British Heavy Metal Practices in the 1970S-80S: Moving Away from a Subcultural Background

Mauduit Pierre History of Popular Culture in the West (1880-2000) British heavy metal practices in the 1970s-80s: moving away from a subcultural background. Defined by the first works of British bands like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath or Judas Priest, heavy metal emerged as a musical genre in the beginning of the 1970s and enjoyed a massive popularity during the 1980s. However, until the 1990s, there was a lack of academic interest concerning heavy metal music despite the worldwide success of the genre and the millions of fans it attracted. “Running with the Devil: Power, Gender and Madness in Heavy Metal Music” published in 1993 and written by Robert Walser embodies the first important study of heavy metal music. Since then, academic work has grown constantly, although slowly. It appears that most of the literature considered the cultural formation of heavy metal from a subcultural point of view. Indeed, heavy metal is broadly acknowledged as a working class, white and male dominated youth culture. This idea follows a conception of culture belonging to the Cultural Studies for which young people inherit cultural and social values from their class that contribute to “weight, shape and signify the meanings they then attach to different areas of their social life”1. Moreover, this movement claims that post-war youth cultures reformulated and asserted their working class identity through their leisure styles. Several scholars therefore analyze the construction and meanings of heavy metal as a reflection of the socio-economic conditions of its production. For instance, Leigh Michael Harrison describes the influence of the industrial and working class environment of the city of Birmingham on the music of Black Sabbath and Judas Priest2 or Ryan M. Moore explores the “reification of class consciousness”3 in the lyrics of British heavy metal bands as dominated youth subcultures. 1 Roberts et al., «Subcultures, Culture and Class» in Jefferson, Tony & Hall (ed): Resistance through rituals. Youth subcultures in post-war Britain, London 1975, pp. 29 2 Harrison, Leigh Michael, Factory Music: How the Industrial Geography and Workign-Class Environment of Post-War Birmingham Fostered the Birth of Heavy Metal, Journal of Social History, 2010 Fall, Vol.44, pp 145- 158 3 Moore, Ryan M., «The Unmaking of the English Working Class: Deindustrialization, Reification and the Origins of Heavy Metal» in Gerd Bayer(ed): Heavy Metal Music in Britain, Erlangen 2009, pp.147 Class socialization is obviously important in understanding the construction of heavy metal. However, such consideration has overlooked the fact that heavy metal is also a product of musicians’ agency. Indeed, many British heavy metal bands have proved a capacity to borrow from cultural references outside their working class background and to adopt strategies that redefined the legitimate meaning of heavy metal music. Therefore, we would like to ask the following question: How the construction of heavy metal in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s was featured by musicians’ cultural practices and performances that operated outside the working class subcultural framework of the genre? The aim of this paper is to show that the construction of heavy metal as genre was not only based on the socio-economic conditions of its production as it is often explained in existing literature but that it also dealt with cultural practices of borrowings and conscious strategies redefining the definition of “heavy metal legitimacy”. In other words, it allows us to consider heavy metal as a performance that relies on bands’ agency. Thus, our understanding of culture is linked to that of Sewell and William as we consider heavy metal as autonomous because its meanings are shaped and reshaped by a multitude of contexts and practices other than the originals4. Therefore, we will analyze heavy metal practices and strategies through sounds, lyrics, covers, choices of production, etc. of British heavy metal bands from the 1970s and the 1980s that enjoyed popularity. In order to to so, this paper will be mainly based on research literature about heavy metal bands in Britain during the 1970s and the 1980s. In the first part of this paper, I will study the evidence of classical borrowings in the music of British heavy metal bands and show how it contributed to their differentiation and empowerment in regard with their audiences. In the second part, I will address the issue of the relationship between heavy metal and the mainstream by analyzing how this relationship shifted because of some band’s “position taking strategies”5 that aimed at redefining the authenticity of the genre in order to gain recognition in the “metal field”6. I expect to demonstrate that British heavy metal of the 1970s and the 1980s was featured by an important creativity that was not only determined by the conditions of its production. 