There is no disputing the role of the Rickenbacker bass in heavy metal/progressive metal and progressive rock. Lemmy, Geddy Lee (in the metal days of Rush), Steve DiGiorgio, Sharlee D’Angelo, Micheal Anthony and Nikki Sixx are just a few of the metal bassists that used a Rick at least some point in their career. I remember plenty of local metal acts in NY which had bassists that used a Rick. Unfortunately, Rickenbacker guitars have the stigma of not having the right sound for metal. I think the 660 would be a great guitar for metal! When I had my music shop in Bronx back in the late ‘80’s, I was an authorized RIC dealer and I had a very reliable source tell me that Eddie Van Halen was at the RIC factory and expressed an interest in playing a Rickenbacker guitar. Imagine Eddie switching over to a Rick to play Eruption!
Even if you claim to not like Metal, aren’t you curious to hear what your influences have influenced and inspired music that others have created?
Who is even to say exactly what Metal is? Some people would consider metal to be any loud music with overdriven / distorted guitars. If that was the case, you could even throw some Yes songs or parts of their songs in that category. Obviously Yes is not a metal band, but there parts of a few songs where I would consider bordering on progressive metal, like on the Drama album. You might find that weird that I’ve added Yes in here but remember back in ’89 when Jethro Tull won best heavy metal album Grammy award!!
I think Tull is a great band, but metal?!? Everyone into metal was expecting Metallica to walk away with that one! There are so many different types of metal music. I thought grunge was metal played by guys with short hair (with the exception of a few), jeans and flannel shirts.
I personally wasn’t crazy over many of those glam metal bands as I found most of those bassists uninspiring, to put it nicely. I also found looking at men who were trying to look pretty, rather disturbing. But those bands usually had a couple of songs that I liked, mostly after they got tired of wearing t he make up and decided to focus more on their music.
I try to keep up with the times I like some of the newer metal. Some of the newer metal bands I just find sort of lame. I’m not really into metal bands that have a lead vocalist that spends at least 95% of his time sounding like he’s / she’s having their spleen torn out. I can’t deal with that and it’s too bad because the music in a few of those bands is pretty good.
There are many good progressive rock and progressive metal bands out there, unfortunately they don’t get much recognition and attention for their talent. I guess the record companies figure they can make more money pushing Britney Spears type artists.
Let’s start a discussion on which artist(s) or band(s) you think started heavy metal. Was it The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Steppenwolf, or some other band? Even Deep Purple once claimed to be the band that started heavy metal.
