Running with the Devil. Robert Walser
and social prestige. “That’s not heavy metal” is the most damning music criticism a fan can inflict, for that genre name has great prestige among fans. But genre boundaries are not solid or clear; they are conceptual sites of struggles over the meanings and prestige of social signs.
Fans care, often passionately, about difference; they find certain bands and songs meaningful and relevant to their lives, while others leave them indifferent or repulsed. But there are institutional pressures for a kind of generic coherence that effaces such distinctions. Fan magazines try to apply “heavy metal” very broadly, to attract as many readers as possible. But their editors must negotiate discursive boundaries cautiously. Magazines that define themselves as wholly or primarily about heavy metal strive to appear as inclusive as possible, in part to advise fans on new bands or even to market those new bands for the sake of record company sponsors, but also because every fan wants to read about (and look at pictures of) his or her favorites in every issue. On the other hand, to include bands that fans do not accept as metal would weaken the magazine’s credibility and the fans’ enjoyment of the heavy metal “world” portrayed.9
Record clubs (“Grab Ten Headbanging Flits for 1¢!”) and fan merchandisers work to produce a notion of heavy metal that is inclusive and indiscriminate, just as in classical music, where orchestra advertising, music appreciation books, and record promoters campaign to erase historical specificity in order to stimulate consumption. And just as the promoters of classical music offer encounters with unspecified “greatness,” those who market heavy metal present it vaguely, as participation in generalized rebellion and intensity.10 But in both cases the coherence of the genre and the prestige of its history are crucial concerns of the music industry. An executive for Polygram Records describes the company’s success in mobilizing a sense of heavy metal history as a marketing tool: “We used an in-store campaign for Deep Purple that emphasized peer pressure. Many of the potential buyers of DP records are too young to remember the band in its previous incarnation. So we had to instill in these young metal fans that they were not really hip, not dedicated headbangers until they knew about Deep Purple. The campaign was very successful.”11
Rigid genre boundaries are more useful to the music industry than to fans, and the commercial strategy of hyping cultural genres while striving to obliterate the differences that make individual choices meaningful often works very effectively to mobilize efficient consumption (nowhere more so than in classical music). But not always. The consequences of such a coarse view of heavy metal can be seen in the failure of the biggest metal concert tour of 1988. Touted as the heavy metal event of the decade, the Monsters of Rock tour during the summer of 1988 was a mammoth disappointment for fans and promoters alike. At the moment of heavy metal’s greatest popularity ever, several of the world’s most successful heavy metal bands were assembled for a U.S. tour: Van Halen, Scorpions, Metallica, Dokken, and Kingdom Come. These were some of the biggest names in metal, yet attendance throughout the tour was surprisingly light, and it became clear that the promoters who had assembled the tour suffered substantial losses because they had misunderstood the genre of heavy metal: they saw it as monolithic, failing to realize that heavy metal and its audience are not homogeneous, that fans’ allegiances are complex and specific. Many fans came to the Monsters of Rock concerts just to hear one or two bands; many Metallica fans, for example, despise bands like Scorpions and Kingdom Come. Waves of partisan arrivals and departures at the concert helped defuse the excitement normally generated in full arenas, and the fans’ selective attendance undercut the concession and souvenir sales that are so important to underwriting tour expenses and profits.12
The crude assumptions about genre that sank the Monsters of Rock tour are also endemic in writings about metal, from the rectitudinous denunciations of would-be censors to sociologists’ “objective” explanations—nearly everywhere, in fact, but in the magazines read by the fans themselves, where such totalizing errors could never be taken seriously. Outsiders’ representations of heavy metal as monolithic stand in stark contrast to the fans’ views, which prize difference and specificity. Because the magazines present heavy metal as exciting and prestigious at the same time that they apply the term more broadly than most fans can accept, the magazine itself becomes a site for contestation of the term. Writers of record reviews and articles gain credibility with their readers by arguing for distinctions that may contradict the inclusive stance of the magazine itself. But fans also contribute their perspectives directly through the letters columns that begin each issue. For example, one fan wrote to offer his canon of the best metal bands; his letter is emphatic about the importance of genre, and he sees “heavy metal” as a distinction of great value, something that can be attained and then lost:
Some other good groups are Accept, from Germany, and Exciter, Heaven, Twisted Sister, Girls School, Wild Dogs and so many others. Van Halen was once Heavy Metal but they got stuck on themselves. Van Halen is now what we refer to as “Bubblegum” hard rock. Loverboy, ZZ Top and Zebra are all hard rock. There is a difference between hard rock and Heavy Metal. Heavy Metal is actually a “New Wave” music for the 80s.13
Another fan addressed the controversial split between glam and speed metal, rebutting the many hostile letters that disparage one side or the other. She takes a liberal stance that retains the label “heavy metal” for her favorite band but acknowledges the merit of its incompatible cousins: “Poison and Metallica shouldn’t even be compared really. Poison is heavy metal. Metallica is speed metal. Poison is good at what they do, and Metallica is good at what they do.”14 The letters columns of magazines like RIP or Hit Parader also serve as forums for other kinds of debates, including discussions of sexism, homophobia, and racism. Fans often write in to critique the representations of gender and race they find in heavy metal lyrics, interviews with musicians, and journalism.15
Musicians who are considered heavy metal by their fans may vary greatly in their allegiance to the genre. Judas Priest’s goal has been “to achieve the definition of heavy metal,” while members of AC/DC and Def Leppard claim to hate the term, even though all three bands are mainstay subjects of heavy metal fandom.16 Many writers and fans consider Led Zeppelin the fount of heavy metal: “Quite simply, Led Zeppelin is, was, and will always be the ultimate heavy metal masters.”17 But Zeppelin’s lead singer, Robert Plant, rejects that characterization, saying, for example, of the band’s first album, “That was not heavy metal. There was nothing heavy about that at all…. It was ethereal.”18
There are many reasons for bands to position themselves carefully with respect to a genre label. Their account of their relationship to heavy metal can imply or deny historical and discursive connections to other music. But more important, it situates them with respect to audiences, interpretative norms, and institutional channels. Guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen denies any connection with metal out of contempt for a genre that he views as technically and aesthetically inferior to his own music. Malmsteen hopes to gain greater prestige as an artist than is normally granted to metal musicians, but he is also bidding for the radio play that is often denied them.19 Iron Maiden has ahvays depended on selling tickets and albums to hard-core metal fans; they have no other audience. Yet the group’s singer, Bruce Dickinson, affects nonchalance when discussing the genre and their place in it: “What is your viewpoint? I wouldn’t call UFO a heavy metal band, but if you happen to be a fan of Human League, they probably are. And if you’re a fan of Motörhead, UFO aren’t heavy metal. If we said we are heavy metal, it wouldn’t matter much in the way we sound. It’s a category.”20 Many artists bridle at genre categories because they see them as restrictive stereotypes, implying formulaic composition. Dickinson resists being pigeonholed by pointing to the relative, rather than absolute, nature of genre distinctions. But he must feign indifference to the meaningfulness of genre to fans and institutions in order to claim this appearance of artistic freedom.
The music of Rush meets the criteria of the definition of heavy metal held by most outsiders but fails the standards of most metal fans. Geddy Lee, the band’s singer and bass player, muses on the problematic status of his band: “It’s funny. When you talk to metal people about Rush, eight out of ten will tell you that we’re not a metal band. But if you talk to anyone outside of metal, eight out of ten will tell you we are a metal band. Metal is a very broad term.”21