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Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

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Why I prefer Van Halen to Radiohead
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IanB
IanB
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Edited May 06, 2008, 18:02
Re: NWOBHM
May 06, 2008, 17:56
GeeZa wrote:
IanB wrote:
[NWOBHM was just as much a genuine national grass roots movement as Punk or "New Wave". Probably more so and just as revolutionary in the cutting of HM away from the Blues and Prog roots. Punk was much more of a media construct. The young metal bands got very little coverage until it was nearly all over and Sounds got on the bandwagon.

Absolutely. There was/is a very good set of gig reviews from a guy who followed very early Maiden around in the 70s and witnessed the birth of NWOBHM and in parallel punk. It was interesting how the reality of this movement was very "Bad News" in that it was battered transit vans full of hairy motherfuckers unloading Marshalls into grim pubs around the arsehole ends of the East End, usually playing to five drunks and a dog. Ever been to Maryland at the bottom of Leytonstone High Road? It's a dive now so I bet the gigging pubs around those areas weren't much better back then.

Punk was seen as a "West" thing in London, all the media attention and links with fashion and politics inflated this sense of something not everyone could identify with. NWOBHM on the other hand was just plain heads-down working-class music, with a work-and-music ethic and fan relationship that punk didn't really have for the most part. When Maiden disappeared for a year or so in the 70s people assumed they were fucked, but they stubbornly came back with Di'Anno and the rest is history. Like most metal, it's (ongoing) influence is generally ignored out of embarrassment.



Ah Leytonstone. Sweet memories. I used to rehearse on and off with a half assed Punk band in the rehearsal studio under the railway arches (this would be 78 ish) and one time when auditioning for guitar players this local lad turned up with a Jeff Beck hair cut and an SG and just shredded the thing. It was the first time I had heard someone play up close with punk energy and metal chops. Made all that Shelley / Diggle type stuff we were doing sound a bit thin. We hit it off big time but my band mates weren't having any of this guitar army stuff. Those rehearsal rooms were chocca with bands just as you describe - hair, leathers, cider, Rothmans, rusty transit van out the front, serious volume. The local pubs were a bit on the grim side but then London in the 70s was a bit like that.
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