Hard Rock / Heavy Metal / Punk - The History of Rock Music (Part 6)

0:55 What's good, everybody?It is Scoobert Doobert.I am back from Japan, a little bit jet lagged, but really, really stoked on everything that

1:22 just went down over there, played some gigs, awesome festival, really sweet undergroundTokyo, bar nightclub thing, and I worked with a bunch of really great bands.But I am back.Not to talk about Tokyo, but to talk about punk rock, hard rock, and heavy metal.So let's get into it.On the last episode of The Rock History, kind of a series thing that we've got going

1:46 on on this podcast, as well as our sub-stack, lovemusicmore.substack.com, we talked aboutprog rock.We also talked about progressive radio and how that contributed to that whole notionof progressive music, adding in the virtuosity of jazz, adding in the complexity of jazzharmony and classical, and then just kind of like pushing and moving rock out of the bluesrock phase and into something new.

2:15 That's something new continues to progress.And the linchpin at the heart of all of this, of course, the Beatles, who I'm forever obsessedwith.But there's a song that you can listen to on the White Album called Helter Skelter.Helter Skelter is often referred to as the first punk rock song.And part of the reason for that is it embodies the ethos of a lot of what comes out ofthat, hard rock, punk rock, heavy metal.

2:46 All of that kind of has this element of angular guitars, so like very in your face and distortedin a way that's different than like the Rolling Stones or something like that, in a way that'sdifferent than Cream or Jimi Hendrix or Jefferson Airplane where it's now it's pushing intoa, like how can we break the speakers?How can we run up and then just jab our finger into your chest kind of music?

3:16 And I feel like that's also very different from what Prog Rock was doing, where Prog Rockwas like how can we take that psychedelic journey and go even farther?This instead was like, you know what actually screwed the psychedelic?How do I punch you in the face?

3:33 The other band that I thought really exemplified that from that early phase was Led Zeppelin.So we talked about Led Zeppelin and their guitar solos and everything I got.But John Bonham, their drummer, had such an intensity behind the drum kit that I thinkthat it pushed the blues-influenced thing that Led Zeppelin had at its core and pushedit further into that hard rock.

4:01 And then you add in the other technological innovations like the Line Array and basicallyways that you can perform in a stadium now, which the Beatles were partially to blamefor that because they sounded like crap in the stadiums because the technology wasn'tthere.But because there was the demand, now the technology starts to catch up.

4:19 And so you have Led Zeppelin playing these big stadiums and that naturally pulls somethingnew out of you.It's not just changing the theatrics.It's also changing the intensity of the songwriting and the playing and the arranging.So naturally, people that are influenced by the Beatles and then influenced by Led Zeppelin,maybe they're young at this time.

4:40 They grow up and they want to play some music that is going to hit the same chord.And that's where you start to get other acts down the road like Judas Priest or an IronMaiden who we'll get into.And then you also have these other bands that are super, super important in this world,like Black Sabbath with Ozzy Osbourne.

5:02 And one of the cool things about Tony Iommi who was the primary guitarist in that band washe actually lost the fingertips on two of his fingers in a factory job that he had.And he didn't want to quit the band.So they instead created these metal tips that he was able to put on to his fingers so hecould keep playing guitar.

5:28 And that helped influence the style of music that they played because obviously you can'tplay certain things and you have metal tip fingers.But also the way that you're going to play, it's going to sound really different.And also, that's hard rock, right?That's metal.The duo literally is playing with metal on his hand.And then you add in the theatrics of people like Ozzy Osbourne, right?

5:51 You see how the rock is starting to splinter.It's going, that's not the blues inspired Delta music that we had before.Now instead we have this like otherworldly, evil cosplay kind of music that I thinkthat the theatrics and the scale are super, super important for informing the music ratherthan necessarily vice versa.

6:18 Where if you are playing on a big stage with pyrotechnics, you know, fire behind you andyou have a metal tip fingers and all this kind of stuff, like what kind of music are yougoing to play?Are you going to play teen about your stuff or are you going to play something a littlebit more like Helter Skelter, but a new kind of version of that.

6:38 And so if you listen to Black Sabbath and like Iron Man, that's what one of the best first,not first, but like early songs to learn on guitar because it's just so, it's so funto play.It's so cool.And it's not that virtuosic in the same way that prog rock is, but it has its own elementof personality.

