Top 10: 60s Albums That Shaped Heavy Metal

1970 is widely regarded by metal historians as the year metal was born, and you can’t really blame them. Albums like Black Sabbath’s self titled and Paranoid, Deep Purple’s In Rock, Uriah Heep’s …Very ‘Eavy …Very ‘Umble, and Sir Lord Baltimore’s Kingdom Come (just to name a few) were significantly heavier and more extreme from a musical and songwriting standpoint than their psychedelic predecessors. But who were these predecessors? It’s not like Black Sabbath were spawned from the depths of hell on February 13, 1970 and voila: Heavy metal was born! No, there were a slew of bands and albums that played a key role in this musical evolution. Today, we explore this oft-forgotten proto-metal era with our Top 10 60s Albums That Shaped Heavy Metal. So turn on, tune in, and…hey! Don’t take the brown acid, MAN!

10. Deep Purple – Deep Purple (1969)

Kicking off our list at #10 is an album from a band who would fully embrace their heavy metal identity just a short year later, Deep Purple. The band formed in 1968 as an English answer to Vanilla Fudge, specializing in fuzzy, psychedelic covers of Top 40 hits. With each subsequent release, the band would continue to evolve as songwriters and musicians, reaching a new peak on their self titled third album. By now, the band had all but abandoned the poppy roots of their debut, the only cover being of Donovan’s folk ballad, “Lalena”. The rest of the album is hard driving psych with emphasis on virtuosic jam passages courtesy of drummer Ian Paice, keyboardist Jon Lord, and guitarist Ritchie Blackmore. These were masters of their craft, firing on all cylinders. Come the arrival of singer Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover later that year, the pieces of the Purple puzzle would be complete. The rest, as they say, is history.

9. Leslie West – Mountain (1969)

Having spent the better part of the 60s as the driving force of underground garage rockers The Vagrants, Leslie West emerged in 1969 as the rightful heir to Eric Clapton’s fuzz-driven throne. Aided by Cream producer Felix Pappalardi, West conjured some of the hardest, heaviest, and colossal blues rock ever heard on his debut solo album, Mountain. To this day, the riffs on “Blood of the Sun” are enough to shake even the most hardened headbanger to their core. After a celebrated appearance at Woodstock, West and Pappalardi banded together for album #2, branding themselves Mountain and adding drummer Corky Laing and keyboardist Steve Knight to the mix. You can read more about that release (Climbing!) here.

8. The Stooges – The Stooges (1969)

“What? A punk album on a metal list?” Settle down elitist and allow me to explain. While today The Stooges are to punk what Black Sabbath is to metal, this was not the case in 1969. In fact, the term “punk rock” didn’t even exist. Even the term “heavy metal” was used in a musical context as early as 1970, in a Rolling Stone review for Humble Pie’s As Safe as Yesterday Is. “Punk”? That wouldn’t be for quite a few more years. So when The Stooges released their self titled debut in the summer of ’69, the musical equivalent of a dagger through the heart of the free love generation, nobody knew what to make of it. All one could gather was that it was a ferocious, pissed off melee of raucous riffs, rotten production, snarling attitude, and Stonesian swagger on speed. This would prove to be crucial to the eventual amalgamation of metalpunk a decade later (i.e. The Dictators, Motörhead, Plasmatics), which would subsequently give way to Venom and thrash metal. Thanks Iggy!

7. Cream – Disraeli Gears (1967)

When Eric Clapton formed Cream in 1966, he had already been branded “God” by both the music press and the impressionable youth of England for his work with The Yardbirds and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. In his defense, until Hendrix dethroned him a year later, Clapton was the most revolutionary guitarist of his time. OK, that’s a lie. Jeff Beck was far more proficient, but Clapton got the glory (in MY opinion). That said, this isn’t to take away from Clapton’s one time uncanny ability to crank out addictive fuzz laden hooks and blistering blues based solos, both of which reached their peak on Cream’s sophomore masterpiece, Disraeli Gears. If you were to tell me the lead riffs to “Sunshine of Your Love”, “SWLABR”, and the epic “Tales of Brave Ulysses” were the first proper metal riffs ever recorded, I’m not sure if I’d disagree, let alone get mad about it. Without Clapton, there’d be no Iommi.

6. The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Are You Experienced (1967)

The age of the guitar can be divided into two eras: Before Hendrix and After Hendrix. Before Hendrix, bands like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Kinks were experimenting with fuzz, overdrive, and other guitar effects. However, they were never able to push the sonic envelope the way Hendrix did. We make take it for granted now, considering his catalog gets played to death on classic rock radio, but 55 years ago, NOBODY had heard anything like Are You Experienced. While it may be a blues album at its core, the freaky riffage, atmosphere, and tones of cuts like “Foxy Lady”, “Manic Depression”, and the title track were nothing short of revolutionary, drawing a line in the sand between the humble blues rock of the Brits and, well, whatever the hell this was supposed to be. It’s no wonder the songs on this album alone have been covered by Carnivore, Soundgarden, Paul Chain, Stone Vengeance…the list goes on.

