By the end of the 1980s, thrash metal was on its last legs. Metallica and Slayer were on the path towards acceptance by the mainstream and it seemed as though heavy metal was in danger of losing not only the extremity upon which it had been founded, but also its shock value. How ill-founded those assumptions turned out to ...
Eddie Van Halen redefined the sound of heavy metal at the end of the 1970s. His high-velocity solos, distinguished by his finger-tapping technique and tremolo-bar effects, on Van Halen’s 1978 debut album heralded a new era in hard-rock guitar that rejected the clichés of a jaded genre. His solo on Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’ in 1982, which effectively ...
His contemporaries Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck might receive more time in the spotlight, but guitarist Ritchie Blackmore (b. 1945) has been similarly influential and innovative during his 40-plus-year career. Born in Weston-Super-Mare, England, in April 1945, Blackmore was given his first guitar at the age of 11 and began taking classical lessons, ...
When singer-guitarist Dave Mustaine was dismissed from the original Metallica line-up, it opened the door for a young Bay Area-based guitarist named Kirk Hammett (b. 1962) to come in and lead the thrash-metal charge. What Hammett and his mates in Metallica would accomplish from that point, no one could have predicted. Born in San Francisco, California, Hammett ...
Frank Anthony Iommi (b. 1948) was born in Birmingham, England. Like so many other teenage boys in 1960s Britain, he was inspired to pick up the guitar upon hearing Hank Marvin and The Shadows. In 1967, after playing in various local acts, Iommi hooked up with three former school mates – Bill Ward (drums), Terry ‘Geezer’ Butler ...
The term ‘heavy metal’ came from the controversial US Beat Movement novel, Naked Lunch, in which the author, William Burroughs, talked about ‘heavy metal thunder’. This phrase was used in Steppenwolf’s 1968 single ‘Born To Be Wild’, and helped christen an emerging sub-genre of hard rock. The origins of heavy metal are heard in the hard rock ...
Speed and thrash metal sprang to prominence in America during the early 1980s, with fans around the globe forming their own groups. Equally indebted to the do-it-yourself ethos of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal and the underground spirit of hardcore punk, the style’s original progenitors were frighteningly young, but had spent years sharpening their musicianship. Speed ...
Death metal and grindcore both had roots in the decaying thrash metal scene of the mid-1980s. As that decade concluded, musicians on both sides of the Atlantic were looking for new and horrific ways to shock. The styles ended up gravitating towards one another, but began life as very different entities. Death metal bands like Morbid Angel and Death ...
Canadian trio Rush had little idea of the magnitude of their actions when they released Caress Of Steel in September of 1975. Just seven months after the group’s second album, Fly By Night, it saw them board a creative wave that for many fans would peak with their next studio release, 1976’s conceptual album 2112. Though still recognizeable ...
Funk stars of the 1970s like The Ohio Players, Sly & The Family Stone and Funkadelic didn’t realize for a decade that hard rock ears had been paying attention. That same decade, Aerosmith’s combination of white-boy electric blues and propulsive arena hard rock had been deemed as unique, with just Grand Funk Railroad working along the similar lines. ...
As the genre’s name so boldly implies, timing and image were both of critical importance to the realm of nu metal. In pure musical terms there was little to unite the scene’s leading exponents, save for the radical detuning of their instruments and a desire to distance themselves from such old-school hard rock favourites as Iron Maiden and Metallica. ...
A range of metal percussion instruments are found in the western orchestra, many of which have ancient and global origins. Triangle The triangle comprises a slim steel bar, circular in cross-section, bent into an equilateral triangle (18 cm/7 in each side) with one corner open. It is played with a metal rod, and is suspended from a ...
(Vocals, guitar, 1903–62) Francis ‘Scrapper’ Blackwell is best known as Leroy Carr’s musical partner, but he was also a gifted artist in his own right. In 1928 he recorded ‘Kokomo Blues’, which Kokomo Arnold covered as ‘Original Old Kokomo Blues’, before Robert Johnson retooled it as ‘Sweet Home Chicago’. After Carr died in 1935, Blackwell retired from ...
(Vocals, songwriter, b. 1962) Born in New Jersey and raised in Houston, Black burst on to the scene in the late 1980s. Signed by ZZ Top manager Bill Ham, Black’s double platinum debut album, Killin’ Time (1989), spawned four chart-topping singles, including ‘Better Man’ and ‘Nobody’s Home’. He has duetted with legendary cowboy Roy Rogers ...
Inspired largely by heavy metal founders Black Sabbath, the doom metal bands based their sound on the slower and more ‘sludgy’ elements of Sabbath’s sound, as can be heard on ‘Planet Caravan’ from Paranoid (1970) and ‘Sweet Leaf’ from Master Of Reality (1971), rather than the faster and more brutal elements of their music. As the name suggests, ...
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David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
his life, music, art and movies, with a
sweep of incredible photographs.