Sound of the Beast Page 4

  Minding the gap between Black Sabbath and the punk explosion, Motörhead members were rude longhairs on a speed binge of hammering bass chords, distorted guitar, and rumbling drums. Steering clear of politics or mythic heroes, and singing with gravel in place of vocal cords, Lemmy trafficked in debauched songs about sex, drugs, and rock and roll. The furious initial string of Motörhead albums— Overkill, Bomber, and Ace of Spades—choked the English music charts, impressing on metal fans that a band could succeed commercially without sacrificing its blunt power and integrity. Black Sabbath had introduced heavy metal, Judas Priest gave it flash, and Motörhead fortified it with true grit. So equipped, heavy metal swallowed punk rock and pressed forward.

  Meanwhile, the sun was setting fast on the polluted and confused British Empire. Unemployment reached 20 percent in the late 1970s, and combined with rising inflation to create a state of stagflation—a dreaded economic choke hold. Blighted by the worst conditions since World War II, the kingdom needed creative forces of all kinds. From punk came a catalyzing spark: the audacity to believe that anyone could start a rock band. “Punk created the idea of starting a record company from your garage or bedroom,” says Jess Cox from newfangled group Tygers of Pan Tang—a whirligig of riffs and hair that considered its music distinct from the past. “On a pure artist level, it didn’t matter if you could play or sing—the idea was getting up onstage and making a racket.” The results exhilarated a generation of teenagers dying to make their mark on vinyl.

  Ozzy Osbourne confessed to singing along to Beatles songs in front of his bedroom mirror as an adolescent—likewise, John and Mark Gallagher formed Raven with one acoustic guitar, which had been a souvenir of a family trip to Spain. Novice bassist John simply

  PUNK ROCK

  A brief burst of enthusiasm aimed at toppling the jaded rock scene, punk rock took hold of London, New York, and then Los Angeles, replacing pseudoscientific musical wizardry with abrupt visual style. Punk had a built-in look—in fact, the Sex Pistols and the Clash could have been mistaken for bar bands if not for the orange hair and shaved heads. In California, bands like Black Flag, Germs, and X showed that all was not beach balls and sunshine. Under the regime of Governor Reagan they attacked Hollywood ideals with misfit tantrums and threats. The New York scene was brainier, save for its most storied band, the legendary minimalist pinheads the Ramones, who dressed in matching jeans and motorcycle jackets and never stopped talking about Black Sabbath.

  Safety-Pin Classics

  Black Flag, Everything Went Black (1982)

  The Clash, The Clash (1979)

  The Damned, Damned Damned Damned (1976)

  The Fall, Live at the Witch Trials (1979)

  Germs, Gl (1979)

  Plasmatics, New Hope for the Wretched (1980)

  Ramones, Ramones (1976)

  Ramones, Rocket to Russia (1977)

  Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols (1977)

  X, Los Angeles (1980)

  tuned the instrument low when it was his turn to practice. From Radio 1 and the Top of the Pops television show, the brothers absorbed the glam rock thrills of Slade, Status Quo, and Sweet. Though Slade was more like catchy soccer rock than heavy metal, imitators like Raven upped the gonzo factor a thousandfold and turned the basic recipes into heavy metal staples.

  When they graduated to real instruments, the first venues Raven played were semiprivate “workingmen’s clubs” in Newcastle, which provided cheap beer and entertainment to fatigued dock- and factory workers. Some of these clubs hired the equivalent of Holiday Inn lounge singers. Others had off-color comedians and a few struggling rock bands. The audience sat at huge trestle tables on long wooden benches, waiting to be impressed. “You’d go before an audience that had no intention of being entertained by you and antagonize them into a reaction,” recalls John Gallagher. “People were throwing pint glasses at us. We used to play shows where there’d be three sets. We’d be going nuts; then, in between sets, there’d be bingo. We’d be backstage trying not to laugh while the guy was calling out numbers.”

  Judas Priest also cut its teeth in the workingmen’s clubs, as did emerging northern England bands like Saxon, known by the homely name Sonofabitch. Even the halfway glamorous Tygers of Pan Tang trod the boards. “The ‘turn,’ as they called you, played two sets of forty-five minutes between the bingo and the ‘meat draw,’” recalls Tygers singer Jess Cox. “Patrons bought a raffle ticket, and the winner picked from a hat went home with a tray of cold meat! The band was expected to be utterly silent on pain of death while the bingo numbers were being called. We were expected to do a lot of cover versions, and we did tracks by the Beatles, Motörhead, Ted Nugent, and AC/DC to pad our sets. At ten P.M. the punters could dance—not before, mind, or some burly monkey in a loud jacket told them to sit down. It was a very strange experience, but a great one to hone your act for the real world.”

