Searching the Heavy Metal Highway

by Rick Rockwell

As you travel down the heavy metal highway, perhaps you’ve had a thought or two about where it all started. What’s at the source?

Of course, as you thrash to Korn or Godsmack or Metallica, there may be no reason to wonder about the origins of their metal sounds. The chords are there to clear away any other thoughts.

But those metal bands are part of the present, and they draw upon the legacy of the past. Headbang down the heavy metal highway enroute to the source and you’ll likely find your way to Detroit.

That’s where you’ll find the MC5, short for Motor City Five.

Of course, the MC5, a possible source of the term “heavy metal” wouldn’t be classified as a metal band at all today. And indeed, their contributions to the beginnings of the term “heavy metal” are still in dispute.

For years, some believed Norman Mailer had invented the term “heavy metal” when he penned an essay about the MC5's appearance in Chicago during the Democratic Convention protests. But that proved to be wrong. In his essay Mailer describes the band’s music as an “electric crescendo screaming as if at the electro-mechanical climax of the age....” He also makes comparisons between the music and the sound of the motorcycles driven to the concert by a group of bikers. But the term “heavy metal” does not appear.

John Kay of Steppenwolf also claims to have invented the term in 1968 in the lyrics to “Magic Carpet Ride:”

I like smoke and lightning/
Heavy metal thunder/
Racin' with the wind/
And the feelin' that I'm under.

That is regarded as the first song reference to heavy metal, however, the song is clearly an analogy about riding motorcycles and the term “heavy metal thunder” refers to the sound of the bikes, in the same way Mailer makes the comparison between the bikes and the MC5. Steppenwolf was not a heavy metal band and although they were considered hard rock at the time, their sound is rather standard fare these days. This all gets us closer to the source of heavy metal but these are clearly not the absolute origins.

Some credit the term to avant-garde novelist William Burroughs from his novels The Soft Machine (1962) and Nova Express (1964). Although Burroughs definitely had an impact on rock, including being the source of a number of band names, the metal music Burroughs referenced is regarded as fantasy, clearly not linked to anything that existed in 1962. However, it is possible that others applied Burroughs’ term to music emerging just six years later.

Chas Chandler, the manager of the Jimi Hendrix Experience claimed in a BBC documentary in the mid-1990s that the first time the term was used, it was applied by The New York Times, in reference to Hendrix and his sound in 1969. This claim proved to be false. Likewise, Sandy Pearlman, who produced and managed Blue Oyster Cult, claims he invented the term as a reference to a musical style in 1970. This is also likely an unsubstantiated boast.

Most sources agree that by 1971, the term "heavy metal" was in regular use in Creem, the national rock magazine based in Detroit. Which brings us back to the MC5. Some rock historians say the late, great Lester Bangs, the rock critic who ran Creem for a time, used the term as a musical reference in 1969 in his review of the MC5’s live debut, Kick Out the Jams. However, just like the Mailer reference, Bangs does not use the term, although he does say the band plays “ugly noise.” Although Bangs slammed the band’s sound, later he apparently regretted what he wrote and embraced the MC5’s musical sincerity.

So where does that leave us? Not really any closer to the true origins of the term “heavy metal” other than many clues pointed toward the MC5, one of the loudest bands of the late 1960s.

As for the MC5, although the band may wrongly be credited with spawning the term “heavy metal,” today the group is classified as proto-punk, having influenced many of the late 1970s punk acts, and even some of the grunge movement (Nirvana is just one example) of the early 1990s. Indeed, the MC5 was a band far ahead of its time.

(MC5 photo courtesy of the MC5 Gateway.)

(To sample a bit of the MC5 live, below is a video of the band’s underground classic “Kick Out the Jams,” although this version is tamer than the original.)



(Check this link for a fully uncensored version of the original “Kick Out the Jams.”)

The Old Man’s Suggested Listening

1. Pearl Jam (self-titled 2006 release)
2. Godsmack, IV
3. Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stadium Arcadium
4. Buckcherry, 15
5. Audioslave, Revelations
   

MC5
Heavy Metal
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