We'll turn our discussion to heavy metal music in the 1980s. When I say the early days of heavy metal, you may think I mean to go back to the late 1960s, the early 1970s. Because now, since heavy metal became so popular and so mainstream by the end of the 80s, we tend to look back into the 70s and into the late 60s and call a lot of music Heavy Metal. Because it seems to share a lot of characteristics with the music that were used to from the 80s and to a 90s. But the fact is that, Heavy Metal music didn't really begin to separate itself out from other Blues base rock music. Really and so the end of the 1970s and the early 1980s, just about the time that rock music itself. Was changing so much at the end of the 70s with what we called corporate rock, some people would think of it as sort of the staples of classic rock. But what was happening at the end of the 70s was at that point the heavy metal really began to separate itself out as something different, or something aside, or something that wanted its own distinctiveness from this other kind of music. So as we talk about the early Heavy Metal in this lecture we're really talking about the music that comes out of the late 70s and the first half of the 1980s. Groups having some commercial success, but there are a lot of Heavy Metal groups and Heavy Metal scenes with groups that just sort of bubbled under the charts. And never really sort of had the success, or at least, never had the kind of success that Heavy Metal bands would have in the second half of the 1980s. Considering Heavy Metal from the very beginning, we have to wonder where does this term come from? A lot of Heavy Metal musicians don't actually like Heavy Metal. I know Ozzy Osbourn has said a number of times what exactly doesHeavy Metal mean. It doesn't really sort of flattering or interesting or a descriptive kind of term. Where did it come from? There's the Stepenwolf song Born to be Wild, heavy metal thunder, so people say well maybe that's where the Heavy Metal thing comes from. Of course in that song they're really talking about motorcycles and the heavy metal thunder that comes from those. In terms of style some of the prototypes for Heavy Metal music. You might be able to go back as far as say something like Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida from 1968, the kind of really heavy sound of that track. You may want to Detroit in the MC5 and Iggy Pop. You may want to sort of refer to the sort of aggressive sound of a lot of the garage bands from the mid and late 1960s. Probably the most obvious place to start with the roots of Heavy Metal, is with Black Sabbath. That is a group that, of course, has Ozzy Osbourne in it and by the end the decade and into the early 1980s, both Ozzy and Black Sabbath without Ozzy become important figures in the growth of heavy metal as a separate kind of genre. But back in the 70s, Black Sabbath really were as we talked about before, kind of grouped in with bands like Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple, and other groups. Well, those are a couple of other groups that might be seen as prototypes. They weren't yet Heavy Metal. They weren't yet thought of as Heavy Metal in the 70s but became prototypes for heavy metal music. Black Sabbath for its Gothic, horror themes. Remember that the whole idea of calling the band Black Sabbath, was using a name from a Boris Karloff horror film from the 1960s. That sort of dark sound that a lot of that music has where all of the instruments, the bass guitar, the voice are all really pretty much doing the same exactly lines. So if you listen to a song like say for example, Iron Man they're all basically doing that same melody with some elaboration it's a very dark sort of slow brooding kind of sound. Of course, they could do more up-tempo things, and certainly that happens in a lot of their tunes, too. But you get the idea of this sort of dark Gothic horror kind of a theme. A Deep Purple for the virtuosity of Ritchie Blackmore on the lead guitar, very important prototype for Heavy Metal. The classical references is courtesy of keyboard is John Lord. Most of those classical references actually took more like Baroque music, that is music of people like JS Bach, not so much to Mozart or Beethoven or Schumann or Brahms or something like that. But very much sort of a Baroque influences. The lead vocals in Deep Purple, Ian Gillan, and that sort of high scream that he patented very early on becomes prototypical for heavy metal vocalists. Led Zeppelin are often cited as a prototype. And Jimmy Paige would say well don't forget Led Zeppelin had an awful lot of acoustic music and it always sort of bugged him a bit that they're always remembered for the heavier stuff. But certainly When Led