{"id":692919,"date":"2026-06-09T05:34:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T05:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/692919\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T05:34:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T05:34:14","slug":"think-black-sabbath-invented-heavy-metal-these-british-bands-want-you-to-think-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/692919\/","title":{"rendered":"Think Black Sabbath Invented Heavy Metal? These British Bands Want You To Think Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

With their sinister lyrical imagery, sludgy guitar riffs, and powerful rhythm section, it\u2019s easy to see why Black Sabbath has long been heralded as the founding fathers of heavy metal music<\/a>. But if you were to ask two other British bands that were dominating the rock \u2018n\u2019 roll airwaves at the same time, a different band got to it first.<\/p>\n

Who? Yeah, them.<\/p>\n

The Real Inventors of Heavy Metal, per Deep Purple<\/p>\n

In a 2025 interview on the Metal Sticks podcast (via Ultimate Guitar<\/a>), Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice argued that even with genre-defining hit tracks like \u201cSmoke On The Water\u201d<\/a> and \u201cHighway Star\u201d, he still wouldn\u2019t call his band (or, inadvertently, Black Sabbath) the first heavy metal band. That distinction, he argued, belonged to fellow English rock \u2018n\u2019 rollers The Who. As far as Paice was concerned, Deep Purple and other bands of the 1970s were the \u201csecond coming\u201d of a musical movement that The Who had already started.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Who did it before everybody,\u201d the drummer said. \u201cThey were the first on the big amp, they were the first to push rock \u2018n\u2019 roll beyond pretty little pop songs\u2014let\u2019s not forget the importance of The Who.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey just changed everything for kids who wanted to do something a little more violently. [Pete] Townshend\u2019s notion on stage, [Roger] Daltrey\u2019s aggressive singing, and then the control of John Entwistle, and the madness of Keith [Moon]. I mean, the whole thing should have never worked. The Who were so important. People tend to forget them because they\u2019ve been around for so long. But that was a big spark.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, The Who Would Have to Agree<\/p>\n

While there was an undeniable industrial quality to Black Sabbath, coming from the steel industry of Birmingham, there is something to be said for the music The Who<\/a> was putting out in the years that led up to Black Sabbath\u2019s debut album. Unsurprisingly, Who vocalist Roger Daltrey was more than willing to accept Ian Piace\u2019s take.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were just different than everybody else,\u201d Daltrey later told Rolling Stone<\/a>. \u201cAmericans don\u2019t really know The Who from the early Sixties. But\u2026we were the first heavy metal band. Jim Marshall invented the 4\u00d712, 100-watt stack for Pete Townshend. All the guitar smashing that Jimi Hendrix became famous for, in his style, was basically copied from Pete Townshend, first of all. And the first rock opera, of course. We elevated rock to be maybe up its own a** in a way. We were doing it before anyone.\u201d But, Daltrey added, almost as an afterthought, \u201cIt\u2019s not important in the long run.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photo by Michael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With their sinister lyrical imagery, sludgy guitar riffs, and powerful rhythm section, it\u2019s easy to see why Black…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":692920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[89,88,216,2156],"class_list":["post-692919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-black-sabbath","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-rock-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}