I won't argue that The Who helped spark Punk, but you could argue that The MC5, The Stooges, The Velvet Undergound and The New York Dolls were just as influential. So it's roots are a little murkier. As metal goes? It's believed Sabbath is the single band that launched it but there's arguments for Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Blue Cheer played a significant role too.
But you want to know why I am a devout metal fan, despite the fact I openly love nearly every genre of music except Nu Metal and nearly all pop? I can't speak for the rest, but I know there are many like me and the answer is really simple: Metal is the outcast.
Metal is the music for the people who don't typically fit in; the people who either aren't popular, felt like they never belonged or are even social awkward. It gave everyone of those people who chose to listen to it, an identity and even made them feel self-worth and empowerment when they didn't have it before.
Look at Kirk Hammett from Metallica for example: he was by his own admission, a geek in school and bullied relentlessly. He picked up the guitar and discovered the early hard rock/metal bands and it gave him an identity and purpose. He grew his hair out, changed his image because of metal and went on to be in two influential thrash bands: Exodus and obviously Metallica.
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I'm gonna be VERY transparent for the first time because I feel this is important to me: I can personally say that I 100% am one of these people. I didn't have hardly any friends (really only 3, one of them is
@froman5150 who I am friends with to this day). I wore geeky, cheap Jeffery Dahmer glasses because my folks didn't want to spend any money . I had and still have an overbite that my parents never got me braces for and I got picked on about it constantly, mercilessly actually. My parents didn't let me go and do a lot of things that other kids did, so I had a minimal social life. I sucked at sports and couldn't make it on a team. So I pretty much was an absolute zero
Then one day on my 12th birthday, my dad gives me his guitar that be bought in a mid-life crisis, that he couldn't actually play ( The Telecaster I've used in videos posted on here) and told me " Happy Birthday, now learn it" despite not wanting a guitar. I played classic rock stuff to start out but when I began playing metal and listening to more and more metal, I suddenly began to have my own Kirk Hammett moment: I ditched the glasses ( though I wear them again these days because who cares?) , I started wearing band t shirts and dressing like a typical metal kid and then formed a garage band ( Stormbringer, stolen from the Deep Purple album of the same name). Suddenly, I wasn't a total zero. I wasn't Mr. Popularity but now people at least knew who I was. And I began almost being drawn towards other kids like me, who had the same connection to metal.
So yeah, that's why I am the big cheerleader for this genre and go on the defensive for it. I get why a generation above me might not be fans (though there are PLENTY who are): it's because it wasn't the popular music of their youth and it was still new, almost unformed still. For me? It was still unpopular and always will be, but there were many others now like me and it gave us that identity. So I'll always wave the flag for it, because honestly? I don't know if I would be me today, if it wasn't for it helping me out then when I needed it most
