Sound of the Beast Read online

  The makeup, blood, and fire created an indelible subdermal impression on fans, many of whom never even heard the music. Kiss shrewdly filled the widening generation gap with merchandise, creating dolls, pajamas, bubble-gum cards, a board game, a comic book published by Marvel, and a pinball machine. Already costumed superbeings, they were soon the stars of their own sci-fi movie, Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park. Abandoning Dr. Seuss for “Dr. Love” soon became a rite of passage in American elementary schools. Upon reaching the other side of childhood, that huge population looked with singed retinas to heavy metal to deliver the same shock and thunder.

  Black Sabbath offered listeners something more than three chords and a good show—but their audience was still left to scavenge for sounds with similar impact. By the mid-1970s, heavy metal aesthetic could be spotted, like a mythical beast, in the moody bass and complex dual guitars of Thin Lizzy, in the stagecraft of Alice Cooper, in the sizzling guitar and showy vocals of Queen, and in the thundering medieval questions of Rainbow. Then, following Sabbath out of Birmingham in 1974, Judas Priest arrived to unify and amplify these diverse highlights from hard rock’s sonic palette. For the first time, heavy metal became a true genre unto itself.

  With Judas Priest the chugging momentum of Deep Purple was harnessed for a threatening attack from which the histrionic peaks of Led Zeppelin were mere foothills. Nothing before matched the speed of Glenn Tipton and K. K. Downing’s guitars or the high drama of Rob Halford’s phenomenal voice. Judas Priest skimmed the most intense elements of the past into a cauldron and remixed perception in a magical way. “I was inventing my vocal technique as it went along, really,” says Rob Halford. “I didn’t really have much in terms of people that sounded cool to look around and say I wanted to sound like this or emulate that.”

  Judas Priest made no bones about openly proclaiming its goal: to be the world’s ultimate heavy metal band. The lineage from Sabbath could have hardly been stranger. Sabbath lent the younger band its rehearsal space, and one of Judas Priest’s members had briefly been involved with Earth, the band that became Black Sabbath.

  Yet compared to Sabbath, Judas Priest’s music was very formal, tightly organized around breaks, bridges, and dynamic peaks. As Black Sabbath coalesced according to feel instead of a steady metronome meter, Judas Priest took a heavily composed approach. The melodic, mind-expanding interplay of Tipton and Downing used twin lead guitars as carving tools to deftly cut and shape sound at high-decibel volumes. Each scorching lead guitar break was inserted in another perfect song crevice, pointing the way to new invulnerable creations. Unlike the utterly primal Black Sabbath, young players could emulate Priest without sounding like clones—the band’s astonishing repertoire of musical techniques demanded further exploration.

  Just as Paranoid had tackled politics and power struggles, on Sad Wings of Destiny the uncanny Rob Halford took lyrics from the extraordinary thoughts of Sun-tzu and the royal Shakespearean dramas. He ignited them with searing vocal fireworks. “I was blessed with extraordinary vocal chords that can do some bizarre things,” says Halford, “and it was always a case of looking at new ways of doing things from song to song. It was all about experimentation more than anything else.”

  Though the “flashing senseless sabers” of “Genocide” could be seen as mere battlefield fantasy, the song was written the same year that Pol Pot was “cleansing” the prison-state of Cambodia of a million and a half ethnic minorities, many of whom were beheaded with swords. This was the mission of heavy metal: to confront the big picture—to create a connection between life and the cosmos. If there were to be love songs, they would be epics, not odes to teenage puppy love at the soda shop. Lyrical conflict would exist on a grand scale, which in the 1970s meant lashing out against despots, dictators, and antidemocratic Watergate burglars. “I always understood rock as a form of revolution of young people against the establishment,” says metaller Tom Warrior of Celtic Frost. “Though nowadays, of course, it’s one big commercial machine, deep within me the spirit is there. I can’t deny it, because I experienced it like that when I was a kid.”