  Ten years after Black Sabbath’s Star Club residency, the bohemian Hamburg clubs were closed—British bands could no longer take the ferry to Germany to earn their stripes. London bands had life a little better, with more opportunities to develop original material rather than play cover songs. By 1979 the city hosted countless neighborhood clubs where heavy music was the center of attention, including the Soundhouse, Music Machine, the Marquee, and the Bandwagon. All were stepping-stones to the hallowed Hammersmith Odeon, the 3,500-capacity West London concert capitol where Motörhead, and later Iron Maiden and Venom, recorded triumphant live albums.

  Facing a void of major-label disinterest, these new British acts took matters into their own hands by forming independent specialty record labels. Small companies could survive selling a few thousand copies of their records, requiring a prolific release schedule of minihits. “The whole ethos of do-it-yourself record companies created the movement,” says Jess Cox. “Heavy Metal Records, Ebony Records, Music For Nations, and so on. Neat Records is one big example. Neat [home of Raven] could not compete with the major labels, but then all of a sudden it was cool to be independent and small. The media supported it, so the shops stocked it, so the kids bought it.”

  Raven’s first single, released in 1980

  Bands designed their own record covers, usually in black and white, compensating for simplicity with eye-grabbing logos and apocalyptic images lifted from fantasy and science-fiction comics. As word spread, established weekly British music papers like Sounds and New Musical Express began to cover the likes of Raven and Tygers of Pan Tang. They introduced readers to London front-runners Iron Maiden and Sheffield’s hopefuls, Def Leppard, along with a whole colony of lesser-known bands still making “the turn” in regional English clubs. Sounds writer Geoff Barton popularized the term the “New Wave of British Heavy Metal,” usually shortened to the conveniently written but incredibly awkward acronym NWOBHM. “The NWOBHM already existed,” says John Gallagher of Raven, “but somebody from the media pointed it out and gave it that name.”

  The scene was ragtag, and the “New” in NWOBHM often meant inexperienced, yet there was little amateurism at play in Iron Maiden. They deftly synthesized the gothic layers of Judas Priest with the immediate danger of punk rock—a lethal and impressive combination. Clad in a black shirt with a silver spiked armband and belt, singer Paul Di’Anno, a reformed skinhead, commanded clubs with a Tom Jones swagger, coiling the microphone cable in his hand and extending his pinky finger with evident authority. Iron Maiden seemed to be playing ten times as many notes as anyone else, and its dazzling compositional approach elevated the musicianship of heavy metal for decades.

  Paul Di’Anno of Iron Maiden

  (EMI Records)

  Though Iron Maiden was just as caustic and direct as the Sex Pistols or Motörhead, they attacked with fast unison guitar progressions instead of buzz-saw chords. Most of Maiden’s songs were written by unusually aggressive bassist Steve Harris, who plucked a flurry of complex melody lines while the two guitarists hammered and pulled tricky harmonic complements.
From Judas Priest, Maiden inherited finger-stepping arpeggio guitar phrases and histrionic singing, and like Priest they took pride in being a heavy metal band. An early version of Maiden had been offered a record deal in 1976 if they would just “go punk,” but Harris and company held tight, relentlessly promoting their own career until the record industry was forced to take notice.

  Among a flurry of seven-inch singles by peers, Iron Maiden’s self-released Soundhouse Tapes EP hit the streets in 1979, the same year Margaret Thatcher took over as prime minister. Signaling a similar change of the musical guard, the bright riffing of “Iron Maiden,” “Invasion,” and “Prowler” spearheaded the NWOBHM scene. Previewing three tough spurts by a band not afraid to demonstrate musical chops, the Tapes were voted number one by London radio listener requests even prior to being officially released.

  England embraced Iron Maiden because the band loved its country. Maiden’s macabre lyrics grew from the elaborate images of “London town streets, when there’s darkness and fog” envisioned by Judas Priest’s 1976 song “The Ripper.” From the Damned and the witchy goth-punks Siouxsie and the Banshees, Iron Maiden adopted Shakespearean stage tricks like smoke machines and haunting homemade props. Capitalizing on their surroundings, Iron Maiden’s horror show evoked such typical British frights as the Hammer Films chiller features of the 1960s and the medieval torture devices on display at the Tower of London. It was merry and macabre, and all in good fun.

