Fuck Keith Richards

I can't wait for this. I only hope it's better that his, slightly disappointing, autobiography. This and the film about Anvil, plus AC/DC and Metallica selling out tours could make 2009 a great year for metal.

Metal saves the day!

Reports of whether he screamed, over the captain's intercom, his in-concert rallying cry of "Scream for me flight 405 from Sharm el Sheikh!!!" remain unfounded.

The 'leading singer of Iron Zeppelin looks quite respectable' remarked my mother after his appearance in BBC Breakfast.

No Remorse Video Jukebox: Megadeth - Peace Sells (But Who's Buying?)

Megadeth do love a good set of brackets. This video was originally banned for fear that it could induce epileptic fits, which, in my book, is the sign of a great metal video.
I love the interlude; 'This is the news'. Yeah, get over it, Dad, you're such a square. Dave Mustaine and his band of LA thrashers piss all over BBC News 24 any day of the week.

Now this...

... is a proper TV ad.

In Vertigo You Will Be

My first proper, bombastic, overblown gig was Metallica at the Birmingham NEC in May 1990. I was so looking forward to it, to see my new heroes in the flesh for the first time. There was four of us that went: me, Al, Al's brother and a guy from work called Gary (more on Gary later).
We went on a coach as part of a ticket 'n' travel deal. I'll never forget striding purposely into the confines of the NEC arena... and promptly got my studded leather belt confiscated, to be picked up later. The t-shirt stands were doing swift business; metal fans love their merchandise. I bought one which featured a design by the band's illustrator, Pushead. It was the design which had been used on the posters for the tour, which was called, weirdly, In Vertigo You Will Be.
Warrior Soul were the support act. They were a four-piece from the USA who listed Joy Division and Killing Joke as their influences (indeed, ex-KJ drummer 'Big' Paul Ferguson was on the kit). They were pretty good, for the time. Mind you, I was so excited I'd have creamed my kecks if Bobby Crush was supporting.

Then it was time for the main event: Me-fuckin'-tallica. I can't remember anything about the set list, only the favourites of mine that they played: One, Welcome Home (Sanitarium), Creeping Death, For Whom the Bell Tolls. When they played crowd-pleaser Search and Destroy, the place went nuts. James Hetfield did his usual shtick of getting the crowd to chant 'search and destroy' louder and louder each time. Of course we all obeyed, resistance was futile.
The gig had everything: energy, great songs, pyrotechnics (oh yeah) and, er, a bass solo. But who gave a fuck, we even loved the bass solo. I remember that they kept getting called back for encores. On the last one Hetfield had to tell the crowd that after the cover of Diamond Head's Am I Evil? There would be no more, they'd run out of rehearsed songs. Brilliant.
I read later that they regarded that gig as one of the best they'd ever done. And I was there.

Metallica were definitely my band now.

Metal Thrashing Mad

So we'd got the first record bought, and the first gig gone to, now it was time to consolidate. The trouble with metal in those days was that it was segregated; if you liked thrash you couldn't like glam, if you liked glam you couldn't like hardcore. Perhaps I ought to explain these different areas:

• Straight metal - just ordinary heavy metal, stuff like Whitesnake, AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Dio
• New Wave of British Heavy Metal - bands like Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, Saxon, Samson, Holocaust, Diamond Head and White Spirit who, in the late 70s, energised by the DIY attitude of punk, mixed that with the riffs of heavy metal, building up a live following in small venues around Britain. Strongholds were London, the Midlands and the North East. Short-lived. Not many made it past 1983.
• Thrash metal - combining the riffs and work ethic of the NWOBHM with the speed of hardcore/skater punk. Bands include the so-called 'big four' of Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax and Slayer. Lesser known but popular bands were Testament, Kreator, Overkill, Nuclear Assault and Exodus. Strongholds were the Bay Area of California, New York and Germany. Songs usually about war, social issues or politics.
• Glam metal - taking cues off early punks like The New York Dolls, The Stooges and The Ramones it was a brand of metal that was very flamboyant. Songs usually about sex and/or drug-taking. Bands include Faster Pussycat!, Dogs D'Amour, LA Guns, Tigertailz and Poison. Popular with 'the ladies'. Involved men wearing make-up.
• Funk metal - Opened itself up to a wider range of influences, namely funk and soul. Inspired by early practitioners of funk and rock like Parliament, Funkadelic and Bad Brains. Popular with both indie rock and thrash fans, bands include Red Hot Chili Peppers, Faith No More, Primus, Mordred and *huge fanfare* the all black Living Color.