  Other new heavy metal bands were ruthlessly heretical, continually facing rejection. Following a space rock debut in 1972, the German hard rockers Scorpions compressed eight-minute jams into guitar-driven overdrive. Courting taboo, their 1976 album Virgin Killer depicted a nude fourteen-year-old girl with a shattered pane of glass over her pubescent pubic delta—and was promptly banned outright in America. The image was an exaggeration of the prevalent attitude toward sexual experimentation, and the music embraced a wild new mentality that chanted for excitement. Heavy metal audiences wanted to be shocked, and they craved the stimulation of difficult territory. “We respected other bands like Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, but we wanted to do it differently,” says Rudolph Schenker, guitarist of Scorpions. “We were a different generation.”

  Pigeonholed prematurely as minimalists, Black Sabbath asserted a metallic mastery on its sixth album, 1975’s Sabotage. Following the accomplished path begun by 1973’s Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, the LP hurtled through the looking glass with a band beset by lucid nightmares. “Hole in the Sky” and “Symptom of the Universe” were pummeling psychedelic masterpieces long overdue from the reality-altering Sabbath; yet the dominant theme of Sabotage was splendor in the face of cold money invaders—the cathedral-size claustrophobia of “Megalomania” and “The Writ” pushed away the lawyers and managers who had been bleeding the band dry. By this point Sabbath was experiencing the first divorces and drug breakdowns endemic to rock stars, and “Am I Going Insane,” was Ozzy’s great moment of clarity after allegedly spending the entirety of 1972 through 1974 on LSD. Sabotage was a high point for the band. Joined by the English Chamber Choir for the opulent “Supertzar,” Black Sabbath proudly displayed its delusions and hoisted aloft its grandeur.

  Swerving from beneath its mentor’s shadow, Judas Priest modernized tremendously on 1978’s Stained Class. Contemplating the information age, the cover depicted a metallic humanoid head being pierced by colored beams of light. Instead of crying out in protest against the powers that be, songs like “Exciter” and “Saints in Hell” spoke from the point of view of authority, wielding the merciless force of the music like a weapon. While Ozzy Osbourne’s voice had remarkable emotional quality, he was not widely regarded as a gifted singer. Rob Halford, however, perfected a searing, vibrato-ridden delivery that fluttered from a banshee’s wail down to an angry clenched snarl. When united with bold studio effects and the crisp guitar exchanges of Tipton and Downing, the combination of talent and technique was nothing short of state-of-the-art heavy metal genius.

  Though somewhat marginalized by the press, heavy metal spoke to an unrecognized audience—and heavy acts began banding together on long concert tours in search of that support. “We really, truly created metal fans as we made album to album,” says Rob Halford. “There wasn’t any broad-based metal culture at the time. We would go around the UK and Europe, and eventually over to America, and people were just very slowly turning on to this brand-new style and brand-new sound. Each generation finds something that’s relative musically, that they want to identify with and call their own—that’s how we were connecting with our first fans.”

  The food of heavy metal’s long life was forming. When Black Sabbath appeared from Birmingham, the sound was an aberration, emulated by many without being completely developed and expanded. After the arrival of Judas Priest, heavy metal constituted a full-fledged movement that could trace its trajectory from point A to point B. As the next wave of bands picked up the path, the cycle would take on the characteristics of an avalanche, surging onward with increasing power and momentum.

  1970S Protometal

  The small-fries of the late 1970s found heaviness in the unexplored crevices left in the tracks of hard rock dinosaurs. Kiss and AC/DC compressed the biggest sounds of the past into bite-size anthems. Judas Priest and Scorpions added electrifying dual guitars—an incredible new dime
nsion that became the basis for heavy metal songwriting. Though they looked like hard rockers, these bands were the basis for something new. Their lyrics were less abstract, more tied to the life happening on the streets. As they gained momentum during the 1970s, one by one these bands left behind the lumbering gait of hard rock, crossing over completely to heavy metal.

