic change in their music. I listened to Floyd alot as a kid and teen cause I smoked alot of pot at the time. Once I quit smoking pot, my interest in listening to Foloyd somewhat waned to non-existant. So in my perspective, Floyd was a drug band more due to my use of drugs as opposed to the label of their musical stylings. The point being, my "label" was due to what I did while listening than what the style was labeled by whomever.
?

Shawn Of Fire wrote:

Quote :

Heavy metal started on February 13, 1970 with the release of Black Sabbath

And the term was coined by someone other than the band....to this day, Ozzy considers Black Sabbath "rock and roll" or "hard rock" (I've heard him say both)...I've also heard him say "I don't even know what Heavy Metal is..."

Point being: things evolve. Period.
Aerosmith, Blue Oyster Cult, Ted Nugent, Van Halen...ALL got categorized as Heavy Metal by the same people who categorized Black Sabbath as Heavy Metal...the fans and the press. Only after decades of evolution and genre-splintering did people begin to get more specific and separatist and argue over what is and is not "Metal".

Fact STILL remains that, whether anyone here agrees or not, Heavy Metal in 1977 in America was made up of many bands that, by today's standards and guidelines, would be categorized as Hard Rock or Rock. In 1977, there was no Thrash Metal or Metalcore or Death Metal or Speed Metal or Prog Metal...there was Heavy Metal...KISS and Sabbath and Zep and Aerosmith and Queen and Motorhead. There is no way to redefine or change it.

It's like The Eagles being called Rock...by today's standards much of their music would be labeled Country or Americana...doesn't mean they are not a Rock band.

You can't relabel the past, especially historically documented past, by modern standards...things are what they are.

This.

When a thing is different enough from the preceding thing, it tends to be called something else....

I don't think anyone is denying what the movement was called, what X bands were called, but I do see a ton of ignoring the elephant in the room, which is the fact that whether the band says they sound a certain way, whether the fans say they sound a certain way, whether the mags say they sound a certain way...or are defined a certain way.... just speaking it doesn't manifest that into reality. If it's an individual opinion, yeah, okay, that's all fine, but you can't just stuff that particular opinion into a context which can only be defined by the music itself. If people thought and still think Zep sounds like KISS and Aerosmith like Sabbath, more power to them, but playing the records next to one another tells a different story and differences should be apparent, ESPECIALLY since there were not necessarily subgenres of 'metal' at that time....it is actually MUCH EASIER to say metal or NOT metal. There IS a stage where the pupa turns into a butterfly. Denying that would be THE SAME as saying something like one band just up and happened one day and there was suddenly heavy metal everywhere, which we all know isn't true.

Further, if many of these bands did not sound different, then each and every one of them wouldn't have spawned a legion of imitators who helped personify different styles. Unless we're going to argue that Candlemass started doom or Poison started glam or etc. Later bands have roots and those roots are usually exclusive. Why? Because the original bands had their own individual sounds - and - not all of them were the same kind of rock or metal....

Jimi Hendrix!!

We also need to evaluate how we are treating this time perspective issue because it doesn't seem like something that can be cherry picked.

Let's say it's the early 50's. There are two Chuck Berry's - one comes from Missouri, one comes from Canada. The Missouri Chuck hits fame with 'Roll Over Beethoven' and so forth. The critics and fans come to call it rock and roll. Does it start to be rock and roll when these people say, or was it that because the nature of the song is a rock and roll song (and we just didn't coin the term)?

Now let's say the Canadian Chuck also releases a single at the same time, say it's 'Maybellene' (Maybe it is!). The press describes it as heavy blues and Canadian Chuck is mostly known in his Canadian tundra homeland.

Time passes and bands pop up that work and improve in the style Missouri Chuck pioneered. They, along with Missouri Chuck, are considered rock and roll.

Is Canadian Chuck's music, in hindsight, rock and roll? It's the same music, but it was called something different. Should Canadian Chuck go down in history as heavy blues because of the perspective of the time and place, or rock and roll? Canadian Chuck had peers who were very much more traditional blues, but they were called rock and roll while Canadian Chuck remained in obscurity.

Are the recordings important, or the history? AND - How can we have HISTORY without the PRESENT?

I mean, if you guys have better parameters as to how to view something, let me know because my physics theories would appreciate another view of time.

I think this thread clarifies why when I was asked that initial question by my wife--I had no answer I was comfortable giving. My point is not whether or not bands like KISS, Nugent, Aerosmith, etc were wrongly labeled as "heavy metal" b/c that is irrelevant. Good music is good music and they all heavily influenced bands that I would call heavy metal.

To me, there IS a difference between 'hard rock/heavy rock' and 'heavy metal'. I mean back in the 70's I listened to Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, Nugent, etc as well as Motorhead, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, the Scorpions and there was a big difference in their sounds--even if they had the same label.

I threw this out there b/c I often hear many different opinions here as we all have different experiences and perceptions of music. I don't care if I agree or not--just wondering what other people's thoughts were. It's been cool to see as I still don't have an answer.

So again, irregardless of what label they had---which US band captured that sound of 'heavy metal'?

--(Petra. That's hilarious. Made me laugh--especially b/c my (to be) brother in law took me to see them way back when, thinking he was taking me a hard rock concert to "positively influence" me away from what I listen to).

OK it can be revealed, it was Spinal Tap!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!