  In February 1980, Iron Maiden performed “Running Free” live on Top of the Pops, then, in May, released its self-titled Iron Maiden album. British heavy metal was ready for prime time—a rush of simultaneous albums appeared. Sharing the spotlight was Saxon’s Wheels of Steel, achrome-plated collection of solid, neck-breaking delights. Def Leppard, a group of teenagers from Sheffield, debuted with On Through the Night, tempering their raw exuberance with melodic Thin Lizzy—style guitars. Then Motörhead released Ace of Spades, the most essential of its early speed bursts, revealing the secrets of Lemmy’s immortality with tales of sexual conquest and life on the road. Severing connections to the past, this impressive slate of albums brought relentless heaviness with flashes of weightless euphoria—together they formed the nucleus of the NWOBHM universe.

  Heavy metal was music under pressure, with multiple layers of rhythm and melody delivering a fireworks show of high-speed sound. Accelerating the flashy ethos in heavy metal songwriting, the force of multiple guitars became a uniquely central element, encouraging more complex musical development. Even the most basic NWOBHM rogues modulated their three chords with tempo changes, guitar solos, and shifts in mood and energy. Explains Dave Mustaine, the founder of Megadeth and an early member of Metallica, “The NWOBHM brought a lot of lesser-known bands, but their musical style was much more appealing to me. It was all based on cyclical patterns of riffs.”

  With Black Sabbath’s career temporarily on hold, Judas Priest stepped in to head this metal renaissance. They capped the deluge of 1980 with the triumphant British Steel, whose title and songs like “Metal Gods” explicitly name-checked the English heavy metal phenomenon. Having survived punk in London and toured briefly in America with Kiss, a wiser Judas Priest switched gears into a streamlined approach. “Living After Midnight” and “Breaking the Law” emphasized chanting choruses instead of elaborate classical constructions. “That was the big breakthrough for Priest,” says Rob Halford. “It was the record that started to break down any walls of oppression in the biggest sense. Once songs like ‘Living After Midnight’ and ‘Breaking the Law’ started to hit the airwaves, then that just segued into other things.”

  Side by side there was no comparison between 1970s hard rock and the NWOBHM forces. The players even looked more aggressive after 1980—instead of flowery open shirts, bell-bottoms, and mustaches, heavy metal bands dressed in tight-fitting black leather and slick synthetic materials decorated with abstract pointed angles, lightning bolts, and shiny metal. “I remember wearing a Clash T-shirt onstage,” says Jess Cox. “We also had straight trouser legs as opposed to flares. We had our hair with straight-cut fringes instead of the old center parting. I know that sounds stupid, but back in the late seventies most older rock acts had handlebar mustaches!”

  Touching the larger issues instigated by punk, the NWOBHM bands also took a streetwise yet oblique approach to politics. The picture sleeve of “Sanctuary,” a single from Iron Maiden, depicted Prime Minister Thatcher being axed in an alleyway as she attempted to tear down an Iron Maiden flyer. The British government responded to the record’s popularity with an official censure, requiring that future editions place a black bar over the face of the tormented leader. For her troubles, Thatcher, who cut social programs, sold off government agencies, and fought organized labor, was later nicknamed “the Iron Maiden” by the mainstream press.

  Replacing the orange Mohawks of the punk phase, heavy metal fans adopted their own look, based largely on the tough European rockers of the 1970s (seen standing around campfires in the Who’s 1973 rock opera Quadrophenia). These were young Germans, English, Dutch, and Italians who had survived terrorists, economic downturns, and the presence of NATO or Eastern Bloc troops during the Cold War. Like Hells Angels, they wore black leather jackets under ripped denim vests lovingly adorned with band pins and Motörhead, Thin Lizzy, or Deep Purple back patches. “My entire life I was exposed to bikers,” says Tom Warrior, whose father was a motorcycle racer and racing publisher. “I found biker gangs in America, no matter how unbelievably radical they looked, the best guys ever. In Europe, especially in the early 1980s, they were more violent and involved in turf wars and prostitution and things like that. That was the fan base for Deep Purple and Motörhead. The whole heavy metal uniform is basically a clone of that.”

