Freddie Mercury Makes a Bad Decision

I'm fascinated by the moments when acts momentarily lose the plot. Those occasions when desperation, a cocaine habit or just sheer wrong-headedness convince them that it would be a good idea to go off in a new bold, direction. Maybe release an album that could be the soundtrack to a film about a race of people called The Elder that the bass player has just thought up? Or how about a double album of instrumentals about plants? Clear a space on the wall for the platinum disc, Jeeves!

Queen had their wobbly moment in 1982. In a sense it was unexpected; they were following-up an album, The Game, that had got to number one in the UK and US, and had yielded two no. 1 singles in the latter country. One of those was Another One Bites the Dust, and it's tempting to imagine that Freddie Mercury concluded from this that, you know,maybe their fans would love to hear more funk and disco songs.

The result was Hot Space, a dog of an album where half the songs were unsuccessful attempts at sounding like Chic, while the other half were unsuccessful attempts at sounding like Queen. Some of the much-maligned funk stuff isn't that bad: both Staying Power and Body Language have plenty of hooks. It's the rock songs that are the real clunkers: Brian May's Las Palabras De Amor is the wettest thing he ever wrote, while it probably takes longer to listen to Calling All Girls than it took Roger Taylor to write it. The final track is Under Pressure, which was recorded and released a year before the rest of the album and sits there on the track listing like a university student at a family party, aloof and slightly embarrassed.

Yet, Hot Space was an important album for the group because it had a legacy. Queen weren't stupid, and learned their lesson. They came back in 1984 with The Works, which gave them a clutch of hits and some fresh momentum. But it was an unadventurous, by-the-numbers album, and as the 80s progressed, their records got duller and duller. A band once known for being innovative and taking risks settled into churning out tame corporate rock that had you yearning for a few Bismillahs or Galileos. Or maybe even some funky bass lines and horn arrangements. No, on second thoughts, maybe not.

The Italian Wave of British Heavy Metal

 Over here in Italy there's a very good magazine called Classix Metal, that devotes itself to writing about 80s Heavy Metal of all shades. It's essentially a well-produced fanzine (which is surely the only way to describe a publication that has a nine page Raven retrospective or an article on Mausoleum Records). Still, it's all the better for it, meaning that it's enthusiastic about its subject matter and doesn't take itself too seriously.

In a recent issue there was an article that traced the history of Heavy Metal in Italy. This was interesting to me, as I don't normally associate sunny, Mediterranean countries with Heavy Metal (I'm trying to think of what could be the Italian version of Birmingham - Turin? Not quite the same).

One thing that struck me was that a lot of the Italian bands had names that would make the UKIP proud: Gunfire, Spitfire, Royal Air Force, Steel Crown and my personal favourite - Drunkards. It's an often overlooked fact how NWOBHM bands promoted British culture abroad - well, if you can call wearing a sleeveless Union Jack shirt promoting culture. Nonetheless, the net effect was that in the 80s, there were a raft of European Metal Bands being formed who had names straight out of the Warlord or Victor comics.

Having said all that, the band that really made an impression were the tastefully-named Death SS. The band were active from the late 70s until the late 80s and seem to have been a cross between Alice Cooper, Kiss and Scooby Doo Where Are You? You can see a picture of them from 1980 below (I scanned it directly from the magazine as I didn't fancy putting "Death SS picture" into Google).

And in case you're wondering - and I know you are - the Mummy played bass.

Still, everybody needs to move with the times (even a band with songs called Zombie Terror and Black Mummy), and as the 80s progressed Death SS, like so many other bands, weren't immune to the increasing popularity of Hair Metal. Look at the photo below from 1988.

Def Leppard meets the Wolf Man! Even the Mummy had a soft perm. The faun seems to have turned into a badger, too.

10 Random Thoughts on "Heavy Metal Britannia"

1. All that "proto-metal" stuff with Blue Cheer, Cream and the Edgar Broughton Band etc didn't really convince and took up too much time. Metal is about more than just hitting the instruments hard, and as good as those bands were, I'm listening to the first Black Sabbath album as I write this, and none of these bands really anticipate or predict it. It all starts here.

2. Rob Halford seems a decent bloke.

3. Hasn't Brian Tatler off of Diamond Head aged badly? And since when were Diamond Head as important as Saxon and Iron Maiden?

4. Deep Purple's music hasn't aged too well. And they weren't really metal. Well, maybe "Speed King"

5. Burke Shelley is a bit of an arse

6. Bill Ward has a hell of a boozer's nose. But he seems a lovely man.

7. Judas Priest's influence is overlooked. If you look at the NWOBHM bands, their sound can be traced back to Black Sabbath - but they sound more like Judas Priest.

8. Most Heavy Metal musicians aren't very articulate when it comes to defining Heavy Metal: "It's kind of .. you know, heavy"

9. Mick Box's interesting "ear flaps" theory that bands were protected from the noise from the amplifiers because ears "face forward" is an interesting one, but may not stand up to rigorous scientific examination.

10. "Symptom of the Universe" was a perfect choice for the song over the credits. Be honest.

Backpatchphilia

The photo above is of the audience at a concert by The Rods back in 1982. I think it captures being a Metal fan at that time perfectly. Everything is in attendance: the Wrangler (never Levi as I recall) denim jackets (sleeves optional), the dank brown hair a bit longer than the fashion at the time but not too long to get into trouble at school/work, the biker jacket and the wispy moustaches. It's a more innocent time, a time when Then Rods could leave people open-mouthed (or at least slack-jawed). And, naturally, there's the patches.

If I had an ounce of creativity or entrepreneurship, I would call up on of those Art Book publishers like Taschen with a proposal for a coffee table book called The Art of the Heavy Metal Back Patch. All of the classics of the genre would be there of course: the Judas Priest Razor Blade, the Motorhead Snaggletooth (or whatever it's called), the AC/DC cannon, the Number of the Beast album cover (surely an album cover that was designed to look good on a Backpatch on a denim jacket). I'm sure the book would sell more than you might think.

The one limitation about the different patches was that your selection was relatively limited, and you needed to rely on what was popular and being produced at the time. If you wanted to express your loyalty to someone who was a bit more obscure you needed to resort to your own art skills. Which is why my follow-up book would be Heavy Metal Art on School Jotters 1979 - 1985. I'm sure the lofts of Britain contain some excellent examples of school jotters containing fascinating interpretations of the Kiss Destroyer album cover done with felt pens or the words Black and Sabbath arranged in an upside-down cross that made the English teacher go ballistic. Apart from anything else, the actual act of trying to cover your school books with art gave you an idea on the exact level of your artistic abilities; I'm sure quite a few people realised that a career in illustration would be beyond them as they struggled with the horse while trying to do the Stormbringer cover.

Solid Ball of Pewter

Anyone remember these? Jewelery for headbangers was a fairly specialist industry back in the day. Usually this meant skin-rashing pendants made of pewter (whatever pewter is, I can't find it anywhere in the precious metals section of the periodic table), but the ones above were actually made of silver. Bet that Magnum one sold like hot cakes.