GREAT MOMENTS IN METAL

GREAT MOMENTS IN METAL

FEATURES

Anastasia Finn

JULY 14, 1945

Tiny Ian Kilminster—later to be renamed Lemmy and to play bass in the group Motorhead—emerges wailing from the womb somewhere in Wales. A crack team of obstetricians works around the clock to push him back in, but to no avail.

AUGUST 14, 1948

Moments after emerging from the womb somewhere in the British Midlands, tiny Robert Plant lets fly a wail that shatters the bifocals of the obstetrician who plucked him from it.

MARCH 6, 1951

Moments after emerging from the womb somewhere in Canada, tiny Geddy Lee lets fly a wail that shatters the windshield of the auto of the obstetrician who plucked him from it—even though it’s in his suburban garage four miles away (he takes the bus to the hospital). The infant weighs 7 lbs. 8 oz—six pounds, fourteen ounces of which are nose.

MAY 14, 1952

Four-year-old Robert Plant discovers his ability to cause neighbors’ dogs to void their bowels in terror with his screeching.

JUNE 19, 1956

Somewhere in Australia, tiny Angus Young emerges from the womb barebuttocked and stamping his little tootsies. He has no effect on either the glasses or the windshield of the obstretician who delivers him.

MAY 26, 1963

Thirteen-year-old Ronnie Dio, later to grow—but not much—into an unsightly little dwarf of a man with a great big voice, makes the sign of the devil. “Oh,” say his seventh grade classmates, “we are so impressed.”

AUGUST 14, 1964 As the Kinks prepare to record their third single, “You Really Got Me,” lead guitarist Dave Davies sticks knitting needles in the speaker of his amplifier, causing it to sound as though the earth is opening up and swallowing small Japanese hamlets. No one realizes it, but heavy metal is born.

JUNE 18, 1965

For the recording of “Satisfaction,” Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards uses a fuzztone, a new device that makes him sound like the earth opening up and swallowing Japanese towns of 25,000 to 50,000 inhabitants, or at least like several saxophones that aren’t exactly in tune with one another.

AUGUST 19, 1966

Jim Marshall invents the Marshall amplifier, which enables even frail little English twerps who look as though they’d blow away if you sneezed within a block of them sound like the earth opening up and swallowing Tokyo, or at least Kyoto. Researchers soon discover that the amplifier is capable of a volume that produces brain damage. Supply your own punchline.

OCTOBER 2, 1967

Three young San Francisco Bay amphetamine abusers with hair down to their solar plexuses and a dream form Blue Cheer, presumably believing that abusers of drugs other than amphetamines will mistake them for Cream or the Jimi Flendrix Experience. Their manager, a former Hell’s Angel, boasts that they play so loud that they turn the air into cottage cheese. Which boast an American Cottage Cheese Association spokesperson annoyedly dismisses as so much sour cream.

JUNE 16, 1968

Blue Cheer performs at Los Angeles’s Shrine Auditorium on a bill topped by the Jeff Beck Group. About five minutes into the song they announce as their last, the drummer breaks one of his bass drum pedals. The author, in town to address a national PTA convention on the theme of “Amphetamine Abuse In Our PreSchools,” sighs with relief, believing that the end of their excruciating set is near. Over six hours later, the song ends.

MARCH 14, 1969

Led Zeppelin arrive in America for their first American tour. Former Herman’s Hermits sessionman Jimmy Page plays his guitar with a violin bow. Drummer John Bonham hits his cymbals with his bare hands. Robert Plant bares great handfuls of chest hair and shatters windshields in the parking lot with his singing. Now that’s entertainment.

OCTOBER 23, 1969 Grand Funk Railroad forms in Michigan, apparently to make Blue Cheer seem like Cream in comparison. Three years later, their manager will suggest in the liner notes of their greatest hits album (what a concept!) that, like Napoleon, Hemingway, and Twiggy before them, Mark, Don, and Mel need be referred to by one name only. He misspells Hemingway. He doesn’t mention Morrissey or Prince. Maybe I shouldn’t either, as this article isn’t about excruciatingly off-key post-punk or concupiscent post-disco, but heavy metal. So kill me. So cancel your subscription.

SEPTEMBER 29, 1969

Apparently believing that there could never be too many Led Zeppelins, Black Sabbath forms in the British Midlands. They purport to be heavy into black magic, man. Doing so distracts from the fact that they’re rotten musicians, and that they include the only lead singer in the British rock ’n’ roll history to borrow his best known stage move from deposed U.S. President Richard Nixon—Ozzy Osbourne’s forever making V’s with his middle and index fingers and waving them in the air. He makes the genre, heretofore the domain of frail little twerps who look as though they’d blow away if you sneezed within a block of them, safe for the big-assed, love-handled, and hopelessly off-key.

APRIL 18, 1970

Apparently believing that there could never be too many Deep Purples, Uriah Heep forms in London. Their organist, Ken Hensley, is the ugliest man in the history of rock ’n’ roll. He is even uglier, that is, than the group’s guitarist, Mick Box. He needs only look at a lawn to kill it. When he cries, the tears get halfway down his cheeks and then dash back up to his peepers in horror. He appears to have been whupped with an ugly stick. He has to sneak up on glasses of water to get a drink. I could go on and on.

APRIL 29, 1970

Apparently aspiring to sinister Teutonicness, Blue Oyster Cult, many of whom are Jewish, sprinkle umlauts over the vowels of their name.

