Sound of the Beast Read online

  After a cooling-off period courtesy of the Canadian power trio Triumph, a squadron of four German fighter airplanes flew over the undiminished crowd at nightfall, introducing Scorpions. A seasoned touring band with eight albums behind them, Scorpions delivered a long, powerful set, culminating in a five-minute orgy of ecstatic noise and guitar feedback. Headliners Van Halen brought the day and their hardest era to a close with metallic luster, untarnished by the slurred delivery of singer David Lee Roth.

  A two-hour U.S. Festival Special ran on Showtime throughout the summer, beaming images of heavy metal crusaders in action through the emerging medium of cable television. Cable was a technological innovation that would soon prove as essential an ally to heavy metal as had the cassette tape. Taking notice, music-video outlets like the USA Network’s Radio 1990 and Night Flight and Canada’s Much Music began airing clips from bands like Def Leppard, Scorpions, and Krokus. As television bent to acknowledge the success of heavy metal touring acts, it seemed that a victory had been won over the likes of Adam and the Ants and Duran Duran—made-for-TV bands from England’s “new romantic” movement whom metalheads had fingered as avowed foes.

  While radio continued to steer clear of all but the tamest ballads, in 1983 a new all-music television channel called MTV began investing more wisely in the rising popularity of heavy metal in America. Initially the cable channel had emulated the programming strategies of commercial radio, from which it also culled its on-air hosts. In order to avoid being usurped by a powerful radio network, MTV now needed to branch into new territory. The novelty of new wave videos by Flock of Seagulls and Devo had gathered much-needed early attention for the channel, but advertisers were growing restless. To build an empire safe from imitation and hostile takeovers, the company needed to progress to something flashier and at the same time more bankable.

  Heavy metal was perfect: a platinum-selling new music genre complete with attention-getting stage sets, vivid album art, and bright costumes. “MTV came on board, and they were looking for bands that had visual value,” recalls Twisted Sister singer Dee Snider. “I think one of the reasons they embraced heavy metal, and were very involved in that resurgence, is because heavy metal and hard rock had always been visually driven. To us it was natural. We were already dressing up and doing a stage show—just stick a camera in front of us and we were ready to go.”

  Primping and snarling, heavy metal bands made glamorous and outrageous pinups. Even as former members Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins of 1970s progressive rock band Genesis were reinvented as solo video stars, heavy metal fought to replace rock and roll clichés with fresh sounds and fun antagonism. “There were bands that died a death with the birth of MTV, like Supertramp and Joe Jackson,” recalls Dee Snider. “I remember .38 Special had a lot of platinum records and hit singles, but they were just like blah to look at, whereas the metal bands were able to give them a show.”

  Powered by videos for “Photograph,” “Foolin’” and “Rock of Ages,” the most visible heavy metal act of the summer of 1983 was NWOBHM prodigy Def Leppard, who had become more cute than lethal. Blocked from topping the Billboard chart by the unprecedented thirty-seven-week run at number one of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, by year’s end the group nonetheless burned through nearly 4 million copies of their third album, Pyromania.

  Metal health nuts: Quiet Riot

  (Deborah Laws/Metalflakes.com)

  Los Angeles club veterans Quiet Riot finally knocked over Jackson at the close of 1983, and in November their Metal Health went to number one. Though a little hackneyed, Quiet Riot was an undeniable influence on things to come— Metal Health‘s “Slick Black Cadillac” was covered by James Hetfield and Ron Mc-Govney in their pre-Metallica band. As outgoing Quiet Riot singer Kevin DuBrow told Kerrang!, “I believe we’ve now sold over two million albums and the single should go top ten this week. What is really exciting is that it will be the first time that a true heavy metal single has made the U.S. top ten!” Indeed, if heavy metal was heard only underground three years prior, its virtues were now shouted out in aerobics classes across the country; the chart-topping “Metal Health” urging, “Bang your head! Metal health will drive you mad!”

