came out of Boston in 1972, fronted by two men known as the Toxic Twins because of their vast appetite for drugs: Steven Tyler on vocals and Joe Perry on guitar. They played a slightly more aspirational Rolling Stones brand of rock music, but with their twisting guitars turned up much louder. Their songs were low-slung authentic blues-sounding, but were anthemic enough to appeal to us kiddies in need of such sweeteners. The success of their third album, Toys in the Attic, meant that they could buy as many drugs as they wanted, which they did, and they managed to look extraordinarily cool while on them (in fact the more zonked-out they became, the more they began to look like pirates). At the height of this giant plane of excess, the band entered a studio called the Wherehouse outside Boston and recorded their fourth album, the one Dominic had lent me, which they somewhat ironically titled Rocks.
Rocks is the greatest rock album of all time, by anyone, ever. I don’t know how Aerosmith managed this considering the state they were in while they were making it. When asked about the record these days, even Tyler says that all he can hear are the drugs. It sounds like something from another dimension; entirely otherworldly, a hazy sonic entity unto itself. It swirls and swaggers but feels arid and fragile at the same time, and although they’ve had their odd decent moments since, this is the only Aerosmith album you honestly need to buy – it’s a rawhide goddamn masterpiece. Its final song, the faux doo-wop coda ‘Home Tonight’, features my all-time favourite guitar solo; it’s a weird and unique thing – a guitar solo that makes me cry.
As Rocks slowly released its charms, Kiss slipped off the end of my radar, and thus began a holy tumble into an abyss of dark stuff – music made by outlaws in eyeliner, high on drugs. Aerosmith had opened another big door for me – the gateway to the defining Metal giants of the 1970s. In America this era belonged mostly to Kiss and Aerosmith, but in the UK it belonged to the really big boys, the guys who were so big that they became known as dinosaurs. This was the decade where Heavy Metal started on solids, learned to walk, and grew into the monster that conquered the world, East and West. The 70s were where Metal found itself, where the sacred texts were hewn from the death of innocence in the 60s, lines were carved thick in the sand, amps were cranked up to their limits, and the rules of the game were conceived, practised, and stuck at for over 25 years. Let’s take a deep breath and enter the Houses of the Holy.
THE 1970S:
THE ZEP, THE SABS, THE PURPS
Led Zeppelin were the daddies of us all. They were the biggest, the loudest, had the longest songs, went on the longest tours, had the longest instrumental solo spots, had the highest-pitched singer, had the best and thinnest guitar player, took the most drugs, shagged the most groupies, were the first to have their own private jet, had the most songs about knights and goblins and stuff, and, most importantly of all, sold far and away more records than anyone else of the period.
They came out of the ashes of the late 60s and ripped off old blues standards shamelessly but with virtuosic brio. The only weak link was singer Robert Plant, who looked the part with his puffed open chest and leonine mane, but who sang too high and too squawkily, and wrote silly lyrics, worse than Noddy Holder. But they conquered the world with their first ever tour – as simple as that – the crowds had never heard anything like it before. The Zep were the first to achieve rock’s definitive critical mass; to master its liberational equation: Blues + Power = Destination.
Led Zeppelin were so big and famous that when they got to their fourth album they didn’t even bother to give it a name, or even put their name on the outside record sleeve. It says a lot about the doggedness of the Metal community that people still row about what to call this fourth album. Seeing as the Zep called their first record 1, their second 2, and third 3, the argument for calling it 4 would appear overwhelming. But calling it 4 in front of a Zeppelin diehard provokes howls of protest. They know it as The Four Symbols. Others call it Zoso. Some say it has no name. All you need to know is that it’s the one with ‘Stairway to Heaven’ on it, the one you’ve probably got. It’s almost beyond seminal. It starts off with ‘Black Dog’, which is really hard to play on the guitar and is about sex. It’s followed by ‘Rock and Roll’, which is hard to follow at the beginning if you’re a guitarist and you’re trying to count yourself in, and is about sex too, and is really hard to sing if you’re playing it in the right key. Then it’s the medieval epic ‘Battle of Evermore’, which is full of wailing and mandolins and is profound and hard to play on the guitar (and the mandolin). Then it’s time to settle back for the main attraction.
‘Stairway to Heaven’ is perhaps the most famous rock song of all time. It goes on for about 15 minutes and has many different parts; it’s like ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ but slightly less embarrassing. ‘Stairway’ is a song about nothing really. Plant (known affectionately in Metal circles as Percy) wrote some of the words with a hangover a few minutes before he was due to record them. For a song so famous, few other artists have had the nerve to record their own interpretation. Those who have (Dread Zeppelin, Rolf Harris, Dolly Parton) have produced a mixed set of results. Even Percy hasn’t got much to say about the song any more. ‘I was a kid when I wrote that,’ he says these days, dismissively.
After this, the Zep got even bigger, and they started to give their albums names again – a sign of insecurity if ever there was one. Punk arrived, and everybody assumed the Zep would be one of the first to fall, but instead they ran away to America and played three-hour sets with models of Stonehenge onstage. In the end neither punk nor their own bloated weight killed them: they were killed by Death. The best drummer ever, John Bonham (known affectionately in Metal circles as Bonzo), died the archetypal Metal death, going the same way as Bon Scott from the DC and several others: he choked on his own vomit while sleeping. He died in 1980, and the rest of the Zep did the right thing and broke up the band. To their credit, they still haven’t sullied their legacy by reforming, although they’ve come mighty close over the years, and probably will some day, but that’s OK because that’s what people do. People should be less precious about shit like that.
Black Sabbath were punk before punk was invented, but without sounding much like it. OK, they had long greasy hair and moustaches, and dressed in black, were obsessed with crucifixes, wrote songs about witches and stuff and were probably Satanists, but the principle behind the noise they made, and their attitude while making it, was punk all the way. All four of the Sabs were from Birmingham, and all were really dodgy, especially their delinquent young vocalist (in Metal, always use ‘vocalist’ rather than ‘singer’), the deadly Ozzy Osbourne. The noise they made was instantly terrifying. If you can imagine getting on the Titanic (before it sank), stripping out all its decks and cabins and everything until you’ve just got the gigantic iron shell, and then in the middle of the night scraping something rusty and fetid along the bottom, for hours, then you’ve got the raw effect of the sound of Black Sabbath. They did a few ballads too, though these weren’t ballads so much as funereal dirges, which provoked suicidal urges among those unconditioned to their sound. They scared people, and people love to be scared, so the Sabs became enormous.
The Sabs were bolder than the Zep when it came to naming their fourth record – they bit the bullet and decided to give it a name: Volume 4. Like the Zep, it was their best and most famous album. It came out in 1972 and included a song called ‘Supernaut’, which has, to my ears, the greatest riff of all time. And it’s these riffs that turned the Sabs from a modest blues band into bona fide Princes of Darkness. Tony Iommi, guitarist and songwriter (once described by the editor of Melody Maker as looking like ‘a gypsy violinist in an Earls Court pizza parlour, or more accurately, like the Italian contestant in next year’s Eurovision Song Contest’; Iommi later punched him), is the all-time Master of the Riff. Those thick slabs of chords, jagged grinding motifs, clanging statements of evil intent, were Iommi’s alone. So Tony laid down one of those, Bill and Geezer (drums and bass) doomed it out behind him, and at the front, bellowing the runic catechisms, was Ozzy himself. He wasn’t a great singer, still isn’t, but listening to their early albums there’s only one man for the job – though if foghorns were able to enunciate they could’ve used one of those instead.
The Sabs were always dogged by allegations of Satanism. It was an image they did