The Heavy Metal Years: 1982-1985
Me with my first bass in 1984. An incredible moment of rock’s power.
When I was thirteen or fourteen, I remember hearing a widely dubbed and passed along cassette tape of a preacher with an evangelical twang in his voice speaking on "backwards masking", the conspiracy theory that claimed that rock bands were putting Satanic messages recorded backwards in their songs as a form of Devil-directed mind control. He played rock records backwards to decode the subliminal messages and then he told the audience what the messages allegedly said. Mostly it was gobbledegook. This batshit crazy idea claimed that the mind could somehow decode the scrambled backwards messages to receive instructions to become Satan's minions in a war on Christianity. It was really that bonkers. Medieval thinking is enduringly popular in every epoch, and appealing to superstition is always lucrative.
A meme that’s making the rounds on social media captures the terror and the madness of the early 80s in America.
American culture was changing in the early eighties. It was a nauseating blur of televangelists, preppies, yuppies, assassinations, attempted assassinations, music videos, multi-level marketing schemes, tainted Tylenol capsules, slasher movies, Reaganites and Pac Man. There were rumors and fears of satanic cults connected to heavy metal music and there were lawsuits seeking damages for teen suicides that families believed were caused by exposure to music. Tabloids got stories, lawyers got rich, records and tickets got sold and at least one bat got his head bitten off.
The "Devil's music" thing was a tired, centuries-old saw. There's a 16th century folk tale in which a mysterious traveller offers to play his violin for his food and shelter in a convent. The impossibly sweet and tender music he played made the nuns weep, regret their vows and long to bear children. It was the Devil's own music that did it! Sounds much like what happens when Led Zeppelin is in town.
After all, Lucifer was a great musician, the concertmaster of Heaven. It was a steady gig, but he had to suck up to his boss all the time, so when he got fired, he founded the music business. Nineteenth century violin virtuoso and composer Niccolò Paganini and bluesman Robert Johnson were both said to have made deals with the Devil for their considerable chops. Business was brisk.
Old Scratch playing with fire in a candid moment.
All of the stylistic developments of popular music in the 20th century were said to be the Devil's music by preachers and politicians, including ragtime, jazz, blues, rhythm and blues, country, rock and roll and its offshoots, and hip hop. There really is nothing new under the sun.
Anyway, in eighth grade, I found a new friend in Matt when I was in the drum section in the school band. He was new in town and he asked me about playing bass in a metal band. I told him I could do it. I used to go to his house where he had a drum kit with a double bass drum setup (the brand name on it was U.S. Mercury). His sixteen year old brother, Greg, was a really good guitar player who had an Ovation Preacher and a Strat. They were into metal. Predictably, they lacked a bass player. In heavy metal, nobody wants to be the bass player. I saw it as an opportunity.
Me and Matt Orred. All of the photos I have of us feature holding random objects.
Matt was a really promising drummer and a good friend. He had moved to my hometown in Connecticut from Minnesota via New Jersey. They kept a healthy stock of two-liter bottles of Triple Cola, a south Jersey local brand they swore was better than Coke (people had strong opinions about soft drinks in those days). On the wall in their country-style kitchen hung five straw-like letters that spelled the words "Uff da", which he said is Norwegian for "Oh, shit!". It's more like "oops", or used to express surprise or astonishment.
My only prior exposure to the Minnesota/Norwegian milieu was watching Davey and Goliath, the Lutheran-produced stop-motion animated Christian show about Davey Hanson and his talking dog, Goliath. The show presented stories with a broad moral lesson about universal values like respect, honesty and responsibility and invoked the name of God only sparingly and in very general terms. For a while when I was a kid I thought God might be Norwegian. I can just hear him saying "Uff da!" after creating the universe.
Davey and Goliath recovering from a stunt accident on the set in 1961.
I came from a musical family so we had various instruments in the house which I taught myself to play. So I knew how to play bass, but I didn't know much about heavy metal until we got MTV on cable television that year. Metal's image-making and posturing seemed a bit silly to me, and while it wasn't my favorite music, I saw a chance to have friends who valued me and an opportunity to play really fucking loud.
We would jam downstairs in Matt's basement, playing entirely too loud. It's amazing I can hear anything after that assault on my thirteen-year-old ears. I wouldn't have a bass until Christmas that year, so I played their dad's bass, which was a hollow body bass with nylon coated strings from the sixties. It was absolutely the un-coolest bass to be seen with in the eighties. I plugged into an old but loud Sears P.A. (until we blew it up eventually). I played Paul McCartney's bass riff from The Beatles' cover of "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" when we played Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" and they both really liked that.
Chris Ahillen, me and Matt Orred, again inexplicably holding objects.
Greg moved on to play with older players and Chris, another guy from school, joined us. He was still learning guitar and had to catch up with us. I remember he was eager to play well and he did get better. He was a really nice, clever guy who was very good with electronics. I remember seeing the first little Macintosh computer in his bedroom and he played us a very crude, lo-fi digital sample of the opening of Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog" and we could hear it through that tiny, crummy speaker and we were amazed. Chris refused to say how he did it. He was kind to me and the three of us had fun together going to the movies and playing music and talking about guitars. Chris moved to Normal, Illinois and died of a heart attack far too young several years ago. I'm thinking of you, old friend.
Chris Ahillen 1969-2016
At the community radio station where I volunteered, I heard the Clash, XTC, The Ramones and Thomas Dolby and a ton of jazz but learning and playing Rush, Ozzy Osbourne, Scorpions and Van Halen. I realize now that it was good training for being a working musician. I don't have to so invested in the music to enjoy playing it, or at least endure playing it. Sometimes it's fun to make any kind of music.
I remember playing Quiet Riot's cover of Slade's "Cum on Feel the Noise", Ozzy's "Crazy Train", "Spirit of Radio" by Rush, "No One Like You" by the Scorpions, "Panama" by Van Halen and "Run to the Hills" by Iron Maiden. All of these songs had incredibly challenging vocals and we didn't know anybody who could sing like that, but we progressed as a rhythm section and got tighter and tighter. We were kids learning about how being in a band works.
By the time I left Connecticut, we were pretty good. The Rush tunes were the most interesting ones to play, with their unique structures and compound time signatures. I was so elated when we worked on and played "Freewill" and got all the way through it for the first time without stopping. I learned that working with a group to accomplish a goal and making it happen comes with a blast of endorphins that makes you feel out of this world. That feeling of accomplishment is addictive, and you can only satisfy it by taking on more challenges together. That's how you become a better musician. I see now how formative the experience really was.
“This is definitely not a jazz box.” Me in 1985
This was all very good for me on many levels. I had problems at school. I was bullied and assaulted and it was hard to learn when the stress level was so high every day. I started to burn out. I had a few allies, but I needed as many friends as I could get. Matt offered a lifeline. He respected and valued my skills and touted them to my peers. I remember when I rode his moped forty miles an hour down our street. It's not everyone who would give his scooter to a half-blind guy for a spin. That's trust.
Despite heavy metal's reputation as a destroyer of youth and a menace to society, neither I or my friends became interested in the occult, nor did we participate in any secret ritual ceremonies, form a coven, perpetrate a war on Christianity or burn the Bible. In fact, just the opposite happened; we played some music, and we learned about cooperation and collaboration and, not least of all, friendship. I found friends who valued me and that helped a lot. Hmm...respect, co-operation, friendship...sounds just like the end of a Davey and Goliath episode to me.