Heavy metal timeline

I’m summarising the history of heavy metal music in 22 songs. Each one gets a brief post. Hopefully they’ll end up telling a coherent story.

Simon has set up a Spotify playlist of these songs — thanks, Simon!

0. Introduction
1. The Kinks, You Really Got Me (August 1964)
2. The Who, My Generation (November 1965)
3. The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Purple Haze (March 1967)
4. Cream, Sunshine of your Love (November 1967)
5. Steppenwolf, Born to be Wild (June 1968)
6. The Beatles, Helter Skelter (November 1968)
   (See also: Desert island albums #4: The Beatles — Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967))
7. Led Zeppelin, Dazed and Confused (January 1969)
8. MC5, Kick Out the Jams (February 1969)
9. Deep Purple, Child in Time (June 1970)
10. Black Sabbath, Paranoid (August 1970) and Black Sabbath addendum
11. Blue Öyster Cult, Workshop of the Telescopes (January 1972)
    (See also: Desert island albums #3: Blue Öyster Cult — Fire of Unknown Origin (1981))
12. Rush, Anthem (February 1975)
13. AC/DC, It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Want to Rock and Roll) (December 1975)
14. Rainbow, Stargazer (May 1976)
    (See also: Desert island albums #2: Rainbow — Rising (1976))
15. Scorpions, I Can’t Get Enough (February 1979)
16. Iron Maiden, Phantom of the Opera (April 1980)
17. Judas Priest, Breaking the Law (April 1980)
18. Whitesnake, Fool for Your Loving (May 1980)
    (See also: Whitesnake: a tragedy in about 12 acts)
19. Ozzy Ozbourne, Crazy Train (September 1980)
20. Motörhead, Ace of Spades (October 1980)
21. Metallica, Enter Sandman (July 1991)
22. Dream Theater, Under a Glass Moon (July 1992)

Into the 90s …

In my Metallica entry, I wrote that “The further evolution of thrash into death metal and black metal represents the reductio ad absurdum of a genre with nowhere left to go but self-parody and turgid, lifeless noise”. Among several people to object to that characterisation was Pedro Lopes, who left an epic series of comments constituting a 1990s metal timeline. With his permission, I gathered them all into this guest post:

• Pedro Lopes’s 1990s heavy metal timeline

The ones that got away

• I suggested that I should have included The Troggs’ Wild Thing (June 1966).
• Gavin Burrows made a plea for the Rolling Stones’ The Last Time (February 1965)
• Gavin also mentioned Hawkwind, though not any particular song; in a subsequent comment, he mentioned the song Orgone Accumulator.
• Gavin again, this time mentioning Iron Butterfly and Muddy Waters’ Mannish Boy.
• Andrei Vajna mentioned King Crimson’s 21st Century Schizoid Man.
• Lksdf suggested Vanilla Fudge.
• Gavin suggested Free’s All Right Now.
• Richard Whitbread made a plea for UFO’s Rock Bottom.
• Jason asked whether I’d be covering Kiss or Van Halen.
• jwerpy pointed out that I’d missed Alice Cooper.
• Jason thinks that omitting Guns and Roses is a mistake, and suggests the song Welcome to the Jungle as marking the transition from hard rock into heavy metal.
• Margus Kiis points out that I overlooked The Small Faces’ You Need Lovin’, a song that is very obviously the prototype for early Led Zeppelin.