  Heavy Evidence

  AC/DC, If You Want Blood, You’ve Got It (1978)

  Bloodrock, 3(1971)

  Judas Priest, Sad Wings of Destiny (1976)

  Kiss, Double Platinum (1978)

  Led Zeppelin, Presence (1976)

  New York Dolls, New York Dolls (1973)

  Rainbow, Rising (1976)

  Runaways, Queens of Noise (1977)

  Scorpions, In Trance (1975)

  Scorpions, Tokyo Tapes (1978)

  Thin Lizzy, Jailbreak (1976)

  Robin Trower, Live (1976)

  UFO, Lights Out (1977)

  Nearing the close of the 1970s, Black Sabbath’s name was often openly invoked in Britain by new bands praising their influence—yet the mighty band was failing as a unit. The simmering energy of a new brood of admirers might have buoyed Sabbath’s spirits, except that the band had left England for Los Angeles in 1976 to avoid paying exorbitant British income taxes. Ozzy, Iommi, Butler, and Ward were too distant to participate in the late-1970s UK music scene except on occasional visits, like absentee fathers. The insulated world they shared was beginning to crumble, as ten years of touring, personal isolation, legal woes, and heavy substance abuse took their toll.

  Never Say Die tourbook

  (Collection of Omid Yamini)

  Backed into an alcoholic corner, Ozzy Osbourne quit Black Sabbath before the recording of 1978’s Never Say Die and was briefly replaced by Savoy Brown singer Dave Walker. Ozzy returned to finish the album but soon quit Sabbath for good following a disastrous UK tour that left the band in flagging spirits. A strange New York act called the Ramones supported Sabbath’s U.S. dates that year, while the Los Angeles group Van Halen—initially named Rat Salad after an instrumental on Paranoid—opened for Sabbath’s 10th Anniversary Tour of England. The athletic performances of Van Halen upstaged the aging demons from Birmingham nightly. “They were so good,” said Ozzy, “and we were at the end of our tether.”

  Ozzy Osbourne in 1977

  (Austin [Hardrockßg] Majors)

  The two final Ozzy-era albums, Never Say Die and 1976’s Technical Ecstasy, were the work of a fatigued band. It seemed as though on the seventh record Black Sabbath rested, and then again on the eighth. The sweeping heaviness of Sabotage was replaced by a casual, bluesy swing that gave listeners a breather, replacing magnificently oppressive feelings with something merely sanguine. The results reached for progress yet often resorted to therapy. Like the Beatles’ Let It Be, it was the sound of old friends propping each other up through one last round. In fact, Bill Ward recalls singing dummy vocal tracks to guide Ozzy through his paces while recording Never Say Die.

  When Ozzy Osbourne finally left Black Sabbath, it was more than the end of an era. His departure dissolved a personal chemistry that began when schoolyard bully Tony Iommi beat up Ozzy as a teenager and carried through eight albums that took music to a haunting, pounding new cataclysmic depth. Whether Black Sabbath would continue after Ozzy was uncertain. Whoever filled Ozzy’s place—if indeed the band would even continue without him—would stand in the boots of a giant.

  As when the Beatles called it a day, Ozzy split apart the Sab Four having programmed the instructional code for a new musical protocol. Even while temporarily out of commission, Black Sabbath continued to influence the younger generation from across an ocean. As it turned out, heavy metal would repeatedly prove to be best inspired from a distance—where strong impressions, memories, and images were encouraged to run amok in the imagination. Ultimately, as successive waves of bands emerged to exploit the forces Sabbath set in motion, the success and excess of all other 1970s hard rock supergroups would pale in comparison.

  II

  The new Wave

  of British Heavy Metal

  1977: First official Motörhead LP released

  1980: Judas Priest’s British Steel crowns a slew of LPs, including Iron Maiden, Def Leppard’s On Through the Night, Saxon’s Wheels of Steel, and Motörhead’s Ace of Spades

  February 20, 1980: AC/DC singer Bon Scott dies

  June 1981: First issue of Kerrang! published in London

  1981: Judas Priest and Iron Maiden tour North America.

  As Judas Priest and others ripped heavy metal away from its hard rock roots in the mid-1970s, another musical revolution called punk was doing some rock and roll housecleaning of its own. Punk countered the overprocessed, assembly-line glamour of millionaire bands like Kiss and Led Zeppelin with a simple visual violence: mismatched hair dye, safety pins worn as jewelry, and partially shaved heads. It was a hodgepodge, ragamuffin musical fashion that exaggerated and challenged cultural values, inverting the proper and championing the sick.

