10 Bands That Started Hard Rock

Whenever you start off as a blues band, you tend to get put in a box and typecast as just another 12 bar act. Even though the blues may be the foundation for what rock and roll was built upon, it's more important to see what you do with those few notes once you graduate past power chords. There was a lot more to explore, and Led Zeppelin took it upon themselves to cover almost everything.

Compared to some of the more pop friendly acts like the Beatles, Led Zeppelin felt like the definition of what a hard rock band should sound like, complete with Jimmy Page making songs that were primarily based on riffs rather than regular chord progressions. Aside from their more raucous side, you could still hear the blues seeping in occasionally through the mannerisms of Robert Plant, while also venturing into unheard of territory like Eastern sounding scales like on Kashmir.

Even when Zeppelin decided to tone things down on their more acoustic based material, the pure stomp of John Bonham always gave the band an added dimension of sound, almost like having a certain muscle that powers the rest of the groove forward. While no band can claim to be the true originators of hard rock, Zeppelin's records are still about as close to perfect as it gets in the hard rock arena.