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 and Hawkwind, the precursors of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands spearheaded by Judas Priest, Motorhead, Def Leppard and Iron Maiden in the 1980's.
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 that definition the absolute limit. Few songwriters are discernible within their ranks however, most of the material having been collectively "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 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 guts and political conviction.
Hard rock and heavy metal went into a relative decline during the 1990's, but the tradition has been given new life by Britain's first great hard rock band of the 21st century, The Darkness, led by the irrepressible Justin Hawkins, although, it has to be said, they are a lightweight pastiche of their 1980's forebears.

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