7:04 And that's part of the reason why that music, that early Black Sabbath music, is nevergoing away.It's eternal.Because it strikes just a certain itch.I mean, like even now, like there's every once in a while, there's just like this feelingof like, oh, I need a little bit of that Black Sabbath again.And Black Sabbath, they hit the scene in 1970.So this is not long after the Beatles.

7:26 This is not, this is contemporary with Led Zeppelin.And from there, you start to get a little bit of like an arms race of heaviness, whichis awesome and continues to this day.Like if you listen to modern metal music, all the million subgenres of metal, there'sthis like, yeah, arms race of heaviness, of intensity.And it's awesome.It speaks to the reason why people go to this genre and get obsessed with it.

7:56 They're looking for heaviness.They're looking for intensity.Some of the other bands that you're probably familiar with, Deep Purple, Smoke on theWater, speaking of like early songs to learn on the guitar.Most people's first song, including mine, bo, bo, bo, bo, bo, bo, bo, bo, bo, bo, youknow.It's great.And then AC/DC, another band that I would say if you were learning guitar, and you wanted

8:24 to learn how to do a guitar solo, AC/DC is a great place to visit early and often becauseAngus Young's just, and also like isn't that the most Australian name ever, AC/DC's AngusYoung, that his his playing is just it is a synthesis of everything that came beforeit.

8:46 It is I always like, you know, there are some players that are just breaths of fresh airlike Jimi Hendrix, who just comes on the scene and you go, whoa, okay, you can play guitarlike that now.That's amazing.Angus Young doesn't feel that way to me and no respect to it, no disrespect to him forthat because I love his playing and I learned a bunch of it.

9:09 He instead feels like the type that was a student of the game and came out and weavedit together in a pleasant and simple and easy to follow away.It is AC/DC's music is not, yes, is music is not the progressive music.It is instead a distillation where you take all of this kind of Led Zeppelin hard rocky

9:32 stuff and turn it into more anthemic and more just essential nature of rock and thenyou also have like their ridiculous vocals.But you know, I'm not going to go too heavy into all these different bands.I've got a little bit more of a deep dive on the sub-stack.Instead, what I'm trying to paint the picture is how the guitar solo and the stage presence

9:56 slash fan artist relationship informs hard rock, which then eventually pushes intoheavy metal and costumes just like Angus Young, he's wearing a schoolboy uniform.This is where the flamboyant nature of rock music really starts to come out.The music becomes more flamboyant, the outfits, the light shows, the, you know, all of these

10:20 things just start to compound on each other and talking to rock musicians of this time,you can tell that they are really listening to what the fans want.They are oftentimes being led by the crowd rather than leading the crowd in a lot of wayswhere it they're kind of like auditioning concepts like all these bands are playing livelike crazy.

10:44 And when you're playing live that often, you can see okay, that worked, that didn't work,that works in this region, doesn't work in that region.That's how the distillation starts to happen like the ACTC type.So let's talk about Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, two of my favorite bands in 8th grade.No hate, I love them still, but something about being an 8th grader just, it's just really

11:07 Iron Maiden just spoke to me, same with Children of Bodom, I just love the rock.I think part of what it is is like there's an element of just young man and all of this stuff.Iron Maiden, one of the things that I think is really interesting with them is guitar mini.So the eagles do this as well.

11:32 But Iron Maiden does a great job of having two guitar solos happening at the same time.We're having a guitar riff that two guitars are playing at the same time.And Led Zeppelin did a little bit of this with overdubbing, but there was only one guitaristin Led Zeppelin.So when they played live, it wasn't quite the same.Iron Maiden instead took that idea and built their whole personality around it.

11:54 And it's awesome, it's so cool, it's like, a lot of people that are not guitarists wouldprobably call it self-indulgent, but damn right it is, it's fun, you know, two guitarsgoing, at the same time and in like slightly different pitches, so they create a harmonyjust like two vocalists singing together, it's awesome.And it's just like unabashedly fun.

12:17 And it's really funny to see the ways that the black Sabbath darkness starts to moldinto Iron Maiden's sense of mythical warfare and battle scenes and battle music.And they create this mascot named Eddie who is prominently featured with like the Union

12:44 Jack on a lot of their LPs and also they, into this day, they have this like giant manon stilts walking around the stage, this Eddie person.Again, these stage shows are getting more elaborate.It's getting sillier and speaking of sillier, Judas Priest, they are the leather clad studdedup, powerful founding fathers of hair metal, eventually.

