History of Heavy Metal Thread

[Certif1ed]

I kept the ace up my sleeve for the surf music connection above - the missing link, if you will, and it's Dick Dale, who deserves a post all to himself, as the first Mad Axeman.

His lead seems to come from The Shadows (please correct me if there is an earlier precedent for this melodic guitar fronted style), and also from Gene Krupa (posted above).

According to various biographies, he wanted to capture Krupa's wild style on the guitar as well as with the band, and to get his sound, he cranked his Fender amps up so much that they regularly blew - and Leo Fender's company upped the wattage of the amps to 100, put in 15" speakers, and developed the Dale transformer in order to help him get his sound - and be able to finish a gig!

Dale also played Fender guitars - the Strat, naturally - and he was left handed... that reminds me of someone, now who...? (no prizes!)

This list of Mad Axemen attributes is obviously not quite enough - but what Dale also did was to use a pretty unique tremolo (fast alternate picking) style - the same one that would be used nearly two decades later by Judas Priest and Diamond Head - and form the basis of the Thrash Metal "revolution".

Not only that, but he often used scales other than the minor pentatonic. I haven't listened particularly hard, but some of it sounds like Phrygian mode (very common in Metal), and certainly most of it is in some minor mode or another - and isn't just a rip-off of "Peer Gynt", like the Ritchie Blackmore/Lancasters track I posted above.

Some of his music could sound pretty dark too - I think that this is the beginning of the Heavy Metal sound and approach - you may recognise it from Pulp Fiction. Note right at the beginning that Dale uses the exact same technique used at the beginning of the solo for "Exciter", and swaggers about exactly like Matt Bellamy of Muse - they've even got similar haircuts;




...and listen to the guitar stabs after the drum intro to this earlier tune from 1962 - very Slayer;




...and this shredding;



Here's Dick in the 1980s with the late, great Stevie Ray Vaughan;




Here's Dick more recently, with a more up to date sound;




...and here's Judas Priest performing "Exciter" so you can play spot the difference between the start of "Misirlou" and the start of the guitar solo - come to think about it, the main riff of Exciter begins to sound a bit familiar too;




...and Slayer, performing "South of Heaven", because it's awesome, and those phrygian licks and "Stab" chords are quite strangely reminiscent of the Dale youtubes I posted above.



Rock and roll...