“Hard rock needed a miracle and it found one in this masterpiece”: The best rock debut album from every year of the 1970s

Famously recorded in one day, Black Sabbath’s debut album was released on Friday February 13, 1970 – a symbolic date. The title track and N.I.B. were the most potent examples of Sabbath’s elemental power. But elsewhere are traces of blues and psychedelia. Rolling Stone magazine mocked both the music and the occult imagery, declaring the album “a shuck… like Vanilla Fudge playing doggerel tribute to Aleister Crowley.” But in America, Black Sabbath sold a million. In the UK, it made the Top 10. And over time it would be acknowledged as a landmark album in the evolution of heavy metal.

With head-spinning, thought-blurring, all-round virtuosity-with-knobs-on from guitarist John McLaughlin and drummer Billy Cobham in particular, Mahavishnu Orchestra’s debut was the first jazz rock album that rock fans in numbers found themselves being jolted and grabbed by – enough of them, in fact, to make it an unlikely but important Top 20 hit. The thinking rock fan’s badge of cool in 1971.

They looked like an overdressed bunch of freaks, and Roxy Music’s genre-defying, futuristic-primitive debut record was a completely different animal to anything else that was around at the time. With its warbling wind instruments, detuned-radio synth tones and Bryan Ferry’s alien lounge-lizard vocal delivery, Roxy Music was wonderful, unique, and breathtaking.

A staggering debut that immediately established Lynyrd Skynyrd as the jewel in the crown of southern rock, there’s far more to (Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd) than simply its epic closing track, Freebird. The evergreen American FM radio staple might still deliver involuntary air-guitar nirvana to even the most casual listener, but Gimme Three Steps and Tuesday’s Gone can’t be underestimated.

Having signed the band to his Swan Song label, Peter Grant supposedly gave Bad Company two weeks to record their debut during a break in Led Zeppelin’s recording schedule at Hedley Grange. Seizing the opportunity with both hands, the band laid down eight tracks of bar-room boogie that could soundtrack anything from fighting to fucking.

From the opening line of a dismantled and reassembled take on Van Morrison’s Gloria – 'Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine' – it’s clear that this is a singular, uncompromising and shamanic voice, perfect in its imperfection. Unflinchingly exploring religion, death, childhood and the human condition, taking the groundwork of the beat poets and transforming it for a new, even bolder generation, this masterpiece remains essential.

Ramones’ shoestring-budget ($6,400) debut was born in a blur and delivered 14 songs in less than 29 minutes. Ramones bashed out such dizzying ditties as Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue, Beat On The Brat and Blitzkrieg Bop, alienation, boredom and cartoon characters serving as the group’s primary inspiration. It didn’t set the world on fire commercially, but its influence is without measure.

12 tracks that changed the world, this was the album that turned rock’n’roll on its head. Anarchic, chaotic and rebellious in both musical and lyrical terms, the world had never heard anything like Johnny Rotten’s sarky, disparaging sneer underscored by Steve Jones’ and Paul Cook’s ramshackle, breakneck cacophony before. God Save The Queen, Anarchy In The UK, Pretty Vacant, Bodies – it’s a hard rock classic.

In imminent danger of slumping into a punk-hastened early grave, hard rock needed a miracle and it found one on the Sunset Strip. Flamboyant front-man David Lee Roth was the perfect antithesis to post-punk austerity; he crowed like the cock of the walk, sported leather flares, a chestwig and an apparent shame bypass. Add ‘shreddy Eddie Van Halen to the mix and Van Halen's mega-stardom was not long coming.

Unknown Pleasures is a cornerstone of the post-punk movement. Under the guidance of producer Martin Hannett, it established Joy Division’s starkly original sound: a compelling and audacious landscape of urban dread driven by lead singer Ian Curtis’ anguish and Peter Hook’s propulsive bass lines. Curtis’ suicide the following year, compounding the poignancy of his lyrics.