  Grasping the edges of the stage and shaking their sweaty heads in devotion to the pulsing music, these first “headbangers” clung religiously to their new classics. They gravitated into the orbits of a hundred new heavy bands—Diamond Head, Angel Witch, and Raven foremost among them. In a manic grab for attention, these groups created music that was sheer excitement—hyperactive and impossible to ignore. Raven’s first two albums, Rock Til You Drop and Wiped Out charged into the 1980s with squealing vocals and guitars, crazed by the thrill of speed and sonic pyrotechnics of pure, unadulterated heavy metal. “There’s no edge, no finesse, no guile to what they do,” wrote Sounds. “Pure and simply, Raven [is] all passion.”

  Tying up 1980 neatly, Black Sabbath’s Paranoid was reissued to continued acclaim. The decade-old metal archetype once again dented the UK charts—joined by Iron Maiden’s debut, which rose to number four. In August 1980 Sounds helped promote a concert called Monsters of Rock, which brought Judas Priest, Saxon, Scorpions, Rainbow, Riot, April Wine, and 60,000 fans to the estate of Castle Donington for the first exclusively heavy metal festival. The event plugged metal musicians in to the surging energy of a huge English audience and proved that their scene had grown well beyond its humble pub roots. Most important, when given the opportunity to show their numbers, loyal heavy metal fans responded en masse.

  While new heavy metal bands were forming daily, British headbangers could uncover the latest developments only in the column margins of Sounds or by tracking down a copy of Aardschok—a magazine from Holland unfortunately written in Dutch. Following Monsters of Rock, London publishers dedicated greater portions of the English language to the new heavy metal energy. Sounds spun off its coverage of the NWOBHM in June 1981 into an all-metal offshoot dubbed Kerrang!, an onomatopoeic moniker expressing the clang of guitars, the crash of cymbals, and the snap of banging heads. Lemmy claimed that the name was copied from a Motörhead stage banner.

  Kerrang! instantly became a metal bible, hosting a stable of reassigned Sounds writers like Geoff Barton and Malcolm Dome who gave voice and identity to the burgeoning underworld. Like accelerated English versions of Lester Bangs and Hunter S. Thompson, they enthusiastically dove into the metal scene and regaled readers with long
-winded and half-intoxicated reports of their brushes with greatness. Inside Kerrang!’s first issue were items on Diamond Head, Venom, Raven, and Jaguar; glorious color photos of Lemmy, Girlschool, and eccentric guitar prodigy Michael Schenker of UFO; and an investigation of the curiously British home life and rustic tea-drinking habits of Saxon. A small photo item compared the relative pudginess of Meatloaf, Simon LeBon of Duran Duran, and Iron Maiden’s Paul Di’Anno.

  Kerrang! No. 1: birth of the headbanger’s bible

  Kerrang! grew to be so widely read that many of the bands it championed became influential, if not always long-lived, metal icons. Among the in-house favorites was the formidable Girlschool, an all-female South London troupe heavy enough to match weaponry with Motörhead. On the 1980 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre EP, the two sweetheart bands covered each other’s songs. Kerrang! bestowed more space than merited by sheer musical might on Jon Mikl Thor, aka Thor, a former Mr. Teen Canada bodybuilder whose muscular sideshow included blowing up hot-water bottles like balloons and bending steel bars in his teeth. One of the tamer acts the magazine championed was Samson, whose unusual drummer, Thunder-stick—an early and brief member of Iron Maiden— wore a sequined hood, never spoke, and played with a zoo cage constructed around his drums.

  Motörhead/Girlschool seven-inch

  The magazine had an incredible compass for talent. The cover of Kerrang! No. 1 pictured sweaty guitarist Angus Young of AC/DC dressed in his trademark schoolboy uniform. Inside, the magazine’s list of the one hundred greatest heavy metal singles of all time was topped by AC/DC’s “Whole Lotta Rosie.” Though not strictly a British band, having relocated to England only in 1976 from the former penal colony of Australia, the straightforward powerhouse was a key common denominator of the NWOBHM. AC/DC survived the harsh proving grounds of Australia in the same way that Black Sabbath had trained in the blues clubs of Hamburg, Germany. At one point AC/DC’s schedule called for three shows a day: high schools in the afternoons, cocktail bars in the evening, and gay dance halls at night. This relentless drive led to a slew of gritty, well-toned LPs, including High Voltage, Powerage, and Let There Be Rock. The band toured relentlessly, supporting Kiss, Black Sabbath, Scorpions, UFO, Alice Cooper, Aerosmith, and Rainbow, and was a fearless force onstage. Their ravenous 1979 LP Highway to Hell, with potent, searing guitars and a furious downbeat, was an ominous metal milestone.