of the dark side of social life, also reflect its engagement with the pressures of a historical moment.
For rebellion and escapism are always movements away from something, toward something else. Rebellion is critique; whether apparently effectual or not, it is politics. But even more important, what seems like rejection, alienation, or nihilism is usually better seen as an attempt to create an alternative identity that is grounded in a vision or the actual experience of an alternative community. Heavy metal’s fascination with the dark side of life gives evidence of both dissatisfaction with dominant identities and institutions and an intense yearning for reconciliation with something more credible.13 To explain this side of metal as the pathological imprint of malicious musicians or as adolescent socialization gone awry (as is often done) is to dehistoricize the specific forms and practices of heavy metal.
For I simply don’t find persuasive arguments that explain heavy metal in terms of deviance. The context for this study is the United States during the 1970s and 1980s, a period that saw a series of damaging economic crises, unprecedented revelations of corrupt political leadership, erosion of public confidence in governmental and corporate benevolence, cruel retrenchment of social programs along with policies that favored the wealthy, and tempestuous contestation of social institutions and representations, involving formations that had been thought to be stable, such as gender roles and the family. This social climate, besides shaping lyrical concerns and distributive networks, provided the context within which heavy metal became meaningful for millions of people. Heavy metal is intimately embedded in the social system of values and practices that its critics defend.
Chapter 1, then, situates heavy metal as a cultural practice that is historically constituted and socially contested; it examines how “heavy metal” means different things to the variety of people who are involved with it—fans, musicians, historians, critics, academics, censors. I trace the history of heavy metal as it has been assembled by critics, fans, and musicians and then discuss ongoing disputes over the boundaries of the genre, emphasizing the divergent interests of fans, musicians, critics, fan magazines, and other commercial mediators. A summary of the characteristics, activities, and beliefs of heavy metal fans is followed by discussion of the very different interpretations of those activities provided by academics and rock critics.
I have intersected the texts and debates of metal fans and musicians with analytical and historical perspectives that are sometimes foreign to that experience but find common ground in my arguments for the cultural coherence of that experience. This study is organized around the issues that fans and musicians, through their activities and statements and the music itself, have indicated are central to the power and meaning of heavy metal. But it also reflects my own position as an academic and cultural critic, and it engages with ongoing arguments about music and culture that not all readers will find interesting or important. In some circles, for example, it is still necessary to argue that music can be analyzed as having social meaning; readers who are willing to grant this point may wish to skip over parts of chapter 2.
In my attempts to make sense of heavy metal, I have learned from and taken issue with the arguments of sociologists, musicologists, rock critics, and cultural theorists because I have found such interdisciplinary inquiry the only adequate approach to the study of something as complex as popular music. While heavy metal appears as the object of study of my cultural and musicological investigation, I have tried through my engagement with heavy metal to raise larger questions about the politics of culture, recent American history, “classical” music, and the nature of musical discourses, experience, and analysis.
The specific sites of metal activity—concert arenas, clubs, record stores, warehouse rehearsal rooms, fans’ bedrooms and cars—may be distant and unfamiliar to many people. Similarly, the musical discourses of metal are grounded in semiotic codes that are widely shared but often drawn upon by metal musicians precisely to articulate alienating noise and exclusivity. Running with the Devil attempts to resituate heavy metal within contemporary debates over music and cultural politics without muting that noise. It offers some explanations of how heavy metal works and why people care about it.
Running with the Devil
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
