Metal Elective AY16/17

Week 2

1. Review

i) Methodological Difficulties

We spent no little time last week addressing what may be seen as a critical tension in
our undertaking the study of metal, viz., whether the subject matter lends itself to
conventions of academic discourse. Might it be argued that aspects of metal are radically
incompatible with a conservatoire environment, an honours degree and modes of
analysis in general that are avowedly institutional? Are we seeking to domesticate or
otherwise harness energies that necessarily resist formalisation?

In particular, the following concerns were raised:

a) Musical analysis. The various structural, harmonic, contrapuntal and semiotic

analyses with which we’re familiar in a classical environment may be felt to be well
suited to the traditions from which they are derived (although this might legitimately be
disputed). To a significant extent, these modes of understanding are derived from
composers’ actual practice and thus at least a measure of correspondence is no doubt
apparent. [Is this necessarily true, however, and is it consistent with phenomenology,
psychology, reception theory, multi-cultural discourses, gender studies etc.?]

One way or another, these analytical approaches (and their ‘structures’) share a
scientific validation where logical consistency, systematicity, abstraction, and perhaps
even positivism hold sway. The discourses of continental philosophy (and
contemporary sociology in places) dispute the primacy of these ‘constructs’ and the
cultural values there embedded. In adopting these methodologies, we tacitly validate
and perpetuate particular ways of thinking. Is this consistent with the iconoclastic
tendencies that we may feel characterise metal in some instances?

b) Text and act. Similar concerns arise when we consider the implications of
performance practice and textuality in general. The metaphysics governing works and
their ‘content’ (the ‘object’ of our discourse or, better, the ‘ideality of the musical
object’),1 and moreover their ‘living’ articulation, is drawn from the same cultural
origins, namely 5th century BC Athens and the Socratic tradition (logos as pure
intelligibility). This then informs the Christian tradition and the dominant cultural,
spiritual and personal standards by which Western history is articulated.

1
Cf. Derrida’s The Ideality of the Literary Object.
Rethinking these determinations (philosophemes, as it were) 2 so fundamentally allows
for potentially radical transformations of how we conceptualise what we take to be
ourselves and our environment (indeed, how we conceptualise). Since (some) metal is
predicated on vehement opposition to Christianity, social conventions, orthodoxies,
morality and so on, is a radical mode of engagement necessary wherein a more mobile,
supple form of thinking is alive to the infinitely elusive Other? [Thus, between text and
act we find instead textual play.]

c) Satan and Nietzsche. Extreme metal has become associated with Satanism, not for the
most part out of a genuine spiritual commitment or demonism, but by way of
advocating an extreme rejection of society and embracing the utter primacy of the
individual and their own determinations. Drawing multiply from Nietzsche’s writings (v.
The Anti-Christ 1895, incidentally), this ironically rather orthodox individualism is
inconsistent with many highly influential readings of Nietzsche’s extraordinarily
ambiguous writings.

It may be argued, therefore, that the radicality to which metal imagines itself to adhere
has fundamentally missed the deeper implications of its attitudes and is thus ultimately
conformist and subordinate, very much contrary to its aspirations.

d) These themes will thus be explored over the coming weeks with a view to tackling
our subject matter in a suitably rigorous intellectual fashion.

ii) Beyond this, however, our task is at least to attempt to explore the more general
social and cultural attributes of metal, which is to say its definition, history, divergent
sub-species, principle exponents, reception, cultural role and so forth.

With this in mind, we began to consider the origins of the genre, specifically its
originary sources and those musicians who may be said to have pioneered the style
whilst not necessarily being its principal exponents. As you’ll recall, the following
recordings were suggested as the immediate forerunners of what was to become Heavy
Metal:

a) The Kinks, You Really Got Me (1964).

b) The Yardbirds, Think About It (1967).

c) Blue Cheer, Summertime Blues (1968).

d) The Beatles, Helter Skelter (1968).

e) Iron Butterfly, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (1968)

2
Philosophical principles here understood as belonging to the ‘history’ of philosophy, the closure of
metaphysics, where they themselves, as modes of reasoning, are disputed and problematised. Philosophy is
faced with the intractable problem of analysing itself according to its own problematic principles and which
thus perhaps points to another thinking.
In more general terms, Cream and Jimi Hendrix were identified as the pre-cursors of
metal whilst perhaps not themselves being genuine exponents.

2. Led Zeppelin

What then was the first metal band? This question demands that we at least have a
working definition of metal by which to judge. Even still, we will continue to defer
committing ourselves here; in considering the usual suspects tentative conclusions will
begin to be drawn, but these may be subject to modification over the following weeks.
This, after all, is a more contentious question than we might at first think.

i) History. Zeppelin was formed in the aftermath of The Yardbirds’ dissolution.