13:13 But people didn't realize that at the time and also like later on people that were bigfans of Judas Priest didn't always like hair metal, but they created this like metallook.All of that will influence and inform the kind of next wave of metal, but that kind ofsets the scene.

13:33 Before I go too deep into any of that, I also want to pivot and cover punk rock a littlebit.So we got hard rock, we got a little bit of that, we got heavy metal, quick overview.Let's talk about punk rock.So punk rock came out in the mid 1970s.There is naturally a subset of people that are listening and watching and participatingin the music that I was just referring to.

13:58 And they're like, okay, I don't want a 18-foot tall mascot and music that sounds like gallopinghorses and a guy eating a bat, they're just like naturally, not for everybody.Punk rock kind of comes out of that.There's a rejection and also think about prog rock, like prog rock, hard rock and heavymetal all have this kind of like element of excess.

14:28 And just like I was talking about with the guitar mini, the guitar harmonies of Iron Maiden,there's a self-indulgence to all of this music.And it's fun, but that is what its identity is.It is music for music, sake a lot of the times.And a lot of it is kind of the, like I was saying in the prog rock post, the culminationor the final thesis of psychedelic music.Then almost like forgot about the drugs along the way.

14:58 And punk rock comes out of this as that rejection as that against the pretensions of kindof that glam bigger than life, self-indulgent sound.They go the opposite direction, stripped down raw.

15:18 We were in one of the early episodes we were talking about, barred, barred, barred, barredis the word.There's always this element of rock music that is fighting with itself.Unsure of whether or not that turn that it took is what they actually wanted to.And that's part of the reason why rock ends up having so many great subgenres.

15:41 There's just a natural splintering within the ethos that comes from early early on withChuck Berry and then the Beatles and it's always, the fans are always saying, I like thatalbum but I didn't like that album or I don't like this turn but I like that other one.And so there's always this energy and it's a big enough, it's the dominant musical genre.

16:01 So it's a big enough tent that people are able to kind of fight and develop new genres.And then there's enough people around, again, baby boomers, to indulge it and go hard.So punk rock, a few of the bands, New York City, London, you got Ramones, Sex Pistols,Clash, as the most, I guess, modern day, well-known.And a lot of this music is characterized with really short, fast-paced songs.

16:29 Again, lyrical content that's very confrontational, it continues that sense that hard rock andmetal we're picking up, like the Helter Skelter kind of stuff of poking you in the chest,but it's in a little bit of a different way.It's addressing more of the social and political issues.It is simpler and it is more in your face and it is not virtuastic.

16:52 It is not like, I'm going to take a whole big guitar solo or whatever.It almost has the, it wants the authenticity of you just started the band.You just got into this.The rawness of I am honest and I'm not trying to show off.I am instead just expressing pure emotion or pure frustration with what's going on.

17:19 And that splintering between the big time, the main stage, the stadium, and the underground,that will be the story of rock from then until the modern day.It is the story of Mötley Crüe versus Nirvana.

17:46 That punk rock music is what inspires, you know, modern day, emo music, post-hardcoremusic, alternative music, like one of my favorite bands, Modest Mouse.It is that shift between I am here to play an instrument for you, to I am here to bearmy heart out, but in an authentic and honest way, and I love both.So I hope you enjoyed this.Please check out the sub-stack to learn more.

18:16 We'll go deeper dive on each of these kind of proto-genres, their early twists inthe 1970s, and this is, again, this is like the ship without a rudder now that we've lostthe Beatles, now that they've broken up and all of these bands are trying to find theirway.They are inspired by the Beatles or have grown up listening to them or the beach boys

18:36 are both, and now they're trying to chart a new course in a bunch of different oppositedirections.Hope you enjoyed it.Again, sub-stack is lovemusicmore.substack.com, so you can check that out and listen to the audioexamples on there too, because I don't have the copyright stuff.As in on sub-stack, I've got the YouTube stuff embedded, so you can actually listen to and

18:58 watch some of the performances throughout all of this great rock history.So definitely invite you to check that out, and if you could subscribe, throw a five-star,share this with your friends.I would deeply appreciate it if you'd like to hear my music, and here where all of thisrock history is led, I guess, you can go to scoobertdoobert.pizza to find all of my linksat scoobertdoobert.pizza.Thanks for listening.