3 Loud Beatles Songs That Foreshadowed Punk and Heavy Metal

Though punk and heavy metal are two very different genres, they each arrived from similar places. If you go back far enough, you’ll wind up in the Mississippi Delta. But eventually you’ll land in England. The Kinks’ distorted riff on “You Really Got Me” and other garage rockers were precursors to punk. And though Black Sabbath pioneered heavy metal, it’s hard to imagine Tony Iommi’s riffs without Cream’s “Sunshine Of Your Love”.

Meanwhile, we don’t immediately think of The Beatles as punk or heavy metal. But these songs prove The Fab Four were as punk and metal as those genres’ pioneers.

“Taxman”

George Harrison revolted against Britain’s government after The Beatles’ blockbuster success had produced massive tax receipts. He built the protest song around a stabbing guitar riff, which reveals punk’s garage rock roots. Also, Paul McCartney burns a frenetic guitar solo complete with raga licks as an homage to Harrison. It’s the kind of global rage against the machine later echoed by The Clash and others.

Let me tell you how it will be,
There’s one for you, nineteen for me,
Cause I’m the Taxman,
Yeah, I’m the Taxman.

“Helter Skelter”

McCartney once read an interview with Pete Townshend, who had described a song he’d written as “the most ridiculous rock ’n’ roll record you’ve ever heard.” So Macca approached The Beatles and said, “I think we should do a song like that; something really wild.” It worked and it even left Ringo Starr shouting about the blisters on his fingers. The title refers to a fairground ride, but was later adopted by Charles Manson as a dark anthem.

When I get to the bottom, I go back to the top of the slide,
Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride,
Till I get to the bottom, and I see you again,
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!

“I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”

While Cream, Black Sabbath, and Led Zeppelin are credited with transforming heavy blues into what became heavy metal, The Beatles did something similar on this epic from Abbey Road. It echoes the gloomy grooves of Black Sabbath. And the long arrangement foreshadows the complexity of future heavy metal legends such as Metallica. You’ll also notice the sludge metal that Soundgarden brought to mainstream audiences following the rise of grunge in the 1990s.

I want you so bad,
It’s driving me mad, it’s driving me mad.

Photo by Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images