Branded Metal

I took the above photo a couple of weeks ago while out shopping. I wasn't aware that Converse had released a set of Black Sabbath trainers. The ones featuring the artwork of the first album are tempting in a garish way; I like the fact that they subtly declare your allegiance. You can imagine yourself seeing someone the bus wearing these and nodding knowingly. "Can you help me?", you would ask, "Are you for my brain?" they would reply. Except of course there's the likelihood that the person wearing them wouldn't recognise the secret language, or indeed any Sabbath song.

The evidence is accumulating that Heavy Metal band names, logos and artwork may live on longer than their music. Bands such as AC/DC, Motorhead, Kiss and Black Sabbath seem to being used more and more frequently to project some kind of image, real of otherwise; imagine Che Guevara but with a Jack Daniels T Shirt.

I've nothing against bands "maximising their revenue streams" via Motorheadphones or Kiss Koffins, but I can't help thinking that ultimately they'll overdo it and become shorthand for a lifestyle choice, like what has happened with Bob Marley and happening with the Ramones.

Of course, the irony is that 40 years ago the idea that Sabbath and fashion would in any way intersect would have seemed as likely as Ozzy singing in front of the Queen at Buckingham Palace. But then what do I know? Perhaps the officially-licensed Sabotage Chequered Underwear and Red Tights Combo is already in development.

Motorhead - The Tiswas Years

It may seem a bit strange, but I've always regarded Motorhead as a singles band. Maybe this is because when I was first starting to buy records and follow the charts they were regularly up there in the Top 10, duking it out with Blondie, Abba and the other big names of the period. Don't believe me? Well have a look at the copy of Top of the Pops above where an outlay of a few pounds you could listen to cover versions of Super Trouper, Woman in Love and ... Ace of Spades (I'd love to hear that cover version by the way, has anyone got it?). Then, have a look at their chart record between Dec 1979 early 1982; not many other bands had a 1980 and 1981 as good as Motorhead.

Dec 1979  Bomber (34)
May 1980  The Golden Years EP  (8)
Nov 1980  Ace of Spades (15)
Feb 1981  St Valentine's Day Massacre (5)
Jul 1981  Motorhead Live (6)
Apr 1982  Iron Fist (29)

Looking back, one of the more enjoyable aspects of that period was that metal bands were quite prepared to do the publicity circuit in order to sell their records. There was very little of the sullen "we're too cool for this sort of thing" that came in later. So you had Judas Priest miming to Hot Rockin' on kids show Razzamatazz, AC/DC live on duff live show Rock goes to College, and best of all, Motorhead and Girlschool, appearing on Saturday morning's Tiswas. You can see Lemmy and Denise playing the custard pie game in the clip below.

Eventually, the hits dried up for Motorhead. Part of this was due to changing tastes: Rainbow, Thin Lizzy, Judas Priest and Whitesnake were all in the Top 20 in the same years as Motorhead, but only David Coverdale would return there in later years. But a large part was due to Motorhead themselves; Iron Fist was a ham-fisted follow-up to Ace of Spades and as the 80s went on, Lemmy started knocking around with the Comic Strip comedians, appearing in their TV shows and films. It's hard not to think that the band lost momentum. Here they are at the height of their fame, performing Please Don't Touch with Girlschool on Top of the Pops in February 1981.

We'll Bring the House Down

 
Like many other folk, one of the first singles I bought was by Slade. However, unlike most of those folk, mine wasn't one of their classic stompers on that familiar red Polydor label from their 1972-74 heyday. Mine was We'll Bring the House Down, which was released on the appropriately-named Cheapskate label in January 1981 and against all odds put them back in the top ten, with a heavy metal song to boot. Yes, for a couple of years, Slade, to all intents and purposes, were part of the NWOBHM.

Slade, according to the British Hit Singles & albums were "the most successful British group of the 1970s based on sales of singles" (Translation: they sold more than Queen and T. Rex but less than Abba). In 1973 they were the first band since the Beatles to have a single enter the UK charts at number 1. In total, they had three singles go straight in at number one, despite the fact that one of them, Skweeze me Pleeze Me, was absolute rubbish. They were huge. However, by 1981 they hadn't had a Top 10 hit in six years. They were getting desperate. So desperate that they released a version of the hokey cokey. Twice. It failed to chart. Twice.