  Following Quiet Riot’s day in the sun, a succession of heavier video stars from Southern California brought metal to the masses. First came Mötley Crüe, whose fist-pounding 1983 breakthrough, Shout at the Devil, was heavy metal burlesque, resplendent with pentagrams, fire, and black leather. Then Ratt, whose videos for “Round and Round” and “Wanted Man” pushed its 1984 debut, Out of the Cellar, to number seven in the United States, was soon selling 3 million copies. Also in 1984, Twisted Sister’s Stay Hungry went double platinum on the strength of medium-defining music videos for “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and “I Wanna Rock.”

  Appearances on MTV clearly had a huge effect on promoting bands, doubling or tripling sales possible by touring alone—yet, curiously, very few bands grew heavier after being on MTV. Following Pyromania, NWOBHM veterans Def Leppard transformed into something unrecognizably bland. They were not alone. Via the machinations of success, most bands in Los Angeles seemed to become overdressed balladeers. Ratt had begun in clubs wearing black leather and imitating British metal, but by its second album the band sounded much more like Gary Numan, an edgy but emotionless video rock contemporary. Only the guitars and haircuts kept a metal sheen, as producers coaxed the bands out of the live element and increasingly toward commercial compromise.

  Dedicated touring and MTV videos represented two markedly different career strategies, one emphasizing music and the other stressing image. Initially both were aspects of a heavy metal superstar’s career. “It’s fair to say that even Judas Priest was influenced by the opportunities that existed only in America through radio and through TV,” says Rob Halford. “If you look and sound a certain way, it can open up to a potentially bigger audience. The way that Priest handled that is first and foremost we said that we would never be a sellout band. We were never in this for the money. There’s a way of handling it and developing it while still remaining true to the beliefs of what your music is about, while hoping that you’re making something that can reach more people. It’s a fine balance, really.”

  A slew of successful tours united credible metal heroes with MTV metallers. Black Sabbath recruited former Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan in 1983 for their last surge of power before a long malaise and toured with MTV upstarts Quiet Riot. Likewise, Ozzy Osbourne teamed with the hungry young opening act Mötley Crüe, and Iron Maiden traveled extensively in 1984 with Twisted Sister. If the head-liners suffered in record sales compared to their mass-marketed openers, they still saved in video promotion costs and partially recouped in T-shirt sales. To the benefit of everyone involved, fans accepted all heavy metal equally during this first innocent burst of popularity.

  Even as heavy metal rapidly reaped commercial rewards, rock and roll flunkies were utterly unprepared. The New Rolling Stone Record Guide, a consumer guide released in 1983, summarized Judas Priest’s first nine albums in an insulting twenty words, including “grunting” and “vulgar.” The music magazine of record totally failed to recognize that the rules had changed. “Dull-witted and flatulent as ever” wrote Rolling Stone of Black Sabbath’s Mob Rules. “Dio’s lyrics are uninspired and clichéd.” Of Iron Maiden’s breakthrough the magazine wrote, “The Number of the Beast blusters along aimlessly, proving again that bad music is hell.” Def Leppard, Saxon, and the NWOBHM movement were utterly ignored. Among the crucial bands only Motör-head was reviewed favorably. Due credit was given to Lemmy’s lyrics, inasmuch as they reminded the writer of the Clash—who were by this point an irrelevant Casbah-rocking force only in frat rock.

  Though the aging American rock music press denigrated Judas Priest and dismissed Black Sabbath’s entire discography with condescending one-star reviews, it was music and energy that drove progress, not the dictates of Beatles-generation critics. The new coveted audience consisted of the children
of Baby Boomers. This was a different generation from the one that needed folk songs from James Taylor and Carly Simon to negotiate painful relationships in the 1970s. Heavy metal fans themselves were often products of divorce, looking for direction in larger-than-life expressions of humanity.

  Soon the less prestigious teen rock magazines Circus and Hit Parader responded to readers alienated by Rolling Stone. Circus had

  VIDEO METAL

  Heavy metal was a complete package of screaming licks and fantastic imagery, and in 1983 the struggling cable network MTV picked up on the heavy metal look in a major way. Of the early heavy metal bands that went platinum in the 1980s, many relied on the strength of their videos.

