Is Cream “Sunshine of Your Love” the first Heavy Metal Riff?
- Thread starter Magic
- Start date
I’d give Tony Iommi the award for first heavy metal riff…..”Black Sabbath” is freakin’ heavy…not just loud blues based riffage, but heavy.
The song that Iommi took inspiration from was written in 1919-1922 by Gustav Holst, The Planets: Mars, The Bringer of War, and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra.
That original performance isn’t on YouTube, but a version by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as well as other orchestral versions is available.
See if you can hear Gustav Holst’s inspiration in Black Sabbath.
Metallica also borrowed from Mars, The Bringer of War in “Am I Evil”
This is where a lot of heavy metal is rooted…in Classical music. I have always said if Beethoven were alive, he would be a metalhead.
The song that Iommi took inspiration from was written in 1919-1922 by Gustav Holst, The Planets: Mars, The Bringer of War, and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra.
That original performance isn’t on YouTube, but a version by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as well as other orchestral versions is available.
See if you can hear Gustav Holst’s inspiration in Black Sabbath.
Metallica also borrowed from Mars, The Bringer of War in “Am I Evil”
This is where a lot of heavy metal is rooted…in Classical music. I have always said if Beethoven were alive, he would be a metalhead.
Nai Noswad
Senior Member
Can't find it... but didn't Jane's Cotton do a heavy blues opening riff, way over yonders wall?
You must mean James Cotton who played harmonica(blues harp) and started at first with Howlin Wolf.
He did a lot of cool blues songs.....I cant recall which might have been a 'heavy riff' but it might have been then on his later work.
there was this though.....
Elmore James wrote it and many covered it over the years.
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mobiusclimber
Senior Member
To my ears, the first metal band was Black Sabbath. Everything before it, and in truth a lot of Sabbath's output, was blues rock. This is true of Cream, it's true of Zeppelin, it's true of Steppenwolf and pretty much every other band and song that gets pointed at as being heavy metal. Hendrix, the Who, Iron Butterfly... all blues rock and psychedelia. If we're going to point to stuff like that as being metal, I'd say Pink Floyd's "Interstellar Overdrive" and "Astronomy Dominé" are closer to metal than "Sunshine of Your Love."
Nai Noswad
Senior Member
Good point, everything was or had a blues influence, but I didn't hear that with Sabbath's first album it was a game - changer. Many bands like the Stones, Who, Moodies etc... went from being R&B pop...... to rock-the transition escaped me at the time (I had bigger fish to fry).
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mobiusclimber
Senior Member
I would say about half of Sabbath's first album is still very bluesy, in particular their cover of "The Warning." To a lesser extent, "NIB" and "The Wizard." By Paranoid, a lot of the blues rock was replaced with straight up metal. There's still some on there, though, and there would be for every album until Dio replaced Ozzy. I think Sabbath became a completely different band when that happened (I love the Dio years, but they have a very different sound).