5. Iron Butterfly – In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (1968)

Alright, we might have to put an asterisk next to this one, as the album itself isn’t crucial to the development of heavy metal, just its latter half. I wonder how many people have even bothered with the A side of Iron Butterfly’s second album. If they did, they’d be welcomed by a lighthearted collection of psych pop rockers that, while not “great” from a songwriting perspective, are entertaining if only for being so reflective of its respective era. Iron Butterfly so subtly tows the line between AM accessibility and FM psych tropes, as if their lives depended on it. Little did they know their biggest hit would be the album’s B side: A 17 minute monolith that changed the course of music forever. While the lyrics are mostly lovey dovey nonsense, the music is abrasive, fuzzed out, and evil…truly, undeniably evil. That lead riff, the church organs, the bongo solo, those unsettling guitar scratches…now drag that out for 17 minutes. Call me a dork, but I still get chills when I listen to this masterpiece from beginning to end, probably because I listen to it the way it was intended to be heard: on vinyl, in pure darkness.

4. Vanilla Fudge – Vanilla Fudge (1967)

Despite there not being a single original composition on Vanilla Fudge’s self titled debut aside from the “Illusions of My Childhood” interludes, it cannot be overstated enough how impactful this album is in the history of heavy metal. It should also be pointed out that Vanilla Fudge didn’t simply “cover” The Beatles’s “Ticket to Ride”, The Zombies’s “She’s Not There”, and The Supremes’s “You Keep Me Hanging On”, among others. They rearranged, reworked, and reimagined these songs as their own, slowing them down to half speed and incorporating intense musical passages that would prove influential in the early development of doom metal. While largely associated with the “flower power” era, Vanilla Fudge is distinctly eerie, morbid, and morose, coming off as a musical acid trip gone awry. 55 years later and this album still dares you to embrace its wicked grooves with open arms.

3. Grand Funk Railroad – Grand Funk (1969)

I’m going to say something. It may be controversial, but that never stopped me before. The mediator between Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath was Grand Funk Railroad. Don’t believe me? Check out their 1969 self titled sophomore album, AKA “The Red Album”. With all due respect to their incredible debut, On Time, which was also released in 1969, Grand Funk makes that album sound like a warmup in comparison. On Grand Funk, Mark, Don and Mel attack their respectful instruments with such visceral aggression and extremity. Their cacophonous rage was enough to level entire cities, and I’m sure cuts like “Mr. Limousine Driver”, “Paranoid”, and their cover of The Animals’s “Inside Looking Out” destroyed many stereos in the process. While Closer to Home (1970) would further expand upon this formula in its own early metal way, it’s the unbridled fury of Grand Funk that, without, this list would be incomplete.

2. Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin (1969)

Speaking of Led Zeppelin, you knew they’d be on this list. After all, they released their two heaviest albums in the 1960s. While I was briefly considering putting Led Zeppelin II on here, if only for being the better album cohesively, it’s the self titled that had the bigger impact overall, if only for encouraging a band from Birmingham, England named Black Sabbath to “be heavier”. Granted, Zeppelin’s influence went beyond the Sabs. Future classics like “Good Times Bad Times”, “Communication Breakdown”, and “Dazed and Confused” kicked everybody’s ass. The way Van Halen kicked off the 80s in 1978 with their debut, Led Zeppelin kicked off the 70s in 1969. This was a far cry from the down home blues rock of The Yardbirds and Small Faces. This was the future, and it was Zep’s way or the highway from here on out.

1. Blue Cheer – Vincebus Eruptum (1968)

While Led Zeppelin, Grand Funk Railroad, and Deep Purple would spend 1969 inching closer towards what we know today as heavy metal from a musical standpoint, Blue Cheer had the “heavy” part of the equation down pat a year earlier. Vincebus Eruptum is so fuzzy, raw, and brutal, that it makes Jimi Hendrix’s sonic explorations just a year earlier sound like child’s play. The low, unsettling frequencies of the guitar and bass have more in common with sludge metal than even Black Sabbath, at least from a tonal perspective. Keep in mind there wouldn’t be anything that could be properly labelled “sludge” for almost another 20 years. This is just one of the many reasons why Vincebus Eruptum is a game changer, and hands down the most important album in metal prior to Black Sabbath’s debut. If you can afford it (I’m not sure what it goes for these days), pick yourself up and original press of this masterpiece, load up on the poison of your choice (or don’t), and enjoy the trip. If your stereo can handle “Summertime Blues” and “Doctor Please”, it can handle the apocalypse.

Honorable Mentions

• Coven – Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls (1969)
• The Gun – Gun (1969)
• MC5 – Kick Out the Jams (1969)
• Spooky Tooth – Spooky Two (1969)
• Steppenwolf – Steppenwolf (1968)