Anyway, 

I don't recall seeing any particular bias in England during the 1970s. Modern retrospective reviewers will never get it right, nor will revisionist rock journalists.

But as someone from the 60s I do take issue with notion that the phrase "Heavy Metal" originated in Born To Be Wild  - Steppenwolf used the phrase but it clearly refers to the elemental weather, (lightning, thunder, wind), not music, they certainly didn't invent or originate the term. There is no provable association between Born To Be Wild and the subsequent naming of Heavy Metal as a genre many years later.

It's true.

Personally, I always have beeen loved Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Uriah Heep and BOC, but  KIss, Ted Nugent (except  his Stanglehold the track which is a fantastic) and  AC/DC- I used to hate these bands.

Sure thing - (and I was there too) - we could not have had a New Wave of British Heavy Metal from 1979 onwards unless there had been an Old Wave of [British] Heavy Metal prior to then. 

However, that 'Old Wave' probably consisted of bands like Motorhead, Diamond Head, Ironing Maiden and Saxon (all formed between '75 & '76) who would become the main-stays of the New Wave rather than the Heavy Rock stalwarts of Sabbath, Purple and Zeppelin who frequently get touted as the original British 'Metal' bands. The anomaly is Priest, but they formed in 1969 as a blues band then moved to Heavy Rock in the mid-70s before being adopted into the NWOBHM scene in the 80s. Budgie fit in there somewhere but I've never really considered them to be a metal or even proto-metal band (or a Prog Related band come to that).

As someone who was an avid music fan in the 70s and a follower of both Progressive Rock and Heavy Rock as I said I don't recall there being any particular bias in the British rock press (or among artists) in favour of Prog and against Heavy Rock. Sure there was a degree of delineation in fan-base between the two but it wasn't that prevalent compared to the negativity towards other more commercial or mainstream genres. If there was a split it would be between Blues-based rock and Rock'n'Roll based rock and not in how complex or erudite the music was, though even then there would be exceptions like Groundhogs, SAHB and Budgie. Both Progressive Rock and Heavy Metal tend to drop on the Rock'n'Roll side of that divide - there ain't a lot of Blues in either of them. 

From what I remember (and from the contents of my own record collection) we were more eclectic than the stereotype image of the long-haired denim clad 70s youth would suggest. Back then the Underground and "serious" music scene were so broad and varied that most music fans would be receptive to a wide range of musical styles - the explosion in music and styles of music that occurred in that era was unparalleled - if you look at the line-up of the 1973 Reading Festival the diversity of music presented is staggering:

(£4.40 admission... it's a 100 times that now - thankfully the cost of buying albums hasn't gone up by that much)

Of course by the (very) late 70s that had all changed, and I don't doubt the animosity between music fans was as bad as Doug described it - the declining Prog fans were on the defensive by then and the upstart Metal heads were of the younger post-punk generation who thought a mullet looked cool. 

Much to the annoyance of Metallicacaca  (however "back then" was the late 80s not the 70s)

In above video John Entwistle play bass guitar in the way that was ahead of his time.

Atavachron wrote: I believe there was a brief period when the two were considered genetically related, at least from a certain perspective;"...Heavy Rock as a style grew out of Progressive Rock sometime in the early 1970s. The trend setters were Deep Purple and Black Sabbath"   -- from Philip S. Walker's notes in the Warhorse Red Sea reissue.

I sorta agree with that because of the association to Rock'n'Roll based Rock in those bands - I notice he didn't mention Led Zeppelin who were more Blues-based even though they ventured into other genres they didn't begin as a Progressive Rock band.

Another fly in the ointment was the appearance of The Heavy Metal Kids on the Glam/Heavy Rock scene around 1972-74. Most certainly not a Heavy Metal band they took their name from William S. Burrough's Nova Trillogy:

Burroughs is of course referring to narcotics derived from toxic (heavy) metal elements and it wouldn't surprise me a great deal if most of the other uses of the phrase in the music scene picked it up from Burroughs. Hapshash and the Coloured Coat (who are only really remembered now for their iconic Hendrix, Soft Machine and Pink Floyd posters) used it along with another Burroughs phrase "The Human Host" as the title of their 1967 début album "Hapshash and the Coloured Coat Featuring The Human Host And The Heavy Metal Kids"

But again, I don't think any of that means a great deal in the scheme of things other than demonstrating that the phrase was in common use before it was used to describe the music genre. 

I believe so. Well, I was too young to be a fan in early 70s when e.g. Uriah Heep were considered as a progressive rock band; I remember them as a melodic hard rock band.

However, in the second half of the golden decade, I remember that New Hard Rock Champions undoubtely were AC/DC  - the band which I used to hate with a passion.

However, I didn't find it to be anything written in stone or anything.  Some bands like Captain Beyond did a fine job of walking the line between metal and prog.  

