1973 Quotes

“because he began using the term “heavy metal” with equal vigor, perhaps derived from a lyric in Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild,” or from Beat writer William Burroughs’s character The Heavy Metal Kid from his early ’60s Nova Trilogy. A blogger named A. S. Van Dorston chronicled all the times Saunders used the term in his reviews in the early ’70s.11 In a 1970 Humble Pie review for Rolling Stone, he brandished the term as an insult, but by 1971 in Creem he was using it positively for Sir Lord Baltimore. The following year he used it in multiple reviews in Rolling Stone and Phonograph Record magazine for bands like Deep Purple and Uriah Heep (and even Fanny), dubbing Sabbath the “Dark Princes of Heavy Metal.” That year other writers like Dave Marsh in Creem started picking it up as well. By 1973 NME followed suit, as did Melody Maker in 1974.”
― Andrew Grant Jackson, 1973: Rock at the Crossroads