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When we think of the first true heavy metal act, our minds usually go for an act like Black Sabbath, but the truth is, their influences had to have come from somewhere.
There’s plenty of reasons to point the finger at Led Zeppelin as being the forerunners to their sound, and although it wasn’t quite as intense as what Ozzy Osbourne and co produced in the early ‘70s, their hard rock innovations were at least some of the way to being easily classifiable as heavy metal. That being said, their influences also had to have come from somewhere, and there’s one track that Jimmy Page was involved in the creation of that arguably paved the way for their existence in the first place.
Not only that, but its co-creator claims that it was the first heavy metal riff ever written, pre-dating anything by Led Zep or Sabbath by three to four years. ‘Beck’s Bolero’ was the first solo release by Jeff Beck, released under the name of the Jeff Beck Group, and was recorded in 1966 alongside a sumptuous cast of talented musicians, with Page accompanying Beck on guitar, John Paul Jones on bass, Keith Moon on drums, and Nicky Hopkins on keys.
While the instrumental track opens with a soaring guitar line, one that is reasonably heavy, around the halfway point in the song is where things begin to kick in properly, with a riff that the heavy metal icons of the following decade would have given anything to have written. The song itself doesn’t necessarily feel much like a heavy metal track, and is far easier to file under psychedelic rock, but the earth-shattering riff that barges its way in at the midway point is certainly one of the gnarliest of its time.
The thing is, Beck and Page have regularly disputed who was responsible for actually coming up with the riff, and although Beck himself says that this section of the song was “the first heavy metal riff ever written and I wrote it,” Page would contest this, and ultimately it was him that received the writing credit on the track. Page came up with the chord sequence, and it was his idea to reappropriate the rhythm from classical composer Maurice Ravel’s ‘Bolero’ and turn it into this monstrous tune, but Beck would argue that he played a significant part in conjuring up the heavier section.
Page would stake his claim to having written the song in a 1977 interview with Guitar Player magazine, stating: “Jeff was playing and I was in the box. And even though he says he wrote it, I wrote it. I’m playing the 12-string on it. Beck’s doing the slide bits, and I’m basically playing around the chords.”
While Beck never made a full concession that Page was the one who came up with the riff, he was seemingly happy to let things slide. “No, I didn’t get a songwriting credit,” he stated, “but you win some and lose some down the years.”
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