Following the departures of first Eric Clapton, then Jeff Beck, and subsequently Keith
Relf, Jim McCarty and Chris Dreja, Jimmy Page was left with what remained of The
Yardbirds’ identity (and its commitments) and sought to form a new group in its place
(to be known as The New Yardbirds, brilliantly). Ultimately, Page chose John Paul Jones,
with whom he had worked as a session musician, to be the bassist/keyboardist and two
little known musicians from the midlands as singer and drummer, Robert Plant and
John Bonham respectively.

Keith Moon famously predicted that the new band would ‘go down like a lead balloon’,
after which the group rebranded themselves Led Zeppelin. The association of the
(heavy) metal lead and the explosive force of the Hindenburg disaster by no means
seems coincidental in the emergence of arguably the first heavy metal band (or, better,
the first important metal band). It may be remarked at the outset that Rolling Stone
magazine in 2006 and described Zeppelin as the ‘heaviest band of all time’.

ii) Zeppelin as metal. Led Zeppelin, the band’s debut album was recorded in September
1968 and released in January 1969. Certain of its songs make the case for its being a
(the?) defining moment in the inception of metal, most notably perhaps Dazed and
Confused and Communication Breakdown.

[Play Communication Breakdown]

So what defines it as metal? There’s a prominent and repetitious distorted guitar riff,
certainly, that pervades and propels the song throughout. And John Bonham’s drum
style was unprecedentedly heavy and unyielding for the time, even more so than Ginger
Baker’s eccentric but jazz-inclined meanderings and surpassing Keith Moon’s aggressive
yet decorative approach. The bass is prominent, too, and tends to solidify the guitar
work (as opposed to cultivating its own independent profile); and thus each of the
instrumental components co-ordinate themselves in the interests of persistent, driving
intensity allied to a sort of sonic saturation (often in place of a more varied, nuanced
dynamic approach).

But what sets Zeppelin’s approach apart to an even greater extent from their
contemporaries is Plant’s wailing, high-pitched and unflagging vocal style, pitched far
above the more familiar male vocal registers. It was Plant, indeed, who became the
template for so much that was to follow – from this point posturing, bare-chested, tight-
trousered, long-haired macho-men screaming above relentlessly grinding riffs became
the norm. And, lo, cock rock was born …

Interestingly, Plant himself has argued that Led Zeppelin isn’t a metal album at all, and
Good Times, Bad Times, Your Time is Gonna Come and You Shook Me perhaps associate
that much more with 60s rock than 70s metal, but the albums that were shortly to
follow are undoubtedly less ambiguous in this respect. Led Zeppelin II (1969), Led
Zeppelin III (1970) and [Four Symbols] 1971, and songs such as Whole Lotta Love,
Heartbreaker, Immigrant Song and Black Dog undoubtedly inaugurated a new era and
defined, appropriately or otherwise, what became known as heavy metal (at that time). 3
Immigrant Song leaves little doubt, certainly …

[Play Immigrant Song]

iii) Zeppelin as heavy rock. But yet, some difficulties still remain; Zeppelin may have
been louder, more relentless and distorted than their peers, and Robert Plant’s vocals
may have possessed what one critic described as ‘untiring freak intensity’, but the
group’s controversial relationship to the blues cannot be overlooked.

Reference was made last week to metal’s origins in the blues music of the like of Robert
Johnson and Howlin’ Wolf, but this legacy is perhaps obscured in the styles pioneered
by Slayer, Pantera, Paradise Lost, Bathory et al. In Zeppelin’s oeuvre, this debt is overt to
such an extent that their originality has been disputed in some quarters. Pressed on this
issue, Jimmy Page is happy to admit that revisiting the work of their predecessors was
very much Zeppelin’s policy –

‘As far as my end of it goes, I always tried to bring something fresh to anything that I
used. I always made sure to come up with some variation. In fact, I think in most cases,
you would never know what the original source could be. Maybe not in every case —
but in most cases. So most of the comparisons rest on the lyrics. And Robert was
supposed to change the lyrics, and he didn’t always do that — which is what brought on
most of the grief. They couldn’t get us on the guitar parts of the music, but they nailed us
on the lyrics. We did, however, take some liberties, I must say [laughs]. But never mind;
we did try to do the right thing.” (Total Guitar, 1993)

Advocates argue that recycling the tradition is part of the vitality of the genre, whilst
opponents maintain that Zeppelin plagiarised various blues artists and simply re-
presented their work that much louder (particularly the American critic John
Mendelsohn). In fact, whilst the lyrics are often manifestly unoriginal, instances of
musical plagiarism are relatively few and by no means wholesale imitations. Perhaps

