Q 01/05

Which Led Zeppelin song builds from a quiet acoustic opening to a hard-rock finale over eight minutes?

A) Whole Lotta Love

B) Immigrant Song

C) Stairway to Heaven

D) Good Times Bad Times

Answer · why

C) Stairway to Heaven

Stairway to Heaven was never sold as a single: the band's manager turned down the label's pleas, so fans who wanted the song had to buy the whole four...

Q 02/05

The first use of 'heavy metal' in a song lyric, describing a motorcycle, comes from which 1968 track?

A) Helter Skelter

B) Born to Be Wild

C) Summertime Blues

D) In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida

Answer · why

B) Born to Be Wild

Born to Be Wild has Steppenwolf singing of 'heavy metal thunder', the roar of a bike rather than a style of music; a year later Easy Rider made the so...

Q 03/05

Which Beat writer used 'the Heavy Metal Kid' as a character name in his 1961 novel The Soft Machine?

A) Jack Kerouac

B) Allen Ginsberg

C) William S. Burroughs

D) Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Answer · why

C) William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs called the character Uranian Willy, the Heavy Metal Kid, and later explained that heavy metal seemed to him 'the ultimate express...

Q 04/05

Black Sabbath's heavy, down-tuned sound is partly credited to which accident of Tony Iommi's?

A) Going deaf in one ear

B) An electric shock

C) A broken wrist

D) Losing two fingertips

Answer · why

D) Losing two fingertips

Losing two fingertips to a factory machine on his last shift, at 17, drove Iommi to mould new tips from a melted washing-up bottle and find another wa...

Q 05/05

Black Sabbath took their name from a 1963 horror film starring whom?

A) Boris Karloff

B) Vincent Price

C) Christopher Lee

D) Bela Lugosi

Answer · why

A) Boris Karloff

Boris Karloff's film was showing at a cinema across the road from their rehearsal room; noticing that people paid to be scared, the band wrote a song ...