  Videography

  Def Leppard, Pyromania (1983)

  “Rock of Ages,” “Photograph,” “Foolin,”

  “Rock Rock’Til You Drop”

  Dokken, Tooth and Nail (1984)

  “Tooth and Nail,” “Alone Again”

  Mötley Crüe, Shout at the Devil (1983)

  “Looks That Kill,” “Too Young to Fall in Love”

  Quiet Riot, Metal Health (1983)

  “Metal Health,” “Cum On Feel the Noize”

  Ratt, Out of the Cellar (1984)

  “Round and Round,” “Wanted Man”

  Scorpions, Love at First Sting (1984)

  “Rock You Like a Hurricane,” “Still Loving You”

  Twisted Sister, Stay Hungry (1984)

  “I Wanna Rock,” “We’re Not Gonna Take It,”

  “The Price”

  struggled through several permutations, including Circus Weekly—a 1970s precursor to Teen People that ran profiles on stars like Miss Piggy and Clint Eastwood. Hit Parader was a provocateur of pubescent passions dating back to teen idols Elvis and Fabian. These magazines added larger portions of metal coverage slowly, until the Pat Benatar interviews, Robert Plant pinups, and REO Speedwagon song lyrics were eventually phased out completely.

  The two magazines, later joined by Rip, poured Mötley Crüe, Scorpions, and Iron Maiden in supersizes through American 7-Elevens, supermarkets, and drugstores. Gratefully, the editorial agenda was beholden to the loyalties of heavy metal fans, not the short-term needs of record companies. “Circus was all based on reader polls,” says Ben Liemer, then managing editor. “All the publicists would ask, ‘What do I have to do to get on the cover of your magazine?’ I’d always say, ‘There’s not a damn thing you can do until your name shows up in that little box’—the one that said, ‘Please write to us and tell us what five acts you’d like us to cover more.’ We would always do whatever the readers wanted.”

  Heavy metal headlines: Circus in 1983

  Packed with sweaty live photos, metal fan magazines acted as at-home extensions of the concert experience, publishing tour dates and news items about massive stage shows still in development. Though the homogenizing effect of MTV on the music was troubling, twenty-four hours of videos daily represented only the tip of the metal iceberg. “There was never enough metal on MTV to satisfy the metalheads anyway,” says Liemer. “They would always be playing Michael Jackson and cheesy Norwegian pop bands.”

  With monthly circulation around 450,000 for Circus and 250,000 for Hit Parader, the metal glossies provided a heavy metal lifeline that overwhelmed the still-influential but more specialized import Kerrang! The key was not investigating a wide spread of heavy metal bands but providing incessant repetition of the most powerful. “We were not as open to covering new bands as you’d think,” says Liemer. “They had to work their way up in popularity. I remember Dokken was selling records in markets in 1983 where there was no airplay, and there was no MTV, and their label, Elektra. attributed it to magazines like Circus and Hit Parader covering them month after month. We definitely had an effect out there, and people gave us gold and platinum records because of that.”

  With well-attended tours, cable television, and monthly national magazines, heavy metal fans were no longer invisible—they were a booming subculture with an increasingly public face and loads of forward momentum. To metal fans who had watched metal rise from the Capitol Records parking lot to national exposure, anything seemed possible. Says Blackie Lawless of W.A.S.P., an eventual MTV star whose 1984 debut single, “Animal (F* * k Like a Beast),” was deemed too offensive by its label for American release, “It’s surprising. You might have thought we might have been a little too much for MTV, but they were young, they were mavericks, and they were willing to take chances.”

  Still, MTV support for harder-hitting bands was limited to an occasional clip or concert special. Iron Maiden and Judas Priest kept up their rigorous touring schedules, playing music directly to the fans most nights of the year. MTV was capable of fueling a fad, but for a young band like Metallica—lacking the teen-idol looks of Ratt and striving for a sound as profound as possible—the kind of success it envisioned would come from a different channel. With heavy metal’s popularity at an all-time high, the next wave of headbangers would soon push its newfound clout in its own way, whether the rest of world was ready or not.

