Zep vs Black Sabbath vs Jimi

I'm not going to use the term "heavy metal", with all due respects to Steppenwolf the term wasn't really used as a genre label 'til later in the 70's. And besides, Jimmy Page never liked that label and never considered Zep heavy metal.

All 3 artists however are considered the catalysts of hard rock. You might remember VH-1 did that list a few years ago of the 100 greatest hard rock/metal artists in R&R and these were the top 3 with Zep 1, BS 2 and Jimi 3. Yes and King Crimson were on that list way down the line though. Who do you think was most influential? Tough choice.

The most influential bands was Led Zeppelin, but this doe not mean, that they are my favourites.

ZEP !!

Black sabbath was the most influential, they still sounds heavy.

Sabbath.  Without Sab, rock wouldn't nearly be what it is today.  they invented heavy music.


Edited by GoldenSpiral

Hendrix - because he influenced all the 70s rock bands, including Sabbath and Zeppelin.

GoldenSpiral wrote: Sabbath.  Without Sab, rock wouldn't nearly be what it is today.  they invented heavy music.

I agree that Sabbath was influential on heavy music,but they didn't "invent" it.

Releases by Blue Cheer,Iron Butterfly and The Stooges came before Sabbath's debut.

zep.

GoldenSpiral wrote: marktheshark wrote: GoldenSpiral wrote: Sabbath.  Without Sab, rock wouldn't nearly be what it is today.  they invented heavy music. You don't think Jimi planted the seed there? sure, the seeds were planted before they came along...  other bands had heavy songs, but no one had done whole albums of relentless heavy riffs and dark occult imagery before.  no one had really thought to make a business of being heavy.  It is just my position that sabbath was the most important.  Also, the later ozzy-era albums, while they seem less popular, were quite experimental and crucial to the development of prog rock and prog metal.This is not to say that Hendrix or Zep were not influential because they clearly were, but they did not single-handedly create a whole genre of music the way Black Sabbath did (OK... slight exaggeration there, but the point is made).  then again, my point of view is skewed because I wasn't there at the time, but this is how i understand it.

Well, the way I look at it is that sometimes it takes just one song to usher in a new sound as opposed to a whole album. I was there in '67 when Purple Haze first hit the airwaves. Even though I was only 10, I did have a pretty sophisticated taste in music. Just starting into drums I was listening to a lot of jazz and my favorite R&R artists were the Beatles, Cream and the Stones. I didn't go for the 2nd raters like the Monkees, Herman's Hermits or Dave Clark 5 that a lot of kids my age were into. I always went for the heavy hitters. It was funny, whenever my parents had a party their slightly younger friends would be going through my record collection saying "Oh great, I haven't heard this one yet. Let's play it!"

But when I first heard Purple Haze around the same time Sgt Pepper came out, I knew there was something different coming with this! It was the most heaviest and hard driving sound I ever heard. Even Pete Townsend later said that he thought Jimi changed the sound of R&R even more so than the Beatles did in some ways. Granted, not everything Jimi did was all that heavy due to his experimentation with jazz and blues. Voodoo Child (Slight Return) on Electric Ladyland was I think his most metal song.

Jimi may not have been consistantly hard rock and metal, but I think he was the swift kick in the ass that got the ball rolling. Zep and BS just took it from there IMO.

marktheshark wrote:   Voodoo Child (Slight Return) on Electric Ladyland was I think his most metal song.

I'd also say Spanish Castle Magic is kinda metal... just as metal as Immigrant Song IMO.