During the second half of the 60s there's were literally hundreds of bands that formed in the wake of The Beatles. Most of these never realized much success while still others did achieve minor fame and plodded along pretty nicely for a while.

But then there were those who soaked up everything that was going on from 67 on, got some good gigging experience, maybe released an album or two of decent, but unoriginal songs and then BAM! found their own unique niche and then expertly mined it for lots of gold.

I can't think of a better example of this than......


I've heard no better explanation for AC than from Alice himself:

"We realized that there were no villains in rock and roll. Everything was hippies, peace and love, and flower power. A lot of Peter Pans and no Captain Hook. I had the face for it, I had the look for it… and we were definitely not hippies."

While you were proud to talk openly about bands like Zeppelin and Grand Funk with your friends, it was a bit different with this album. And you definitely didn't turn up songs like Dead Babies when you were listening at home. This was scary and depraved stuff.

And I loved it!

I went through a huge Alice Cooper phase. Love it.

I was fortunate growing up near Boston. Because of the large number of surrounding colleges there were tons of young people who reached out to support the biggest FM station of that time - WBCN. They were truly one of the first AOR stations in the country and prided themselves on breaking new bands to the greater Boston area. Zeppelin gives tons of props to WBCN for helping them explode in New England since the station had been spinning LZ1 well before it was officially released. (Peter Wolf, lead singer of J. Geils was the nightime DJ at WBCN at that time).

So anyway, WBCN's signal finally found its way to our little town 50 miles north of Boston and every kid I knew would tune in at night to hear the next new rock band.

No-one knew at the time that "METAL" was lurking right around the corner...........



I'm shutting my trap now since it's all been said here a million times already. And there's no need to post any song clips. This one is part of everyone's DNA, whether they know it or not.

The hammond organ. Not sure who did it first but the sound of one of these plugged into an overdriven amp became the trademark of quite a few of the bands of this era. The first time I got into it was with this album which I got turned onto by one of my sister's guy friends. The other thing with Heep was the unique vocals which would later become a staple with a lot of the NWBHV bands that would surface towards the end of the 70s.

Heep's next two albums were their peak but this one came first for me. This is one of those that listening to it now it's easy to go "meh". But when it first hit the scene it was pretty damn groundbreaking.




The slide guitar on this blew my mind at the time! So freaking heavy.

Six albums in and all six are high up on my lists, I'm still waiting for an album that isn't on my list:p:

btw how can you select two songs from Look at Yourself and not include "Shadows of Grief".

At this point I'm pretty sure it ain't gonna happen.

Quick sidebar: In the late 70s my band Trilogy did a lot of gigs with another local band named Strider's Wrath. They had a hammond organ and a leslie. We'd always help each other with setup and breakdown.

That organ and rotating speaker are two of the heaviest (weight-wise) pieces of gear ever made!

Great great band. Great great songs. Don't remember where this one came from but it left a huge impression. It's 45 years later and I still have their "best of" in my iTunes.

Another one that was discovered via FM radio. There's a ton of albums that are defined by one song. This is truly one of them.


One the of the best pure rock songs of all time. (hyperbole alert on high)

I'd wager that anyone who was in the 10-15 year old age bracket back in the spring of 1972 can pretty much remember the first time they heard Smoke on the Water from Machine Head. All the cliches about that song are true. It was played over and over again on the radio and within a couple of months everyone one who owned an electric guitar would be hammering away at the riff endlessly.

Loved when they did this on Two and a Half Men. Was a major flashback to me sitting in my own bedroom back in the day.



Eventually FM radio bailed on the studio version and began playing an edited down live version which rocked so much harder and really displayed the power of Deep Purple.

As soon as this album was released people pretty much stopped listening to Machine Head - which is unfortunate because it's a great record. But it really does get overshadowed in every regard by arguably the greatest live rock album of all time...


This record firmly established Deep Purple as part of the hard rock big three along with Sabbath and Zeppelin. And it's no wonder why!

"America's first heavy metal band."

"The USA's answer to Led Zeppelin."

When it was first reviewed these are a couple of the comments that were made about this disc.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you......


Session ace Ronnie Montrose was already a highly regarded axeslinger from his work with Edgar Winter but it was this LP that made him a true God among guitar players. Montrose came out of nowhere and spread like wildfire with the rock crowd of the day. Killer players, killer songs, and a killer sound. Loud, heavy, fast, unrelenting, and balls to the wall aggressive. Listen to this album and then think about the stuff that came out of the New Wave of Heavy Metal later in the decade. Bands like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden definitely aped a lot from Montrose.

A young Ted Templeton produced Montrose and together they really hit it out of the park. Interesting to note that 5 years later he would take everything he learned on this record and apply it to the debut album from the then unknown Van Halen.

Montrose songs have been covered by numerous rock artists and they were a big staple for bar bands during the 70s. One of the songs I played on my first ever gig was Rock Candy. It's amazing how well this stuff still stands up today.

Wonder if Eddie Van Halen took inspiration for his whammy bar dives from the intro of this? And check out a very young Sammy Hagar on vocals.