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Comment count is 5
Old_Zircon - 2012-07-30

The Kinks are great and all, but either none of these people have ever heard of Link Wray or they don't want to admit that an American was already playing metal a decade before You Really Got Me was released.

Not to mention Davie Allen and the Arrows.


fedex - 2012-07-30

well I just checked out some Link Wray, and while I can see how he would influence metal musicians somewhat, what he was playing was not metal, more like psychobilly or just southern blues rock. But the big power chords are there sort of. Davie Allen sounds like hard 50s music. Personally I think Bitter Creek or Blue Cheer came the closest to proto-metal,but that's just me.


Old_Zircon - 2012-07-30

Listen to Switchblade, Rumble, The Shadow Knows. First recorded use of deliberate distortion (the Kinks cutting holes in their speaker was literally an idea taken from Link Wray - he poked holes in the speaker with a pencil when they recorded Rumble back in '58). First recorded use of power chords. There's some rockabilly influence for sure, but he was way beyond that, especially the stuff that didn't get released.

Pete Townsend is on record saying that he learned to play guitar because of Rumble, as is Neil Young.

In interviews Link Wray has claimed that he was doing heavy guitar stuff at shows as far back as 1949 but there are no recordings, so it can't really be verified.

Blue Cheer were great sometimes (the A side of Inside/Outside and the B side of New! Improved! are both masterpieces of early heavy music, although the flip sides of both of those albums are boring blues jams). I'd put The Monks up there, too. Unbelievably aggressive, riff-driven stuff for 1965, plus Robert Plant's singing style in Zeppelin is almost identical (probably a coincidence, but who knows - at any rate, he certainly wasn't singing like that in '65 and ;66 when The Monks were). Seriously, check out the footage of their one TV appearance that's on Youtube, I think you'll really like it.

It's interesting (although not surprising) that they didn't mention Sam Gopal, which was a sort of hipster band in London in 1968 with Lemmy on guitar, vocals and songwriting. Some of their stuff sounds closer to Motorhead than anything Lemmy did with Hawkwind, although back then he was trying to sing like Jack Bruce. Check out the song The Dark Lord.

Sorry to nerd out about music there, being a music nerd has been my job for going on a decade now.


Old_Zircon - 2012-07-30

Also, I've been sick and spending a lot of time inside for two weeks now, and it's making me a bit stir crazy.


OxygenThief - 2012-07-30

Great comment, Zircon. *****


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