Running with the Devil. Robert Walser

      CHAPTER ONE

       Metallurgies

      Genre, History, and the Construction of Heavy Metal

      *

      I have been invited to try my hand at explaining heavy-metal music.

      First, heavy metal is power…. —Rob Halford of Judas Priest¹

      The Oxford English Dictionary traces “heavy metal” back through nearly two hundred years. In the late twentieth century, the term has two primary meanings: for chemists and metallurgists, it labels a group of elements and toxic compounds; for the rest of us, it refers to a kind of music. But these meanings are not unrelated. Even in the nineteenth century, “heavy metal” was both a technical term and a figurative, social one:

      1828 Webster s.v., Heavy metal, in military affairs, signifies large guns, carrying balls of a large size, or it is applied to the balls themselves.

      1882 Ogilvie s.v., Heavy metal, guns or shot of large size; hence, fig. ability, mental or bodily; power, influence; as, he is a man of heavy metal; also, a person or persons of great ability or power, mental or bodily; used generally of one who is or is to be another’s opponent in any contest; as, we had to do with heavy metal. (Colloq.)²

      “Heavy metal,” in each of its parts and as a compound, evoked power and potency. A “man of heavy metal” was powerful and daunting, and the OED vividly confirms a long-standing social conflation of power and patriarchal order. The long history of “heavy metal” in the English language resonates with modern usage, even as contemporary musicians converse with the musical past in their work. “Heavy metal” is not simply a recently invented genre label; its meaning is indebted to the historical circulation of images, qualities, and metaphors, and it was applied to particular musical practices because it made social sense to do so.

      “Heavy metal” now denotes a variety of musical discourses, social practices, and cultural meanings, all of which revolve around concepts, images, and experiences of power. The loudness and intensity of heavy metal music visibly empower fans, whose shouting and headbanging testify to the circulation of energy at concerts.³ Metal energizes the body, transforming space and social relations. The visual language of metal album covers and the spectacular stage shows offer larger-than-life images tied to fantasies of social power, just as in the more prestigious musical spectacles of opera. The clothing and hairstyles of metal fans, as much as the music itself, mark social spaces from concert halls to bedrooms to streets, claiming them in the name of a heavy metal community. And all of these aspects of power provoke strong reactions from those outside heavy metal, including fear and censorship.

      The names chosen by heavy metal bands evoke power and intensity in many different ways. Bands align themselves with electrical and mechanical power (Tesla, AC/DC, Motörhead), dangerous or unpleasant animals (Ratt, Scorpions), dangerous or unpleasant people (Twisted Sister, Motley Crüe, Quiet Riot), or dangerous and unpleasant objects (Iron Maiden). They can invoke the auratic power of blasphemy or mysticism (Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Blue Öyster Cult) or the terror of death itself (Anthrax, Poison, Megadeth, Slayer). Heavy metal can even claim power by being self-referential (Metallica) or by transgressing convention with an antipower name (Cinderella, Kiss). Some bands add umlauts (Motörhead, Motley Crüe, Queensrÿche) to mark their names as archaic or gothic.⁴

      If there is one feature that underpins the coherence of heavy metal as a genre, it is the power chord. Produced by playing the musical interval of a perfect fourth or fifth on a heavily amplified and distorted electric guitar, the power chord is used by all of the bands that are ever called heavy metal and, until heavy metal’s enormous influence on other musical genres in the late 1980s, by comparatively few musicians outside the genre. The power chord can be percussive and rhythmic or indefinitely sustained; it is used both to articulate and to suspend time. It is a complex sound, made up of resultant tones and overtones, constantly renewed and energized by feedback. It is at once the musical basis of heavy metal and an apt metaphor for it, for musical articulation of power is the most important single factor in the experience of heavy metal. The power chord seems simple and crude, but it is dependent upon sophisticated technology, precise tuning, and skillful control. Its cwerdriven sound evokes excess and transgression but also stability, permanance, and harmony.

      But what is the nature of this power? Where does it come from, how is it generated, mobilized, circulated? How can heavy metal music articulate claims to power, and what social tensions are addressed or mediated by it? These are the issues that animate this book. In chapter 2, I will take up the problem of defining heavy metal structurally, as a musical discourse comprising a coherent system of signs such as power chords. In this one, I will be concerned with a more functional view of heavy metal as a genre, with the processes of definition and contestation that go on among those concerned with the music. In other words, I will be focusing here on how heavy metal gets construed—by fans, historians, academics, and critics.⁵ The essential characteristics of heavy metal not only vary according to these different perspectives, but the very existence of something called heavy metal depends upon the ongoing arguments of those involved. Heavy metal is, like all culture, a site of struggle over definitions, dreams, behaviors, and resources.

Genre and Commercial Mediation

      Discursive practices are characterized by the delimitation of a field of objects, the definition of a legitimate perspective for the agent of knowledge, and the fixing of norms for the elaboration of concepts and theories. Thus, each discursive practice implies a play of prescriptions that designate its exclusions and choices. —Michel Foucault⁶

      I hate that term “heavy metal.” —Angus Young, AC/DC

      Heavy metal began to attain stylistic identity in the late 1960s as a “harder” sort of hard rock, and a relatively small but fiercely loyal subculture formed around it during the 1970s. Because heavy metal threatened to antagonize demographically targeted audiences, metal bands received virtually no radio airplay, and they had to support their album releases by constant touring, playing to an audience that was mostly young, white, male, and working class.⁷ The 1980s was the decade of heavy metal’s emergence as a massively popular musical style, as it burgeoned in both commercial success and stylistic variety. The heavy metal audience became increasingly gender-balanced and middle-class, and its age range expanded to include significant numbers of preteens and people in their late twenties. By 1989, heavy metal accounted for as much as 40 percent of all sound recordings sold in the United States, and Rolling Stone announced that heavy metal now constituted “the mainstream of rock and roll.”⁸ By then, metal had diversified into a number of styles and influenced other musical discourses. The term “heavy metal” itself became an open site of contestation, as fans, musicians, and historians struggled with the prestige—and notoriety—of a genre name that seemed no longer able to contain disparate musical styles and agendas.

      Thus, heavy metal is not monolithic; it embraces many different musical and visual styles, many kinds of lyrics and behaviors. “Heavy metal” is a term that is constantly debated and contested, primarily among fans but also in dialogue with musicians, commercial marketing strategists, and outside critics and