Doom metal before Black Sabbath. Golden Earring - Everyday's Torture. From Eight Miles High (1969 album)

[highplainsdem]

This was released in November 1969, three months before the first Black Sabbath album. Eight Miles High was Golden Earring's second album that year - they'd released a double album in April. As with most of their songs at that time, George Kooymans wrote both the lyrics and music. He wasn't yet cowriting songs with Barry Hay, though Barry has the lead vocal here.

And I'm bringing this up now because of a metal fan and reviewer who does consider this early doom metal.

[ProfessorGAC]

1. Cool Tune

Not sure about doom metal. Seems more prog than metal, but it is cool. Especially, since there wasn't much to influence that sound.

[highplainsdem]

3. George was influenced by all sorts of music. Heavy as this album is, it was just 7 months after they'd

released a double album best known for two songs he wrote apparently for his girlfriend (later wife), which couldn't be farther from doom metal. Though there was an early, short version of Song Of A Devil's Servant, which went from 4 minutes on that April 1969 album to 6 minutes on November's Eight Miles High. Thread about that from 2022: https://www.democraticunderground.com/103478673 .

I posted recently about one of those songs for his girlfriend, which GE didn't release as a single but became a hit single for another Dutch group: https://www.democraticunderground.com/1034147342

The other song about his girlfriend, the hit single from On The Double, a single released in late 1968, spent 10 weeks in the top 40, 6 of those in the top 10 (though it never reached #1 on the singles chart, just #2). It was so popular that it became a concert staple not just for Golden Earring through their long career, but for Vreemde Kostgangers, the Dutch supergroup trio George also belonged to. Below is video of Vreemde Kostgangers in 2018. Lovely song...and then the next album had Everyday's Torture. The band kept trying different sounds.

[LuvLoogie]

2. Pretty cool album. It's pretty much psychedelic and 12 bar blues based hard rock.

Not quite metal, though. Sabbath's first album really takes song structure, tonal center, and subject matter into a different realm for me.

BTW, have you heard this version of Eight Miles High by Neil Merryweather? It's pretty cool. Kinda T. Rex-ish

&list=RD7tBZ9fdGUdg&start_radio=1

[highplainsdem]

4. Well, I saw more than one person online describe it as metal, and some include the adjective "doom" as

well, so I know that description will seem accurate to some people. But people can disagree, and those terms weren't used then.

I don't know who George was most influenced by when he wrote that. Couldn't have been Black Sabbath unless he was getting bootlegs, and Black Sabbath had recorded their first album the month before Eight Miles High was released, so they couldn't have heard it first.

George might've been reacting to Led Zeppelin. Led Zeppelin I was released in early 1969. I read somewhere that when George first heard Led Zeppelin, he wondered if he should just give up. Then they supported Led Zeppelin later that year while touring the States for at least one gig in Detroit, May 16 - and after that show they included a cover of Zeppelin's "Good Times Bad Times" in their own US shows for the next couple of months, though I've never found a recording of that cover.

No, I hadn't heard that Neil Merryweather cover of Eight Miles High before. I agree it's cool.