  Like the mod and Edwardian teen scenes before it, punk was centered on the clothing boutiques of London’s fashion districts—in particular the Kings Road shop founded by the Sex Pistols’ manager, Malcolm McLaren. As punk rock flew the coop to New York and Los Angeles in the late 1970s, it shook up personal style and fashion, igniting social rebellion more than inciting musical revolution. Most important, punk allowed proponents the freedom to play however they wanted and to freely speak their minds. Members of the great punk bands the Sex Pistols and the Clash had played hard rock in pub bands before the liberating onset of punk. Consequently, anthems like “Anarchy in the UK” and “London Calling” were far less shocking in sound than via what they said about affairs in Great Britain.

  For bands like the sardonic Fall and the austere Wire, musical simplicity was a statement. For others like X-ray Spex, it was a question of inexperience. The iconoclastic Los Angeles punk band Black Flag found this lack of interest in musical craft limiting. As guitarist Greg Ginn told L.A. Weekly, “I thought that if you’re gonna call yourself a band and claim to play music, it’s not too much to ask that you practice a couple hours, five nights a week. But a lot of people thought, ‘Well, we’d rather party or hang out or this or that.’ And in punk rock, there was a lot of that mentality—’Why do you need to practice so much?’ It was supposed to be ‘Everything’s zero, and life’s not worth anything, so why would you bother practicing?’”

  Many of punk’s buzzing barnstorms were premature stabs at playing heavy metal. For instance, London’s the Damned used fast, heavy power chords in its songs, and spooky singer Dave Vanian wore pale makeup and dressed like a vampire. Like most British punks, the Damned were inspired to form by the Ramones, a Queens, New York, quartet whose 1976 UK tour inaugurated the era of faster and louder. Dressed in a uniform of blue jeans and black leather motorcycle jackets, the Ramones never hid their love for Black Sabbath. Along with a weakness for 1950s greaser bands and doo-wop, their hard-driving repertoire was derived almost entirely from the pummeling chords of “Paranoid.”

  Nonetheless, what little support existed for heavy metal in the music scene evaporated as major labels scrambled to sign anything wearing Mohawks and safety pins. The Sex Pistols lampooned one of their suitors with the song “EMI,” teasing the moneymakers even as they shopped for a better contract. Yet within three years the feeding frenzy was over, as rude revolt was squandered on self-destruction. Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious died on bail, and the band and their entourage scattered. “I think punk was important if only to show you how a crash-and-burn system operates in rock and roll,” says Rob Halford of Judas Priest. “That’s what it was meant to be. There were only a couple great moments that had any lasting significance.”

  Wendy O. Williams and Richie Stotts of the Plasmatics

  (John Michaels)

  For all its spastic gobbing in the streets, punk was continually preoccupied with the type of snobbery that was exactly what Blac
k Sabbath had spent the better part of a decade ignoring. Consequently, status consciousness overcame tough posturing after punks tasted success. Like the Rolling Stones several years earlier, the punks bought small estates and turned to pilfering Jamaican reggae music for new ideas. “Punk has a built-in obsolescence,” says Paul Stanley of Kiss, “in the fact that you’re singing about being a have-not. Then success makes you a have, and the idea of being angry because you’re poor is buried very quickly when your record sells. The idea is great, and the anger and emotion is great, but ultimately you have to move on, and the music’s going to have to do the talking.”

  Punk did renew England’s sense of musical identity and fortunately kick-started a fresh wave of rudimentary heavy metal. In 1977, the same year the label introduced the Damned, Stiff Records released the self-titled debut by Motörhead, a band whose dedication to extremes made even punk rock seem uptight. Motörhead leader Ian Kilmister, aka Lemmy, was a former roadie for the Jimi Hendrix Experience and a popular member of the LSD-fueled space rock roustabouts Hawkwind. Leveraging natural beauty—facial warts and missing teeth—with a tattoo that read BORN TO LOSE, Lemmy defied the appeal of rock-star pretty boys, far beyond even the rascally Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols. He was a quick-witted and charismatic endorsement for dangerous living, and became the grand lord of dirty indifference while fans copied his outlaw wardrobe of bullet belts, denim vests, cowboy shirts, and Motörhead patches.