The beginnings of hard rock in Britain were seen in blues rock on the one hand and the mod-rock typified by The Who, The Kinks and The Small Faces on the other, all of whom have their roots to some extent in rock & roll and the pioneering sound of The Beatles. These early bands were followed in the late 1960's by heavier blues-based outfits like Cream, Free and Led Zeppelin and the seminal heavy metal outfits Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Uriah Heep and Hawkwind, the precursors of the New Wave of the 1980's British Heavy Metal bands spearheaded by Judas Priest, Motorhead, Def Leppard and Iron Maiden.

It's a little problematic as to whether or not the output of these later heavy metal bands can be classified as songs. Technically speaking they are, although the demotion of melody to a supporting role in favour of power riffs and soloing stretches the definition to its limits. Few songwriters in the usual sense of the word are discernible within their ranks, most of the material having been produced collectively rather than 'written'.

In the 1970's the centre ground of British hard rock was occupied by the glam and stadium bands typified by Queen and Thin Lizzy, who were then ousted by the coming of punk. Their mantle was taken over by Irish supergroup U2, who succesfully combined hard rock with pop and folk ( Bono has described their music as "folk played loud" ), adding to it guts and political conviction.

Hard rock and heavy metal went into a relative decline during the 1990's, revived for a while at the turn of the millenium by The Darkness, a pastiche heavy rock outfit led by the irrepressible Justin Hawkins, and the decline has steepened as the 21st century progresses, most of the creativity and innovation in this category coming from beyond Britain's shores.

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