10 Rock Music Debuts That Changed The Game

Every single kid who picked up a guitar wanting to play rock and roll has always started out with the blues foundation. From Chuck Berry to Bo Diddley, the DNA of rock and roll always comes back to those down and out songs from the Mississippi Delta, as musicians tried to put their heart and soul into everything they played. The sound of the blues was always pure, but as the British Blues boom came to fruition, Led Zeppelin took the genre to another planet.

While not everything that's on Led Zeppelin's debut is indebted to the blues, you can hear the pure pain and sorrow in Robert Plant's voice on every song here, from the folksy sounds of Babe I'm Gonna Leave You to the showstopper How Many More Times. After playing too many blues standards with the Yardbirds though, Jimmy Page's guitar licks on here are what set the stage for hard rock going forward, not having to rely on the blues and having something a lot more in your face leading the charge than just another 12 bar exercise.

Even though Jimmy Page may be the resident genius of the group, John Bonham was what turned hard rock into the juggernaut it is today, taking cues from everything from rock, funk, and blues to provide the beating heart behind every single one of these songs. You can definitely tell that they're wearing their influences on their sleeve more than a few times here, but when you're looking through the origins of the genre, Led Zeppelin I should be studied as the moment when the blues morphed into hard rock.