Roger Daltrey has claimed that The Whow was “the first heavy metal band,” having laid the groundwork for the genre more than six decades ago.
The 82-year-old rock legend made the comments during a new interview with Rolling Stone. Asked how he sees The Who‘s legacy and what he and his bandmates did better than everybody else, Daltrey replied: “We were just different than everybody else. Americans don’t really know The Who from the early ’60s, but as the drummer of Deep Purple [Ian Paice] said recently in a magazine, ‘The Who started it all.’ We were the first heavy metal band.”
He continued, “Jim Marshall invented the 4×12 [speaker cabinet], 100-watt stack for [The Who guitarist] 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 ass in a way, you could say it. We were doing it before anyone, but it’s not important in the long run.”
Back in 2019, Townshend told the Toronto Sun that The Who “sort of invented heavy metal” with the band’s first live album, 1970’s “Live At Leeds”. “We were copied by so many bands, principally by Led Zeppelin — you know, heavy drums, heavy bass, heavy lead guitar and some of those bands, like Jimi Hendrix for example, did it far better than we did,” he said. “Cream, with Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, they came along in ’67, same year as Jimi Hendrix, and they kind of stole our mantle in a sense. So people who want to hear that old heavy metal sound, there are plenty of bands that can provide it. So it’s not really what we can actually do today. Even if we wanted to, it was never high on my list of wishes.”
7 Responses
Look, I will confess, I was never a Who fan, and as a result, I have a superficial knowledge of the band. So, with that limited exposure to their catalog, in my humble opinion, I will still give an emphatic “NO,” I do not believe the band invented heavy metal.
If one is going to make that argument, about going all the way back, then I would say The Beatles invented heavy metal. Listen to the guitar in Paperback Writer, the scream in Revolution, George Harrison‘s melodic solo in Come Together. Also, The Beatles influenced many heavy metal musicians, as well. Ozzy was a self professed Beatles nut, and wanted to be in a band like The Beatles.
However, as all of us metal heads know, the real roots of the genre started with the blues and was truly transformed by bands such as Judas Priest and Black Sabbath, NOT The Who.
But to end on a positive note, I will credit The Who, with pioneering the rock opera genre.
Agree with you Dana……hard NO !!!!
I agree with Roger, and I always have: The Who created this thunder that was a next level up from the harder edged music that was out at the time: The Kinks, the Beatles were going there, the Stones, Hendrix arrived a bit later: so did Sabbath, Zeppelin, and Purple. But that “sonic boom” that is metal…that came from Townsend, Moon, Daltrey, and Entwistle..
The Who actually is very prominent in Priest’s music as far as composition: The Hellion into Electric Eye is a Whoish idea from Tommy…Steeler is a modern Baba O Reily if you hear it right…Townsend was one of Tipton’s biggest influences.
Absolutely NOT!! And I am a fan of the Who. One of my father’s favorite albums was Who’s Next so I grew up listening to it. And yes Priest and Sabbath
both stated influences as Tony and Dana mentioned. But the true “metal” sound IMO did not come until Tony Iommi lost the tip of his finger and created the tri-tone that we all know in the beginning of the song Black Sabbath. It just resonated a sound that no one heard before. I mean who would have thought an accident in a factory would create a sound that altered and inspired musicians to this day!!! Sabbath lit the torch, Priest ran with it and the rest is history.