So, as you can see, I was too late for the NWOBHM, everyone likes a bit of straight metal, I didn't like dressing like a girl, so the only option left for me was thrash. Besides, Al was into thrash as was our expanding band of friends. Here, have a look at this fellow from the 1989 Arena documentary on heavy metal explain it in more detail, stick with it, I know one of the blokes in the Rock City scene (this documentary was roundly slagged off by metal fans when it was first shown). Take it away Mitch Hale and Penny Rushin:

I love watching that "You can't play Iron Maiden at 500 mile an hour" became an ironic catchphrase amongst our circle of friends. And dear old Penny is obviously struggling to find something to say. I'd love to see them today. Actually Mitch makes a valid point there: "The more the merrier...if you like it stand up for it"

So, first decent heavy metal record I owned was the 12" single to One by Metallica (being nine minutes long, I don't think a 7" was available). I first saw the song as part of the Top 40 Breakers on Top of the Pops and thought it sounded good. I then saw most of the video the following Saturday on the chart show and knew I must have it. So that afternoon I rushed down to R and K Records in Newark and got my hands on it. I couldn't wait to get it home and listen to it in all its glory. It was class. A nine minute story of a WW1 soldier dying in hospital (happy days!), based on a book called Johnny Got His Gun. The video to the song featured clips from the film adaptation. Then I flipped it over and found two live tracks on the b-side: For Whom the Bell Tolls and Welcome Home (Sanitarium). This was the music for me. They didn't sing about girls, of which I had very little experience at the time, and they encouraged the growing of facial hair. Fucking A! I was hooked.

No Remorse Video Jukebox: Breaking the Law - Judas Priest

I'm not sure if this was intended to be a comedy video, but that's how it turned out. I've never really been a fan of Judas Priest; I always found Rob Halford's high-pitced vocals rather silly, not to mention unlistenable. Besides, how can you take a band seriously that features a guitarist called Ken?
Top marks to the Priest for the stand they made in their court case in the late-eighties (more on that later) and to Rob Halford for coming out of the closet. Mind you, what with his stage attire of S&M gear and his penchant for Harley Davidsons, who knew?

The Bands: Black Sabbath

Forget what anyone may say about who invented heavy metal. People will try and argue that it was The Kinks, Blue Cheer, Cream, Steppenwolf or even The Beatles. And it was never, ever Led Zeppelin, good as they are there was far too much other stuff going on with Zeppelin for them ever to be labeled 'heavy metal'.

No, the first band ever to play what has since become known as heavy metal was Black Sabbath. Forming in Aston in Birmingham in the late sixties they went under various names such as Polka Tulk Blues Band and Earth before settling on the name Black Sabbath. They got their name from the poster for a film which was showing in a cinema across the road from their rehearsal room. They realised that people were willing to pay to see this horror film called Black Sabbath and be frightened. Paying to be frightened was an idea that appealed to them. I still think that no band has ever come up with a more suitable name than Black Sabbath, it says everything about them without hearing any of the music.

Their dark, heavy guitar sound came from the fact that guitarist Tony Iommi had an accident while working on an industrial press and had the finger ends of his right hand chopped off. Not much of a problem for a right-handed guitarist but Iommi was left-handed. So he devised a system of putting Fairy Liquid bottle tops on the ends of his fingers, which went some way to making their signature sound.

With drummer Bill Ward, bassist Terry 'Geezer' Butler and a manic, speed-freak singer called Ozzy Osbourne completing the line-up they made for one of the best heavy metal line-ups ever.

If someone who'd never heard heavy metal before asked me to describe it to them, I'd play side 1, track 1 of their debut album. The track called Black Sabbath just about wrote the book on heavy metal. It starts with the sound of a thunderstorm, a tolling church bell can be heard in the distance. Enter the band with one of the heaviest, most gut-churning sounds ever created by man. Then you get to the vocal, never the strongest of singers, Osbourne's vocal sounds like a man absolutely terrified. "What is this that stands before me? Devil in black and eyes of fire" is the opening line and you can't get much more metal than that.

Their first four albums (Black Sabbath, Paranoid, Master of Reality and Volume Four) are all pretty much essential. With Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Sabotage also being worthy of any serious metal collection.

Over the years Sabbath have become something of a joke, not least because of Osbourne's gradual decent into reality TV jester. I just hope people still realise that, along with three others, what a true innovator he was.

Recommended listening:

