The story of heavy metal’s beginnings is usually told one way: doom-laden riffs, occult imagery, and a dark new sound emerging from Black Sabbath in 1970. That tale centers on Birmingham’s own Sabbath, whose self-titled debut and follow-ups like Paranoid and Master of Reality laid down the blueprint for generations of metal musicians to come. But Eric Clapton, one of rock’s most respected guitarists, has quietly offered a different perspective.
Clapton, whose career stretches from the blues-rock mastery of Cream through decades as a solo artist, has spoken about the origins of heavy metal in multiple interviews. While he acknowledges that genres rarely start with a single moment or band, he doesn’t fully buy the Black Sabbath-first narrative. Instead, he points to a lesser-remembered group that predated Ozzy and company in pushing rock into heavier territory.
In conversations with music journalists, Clapton has held up Blue Cheer — a late-’60s San Francisco power trio — as perhaps the real originators of heavy metal. He admires Blue Cheer for their raw, loud, unfiltered approach to rock long before the term “heavy metal” had even solidified. Clapton noted that Blue Cheer didn’t have a mission beyond cranking up their amps and going as hard and loud as possible, a quality he feels is essential to the heavy metal spirit.
“There was a band called Blue Cheer, who I think were probably the originators of heavy metal because they didn’t really have traditional roots in the blues,” Clapton explained in an interview. “They didn’t have a mission. It was just about being loud.”
Clapton’s point isn’t that Sabbath didn’t matter — far from it. Black Sabbath’s early work, particularly the eerie, downtuned riffs that opened their 1970 debut, Black Sabbath, and tracks such as “Iron Man” and “War Pigs”, directly shaped what would become mainstream heavy metal. Those sounds defined the genre for millions of fans worldwide.
Rather, Clapton’s perspective shifts the origins conversation slightly earlier, to a moment when rock music’s volume and sonic force were being pushed to extremes that few had attempted. Blue Cheer’s 1968 album Vincebus Eruptum is often cited by historians as one of the earliest examples of what would later be called heavy metal or proto-metal — a sound built on distortion, dense power chords, and unrelenting amplification.
For Clapton — whose own early bands like Cream experimented with amplification and power trio dynamics — the distinction matters. In his telling, it’s not just the darkness or doom that defined metal’s beginnings, but the sheer physical force of sound itself — the idea that music could be felt as much as heard. Blue Cheer’s live reputation was built on volume and impact, playing louder and more intensely than many of their contemporaries.
Clapton’s assessment also reflects a broader truth about musical evolution: genres rarely have a single starting point. Instead, they grow out of overlapping experiments, regional scenes, and bands pushing against the limits of what music can express. From the psych-rock psychedelia of Blue Cheer, to the doom-laden riffcraft of Sabbath, to the later sophistication of acts like Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, heavy metal emerged from a web of interwoven influences.
To many fans and historians, Black Sabbath’s impact remains unmistakable — their 1970 debut in particular is often cited as the moment when heavy metal truly coalesced as a genre. Yet Clapton’s view reminds us that the roots of metal stretch back into a chaotic musical landscape where loudness, distortion, and fearless volume were being pioneered by bands few today would name on the first page of rock history.
In the end, Clapton’s comments don’t erase Black Sabbath’s influence — but they broaden the story, shining a spotlight on the often overlooked innovators whose blistering sound helped forge the path that metal would walk for decades to come.
