Most Resilient And Successful Rock Bands example essay topic

Heavy metal in the 1980's is hard to describe. Its static style did not change much from the 1970's, but the lyrics, image, and theatrics took a step forward. Heavy metal had a huge impact in the 1980's and there were many successful bands. Van Halen took heavy metal to new heights. After more than two decades of playing sold-out concert halls, selling millions of albums and enduring various lineup changes and solo projects, Van Halen is recognized as one of the most resilient and successful rock bands to emerge from the 1970's and continue into the 1980's. Eddie and Alex Van Halen were raised in Pasadena, the children of Dutch immigrants who immigrated to California in 1967.

The Van Halen brothers grew up taking classical piano lessons. Eddie played guitar and Alex played the drums as teenagers. In 1974, they hooked up with David Lee Roth (vocals) and Michael Anthony (bass), while gigging around town in their band Mammoth. Within a few years, they had become one of the most popular bands on the Los Angeles scene. Fans packed L.A.'s smoky rock clubs to check out Eddie's unconventional guitar riffs and Roth's over-the-top showmanship.

In 1976, Gene Simmons noticed the group at a local club and gave them a recording session, and soon after Van Halen was signed to Water Bros. Their debut album, Van Halen, was released in 1978 and included the hit singles 'Runnin' With the Devil' and a cover of the Kinks' 'You Really Got Me. ' Eddie Van Halen took electric guitar technique to new heights with his patented two-handed tapping and pull-off effects, while Roth's tongue-in-cheek histrionics proved to be a refreshing alternative in an industry chock full of self-important rock stars. Within six months of its release, Van Halen was certified platinum. The album not only launched Van Halen's career, but it came to influence countless American rock bands during the next decade. During the next few years, Van Halen became one of the hardest working and most profitable bands in the recording industry, releasing a string of multi-platinum albums in quick succession; 1979's Van Halen II, 1980's Women and Children First, 1981's Fair Warning and 1982's Diver Down. But it was the album 1984, released on New Year's Day of that year that solidified the band's superstar status.

The album contained the mega-hits 'Jump,' 'Panama' and 'Hot For Teacher,' with their accompanying raucous videos that received seemingly non-stop airplay on MTV. All was not well within the band, however. Rising tensions between Roth and the other band members were increasingly evident; on their 1984 world tour the band didn't even play on the same stage, but rather performed on four separate platforms, symbolic of the escalating rift among its members. Finally, in 1985, after taking time off to record a successful solo album (and delaying work on the follow-up to 1984) Roth parted ways with Van Halen.

This group proved to be the starting point of heavy metal, starting out in the 1970's and continuing through the first half of the 1990's. After groups paved the way for heavy metal, one band can be the representative of the heavy metal style in the 1980's. Metallica was formed on October 15, 1981 by James Hatfield and Lars Ulrich. Lars played the drums while James was on vocals and guitar. Kirk Hammett joined the band in 1982 and became the band's lead guitarist. Metallica's bass player was Jason News ted, after their first bassist, Cliff Morton, was killed in a bus crash.

It was on March fourteenth that Metallica played their first gig at radio city Anaheim in California. On June fourteenth the Metal Massacre LP was released and it was Metallica's first appearance on an official record. The first release of the LP contained a few mistakes including band's name being miss spelt Metallica and Lloyd grants name being misspelled as Loyd d Grant. 1983 was the year that Metallica really made an impact. They moved to San Francisco during February and played their first show on March fifth at the Stone, a now legendary venue for Metallica. Kirk Hammett's band, Exodus, opened for them on what was to be Cliff Burton's first gig with Metallica.

It was on the move from LA to San Francisco that the band got a view into Dave Mustaine life style. It was decided as soon as they reached San Francisco that they needed to have a new guitarist. On April 1 Kirk Hammett was asked to join the band. Dave Mustaine played his last gig with Metallica on April ninth. It was only on April eleventh that the band actually told Dave he was out of the band and gave him a coach ticket back home to LA. The recording of Master Of Puppets, the band's third album, started on September second at the Sweet Silence Studios in Copenhagen with producer Flemming Rasmussen.

During this period, the band took time out to play two major festivals, the first being the Metal Hammer festival in England on September 14. The second was the Day on the Green festival in Oakland Ca. Master Of Puppets was finally completed on December 27 1985. Metallica played their last show on December 31 at the Civic Center in San Francisco with Megadeath, Exodus and Metal Church. Metallica had albums all the way up until 1999 with their last album S&M, which was a live collaboration with the San Francisco Symphony. England was also home to several bands that were considered leaders of heavy metal, and Def Leppard is an example of one of these bands.

In November 1977, the first Def Leppard rehearsal takes place in a spoon factory near Bram all Lane, Sheffield (UK). Lead singer Joe Elliott, bass player Rick 'Sav's adage, guitarist Pete Willis, and drummer Tony Kenning just renamed the band from Deaf Leopard (a name first coined by Joe Elliott at school in 1975) to Def Leppard. In January of 1978 Steve Clark joins the band as the second guitarist, and Frank Noon is declared as the new drummer. On March 14, the debut LP 'On Through the Night', produced by Tom Allow, is released.

Around the same time, the single 'Hello America's ees the light of day. On April 1, 1980, the band sign with Lever-Krebs Management Company. In May, the band arrive for debut US tours to open for, respectively, Pat Travers, Judas Priest, Ted Nugent and AC / DC. In August, Def Leppard returns to the UK to play at the Reading Festival. The crowd, convinced that the band have sold out to the Yankee Dollar and turned their backs on their home country, greet them with a rain of tomatoes and beer cans. Def Leppard released many albums such as, Pyromania with the single "Photograph", and Hysteria with singles such as 'Women', 'Animal', 'Pour Some Sugar On Me', 'Love Bites', 'Armageddon It', 'Hysteria' and 'Rocket'.

Def Leppard was an English band that showed the other bands how it was done. Their career started in 1977 and continued through 2002 with the "X" tour. Heavy metal is an amazing thing that took its unique and amazing sounds to new heights. Unfortunately due to highly commercialized excess driven hair bands the genre was sent in to another decline where the music would be reabsorbed into new genres. By around 1990 most heavy metal had evolved into other rock genres like hard rock, grunge, gothic rock, gothic metal, thrash metal, speed metal, doom metal, and nu metal.