Nascent music genres are not usually started by established bands, they either grow steadily from the grass-roots over a period of time "off-radar" and the suddenly becomes popular in a fully-formed state or they are triggered by a single notable event or newly emergent band with a drastically different take on the existing music scene and other bands run to keep up with them. The difficulty there is the paucity of recorded evidence of any of that underground activity, unlike today where anyone can record themselves and throw it out into the internet for all to hear or ignore, back then if you were not signed you didn't make records (Priest's début album was released five years after their formation and so we have no physical evidence of their blues-rock origins - similarly Maiden's debut was also released five years after their formation ).

The problem that people have in trying to identify the roots of heavy metal is there isn't an unbroken row of dots that we can draw neatly connected lines between - we can produce dots for when and where the name was used, dots for bands that were loud and heavy, dots for riff-based power chords, dots for screaming vocalists, dots for various bands that inspired later generations and dots for those one-off songs that sound like they could be proto-metal but the dots don't connect. This is why I can't see Sabbath, Purple or Zeppelin being called Metal as retrospective tag, this is why AC/DC don't even have a dot on the diagram.

The picture was taken by Ed Caraeff, 17-year old boy who was in the front row.

Ed Caraeff never seen Hendrix before nor head his music.

Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze, Foxy Lady and Wild Thing live performed at Monterey Pop Festival, June 1967.

 

EDIT:  a stunning heavy perfomance of Voodo Child in Stockholm, 1969. 

Well, that "battle" between proggers and metalers (the hardcore fans of heavy stuff) started in second half of seventies when some bands (e.g. AC/DC) get an enormous success with their, for that time, extremly heavy music but created for entertainment only,  and that was pretty opposed to "progosophy". 

Though, it's the publicity that attempts to give a label, not the bands most of the time... So, hey, disregard all of that.

Dean wrote: Nascent music genres are not usually started by established bands, they either grow steadily from the grass-roots over a period of time "off-radar" and the suddenly becomes popular in a fully-formed state or they are triggered by a single notable event or newly emergent band with a drastically different take on the existing music scene and other bands run to keep up with them. The difficulty there is the paucity of recorded evidence of any of that underground activity, unlike today where anyone can record themselves and throw it out into the internet for all to hear or ignore, back then if you were not signed you didn't make records (Priest's début album was released five years after their formation and so we have no physical evidence of their blues-rock origins - similarly Maiden[Television]'s début was also released fourfive years after their formation)

I never saw this.

 

But the majority of commentary was heard in radio in the early days, a lot more than anything else.

 

It was a media creation, and we, as part of the meat grinder, fell for it. Otherwise you gonna tell me that you did not have the "know" to go listen and like something (supposedly) better! FOR THE RECORD, there was just as much crap in the metal, as there was in the proggers, and what I used to call "quasi-proggers".

 

You really need to listen to the NY scene. It was metal before the word existed! Though some call it closer to punk than metal!

Actually, you could also say that American punk started in 1968 - '69 with The MC5 and The Stooges.

Stateside, I think many of us believe that one of the very first bands to kick off "punk" was the band "MC5."  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_punk_rock" rel="nofollow - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_punk_rock

This largely tracks what I remember at that time.  

There were a lot of crossover influences between prog, punk and glam as I recall.  Eno's solo work certainly tapped into the energy of punk.  

The Sex Pistols really seemed to kick it into overdrive over here.  I played in a few punk bands, and we were actually influenced by bands like King Crimson.....one extended jam I would use to warm up the band was "Larks Tongues In Aspic Part II."  

The Brits always seem to come to the game ready to win!  Punk, prog, whatever.  Love you guys! 

Before Stained Class, they have got some "hits" as Rocka Rolla, Cheater, The Ripper and epic Victim of Changes. Personally, I knew for the band since 1975 when as a little kid I bought Rocka Rolla the album because of that great http://www.robbierocks.ch/LP%20covers/Rocka%20Rolla.c.jpg" rel="nofollow - cover design by John Pache ( I loved to buy the LPs by these -  to me previously unknow - U.S. and U.K. bands just on the album covers basis - it was so exciting back then). However, Judas Priest definitely become really great heavy-metal stars in 1980 as a part of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal scene & with  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTkxC0W92aA" rel="nofollow - British Steel  the album. i.e. when they were changed thier heavy music's direction for third time - they left above mentioned proggy elements and then that was pure NWOBHM sound.

Yes were recording TFTO next door. Wakeman asked to be paid in beer. 

I don't know about the rest of the world but the most successful festivals in the UK have been those with an eclectic mix of genres, from the 60s through to the present day both Reading and Glastonbury have had extremely diverse lineups. While featuring mainly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_festival#1970s" rel="nofollow - Prog, Blues and Rock in the 1970s , Reading was officially known as the http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ri3pYfD3vOA/T5GDJkv-1iI/AAAAAAAABAM/bv-db91OLnA/s1600/Reading%2BPoster.jpg" rel="nofollow - National Jazz, Blues and Rock Festival . Even one-day events such as Knebworth would have wide mix of genres on the same bill through-out the 70s.

Lots. http://%20www.ukrockfestivals.com" rel="nofollow - www.ukrockfestivals.com