Then they played the Reading Festival in 1980 after the Blizzard of Oz pulled out (can't imagine what was wrong with Ozzy) and they stole the show. Tommy Vance broadcast the show on the Friday Rock Show and for the first time in years they had a bit of momentum. They then released We'll Bring the House Down, which rode the wave of metal singles charting in the top 20 in 1980-81 and reached No. 10. The single itself was a cheap-looking thing, released in a flimsy black and white picture sleeve, it looked more like a UK Subs or Angelic Upstarts single than something from the most successful British group of the 1970s based on sales of singles. But it made a hell of a racket. It's basically a cross between a 70's football chant and a 70s heavy metal song, but not for the first time the band's charisma, musical chops and energy combined to transform a pretty thin song into a hit.

And that was that for a few years. The follow-up, Knuckle Sandwich Nancy wasn't a hit, and they didn't return to the chart until the end of 1983 when they had one of the biggest hits of the career with the truly awful My Oh My (serious contender for the 1983 Xmas No. 1) which was followed up with another top 10 hit, the equally bad Run Runaway, where they sounded like Big Country. Best remember them this way.

And if you're a Slade fan (and who isn't really? Be honest) you can head over to Bandcamp where this blog's friend John Medd has released his first EP, which features a cover of Slayed gem I Won't Let it Happen Again (even if he's corrected the grammar, the big posho).

60 Minute+ Metal

In the days before CDs were stuck to magazine covers, you had to pay record companies to do their marketing. In 1983, I sent off £1.25 plus postage and packing for the Neat Records compilation, 60 Minute+ Metal. I was curious to hear what these bands that I had been reading about in Kerrang! over the previous year or so sounded like.

I soon (well after around 28 days or so) found out - they were rubbish. Well, they were all rubbish apart from one. Bursting Out by Venom was an utter mess that sounded like it had been recorded in the drummer's bedroom, but it didn't sound like anything else on the tape, or anything else that I had heard, and it gave me a liking for Venom that I've never really lost.

Air Keyboarding

 Watching the repeat of Heavy Metal Britannia a couple of weeks ago, I found myself thinking that the documentary could well be the last word on that era. None of the participants were getting any younger. And anyway, that period of time from 1970 to 1985 or so that forms a big part of my record collection now seems increasingly a remote, historical era, as any quick glance at YouTube of a Sweeney episode will attest. Jon Lord was part of the documentary, white-haired, but otherwise looking fairly healthy; I wasn't aware of his illness and was surprised and saddened when I awoke today to find out that he had passed away after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

Deep Purple were one of the first bands I loved. When we had to design a screen-printed T-Shirt as part of my first year art class, I chose the Purple Records logo. Burn was one of the first albums I bought with my own money, from a record shop in Rose Street in Edinburgh, when I was down visiting my brother who was at college there. That was 1981 or so and I still have it, one of the few vinyl records that I bought in the early 80s that didn't get purged during one move or other. It's a good album.

I've fallen in and out of love with Purple over the years, and I'm not sure what I really think of them these days. Of the "big three" of Sabbath, Zeppelin and Purple, they were the only one who released a decent live album during their lifetime, and also had the best producer in Martin Birch, meaning that their records tend to have the best sound of the three. But they couldn't write songs like Sabbath or Zeppelin, and Machine Head and Burn are their only albums that I can listen to the whole way through.

Yet when they were good they were great, and Jon Lord was a big part of that. The jazzy keyboard and guitar dueling in the middle of Speed King is wonderful, Space Truckin' is a rare example of a heavy rock song whose riff is played on the keyboard, not the guitar, while his keyboard-driven instrumental A 200 from Burn is one of my favourite Deep Purple songs.

One last memory. when I was at college in Brighton in the 90s, a friend told me about what happened one evening in Hungry Years, the local Heavy Metal disco. Apparently, Highway Star came on, prompting some mass air guitaring, which lasted until after the first chorus when Lord's keyboard solo came in. Then, at once, everyone stretched their arms in front of them, like drunken Frankenstein's Monsters and then started to air keyboard along to the solo.

Air keyboarding. RIP Jon Lord, and thanks for the music.