Re: Heavy Metal Who

[kob1@ix.netcom.com (Kevin B. O'Brien)]

On Thu, 26 Jun 1997 15:25:56 -0400, "Mark R. Leaman"
<mleaman@sccoast.net> wrote:

>The Who's music was certainly Heavy Metal at the time. Zep & Hendrix,
>too. Compared to today's HM, no...but they were the heaviest of the
>heavies at the time. Like all forms of Rock, there has been progression
>(unfortunately, the lyrics have suffered and HM became a formula in the
>mid-`70s).

I would say it was more than the lyrics that suffered. The few times
I have accidently listened to HM (like Motley Crue on Letterman the
other night), it certainly sounded to me like there was not much of
musical interest there as well. Just a lot of posturing.=20

>I'd disagree with you here, since both PT's & JH's main style worked
>around the use of controlled feedback, whereas Page was playing straight
>Blues riffs (for the most part). Pete was the least Blues-influenced of
>the three, too.

Absolutely. I think his environment is worthy of exploration to a
greater degree than most people seem to employ. He comes from a
musical family. His father was a working band musician, his mother
had been a working singer, and met her husband when she replaced
their singer when she got sick. During WWII, Cliff Townshend was in
The Squadronaires, which according to Dave Marsh were the leading
dance band in Britain. So Pete grew up in a household where the jazz
standards were part of daily life. Many of those jazz standards
began as show tunes from Broadway productions, BTW, which may have
something to do with Pete's fascination with musicals.

>For instance, both Hendrix and Page played Killing Floor
>(in Page's case, renamed The Lemon Song for some reason)

Would it be cynical of me to speculate that they renamed it in an
attempt to claim it as a song they wrote, rather than a cover?
Hendrix was *very* blues based, but more honest about it. He covered
other people's material all the time, but gave them the credit.


- --=20
Kevin B. O'Brien                  TANSTAAFL
kob1@ix.netcom.com
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