Zeppelin were heavy, they were very heavy. Is there anything sort of heavier than Kashmir? It's a big gigantic sort of spectacular but hard-driving kind of piece that would've influenced and inspired a lot of Heavy Metal musicians. And then the theatrical elements that we're part of an Alice Cooper, or a Kiss show, really start to become part of Heavy Metal, as Heavy Metal starts to get into the bigger venues, into the stadiums and that kind of thing. So, all these things kind of blend together as influences. And so Heavy Metal starts to become a kind of specialty within rock music by the end of the 70s and the early 80s. Let's talk a little bit about the image of Heavy Metal in the culture. Heavy Metal it was a style, you can decide what you think, how you think things are today. But back in the day, and really even into the 90s, Heavy Metal fans and Heavy Metal musicians did not get much respect. The music was thought of as being very simple-minded, the people who listen to it were thought of as being not particularly sophisticated. It's partly because the music was marked as very kind of blue collar and working class. And so a lot of people sort of looked down on those kinds of folks anyway. And so the music that went with it came with all these kinds of people who weren't very sophisticated, who were prone to violence, just your not more, sort of, sophisticated music listener let's say. They were often called Headbangers because of the way they would bang their heads during the music, this kind of thing. Actually among the Heavy Metal people, was a short term that they adopted with some affection. They were happy to be called headbangers. They were both positive and negative stereotypes associated with Heavy Metal. There are two places where we can see these illustrated in the culture, but most clearly, the kind of honesty, loyalty but yet unselfish devotion to partying can be seen in Wayne and Garth of the Wayne's World movies. They are the lovable Heavy Metal fans. They are maybe not the smartest, not the sharpest knife in a drawer either one of them but down deep they're good honest, earnest people who even though they like to party, are good folks. The more negative stereotypes are captured in the cartoon series Beavis and Butt-head. And these two guys are ignorant, vulgar and lazy. One of them wearing a Metallica t-shirt, I think, and the other one wearing a Winger t-shirt. The whole idea there is this is sort of the negative stereotype, of not so much of the Heavy Metal musicians as much as the Heavy Metal fan. And then you see both of them. And they become this sort of iconic imagery that rises up in the 80s and really sticks with us now, and can still be used to some effects in movies and television. Just to indicate the whole kind of personality host of places in the culture. So, that gives us some idea of how Heavy Metal music is seen in the culture. So let's talk about how it rises. The rise of heavy metal can be seen happening in two places, in this country in the United States centered around Los Angeles most importantly and in the UK centered around both London, and also the north of England. Let's talk about the British scene first. This movement called the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, NWBHM, as it's sometimes abbreviated. And within British Heavy Metal, the touchstone really is early Black Sabbath, and we think about what was happening with Black Sabbath at the end of the 70s into the 80s. By 1977, Ozzy Osbourne had left Black Sabbath to go solo. Sabbath tried a couple of singers but eventually replaced him with Ronnie James Dio. And they came out with a couple of big albums with Dio on lead vocals, Heaven and Hell in 1980 and Mob Rules in 1981. Ozzy Recruits virtuoso guitarist Randy Rhoads into his band and he comes screaming back as a solo artist with Blizzard of Ozz in 1980. That was the number two album in this country and number seven in the UK and Diary of a Madman in 1981. So on the biggest stage you've got Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne both kind of leading the way. But underneath there are some groups that were really pushing the aesthetic of getting back to just Heavy Metal. Getting away from all this big production that had happened with the progression of rock bands and Pink Floyd all this kind of thing and just really getting down to the sort of the core of what Heavy Metal was. An important group for that coming out of Birmingham is Judas Priest in 1979. Their album, Hell Bent for Leather is usually considered a classic of this new wave of British Heavy Metal for 1980, we get the album, British Steel and the two classic tracks, Breaking the Law and Living After Midnight. Coming out of London. We get Iron Maiden