And never listened to rock stations. That's probably a much bigger factor. My Motown-fu is solid, for instance. That's also mostly before my time.
Yeah, about that. I was shocked for a few seconds and then I thought "what the hell, maybe it's time."
In all seriousness, first radio station I used the search for in any US city I drove into was the oldies station. It's not just a Motown thing.
One thing about the high energy performing bands like Slayer, that high energy that makes them famous is harder to do when they get older and leans them to early retirement on Live performances. Go to M3 in Columbia, MD in April and you'll see what's happened to the 80's hair bands. Mike Reno from Loverboy looked like he needed the high voltage heart paddle kit while LoverBoy was doing their set last year. But, he got through it pretty well.
KISS tried their damndest to be a metal band but when they hit that first chord and stared to sing it came out like some shitty light rock version of some other, even shittier band.
Given that Zeppelin and Sabbath were two of the original metal bands, I'm going to declare you wrong about the time frame. I agree they weren't metal..
We can agree to agree on your points, Sir. Although, I'm not so sure about Zepplin being Metal...but Sabbath is definitely the root from with all Metal grew.