10 Bands That Started Hard Rock

It's almost difficult to bring up any form of rock and roll and not mention the Beatles at some point. The fact that they were able to pull from different influences left and right and create the guidebook on how to be an adventurous rock band left the entire playing field wide open for other bands to let their freak flag fly. As much as they might be considered a pop group though, the later years showed that the Beatles could get a lot nastier.

After the moptops faded, some of the harsher sides of the Fabs' catalog started to rear their head, starting with singles like Day Tripper and Paperback Writer being more riff based than anything else they had done previously. That was just the tip of the iceberg though, with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band having a blaring opening track that recalled the raga rock coming over from the US.

Once we got to the later years of the White Album though, things had gone up even further, as Paul McCartney made one of the building blocks for metal on Helter Skelter and John Lennon eventually inventing the stoner rock dirge on I Want You She's So Heavy from Abbey Road. As eclectic as the Beatles may have been, there's always a darker side to some of the more ballad-heavy material.