very popular in the UK, this group their initial album from 1980 and then Number of the Beast was number 33 in this country but number one in the UK in 1982. Coming out of Sheffield Def Leppard in 1981 their album High n dry. And then 1983, their big album in this country, Pyromania, number two here, number 18 in the UK. The representative track from that being a track called Photograph. And then a group that was very influential but never really had the success in this country that some of the other groups had. And that's Motorhead coming out of London and lead by bassist, vocalist Lemmy Kilmister. Ace of Spades from 1980 probably the most representative of the Motorheads stuff but Lemmy and his bands were very influential on a lot of the other new wave of British Heavy Metal bands. Some of the features that all of this music share, of course an obviously very guitar-driven sound, virtuous guitar solos and unrelentingly heavy drum beats. That is the drums are heavy, ala sort of John Bonham. The guitar solos are virtuosic ala Richey Blackmore. Ala their American cousin Eddie Van Halen. People like that were the solos, the guitar solos really are the kind of show cases often times of these tracks. Let's turn now to Los Angeles and see what was happening over on this side of the pond. If you were American kid wanted to play guitar in the pop music business in this country, the United States, at the end of the 70s, you probably ended up going to Los Angeles. That's where everybody ended up. It used to be New York, maybe, but by the end of the 70s, it was Los Angeles. It's like every guitar player in the country was in Los Angeles. And so part of that was fighting to get into groups, and various kinds of things. So there was a lot of musicians, and a lot of musicianship in Los Angeles, people fighting to be part of the music biz. And this provided a very sort of fertile ground for a lot of these Heavy Metal groups that rose up. One group that sort of led the way, Van Halen, we've already talked about, and we talked about rock in the late 1970s. Their album from 1978, their debut album Van Halen with David Lee Roth on the vocals. But they did their last album with David Lee Roth, their sixth studio album, in 1984 called appropriately, 1984. And then, because of a falling out between Eddie Van Halen, and David Lee Roth, and tension in the group, these kinds of thing happen all the time. David Lee Roth leaves and in comes Sammy Hagar for the Sammy Hagar version of Van Halen. The first album they did together, 5150, was number one in 1986 with a number three single, Why Can't This Be Love. I'll leave it to you to decide whether you like the David Lee Roth Van Halen Or the Sammy Hagar Van Halen better. But whatever you decide it has to be acknowledged that Van Halen coming out of Los Angeles is an important influence on that scene. Some other groups coming out of the LA Scene sort of early on in the first half of the decade Quiet Riot. Their album from 1983, Metal Health featuring the song Come On Feel the Noize, a number five single for them so some commercial success there. A song that had originally been done in the 70s by a British group called Slade. Ratt, Out of the Cellar from 1984, a number seven album for them featuring the single Round and Round, which was a number 12 single. And Motley Crue Featuring singer Vince Neil and drummer Tommy Lee who had become famous for something entirely different on the Internet some years later. With the two big albums, one from 1983, Shout at the Devil, it was number 17 for them in 83. And their big one from the end of the decade, Dr Feelgood, number one on the pop charts here, number four In the UK. Some of the musical features of LA metal, very similar in a lot of ways to the metal that comes out of the UK. High screaming vocals. Maybe an imitation of somebody like Robert Plant. The very highest screams may be an imitation of Deep Purple's Ian Gillan. Loud, assertive drumming. Again, we come back to the big beats, the big drum sound. Often times the drummers with lots of drums and cymbals, ala something like Carl Palmer from Emerson, Lake & Palmer. The drum kit is essentially this, almost like a sort of an airline cockpit with all kinds of drums that guys can hit. And a lot of unison, anthem-like vocals In the choruses of the songs setting the stage for stadium sing-a-longs. So when you get to the chorus of a song it's almost like the whole crowd can raise their fist and sing a long in a sing-a-long kind of way. Well in the next video Let's talk about what happens before the middle and the end of the decade as Heavy Metal leaves this relatively undergroundish or at least somewhat off the radar kind of status and becomes one of the dominant styles of the decade.