FEBRUARY 14, 1971

Apparently believing that there could never be too many Led Zeppelins, the trio Rush forms in Canada. Lead singer Geddy Lee’s hideous gigantic hooter makes Pete Townshend’s look like Nanette Fabray’s, or, later, Terri Nunn’s, in comparison. At the sound of his voice, domestic pets who slumber blissfully through even Led Zeppelin albums scurry horrifiedly onto the thoroughfare and are run over. When the Canadian pet population plummets, the Canadian Spaying Association (CSA) unjustly claims credit.

MARCH 16, 1972 Apparently believing that there could never be too many Alice Coopers, Kiss forms in New York, New York, substituting fire-eating and cartoonish make-up for guillotines and gallows. They leave the dreadful off-key singing alone.

MAY 1, 1975

Apparently believing that there could never be too many Alice Coopers, Twisted Sister forms in Long Island, New York.

SEPTEMBER 22, 1976

Judas Priest’s Rob Halford dresses up like a patron of a homosexual leather bar. Heavy metal fashion will never recover.

FEBRUARY 19, 1977 Apparently believing that there could never be too many (get involved and amaze your friends—fill this in yourself], Quiet Riot, featuring a soon-to-beprematurely balding Jewish frontman who sings as though intent on tearing the walls of his intestines, forms in Los Angeles.

APRIL 16-19, 1977 Cheap Trick demonstrates that bombastic music doesn’t have to be tuneless or misogynistic, and that one can play it in the silliest possible attire. Heavy metal fashion recovers instantly.

JANUARY 14, 1978 Having expressed all he can with his admittedly limited technique on the electric guitar, AC/DC’s Angus Young explores a heretofore uncharted area of selT expression by showing a Poughkeepsie, New York, audience his creamy white little buttocks.

OCTOBER 11, 1978 Apparently unfulfilled by the chicken a la king, Ozzy Osbourne bites the head off a dove at a Columbia Records luncheon. Better he should have bitten the head off one of the record company assholes he was trying to make an impression on. Oh, God, Anastasia, you’re so cynical.

JANUARY 17, 1979 Apparently believing that there could never be too many Led Zeppelins, Def Leppard, mostly frail little twerps who look as though they d blow away if you sneezed within a block of them, forms in the north of England.

NOVEMBER 4, 1980 Apparently believing that there could never be too many Kisses, Motley Crue forms in Los Angeles. Besides Kiss’s pancake make-up, they also rip off Led Zeppelin’s and Black Sabbath’s fascination with the occult, Alice Cooper’s torn fishnet and Judas Priest’s leather and studs, and Blue Oyster Cult’s umlauts. They don’t allow the facts that Mick Mars is real funny-looking and plays the guitar as though wearing stiff mittens, or that Vince Neil sings like a piglet in distress, to deter them.

FEBRUARY 2, 1981 Apparently believing that there could never be too many Aerosmiths, Ratt forms in San Diego. Within three years, they’ll be the biggest thing in American metal, in spite of the fact that the lead singer can’t sing, moves like a dork, dresses like a borderline drag queen whose wardrobe Stevie Wonder picked out, and ties with Ronnie Dio for the Ugliest Hair award. Their videos abound in cameo appearances by their manager’s uncle, Milton Berle, early American television’s notorious Thief of Bad Gags, in spite of the fact that he wasn’t funny then and isn’t funny now.

JULY 13, 1982

The Scorpions, five Germans with receding hairlines and a singer who makes Ronnie Dio look like Nick Rhodes in comparison, start getting real, real big in America.

AUGUST 23, 1982 Apparently believing that there could never be too many Motley Crues, W.A.S.P. forms in Los Angeles. Their big original move is sprinkling the Crue’s umlauts between the letters of their name rather than above its vowel.

MAY 31, 1983

Closing an all-metal show at the disastrous second US Festival, a besotted David Lee Roth forgets half the words to Van Halen’s songs. What can you expect for only $1.5 million? When his audience of a quarter-million drug abusers displeases him, he informs its male members that he intends to fuck all their girlfriends. This later turns out to have been an idle boast.

APRIL 18, 1983

Lita Ford demonstrates that, hey, a chick can make heavy metal every bit as obnoxious as any fuckin’ dude’s, man.

SEPTEMBER 22, 1983 Punks—not the Clint Eastwood kind, but the kind with silly haircuts and the names of groups you’ve never heard of scrawled on their jackets—are seen trying to knock one another unconscious at performances by the English trio Motorhead, the face of whose leader, Lemmy, is covered with golf-ball-sized warts. Unconsciousness, one imagines, being preferable to the group’s music, which is the sonic equivalent of the decay that’s said to have claimed all but one of the teeth Lemmy hasn’t lost already to amphetamine abuse.

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 41

JUNE 16, 1984

Apparently believing that there could never be too many ‘‘Kashmir”’s by Led Zeppelin, the five grossly overweight old hippies of Deep Purple re-form and record Perfect Strangers.

NOVEMBER 14, 1984

Obscure rock critic M. Campos, an admitted Hispanic, sees the future of heavy metal—two local groups called The Dreadful Umlauts and Chained Nude Playthings in a Prison of Lust! — at a Reno, Nevada, club that only weeks before was still a laundromat. ‘‘I have seen the future of heavy metal,” he writes, ‘‘and its names are The Dreadful Umlauts and Chained Nude Playthings in a Prison of Lust!”