page_title: British blues
section_title: Decline
hierarchical_section_title: British blues / Decline
caption_attribution_description: English: Ian Anderson and Martin Barre, Jethro Tull in concert, Chicago 1973.
context_page_description: British blues is a form of music derived from American blues that originated in the late 1950s, and reached its height of mainstream popularity in the 1960s. In Britain, it developed a distinctive and influential style dominated by electric guitar and made international stars of several proponents of the genre including The Rolling Stones, The Animals, Eric Clapton, Fleetwood Mac and Led Zeppelin.
context_section_description: British blues entered a rapid decline at the end of 1960s. Surviving bands and musicians tended to move into other expanding areas of rock music. Some, like Jethro Tull, followed bands like the Moody Blues away from 12-bar structures and harmonicas into complex, classical-influenced progressive rock. Some played a loud version of blues rock that became the foundation for hard rock and heavy metal. Led Zeppelin, formed by Yardbirds guitarist Jimmy Page, on their first two albums, both released in 1969, fused heavy blues and amplified rock to create what has been seen as a watershed in the development of hard rock and nascent heavy metal. Later recordings would mix in elements of folk and mysticism, which would also be a major influence on heavy metal music. Deep Purple developed a sound based on "squeezing and stretching" the blues, and achieved their commercial breakthrough with their fourth and distinctively heavier album, In Rock (1970), which has been seen as one of heavy metal's defining albums. Black Sabbath was the third incarnation of a group that started as the Polka Tulk Blues Band in 1968. Their early work included blues standards, but by the time of their second album Paranoid (1970), they had added elements of modality and the occult that would largely define modern heavy metal. Some, like Korner and Mayall, continued to play a "pure" form of the blues, but largely outside of mainstream notice. The structure of clubs, venues and festivals that had grown up in the early 1950s in Britain virtually disappeared in the 1970s.
caption: Members of Jethro Tull, in 1973, by which time they had already begun to move away from a blues sound
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