Denim & Leather by Michael Hann

In 1978,  Heavy rock had a certain look and sound. Open chords rang out. Musicians might wear silk or Spandex. Kimonos were not unknown. But by 1983, things were different, and what we now call Heavy Metal was set. Denim or Biker jackets, leather trousers, studded wristbands, and palm-muted riffs. The music got faster and a group of fans dispersed in unfashionable towns had became a tribe. Michael Hann's Denim and Leather is a history of the years that codified Heavy Metal.

You don't actually need to like the NWOBHM to enjoy the book. Reading it feels like flipping through a photo album of a vanished Britain — not the royal weddings and Margaret Thatcher kind, but the one with prefab estates, burned-out Ford Cortinas, and hand-drawn band logos scratched into school desks. Hann takes us back to the early ’80s, to a world where in the North of England bands like the Tygers of Pan Tang played working men’s clubs with sticky carpets and bingo on Tuesdays. There's an especially evocative description of the Marquee Club, complete with Lemmy on the slot machines.

One of then things I enjoyed was its discussion of the importance of Glam on influencing the NWOBHM. Hann’s interviews reveal just how many musicians were turned on by T. Rex and Queen before they ever heard Sabbath or Priest  (the number of future metalheads who cite one of their first singles being Queen’s Seven Seas of Rhye is notable). NWOBHM didn’t emerge out of nowhere — it evolved, often in secret, from teenage glam fans who found distortion. 

That tribal identity was held together not just by the music, but by a scattered but passionate media ecosystem. Kerrang! wasn’t just a magazine; it was a lifeline. The Friday Rock Show on BBC Radio 1, hosted by Tommy Vance, was a weekly communion. And then there was the Monsters of Rock festival at Donington. The description of the first festival is one of the book's highlights, as fan after fan remembers their awe at the size of the crowd and  realizing their were other people jut like them. These were the glue — the things that took a thousand small-town scenes and turned them into a national (and international) movement. And that international point is important, as by the mid 80s, the most important innovate bands were coming from the US and Europe. The New Wave of British Heavy Metal also became the Last Wave.

What Denim & Leather also captures — gently, without judgment — is the inevitable fade. By the mid-’80s, the moment had passed. The bands that didn’t break through disbanded. The music press moved on. Thrash arrived. Glam came back, only now it was American and glossy. The NWOBHM bands who didn’t adapt were relegated to footnotes and second-hand bins. But Hann treats them with respect — not just because they mattered, but because they still do to the people who were there. And to people who maybe missed it the first time but found it later — in old records, fanzines, or forums where people still debate the best Venom record ("In League with Satan").

To Disco With Love

I've gone a bit Disco recently.

In part, this was kind of inevitable. After all a lot of the bands I've written about on this blog had their Disco phase, so why shouldn't I have one too? And the truth is, I've always been more than a bit partial to some Disco. I was 10 years old in 1979, and I reckon that you'll find very few people who were that age in that year with free access to a radio and Top of the Pops whose souls aren't momentarily lifted whenever they hear the intro to Funkytown.

But my recent phase has been influenced by David Hamsley's To Disco With Love, a book that  collects together some of the Disco era's album artwork, grouped into different themes (with the mid 70s dominating, there's a lot of golds, browns and sunburnt finishes), The covers are often pretty much as bad as you would expect, but then again, so what? As a Black Sabbath fan, I'm perfectly comfortable with the idea of great music coming with dreadful covers.

And a lot of it was great. Chic and Giorgio Moroder get a lot of the attention these days, but at the moment I prefer the mid 70s period: less glitter more strings plus a sprinkle of high camp (which, let's face it, gave flavour to most of the great pop from the 70s). Disco's borders with Funk and soul were pretty porous, and the book finds space for Kool & the Gang, Philadelphia International and even Ramsey Lewis.

The older I get, the more I like this stuff. And I like it without irony, this is no guilty pleasure, where the Salsoul Orchestra albums are tucked safely away from view. I think it's because it's all upbeat stuff. I find dark and edgy music overrated these days, I'll take the Beach Boys, Stevie Wonder, AC/DC or ABBA any day.

10 Random Thoughts About the Bohemian Rhapsody Film

1 .This whole "Live Aid saved Queen" schtick doesn't wash. They had four hits the previous year (and played two of them during their set). On Now 4, released after the summer of 1984, they're Side 1 Track 1 (Radio Ga Ga): what more scientific proof do you want?  

2. It's hard to think of a pop star who lost their muse so comprehensively. He wrote all of Queen's big hits during the 70s, and then none during the 80s. How do you go from "Killer Queen" to "Man on the Prowl" in 10 years? Conclusion: don't grow a moustache.

