What was the first heavy metal song?

I tried to convince my son that “I want you (She’s so Heavy)” was a good candidate, but he didn’t buy it.

Thoughts?

Great question. Iron Butterfly maybe? Vanilla Fudge? Deep Purple?

Steppenwolf’s song “Born to be Wild” released in 1968

Probably one of the earliest examples of a heavy metal song would be Manic Depression, but really, the genre more coalesced rather than just sprang up.

Given that the term “heavy metal” was first used in reference to music in May 1968, and the Beatles song didn’t appear until 1969, that’s certainly not it.

Wiki saysBlue Cheer’s cover of Summertime Blues from early 1968 is often regarded as the first true heavy metal recording.

Steppenwolf’s Born to Be Wild, also early 1968, refers to a motorcycle as “heavy metal thunder,” but I don’t think the song itself is quite heavy metal.

Iron Butterfly’s album In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida from mid-1968 may be the first heavy metal album.

How about Helter Skelter? It was released 22 November 1968.

This is what I’ve always thought.

If you wanna go back even earlier, 1966’s Beck’s Bolero, recorded by Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, Keith Moon, and Nicky Hopkins, is a worthy contender.

Ode to Hexavalent Chromium… Oh *that *heavy metal.

You Really Got Me by the Kinks,1964 was one of the early songs by a popular band with a wide audience to incorporate heavy metal’s trademark power chords.

Colibri has it right: Blue Cheer’s cover of Summertime Blues is widely regarded as the first real heavy metal song. It’s a blues-based song that the band rocked out loud as fuck (the band’s self-stated goal was to be “louder than God”) and the album title had the awesomely-unique-at-the-time but by-now-familiar-seeming Latin-esque name (Vincebus Eruptum). It’s a marvel of excess in almost every aspect of it’s rendering.

Steppenwolf’s Born To Be Wild is an awesome song, and is widely known as the first use of the phrase “heavy metal” in song lyrics, although the song is not considered by most to be a heavy metal song (although it does totally fuckin’ rock).

The Beatles’ Helter Skelter is in no way a heavy metal song, but it does mostly rock.

Jeff Beck’s Beck’s Bolero is also not a heavy metal song, although it does totally fucking rock. It could legitimately be described as a proto-prog rock song, although the lack of vocals really relegates it to “cool and influential but not monumentally important” status.

Heavy metal as a genre really didn’t solidify until Black Sabbath came along and introduced the so-called “Devil’s Tritone” to rock music with their eponymous song. This song, with it’s musical and lyrical foci, laid the true blueprint for the genre.

Of course, there was a lot more that went into the evolution of the genre, but that’s the very simple, basic explanation for how Heavy Metal car about.

Heavy metal isn’t characterized by power chords; rock and roll is. Specifically, garage rock and punk rock are characterized by power chords.

It’s all opinions of course, but I would say Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath

Nothing before this song/album really encapsulated the true ethics or semantics of what heavy metal actually is (at least nothing that I’ve heard anyway). I would argue that heavy metal is not the same as merey ‘heavy’ music, or even ‘heavy rock’… Led Zeppelin are not heavy metal for example. The Kinks aren’t, The Beatles aren’t. Steppenwolf’s ‘Born to Be Wild’ is a bit too much of a free-spirited, fist raising “rebel anthem” to be heavy metal IMO. It’s perhaps ‘heavy’ enough to be classified as such, but it’s not dark or narcissistic enough in tone or atmosphere.

edit - agreed snowboarder, got there first…

How Did Heavy Metal Rock Start

Who Invented The Heavy Metal Genre

The Kinks - Wikipedia entry

Kinks Biography

WereThe Kinks really an early heavy metal band?

Building A Library - The Kinks

The Kinks - A Heavy Metal Garage Band

The Earliest Origins of Metal Rock Music

Crazyhorse, you really should read your own citations more carefully. The Kinks are not, and never were, a heavy metal band. The music they played was not, and never has been considered to be, heavy metal. None of the citations you provided contradicts what I wrote.

Well, okay, I can see you making a claim that the cite from ehow.com contradicts me (about power chords). Forgive me if I don’t consider that much of a source.

I stand by what I wrote:

ETA: Okay, the Kinks biography tries to make the claim that they wrote the first heavy metal song. No one else thinks that, or believes it. It’s a great song and it’s fantastically loud for it’s time. But it isn’t metal.

The question isn’t about the definition of power chords - you are getting hung up in a terminology squabble and seem to be stuck on the minor mental task of accepting different terminology while understanding the larger point.

The obvious intent of my post was to say, in the same spirit as most of the other posts in this thread, that in my opinion the Kinks were one of the earliest pioneers of heavy metal - *before *there was actually heavy metal.

But please, continue with your opinions about what songs ‘totally fucking rock’ - it’s extremely informative and I’m sure you can think of a few dozen more if you put your mind to it.

With those two tunes, the Kinks pioneered elements of the Heavy Metal sound. But the band wasn’t simple-minded enough to be a Heavy Metal Band. They did other stuff, too…

Yahoo! Answers says:

**"‘You Really Got Me’ by the Kinks

"It sounds primitive compared to current or even 70’s heavy metal, but it was the first single ever to use power chords (at the time such a technique was rarely used). The band did many different takes of the song, but none of them succeeded until Dave Davies (the guitarist) took a razor blade and cut the cone of his amp, which made it sound sufficiently heavy. The lyrics also remind you of the kind of lust/obsession songs made in heavy metal.

“Many people claim the first heavy metal song is either ‘I Can See For Miles’ by the Who or ‘Helter Skelter’ by the Beatles. These songs, however, were not released until 1967 and 1968 respectively. ‘You Really Got Me’ predates those songs by 3 (and 4) years, making it the first song that could classified as heavy metal.”**

Exactly. Couldn’t have said it better myself (though I did point to someone else saying it with a cite)

I always think of it as Hendrix, but what about Mars, from Holst’s The Planets from 1915?

I see you made it to the second cite by edit time - keep reading. Those are just the top few results of a search that will return thousands that all agree. The ‘claim’ is widely accepted by almost the entire musical world.

Incidentally, not that I would try to influence your obvious mastery of the subject but for posterity, a power chord can be defined hereand it’s relationship to metal (i.e. being a fundamental part of it and one of the defining elements of it) is explained here.