I love Black Sabbath and reckon a lot of inspiration for today’s heavy music can be traced back to their early albums. But they were not the only very heavy band around that time, and while for sure they were the most influential, some others may have been unacknowledged, but that’s why I’m here.
Blue Cheer - Vincebus Eruptum (1968)
Often credited with being the first heavy metal band. All of that sort of definition wrangling, doesn’t interest me but there is no doubt they were loud and distorted. The needle is in the red when they recorded this super-successful debut record (#11 USA). It contains their #14 hit of Eddie Cochrane’s Summertime Blues and a heavy workout of Mose Allison’s Parchment Farm. Which connects us nicely to my next entry in the embryonic heavy rock stakes
Cactus - Cactus (1970)
This was their debut and it opened with a three-minute version of Parchment Farm. They had everything turned up to eleven. Jim McCarty rarely gets spoken of as an influential rock guitarist but if you listen to this album, it sounds like more modern heavy rock. The track ‘Let Me Swim’ is said to have loosely inspired the 1978 guitar solo "Eruption" by Eddie Van Halen. And they lead us back to another great band
Vanilla Fudge - Vanilla Fudge (1967)
Drummer Carmine Appice’s pre-Cactus band. I bet you’re all familiar with their heavy, slowed down version of the Holland-Dozier-Holland song You Keep Me Hangin’ On’ (twice #6 USA in ‘67 & ‘68 #18 UK) and maybe the ambitious ‘Eleanor Rigby’ (#53 UK) Deep Purple were inspired by their ability to put songs through their heavy psychedelia filter and transform them. They also did a great Fudged-up version of ‘Ticket To Ride’. For a brief time from 1967-69 and 5 hit albums, they were hugely influential, produced by Shadow Morton who also produced Leader Of The Pack for the Shangri-las and was involved in recording ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’ with Iron Butterfly. Which leads us to …
Iron Butterfly - In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (1968)
For a while it was Atlantic’s biggest selling album and the first to get a platinum award. It stayed on the charts for 140 weeks and sold in excess of 30 million worldwide. Their sound shaped what was to become doomy heavy rock. Neither folky or bluesy and more than a little classical, the side-long title track was a game changer and must have had an influence long after 1968. The album made #4 in USA though didn’t chart in the UK which didn’t chart the edited single version of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (#30 USA) either.
Captain Beyond - Captain Beyond
When Iron Butterfly had gone their separate ways guitarist Larry "Rhino" Reinhardt and bassist Lee Dorman formed this band with ex-Purple man Rod Evans and Johnny Winter’s ex-drummer. Although not a hit anywhere, their heavy mix of hard rock, prog, jazz and freaky deeky head stuff was super influential and has flown under the radar as such for decades but if you had heard of them, you didn’t forget.
There’s bound to be many other heavy bands that played a part in the early, maybe first five years of heavy rock that rarely get talked of, most of them probably touched on other styles because we weren’t so genre obsessed back then, it was all ‘rock’.