1. Black Sabbath


2. Sweet Leaf


3. NIB


4. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath


5. War Pigs

Al Part 2

Of course the gig we went to wasn't by any name band, oh no. It was by a local band called Marauder, who were complete shite. I even remember thinking they were shite at the time. There were four of them, bass, singer, drummer and their only one decent musician; a guitarist called Mark Gibson. Gibson had been playing guitar on the local scene since the days of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (more on that later). He'd been in a band at the turn of the eighties called Paralex (with other legendary Newark metaller Phil Ayling. That's them in the picture, Gibson's second right), they'd made waves within that scene and even got onto Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich's NWOBHM compilation album of the early nineties.
We went to see the band in a so-called 'fun pub', why it was called a 'fun pub' remains a complete mystery to me as not much fun was ever had in there. They had a monster made by some local college art students that was supposed to breathe smoke at regular intervals, usually when you were least expecting it and started choking. It was a pub that had MTV on it's many ceiling-hung tellys but the music from the PA never matched the tellys.
Marauder really were Gibson's last stab at making something decent, and I think even then his heart was no longer in it. I remember them opening with a song called Wild, Wild Woman which sounded like something Whitesnake's David Coverdale would have given up on as a bad job. The only other two songs I remember are their eponymous track (where we all had to shout "Marauder!" while pumping our fists) and a cover of Free's Alright Now, which Al told me was a fairly good version as the bass line's hard to get right. Or something.
Still, Marauder it may have been but my live heavy metal cherry had been well and truly popped.
My second gig was at the same venue to see a local hardcore band called The Amazing Screaming Willies. They're still on the go today, albeit in a much more truncated form. In fact their guitarist recently had a book published about his experiences as a grave digger. That was pretty bad, top marks for enthusiasm but the music was terrible. Still, it wasn't to be taken too seriously. The thing that marks out that gig more in my memory was that when it had finished, two morons jumped in Al's car while he was unlocking it and refused to get out until they'd been given a lift home. Needless to say Al refused and I lad we knew called Dave (yes, really) pulled them out and punched them both on the face. I remember Dave then trying to chat nonchalantly to them while they had blood pouring from their noses.

So, that was my formative gig going out the way. The next gig was going to be much bigger.

No Remorse Video Jukebox: Rock Aid Armenia

Here's a Planet Rock listener's wet dream; a charity single in aid of victims of the Armenian earthquake of 1988.
It features: Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Gillan, Dave Gilmour, Tony Iommi, Keith Emerson, Chris Squire, Bruce Dickinson, Paul Rodgers, Roger Taylor, Rush's Alex Lifeson (Yay! He's the one playing the green Telecaster while struggling to keep his mullet under control), Geoff Downes, a cartoon shorts-wearing Brian bloody May. And, er, Bryan Adams.
Warning! The end sequence features some tongue action from Ian Gillan, not for those of a nervous disposition.

Al Part 1

Remember the Youth Training Scheme? It was Thatcher's way of fudging the unemployment figures, I was on it. What it consisted of was that you did a week's work with one day's 'release' to college to pick up 'all the skills you'll need in your chosen career path'. What it did succeed in doing was to get loads of kids to do cheap labour with no prospect of a full-time job at the end of it and for a load of kids within the age of consent to pop their cherries while mixing with the opposite sex on their day at college. It was while on one of my college days that I first saw Al. He was on an automobile engineering course (he worked at a reproduction vintage van factory) and his then, soon to be ex, girlfriend was on the same retail course as me. They had a row one break time and I saw her forcefully smack him across the face. He later came on the same First Aid course as me and we struck up a bit of a friendship when we thought we'd pass the time by bandaging up on willing volunteer to look like an Egyptian mummy. Al then left the van factory and came to work with me at Mojo Cash and Carry (the glamour!)

As we kind of knew each other I was given him to look after. Al was always so much more cooler than me. And I'll tell you why:

• He was allowed to smoke at home


• He'd been to see Motorhead at Leicester University and brazenly wore the tour t-shirt which bore the legend 'Motorhead Merry Bastard Christmas Tour 1987'


• He had a guitar and large amp in his bedroom


• He was allowed to take willing girls up to his bedroom for shenanigans (although his brother once informed me that one time his dad got so fed-up with the sound of squeaking bed springs that he started banging on the ceiling and shouted for him to stop)


• He was allowed to say 'bastard' in front of his parents, and, on a good day with the wind behind him, could get away with 'fuck/fucking'


• He knew 'interesting' girls. One being the local vicar's daughter

So, as you can see, that's shaping up to be a pretty decent friendship from my point of view. We started to go out drinking and to parties together. It was on one of our under age drinking trips into town that he introduced me to the delights of AC/DC. We were in a pub called the Castle and Falcon, which became a bit of a regular for us because you could get on the pool table of a Friday and Saturday night and they had a decent jukebox. On our first trip in there we commandeered both the jukebox and the pool table. We both put a pound in and it wasn't long before AC/DC's Whole Lotta Rosie came on. Al proceeded headbang, use his cue as a makeshift guitar and started chanting over the stop/start intro. "Angus!" he was shouting. "Who's Angus? Is he in here?" I enquired, looking around the pub. "Nah, you tit. He's in AC/DC innee?" Well, I thought to myself, Angus isn't much of a name for a rock 'n' roll star, is it?

