In the 1980s Priest became one of the biggest metal bands in the world, with hit albums including British Steel and Screaming For Vengeance. But it was two years later, with Sad Wings Of Destiny, that the band found their signature sound. Inspired by heavy rock pioneers such as Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Cream, the young Priest recorded their debut album, Rocka Rolla, in 1974. But it was after Atkins departed in 1973 that the real Judas Priest was born, with Halford their dynamic singer and second guitarist Glenn Tipton increasing their firepower. In 1970 a new line-up included guitarist Kenny ‘KK’ Downing and bassist Ian Hill. It was in 1969 that the original Judas Priest (named after the Bob Dylan song The Ballad Of Frankie Lee And Judas Priest), a blues-rock band led by singer Al Atkins, was formed in Birmingham. This singular vision and missionary zeal was proclaimed in the title of Priest’s 1984 album Defenders Of The Faith. And what this band has represented, for more than 40 years, is metal in its purest form: the screaming lead vocals, the duelling guitarists, the bludgeoning riffs, the leather and studs, the songs about death and destruction and motorcycles and, yes, heavy metal itself. “Metal is a very special kind of music,” says the band’s singer Rob Halford. But if there is one band, above all others, that defines the sound and aesthetic of heavy metal, it is Judas Priest. Judas Priest (Image credit: Aaron Rapoport / Getty Images)īlack Sabbath came first.
With the help of their quiet-loud template – which Cobain famously admitted to stealing from The Pixies – they made good on the promise that all you need is three chords and the truth, distilling disaffected teenage angst into art, and influencing everyone from Weezer to Tori Amos and Take That. Along with their MTV Unplugged live album and ‘92 B-sides compilation Incesticide, Nirvana created some of alternative music’s most fundamental touchstones. Not since a certain Liverpudlian quartet had a phenomenon torn through the mainstream with such power – that bandleader Kurt Cobain had formed Nirvana with the idea of “mixing really heavy Black Sabbath with The Beatles” is no coincidence.įlanked by Krist Novoselic on bass and Dave Grohl on drums (original drummer Chad Channing left after recording their debut album), Nirvana released three studio albums in their seven years together (1989’s Bleach, 1991’s Nevermind, 1993’s In Utero). Instead, he’s built one of rock’s great careers by doing whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted.It’s genuinely difficult to overstate the impact Nirvana had – not just on music, but on popular culture as a whole – when their second album, Nevermind, dropped in the autumn of that year. Our list draws from every point in his career, proving, among other things, that Young is part of an elite group of Sixties rockers who’ve kept making great music long after their supposed glory days.Īll these years later, Neil Young has neither burned out nor faded away. We’ve narrowed that down to his 100 greatest songs, and tell the inside stories behind each one. Some of them are beloved folk-rock hits some sound like the work of a cult artist with little interest in hooks or high fidelity some are just really fucking loud. We’ve covered his music for decades - hundreds and hundreds of songs spread over studio LPs, live albums, bootlegs, and tapes that Young has only recently begun to release on his Archives website. He’s been a regular in our pages ever since. Young first hit the scene with Buffalo Springfield in 1966, not long before Rolling Stone first hit newsstands. But whether he’s the tender soul singing “Heart of Gold” or the rangy crusader giving us a concept album about his awesome new electric car in 2009, Neil Young is always Neil Young – same creaky voice, same searching lyrics, placing him among the greatest songwriters in rock history.
He’s been a folk-rock superstar and a synth-rock pioneer, a country singer and a rockabilly revivalist, a left-leaning environmental activist and a Reagan supporter, a guy who’s been filling arenas since the Seventies even as he drives his fans nuts with his maverick musical detours. I don’t give a shit if my audience is a hundred or a hundred million.” Over the years, Young has turned that unapologetic sentiment into one of rock’s most durable credos, following his ornery muse wherever it leads him. “I’d rather keep changing and lose a lot of people along the way,” Neil Young told Rolling Stone in 1975.
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