Classic Metal Class Session 8— American Metal in the 1970s
so many great bands to talk about from that era!
We devoted several earlier sessions to the development of heavy metal as a distinctive musical genre, community, sensibility, and lifestyle in Great Britain. That’s quite understandable given the absolute centrality of British bands in early 1970s heavy metal — a kind of music coalescing before it even really had a name!
Just consider how many of the seminal British bands fit in there: Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Budgie, UFO, Uriah Heep, Led Zeppelin (kinda maybe). By the mid to late-70s, there’s also the bands emerging from the Sabbath-Purple Nexus: Rainbow, Whitesnake, Gillan, most notably. Judas Priest and Motorhead are also churning out classic albums and heading out on tours. The New Wave of British Heavy Metal is also churning away below the surface in the late 70s, ready to explode forth.
What was going on across the Atlantic, though? Was heavy metal primarily a British movement that would then be imported to virgin American shores and ears? Not at all! If Great Britain was one of the primary origin points of heavy metal in the 1970s, supplemented by Germany and Japan, the United States also had its bands, its tours, its scenes developing, particularly on the east coast centered around New York City, the west coast centered around Los Angeles, and peppered throughout the Midwest.
We discuss the development of American metal movements and scenes — with plenty of cross pollination from overseas — throughout the 1970s in session 8 of Classic Metal Class. Here’s the video recording, if you’d like to watch or listen to the whole session!
Whose histories and discographies did we delve into? First, the bands active in the early 1970s
- Sir Lord Baltimore, an NYC band. Formed 1968, with their first album in 1971 — one of the first bands actually described as “heavy metal”, toured with Black Sabbath
- Bang, from Philadelphia. Also formed in 1968. First Album in 1971, but their first clearly metal album, self-titled, in 1972
- Pentagram a Virginia band, formed in 1972, recorded a lot of demos and played a lot but released no album until the early 1980s. Major underground influence
- Blue Öyster Cult, a New York band, formed in 1967, first self-titled album in 1972, often called “the thinking man’s heavy metal”
- Granicus, a Cleveland band, formed in 1969, put out their first album in 1973
- Montrose, a massively influential California band formed in 1973, putting out their first album that year. Featured Ronnie Montrose and Sammy Hagar
- KISS, the even more influential band from NYC, Formed in 1972, with their first album in 1974
We could add in metal-adjacent bands from the early-mid 1970s like Alice Cooper, Ted Nugent, Aerosmith, and the Runaways. As the decade proceeds, we see continued development. Music getting heavier and harder, entire scenes developing.
LA becomes a major location where talent will be identified and sometimes poached, and bands will form up, playing the clubs. Some of the key acts in the mid-late 1970s are:
- Van Halen formed in 1974. Gene Simmons produces their demo in 1976, and their first album is released in 1978
- Quiet Riot, formed in 1973, but their first albums released only in Japan starting in 1977, and the band breaks up as Randy Roads and Rudy Sarzo join Ozzy Osborne’s band
- Mickey Ratt, officially formed in 1977 (through a name change), would later morph into RATT. Included Jake E Lee
- Dokken officially formed in 1979, but predecessor band Airborne included later RATT musicians Juan Crocier and Bobby Blotzer
Some other majorly important American bands we discussed with their starts in the 1970s include Twisted Sister, Riot, and Cirith Ungol.
Heavy metal in America was more than just the bands, their records, and where they played or toured. The network, the community of fans — and even evangelizers, you might say — played a massive role.
Tours were of course quite important — bands supported other bands, got to know them, and audiences got to see them live. But we can also talk about the record companies themselves, the advances and cuts, the distribution and production. Whether bands and their music got radio play or not, or appeared on TV shows, even in early pre-MTV music videos — that made a difference. Getting featured in music magazines, particularly those now focused on heavy metal, like Hit Parader and Circus. And of course, with the spread of cassette tapes and recorders, the inevitable tape reproduction and swapping. All of this figured into the overarching American heavy metal scene
There’s a number of other topics we veered off into discussing during this session — which was a lot of fun! — but I’ll leave those for future posts, so we can finish this one up.
I’m Greg Sadler, the Heavy Metal Philosopher. You can join me and my co-host Scott Tarulli each month for a new session of Classic Metal Class).
I’m also the president of ReasonIO, a speaker, writer, and a producer of highly popular YouTube videos on classic and contemporary philosophy. I teach at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, and offer classes to the wider public in my Study With Sadler online academy. I also produce the Sadler’s Lectures podcast and co-host the Wisdom for Life radio show
