Whether considered a die-hard favourite or merely a pop act, The Beatles were undeniable pioneers. Their signature mop-top sound was only one facet of their meteoric rise. Behind the scenes, they had many groundbreaking moments. Brian Epstein’s marketing brilliance elevated their public image, John Lennon’s introspective vision made pop music more personal, and Paul McCartney’s studio innovations pushed the boundaries of what music could achieve. Together, they reshaped the musical landscape.
A band that helped introduce the world to the magical realm of pop music—and the encompassing world of screaming teens it brought with it—successfully managed to change culture forever in the process of their creativity. However, one genre of music that they are definitely not linked to is heavy metal.
The aficionados among us may well point to the group’s track ‘Helter Skelter’ as a link between the Fab Four and the thunderous genre that took root in the 1970s and ‘80s with groups like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and more laying foundations for Metallica, Slayer and Judas Priest. However, The Beatles’ de facto leader, Lennon, once branded another one of their songs as “the first heavy metal record”. Looking back, he may well have a point.
The Fab Four and heavy metal seem like chalk and cheese. Their beautiful signature melodies and wonderful harmonies are a world away from the industrial slam of heavy metal. However, like all musical genres, the latter’s creation started at a similar time to the group’s, and flecks of what would become the hard rock genre were starting to appear as the flowery decade of counterculture came to a close.
The genre began to grow as an entity as artists revolted against bands like The Beatles and their cultured performances. Studio wizadry and kaleidoscopic lyrics now felt like an ugly pastiche. Rather than trying to follow suit—or the four suits as perhaps is more applicable—the spin-off rock sound gathered pace away from the accessible sonics of the Liverpudlians and toward darker areas of the musical landscape.
‘Helter Skelter’ is rightly more often perceived as The Beatles’ heavy metal song and is dramatically unlike the majority of their work. It turned heads galore upon its release in 1968 as McCartney tried to make a song so filthy in sound that it would make The Who blush. However, Lennon said that a Beatles song from three years prior to that release, in 1965, was actually “the first heavy metal record”.
The track Lennon was referencing was ‘Ticket To Ride’, a song that might seem tame compared to the heavy metal music of today. However, certain elements within it laid the groundwork for what heavy metal would eventually become. As the song winds down, it shifts from a pop tune into a chaotic frenzy. While this transition may appear unremarkable now, it was groundbreaking over five decades ago, years before Led Zeppelin had even formed, and the heavy rock revolution found its true ignition.
So, was ‘Ticket To Ride’ the first heavy metal song?
“It’s a heavy record, and the drums are heavy too. That’s why I like it,” Lennon suggested in 1970, which he would echo once more a decade later to Playboy’s David Sheff in 1980: “That was one of the earliest heavy-metal records made. Paul’s contribution was the way Ringo played the drums.”
‘Ticket To Ride’ was later described as radical by Paul McCartney: “I think the interesting thing is the crazy ending instead of ending like the previous verse, we changed the tempo. We picked up one of the lines, ‘My baby don’t care,’ but completely altered the melody,” Macca said in 1994 before adding: “We almost invented the idea of a new bit of a song on the fade-out with this song… It was quite radical at the time.”
Although listening to the track now doesn’t sound anything like what we perceive as so-called heavy metal today, the frantic finish to the tune does contain the first flickers of a spark of what was to come. Though it was created as a studio experiment and a way to shake up the sonic structure that the group had been so neatly linked with, it would provide a brief window into the opportunities that lay ahead for a plethora of bands. Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath would follow and establish the genre, but before Ozzy Osbourne and Robert Plant could reach the summit of heavy metal, they could see a flag already planted by four lads from Liverpool.