  V

  Fevered Fans:

  metallica & Power Metal

  April 1983: Kirk Hammett replaces Dave Mustaine as guitarist of Metallica

  July 1983: Metallica releases Kill ‘Em All

  Autumn 1983: Metal Forces magazine launches

  November 1983: Mercyful Fate releases Melissa

  As heavy metal mushroomed into a major national trend, the do-it-yourself sector had less difficulty lifting itself up by its bootstraps. “Two years ago, when we started, people said we had to play punk or new wave,” said Dan Beehler of the Ottawa, Canada, group Exciter in a 1983 television interview. “Where’s punk today? I think metal has been there since the late sixties, only it was underground. In the past year metal has gotten bigger than it’s ever been. A lot of people think heavy metal is mindless, because there are no harmonies, but I would just describe it as total energy.”

  Even as mighty Kerrang! continued to dispense the latest holy word of metal from London, new voices from the wilderness threatened its dominance and authority. Besides the mainstream Circus and Hit Parader in America, every European country now had its own luscious heavy metal magazine, as France’s Enfer, Germany’s Metal Hammer, and Holland’s long-running Aardschok each offered a glossy color perspective on heavy happenings. The influence of tape trading grew stronger when the London-based streetwise Metal Forces launched in 1983. It focused on music rather than the local social scene and cast an open web to snare articles on NWOBHM relics, unsigned Hollywood glam acts, and demo cassettes by extreme underground demons.

  Metal Forces No. 3

  In the United States, Metal Mania and New Heavy Metal Revue were joined by dozens of self-produced metal fanzines, including Whiplash, Headbanger, Midwest Metal Militia, and Powerthrash. The king of these one-man operations was New Yorker Bob Muldowney, who began publishing Kick Ass Monthly in 1981. He focused on metal not as a regional movement but as a proud ideology to be harvested wherever it flourished. This self-proclaimed “Journalistic Poser Holocaust” rarely lived up to its monthly schedule, yet Kick Ass became a dominant critical voice thanks to Muldowney’s vehement and tireless editorializing. “Why do commercial metal bands feel that, to be successful, one’s music must be weak, lame, and about as exciting as toast?” began a May 1984 diatribe against Quiet Riot and Mötley Crüe. “To me, Kick Ass Monthly was the bible,” says Road-runner Records’ A&R director Monte Conner. “I used to worship that guy. He was the original tell-it-like-is master of brutality.”

  At the same time, former New Heavy Metal Revue editor Brian Slagel developed Metal Blade Records into a full-time operation that was unseasoned yet professional. From a tiny room in his mother’s house Slagel oversaw recording sessions, designed album covers, and called radio stations and record stores to promote his few releases. With a growing reputation after its Metal Massacre appearance, Metal Blade discovery Metallica seemed ready to record to
a full length album. They already had a snazzy title: Metal Up Your Ass. “Of course I expected to release the first Metallica LP,” says Slagel. “But they came to me and asked for eight thousand dollars to put out a record. I didn’t have that kind of money, and I didn’t know where to get it. It was like, ‘Sorry, guys.’ They had a vision of what they wanted to do, and they needed a little bit more money, so they just kind of moved on.”

  Metallica found other options. As their “No Life ‘Til Leather” demo garnered a reputation, the band was wooed by another shoestring operation, Megaforce Records in Old Bridge, New Jersey. Proprietor Johnny Z, aka Johnny Z, had started like Slagel by booking metal shows, bringing Raven from England and Anvil from Canada to play for New York crowds amped by reading about them in Kerrang! He sold metal goods at his record store, Rock & Roll Heaven, located in the inauspicious Route 18 Flea Market in Jersey. Zazula had no money either, so he first attempted to broker a deal for Metallica with several New York-based major labels. After being laughed out of a succession of meetings, Zazula and his wife, Marsha, borrowed the recording budget. “Marsha and I put ourselves in a lot of debt to make that album,” he told Kerrang! “We really took a chance with our lives. We didn’t want to start a record company at all, but we ended up putting the record out on our own because of the lack of interest elsewhere.”