I decided that I quite liked this music he'd started playing and Al promised he'd get to work on a compilation tape for me that weekend. The tape duly arrived at work on the Monday. "It's rockin'" Al said when he handed it over. Let's just say that Al had a pretty weird take on heavy metal. Hawkwind, Jethro Tull, and, er Fleetwood Mac were on the tape (although I think he just had the hots for Stevie Nicks on the Mac front). But there was enough good stuff cutting through: Motorhead, Iron Maiden, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin and something called Guns n' Roses (that's how cool Al was, he had the first GnR album before they started having hit singles). He even had an album by a band called Blodwyn Pig, but apparently I wasn't 'ready for the Pig yet'.

It was on the back of his tape, and on his advice, that I went out and bought my first heavy metal record. Blood, Fire and Love by The Almighty. The Almighty were a pretty competent band from Scotland. At the time I thought it was the best thing I'd ever heard. It didn't come off the turntable. It was at this point that Al said I was ready for my first metal gig.

Hit the Lights

We did have records in our house when I was growing up. There was a load of 7" singles that my sisters had bought and some which we must have acquired from somewhere (jumble sale?) as they had a massive hole in the middle which meant they'd been used in a jukebox. Most of the singles that had been bought were by 10cc, a band I've always loathed - Rubber Bullets, Life is a Minestrone, Wall Street Shuffle and I'm Not in Love being particular targets for my hate.
Then an album -or LP as they were known then - by Leo Sayer arrived in the house, it was called Endless Flight with a 'falling' Sayer in comedy pose on the front. The back was an upside-down photo of his ankles and shoes, he was wearing Snoopy socks. On the inner sleeve was a picture of the curly-haired squirt laughing with another curly-haired turd. I used to think it was Sayer's much taller brother as they looked alike. I was wrong; turns out it was 10cc's Graham Gouldman who'd co-wrote and, I think, produced the record - there was no escape from bloody 10cc. It never seemed to be off our HMV record player, (Which included a handy 'thingy' for the purposes of loading up half a dozen singles which would drop down, one by one, when the previous one had finished. And the stylus/needle? That was a laugh, it was more like a carpet tack) but I don't recall it containing any of Sayer's hits.
My younger sister then became the main record-buyer in our house. She was into all that New Romantic bollocks. Most of her records were pap but she did own ABC's Lexicon of Love, which I still think is a terrific record.

So, how did I arrive at metal? Well, I was a late starter, I didn't buy my first proper metal album until I was 17. Up until then I knew that is was going to be rock music for me. From the age of about 12 I was into Big Country and Simple Minds. In a big way. I loved that whole plaid shirts and guitars-that-sound-like-bagpipes thing that Ver Country had going on. The Crossing and its follow-up Steeltown were never off the house's Hitachi stacker stereo (we'd progressed from the HMV mono set-up by 1982).
Simple Minds were a little edgier, they used synthesizers and featured a charismatic frontman called Jim Kerr. Well I thought he was charismatic; it was as this point in their career that Kerr was an item of ridicule for the NME and Melody Maker. And to be fair he was a bit of an arsehole at the time. The stuff they were bringing out in the mid-80s was miles away from their early-80s purple patch when they were spoken about in the same way that people speak about Radiohead today - you know 'pushing the boundaries'.
So we have The Crossing and Steeltown by Big Country and Sparkle in the Rain, Once Upon a Time and Live in the City of Light by Simple Minds as your starting points. They were all, undeniably, rock albums. All loud guitars and stadium-shaking choruses. But I wanted something more, after a brief dalliance with It Bites (modern prog from Cumbria, big hit: Calling All the heroes. Great second album Once Around the World flopped) I decided to be a goth.
The problem with goth was it was a very limited scene and I've never worn make-up in my life. Although I was a big fan of The Mission's Children album and All About Eve's eponymous debut album (besides I had the serious hots for their lead singer Julianne Regan) my heart was never really in it.
I wanted something harder (oo-er), something to push the boundaries and piss off my parents.

Then I met Al.

An Introduction and User's Guide

I've decided to start this blog because of Seb Hunter's book Hell Bent For Leather. I bigged it up on my other blog a few weeks ago and decided to re-read it. While reading it again after a gap of a few years I decided that Hunter was taking the piss out of heavy metal, a genre of music I have, and, to a certain extent, still do, love. I know it's very easy to mock the music, the bands, the clothes etc. but it provided me with some of the most enjoyable years of my life. I hope to bring the some of the that back to life with this blog. It won't all be positive (believe me, I hate just as many metal bands as I like) but I hope to do the music more justice than Mr Hunter who has written his book with a kind of knowing wink directed at non-metalers and the sneering, chattering classes.

For starters, just look at that picture; it's the very essence of heavy metal. It's James Hetfield of Metallica, quite probably the coolest man on the planet (even though he looks as though he's just set light to a fart). It tells you everything you need to know without hearing any of the music.

To kick things off, here's my favourite metalist metal track like ever, dude: Metallica's Battery. Enjoy.