3
Zeppelin’s heaviest recordings are probably to be found on 1975’s Physical Graffiti, In My Time of Dying, The
Wanton Song and Sick Again in particular.
even creditably, Zeppelin manage to reinvigorate some pretty generic ideas in striking
and original fashion. Take Howlin’ Wolf’s Killing Floor (1964), for example –

[Play Killing Floor]

Zep’s The Lemon Song (from LZ II) was originally credited to Page and Plant; following
legal action, however, it was re-attributed to Page, Plant and Chester Burnett (Howlin’
Wolf). In fact, Plant borrows freely from Robert Johnson (who borrowed from Joe
Williams) here, too (and elsewhere). But musically, the sound is very much Led
Zeppelin’s, albeit a permutation of familiar formulae.

[Play The Lemon Song]

When the Levee Breaks (LZIV) is another excellent example of the above. The original
was written in 1929 by Memphis Minnie (1897-1973), a Louisiana born singer and
guitarist, but resembles Zeppelin’s version relatively little (lyrics aside).

[Play version 1 and 2]

iv) Conclusion. Whether Zeppelin are guilty of misappropriation or not is of little

consequence to us in the context of this elective; but the extent to which their music is
reliant upon blues stylings very much is. If a distinction between hard rock and heavy
metal is at all possible then the point of tension may well be the manifest or otherwise
influence of the blues.

Where blues music is predominantly drawn from the blues scale, mixolydian, dorian
and Be-bop scales (see example), later metal is often predicated on more ‘sinister’
complexes such as phrygian, phrygian dominant, locrian and chromatic hybrids. We
need draw no firm conclusions for the time being, but it should at least be noted that if
Led Zeppelin were indeed a metal band they inclined unambiguously towards the blues
end of the metal spectrum.

a) Blues scales/modes –

Blues Scale:

Mixolydian:

Dorian:
Bebop scale (conflation of dor. bebop and mixo. bebop):

b) Metal scales/modes –

Phrygian:

Phrygian dominant:

Locrian:

3. Black Sabbath

i) Origins. Formed in Aston in 1969 (though they had previously been known as first
Polka Tulk and then Earth), Black Sabbath consisted (originally) of Ozzy Osbourne,
Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward. Roughly contemporaneous with Zeppelin,
Sabbath have perhaps an equal or better claim to being the first ‘true’ metal band.

Their first album, Black Sabbath, was released in 1970 and thus Sabbath follow in
Zeppelin’s wake to an extent; furthermore, their most telling characteristics didn’t really
emerge until Bread had become Black Sabbath and the homonymous song had been
written. Indeed, Black Sabbath was originally a 1963 Boris Karloff horror film and the
occult orientated themes that it inspired (via the writings of Dennis Wheatley) were
ultimately to help define the band.

ii) Musical characteristics. With something of the blues-driven sound of Led Zep still in
our ears, the stark contrast between it and that of the opening song of Black Sabbath’s
debut album will immediately be apparent.
[Play Black Sabbath]

a) On what basis does it so differ? Few traces of the blues remain here firstly, and the
tritone orientation of the principal riff puts us in mind of the locrian mode and not the
blues scale.

b) The slow, lugubrious tread of the music forestalls (and, indeed, inspired) Doom metal
by some years. Little syncopation remains and in its place hypnotic repetition maintains
an unleavening, doleful mood throughout.

c) Sabbath’s music is frequently episodic and it thus initiates another trend that persists
in much metal to this day; a single riff bludgeons you into submission until it’s replaced
by a very different riff which then bludgeons you into submission until it’s replaced by
another riff which then bludgeons you into submission …

d) Thanks to an industrial accident (pre-Sabbath) in a sheet metal factory Tony Iommi

lost two of the finger-tips of his fretting hand. As a consequence, Iommi took to down
tuning from E to C Sharp in order to reduce the strain on his injured hand. The
additional weight of his guitar sound that resulted proved highly influential (or at least
prescient). ‘Heavy’ bands down tune as a matter of course nowadays.

e) The lyrics are highly significant, too, in setting the profane tone; it’s by no means
difficult to see how black and death metals took their cue from Sabbath, in addition to
doom, stoner etc.

What is this that stands before me?

Figure in black which points at me
Turn around quick, and start to run
Find out I'm the chosen one
Oh no

Big black shape with eyes of fire

Telling people their desire
Satan's sitting there, he's smiling
Watches those flames get higher and higher
Oh no, no, please God help me

Is it the end, my friend?

Satan's coming 'round the bend
people running 'cause they're scared
The people better go and beware
No, no, please, no

Next week we’ll return to the occult and its significance.