3. I can't believe they didn't do the "Ah Mr Ferocious" scene with Sid Vicious.

4. I enjoyed the scenes of them recording A Night at the Opera in the countryside. Somebody should write a book about all the albums that were recorded at various farmsteads during the 70s.

5. Gwilym Lee really was Brian May. I don't think I've ever seen a better resemblance between an actor and a character in a biopic.

6. But Ben Hardy really wasn't Roger Taylor. Roger was a good looking guy, but in the film he looks like a squad member of the 1974 West Germany World Cup team.

7.  I have a slight suspicion that one of the motivations of the band for making this film was to get back at Paul Prenter.

8. The film has John Deacon as being about halfway between Derek Smalls and Balderick and I think this is a bit unlikely. I can't imagine he took too much nonsense from the others after "Another One Bites the Dust".

9. There's a scene where Brian May is taking the band through We Will Rock you and Freddie walks in. With a moustache. In 1977! This is madness. If you're going to be paying so much attention to detail that you make sure that he wears the right brand of trainers, you shouldn't be making these errors. 1977!

10. It's a pretty good film, and I speak as someone whose heart sank like a stone when I heard that they were making it.

Village People and Bjorn Again

 

When the web site stated something along the lines of “Bjorn Again will support Village People, but both acts will play for the same amount of time”, you suspected that either there had been some tense running order discussions or perhaps the promoters had realised that nobody with a credit card wanted to watch a full set of Village People, even on their 40th anniversary.

I’d seen Bjorn Again previously, so knew what to expect: kimonos, peroxide and a lot of cheese: cheesy Swedish accents, cheesy dance moves and cheesy “this half of the hall sing with me” type banter. Ah, who cares, what you also get are tour-perfected selections from one of pop’s best greatest hits catalogues. The Aussies have been doing this for a while now and obviously know at 8pm on a Friday night their audience is going to consist of people who have put their work week beyond them and have already had a couple of Tiger beers. So their slightly truncated set list found room for stompers such as Ring Ring and Honey Honey, but not the reflective Winner Takes it All. During the set it struck me that there a few better catalogues than Abba’s at removing arses from seats. They went down a storm.

Village People never had a chance. But they could have at least tried. In case you’re wondering, three of them were the original line-up (the Native American, the Soldier, and the Cop – and judging by the shape of the last, the San Francisco Police Department needs to revise it’s annual medical screening). During the second song I found myself saying to Mrs Hawkfall “They’re miming. Only the lead singer has his microphone turned on”. These sentiments were also expressed more loudly to the band by a couple of members of the audience a few songs later. This soured things a little bit, though towards the end of the set they managed to get some of the goodwill back (it was noticeable that the younger, non-original members were able to charm the crowd much more effectively than their elders).

The Halo Effect

 The Halo Effect: “If we see a person first in a good light, it is difficult subsequently to darken that light”

In David Hepworth’s book on 1971, he uses the Halo Effect to explain why “What’s Going On” has such a reputation for being a great album (basically, the excellence of the opening and closing tracks casts a halo over the rest of the album).

That got me thinking about where else this effect can be seen. Oddly enough, the first name that came to mind was David Letterman. When he retired a couple of years back, tributes poured in about his 30 years as a talk show host. Yet most of the clips that were recalled were from the 1980s. As someone who only saw his show from the late 90s onwards it was difficult to see what the fuss was about: a fairly cranky middle-aged guy making jokes with his bandleader? I think a lot of the goodwill that was extended to him was a result of the Halo Effect created by his early 80s shows, when he really was a breath of fresh air.

In sports, few teams benefit from the Halo Effect as much as the Brazilian national team. Even though they abandoned their old style of play in the late 80s, we still think of each Brazil team as being the heirs of Jairzinho, Pele, Carlos Alberto and the others of the great 1970 team. Each time a World Cup comes around, there’s talk of “jogo bonito” and “samba style football” that doesn’t bear much resemblance as to what’s happening on the pitch. Similarly, the Dutch team have been counter-attacking bruisers for over a decade, but we still carry a torch for them, because of the Halo Effect cast by Cruyff, Neeskens et al.

Perhaps it’s unfair to talk of the Halo Effect with musicians. There’s a general acceptance that they produce their best work in their 20s, so why give someone a hard time if they’re still around 30 or 40 years later and not producing great stuff? Having said that, there are a couple of names that come to mind. Neil Young is one who seems to retain a lot of goodwill from people who got to know him in the 70s (or 90s), even as he tests their patience with each record. And Morrissey’s career seems to be sustained by the residual energy of the intense relationship with his fans in the 80s.