10 Bands That Started Hard Rock

10. The Stooges

By the time the Summer of Love rolled around, rock and roll could go in a lot of different places. As Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis were firmly in the rearview, the idea of going towards everything from folk to psychedelia to Eastern sounding music seemed wildly intriguing for your average musician. If you wanted to move the people though, you didn't need something flashy. You needed to get a little more primal.

Arriving like rats out of the sewer, the Stooges were out for blood when they first hit the rock scene, as Iggy Pop fashioned himself as rock's first true wild man. Compared to some of the more out-there talents of the time like Little Richard or even Jim Morrison, Iggy was one of the few artists that felt genuinely dangerous when he took to the stage, just as likely to get a rise out of the audience as he was to inflict personal harm on himself for a reaction.

Aside from the elaborate stage shows though, the rawness on display on records like Raw Power helped create a feeding ground for a more hectic form of rock, which we would later see in punk music and even the early sides of metal. As off-putting as something like the Stooges may seem on the surface, this is the kind of music that could tap into your animalistic side.