so hefty it felt like dinosaurs were stomping round the room, and a voice so astringent it could strip paint off the walls. Alex said he was going to change his name to Alexander AC/DC and that his parents had said it was OK, and I, temporarily, believed him.
Together Alex and I learned that AC/DC had had two different singers: Bon Scott, who sang like a snake and was dead (he choked on his own sick in 1980), and his replacement Brian Johnson, who wore a flat cap and a vest and sounded like a vomiting pensioner (maybe that’s what had pissed Granny off so much). Alex and I liked Bon the best – too much Brian all in one go was distressing, and Bon sounded sexy, though we didn’t know what ‘sexy’ was exactly. We just knew Bon was cooler, and funnier, and being dead we knew he couldn’t turn around and decide to write a ballad.
Bon was great, but our favourite thing about AC/DC was their iconic lead guitarist, Angus Young. Angus was a short Australian man with straggly hair who always wore a school uniform: velvet shorts, velvet jacket, velvet cap, shirt and tie. It wasn’t the fact that he dressed like us that impressed us particularly – although we respected the gimmick – it was the sheer feral noise he made with his guitar. Every note that Angus played seemed to possess a kind of taut, evil shiver; it got us right in the diaphragm. His perpetually blazing Gibson transfixed us and we devoutly mewed every note in exhausting bouts of keep-up air guitar in Alex’s bedroom. While the rest of the DC stood rooted to the spot in their tight mucky T-shirts under their curtains of hair, Angus duck-walked his way around the stage like a depraved goblin Chuck Berry, dripping rivers of sweat behind him as he methodically, ritually disrobed. We duck-walked with our air guitars around Alex’s room, careful not to skip the needle.
Me as Angus at my sister’s fancy-dress birthday party. L – R: dog, sister, me.
A month later, Alex’s parents took us to Le Havre for a weekend. They were both doctors and were travelling over there for a medical conference. Alex and I spent hours locked in the hotel room, squinting out over the docks, watching sea-gulls attacking cars. When we were eventually let loose in a giant department store called Les Printemps, Alex was allowed two new AC/DC albums and I was allowed one. It took us hours to choose. In the end I went for Powerage while Alex demanded Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap and If You Want Blood, You Got It (I still feel estranged from both to this day). Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap featured songs called ‘Big Balls’, ‘Love at First Feel’ and ‘Squealer’. It was getting harder to avoid the sexual connotations.
We were banned from listening to the tapes back at the hotel or during the journey home, which was probably a good thing anyway with all that talk of big balls. So instead we bickered over whose tape was better before we’d even heard them, and learned the track listings and the times of the songs and every detail from the covers. My tape had a picture of Angus with a crazed, electrocuted expression on his face and wires coming out of his sleeves instead of hands, which I soon discovered was exactly how he sounded inside. But Alex and and I were worried: had Angus really impaled himself upon his Gibson SG on the front of If You Want Blood, You Got It? It looked extremely convincing. How had he survived that?
Angus – dead?
Back in Winchester, we bought up the DC back catalogue using Alex’s parents’ money and waited impatiently for their first new album since we’d discovered them. It was called Flick of the Switch and had an exciting though minimalist cover, with Angus and his guitar hanging off a giant switch. My favourite song was ‘Bedlam in Belgium’. I imagined the devastation the DC could cause in Belgium – Angus duck-walking down a blazing street that looked a bit like Le Havre, but bigger and engulfed in flames. Unfortunately for us, Flick of the Switch was their worst album to date, but we hadn’t discovered the music press yet, so it took a few years to realise.
My family’s appetite for AC/DC hadn’t progressed at quite the speed I’d initially expected. I was particularly let down by my father’s response, who, as a brilliant pianist, bass player and all-round musical Svengali to our family (when he felt like it), should have been the most appreciative. He became agitated when I played the DC on his fragile and expensive record player at objectionable volume while the family sat watching The Two Ronnies. He wasn’t completely anti-pop – he owned ‘Strawberry Fields’/ ’Penny Lane’, a T-Rex album, and a Chris Squire (out of Yes) solo album that someone had once given him by mistake. But whenever he heard the DC he would wrinkle up his face comically and hold his ears as Brian Johnson screeched out ‘What Do You Do for Money, Honey’ and ‘Let Me Put My Love Into You’ and ‘Givin’ the Dog a Bone’. I convinced myself that if he listened long and hard enough he’d eventually get it, just as I had. I said, ‘OK, maybe that one wasn’t so good, perhaps not the best, I agree, but hold on, listen to this one.’ And he’d light another Silk Cut and turn up the darts on the television and I would translate an annoyed movement of his mouth into acquiescence.
One Sunday he was lighting a fire with wet kindling and newspaper, a cigarette in his mouth, and I was playing him Highway to Hell, explaining each track as they came and went. His face was a picture of resigned indifference, but I was determined he’d like it this time. After all, it was my current favourite album, and Bon’s voice was easier than Brian’s, and my father didn’t have his fingers in his ears for once, which was a start. After ‘Shot Down in Flames’ he slowly took the cigarette from his lips and muttered, ‘I quite liked that one.’
Wow! I played it again straight away, fluffing the rewind button in my excitement, but next time when it finished he said, ‘But that one was bloody dreadful.’
‘It was the same one!’
‘Aha.’ Pleased with himself, he turned on the television.
‘Well, did you like it or not?’ I was hopping around, preparing to rewind it again, but he’d turned the TV up so loud he couldn’t hear me.
WHAT IS HEAVY METAL?
Heavy Metal is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as: ‘A style of rock music with a strong beat, played very loudly using electrical instruments’. I reckon they’ve nailed it. The Collins calls it: ‘A type of rock music characterised by high volume, a driving beat, and extended guitar solos, often with violent, nihilistic, and misogynistic lyrics’. It’s hard to disagree. And by Heavy Metal, I mean the real thing – the original full-fat knuckleduster motherfuckers. I’m talking about Metal’s Golden Age, which took place between 1969 (the first Led Zeppelin album), and 1991 (Nirvana’s second album, Nevermind). This book only takes into account events that took place between those two landmark dates, so if you’re here looking for some Slipknots, or The Limp Biscuits, you should search elsewhere.
Heavy Metal comes from two places: the blues, and a strange kind of bombastic neo-classical. Two famous Metal bands illustrate this well: Motorhead and Van Halen. Motorhead’s seminal (the Metal world adores the word seminal) No Sleep ’til Hammersmith, an album recorded at the genre’s High Temple, Hammersmith Odeon, is a Metal classic. Essentially it’s just a fast and mucky blues album howled out by a handlebar-moustached and wart-ridden speed-freak. In the other camp you’ve got Eddie Van Halen, guitarist in his eponymous group, who created a new style of Wagnerian arpeggio by playing his guitar’s neck two-handed, almost like a piano, using classical scales and phrasing, which went on to influence swathes of bouffant pomposity and Paganini plagiarism. There was no soul in that half – most Metal came straight out of the blues and those hoary old three chords, just played at ear-splitting levels – and in very tight trousers.
Why is the concept of high volume so important to the genre? It’s because otherwise it would be extremely boring. If you think about it, there are no subtle structural dynamics to listen out for – no artistry in construction to be intellectually appreciated and politely applauded – you’re not going to miss anything. The only question to ask during a Metal song is: when is the guitar solo? That’s all you