4 Sewell, William. «The Concept(s) of Culture» in Bonnel and Hunt (red): Beyond the Cultural Turn: New directions in the Study of Society and Culture, Berkeley: University of California Press 1999, pp. 35-61 5 Earl, Benjamin; «Metal Goes «Pop»: The Explosion of Heavy Metal into the Mainstream» in in Gerd Bayer(ed): Heavy Metal Music in Britain, Erlangen 2009, pp. 35 6 Ibid,pp.36 Classical references as elements of differentiation an empowerment. In his article “From Achilles to Alexander: The Classical World and the World of Metal”, Iain Campbell underlines the allusive nature of heavy metal. Indeed, the genre has been strongly featured by references to movies, fiction, history or mythology. For instance, borrowings from Norse and Tolkienian mythologies are widespread in the lyrical content of many heavy metal songs. However, we would like here to focus on the appropriation of elements of the classical world by British heavy metal bands. As at it has been stated, most of heavy metal musicians which started their career in the 1970s came from a working class subcultural background while classics were traditionally related to the culture of the elite. This was especially the case in Britain, as Campbell reminds us, where academic studies of the classical world have always been embedded in a closed circle defined by expansive and selective public and grammar schools7, institutions that few working class youngsters of the 1970s had the chance to attend. Therefore, the evidence of classical elements in British heavy metal bands, sometimes pushed to a certain extent of details, is interesting as it challenges the commonly asserted cultural border between the working class and the ruling class and deconstructs the idea of heavy metal as an inclusive genre. However, the aim of this part is not to celebrate such allusions in themselves, but to demonstrate that the unexpected elitist dimension of the genre is not neutral. Indeed, the appropriation of the classical world resulted in a differentiation that fostered the “authority or mystique”8 of the bands in regard with their fans. We will argue that this process, surprisingly, does not create a rupture between the bands and their audience but rather reinforces the loyalty of the latter towards the former. In order to sustain this argument, we will study references to the classics in the lyrics of Led Zeppelin and Iron Maiden on the basis of Campbell’s analysis. Moreover, we will pay attention to the reactions of the fans about these borrowings as well as the discourse of Iron Maiden members about them. The choice of these bands is supposed to be relevant because both of them are considered as influential and enjoyed great popularity within the genre. First of all, we would like to focus on the song called “Achilles Last Stand” by Led Zeppelin, which is one of the most acclaimed of their repertoire. The title immediately informs us of a classical reference to Homer’s Iliad as Achilles is the subject of the song. By analyzing the lyrics and the sounds of the song, we become aware that this is more an 7 Iain Campbell 8 Iain Campbell appropriation rather than a loyal adaptation of the story of Achilles. On the one hand, there are indeed elements that seem to respect the message of the Iliad. Campbell shows for instance how Robert Plant’s narrative voice, telling a monologue addressed to an unknown listener, fits with the requirement of the myth. As for the lyrics, they grasp the idea of a journey (“they told us we should go”) that refers to the travel of the heroes to Troy while the thematic of friendship (“As I turned to you, you smiled at me”) reflects the tight links between Achilles and Patroclus. There are also the ideas of homecoming and act bravely (“Oh the songs to sing when we at last return again”) that are central in heroes’ motivation to fight in the Iliad. On the other hand, the title of the song suggests that Achilles died in a glorious way in a final epic combat whereas in the Iliad his last moments don’t take a central place and are depicted as the result of a random battle injury (an arrow-shot). Then we can see how Led Zeppelin tends to reconstruct the meaning of the myth by fostering the epic dimension of the death of Achilles in the title, which gives some severity to the song. Moreover, Campbell shows that other references in the song contribute to undermine any coherence with Homer’s epic9 and this is why he warns that “it is difficult to find the bulk of the lyrics thematically lucid in any extent”10. The lyrics even introduce some ambiguity as the thematic of the travel and the reference to Atlas (“The mighty arms of Atlas, hold the heavens from the earth”) could embody an allegory to the band’s voyage to Greece at the time of the song’s composition.

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