10 Perfect Songs That Started Hard Rock

In the early days of rock and roll, The Beatles were never meant to be the most threatening presence that the genre had to offer or anything. The Rolling Stones were always the real bad boys, and outside of the religious controversy that happened with John Lennon's remarks about Jesus, the Fab Four were always about turning people on than getting too confrontational. Nothing stood in between them and creativity though, and just one news article was enough for them to create the first metal song on the White Album.

As the sessions went on, Paul McCartney got ahold of a music paper talking about the Who making one of the most abrasive songs that the rock world had ever seen. While the Beatles were never meant to be abrasive by any stretch, Paul saw that as a challenge, crafting Helter Skelter about a playground slide with some of the more ferocious guitar licks that the '60s had ever seen.

What you're hearing on the White Album isn't even the most ferocious take on this song either, with the demo version of the track being almost a half hour long of the Beatles bashing away on their instruments and George Harrison even imitating shock rocker Arthur Brown at one point. For all the masterpieces that the Beatles already had under their belt, they were still the same rock fans that they were in the early days, and Helter Skelter was the song gave everyone that feeling in their gut that made them want to turn their amplifiers to 11.