And there was much rockin’ round the clock, and sh-booming and wang-a-dang-ding-donging, and there were Big Boppers and Dukes of Earl, and silly men with names like "Buddy" and "Smokey." And the Lord was not much bothered by this since, quite frankly, He had been dozing...

And, in the year of Himself, nineteen hundred and sixty-nine, He did glance down once again and was consumed with much displeasure, for the people were listening only to folkie whiners like Bob Dylan (whom the Lord really couldn’t stand) and hippie types in velour pants and Nehru jackets and poor psychedelic groups with asinine appellations like "The Electric Twit," and the Lord was peeved but good.

"Foolish mortals," the Lord did say, "Do they not realize that I created rock ‘n’ roll simply as a means to an end? That rock ‘n’ roll was meant merely as a stepping stone to heavy metal? Even the tedium of opera is preferable in my sight to this swill. And did I not give the erring sheep Deep Purple, that they might be shown divine felicity in this age of ‘Sugar, Sugar’ and Jefferson Airplane?...

But, unbeknownst to the Lord, Deep Purple had become mired down by ill-chosen musical directions, and they had accomplished the mind-numbing feat of becoming both a Vanilla Fudge clone and a rich man’s Moody Blues. And the Lord did forgive them these transgressions, for it was the Sixties and stupid ideas were all the rage and, anyway, "Hush" and "Mandrake Root" were better than ninety-eight percent of the refuse on the radio at the time.
"Maybe I’ll give them a year or so, just to get the bugs out," proclaimed the Lord. But still, He was not pleased...

"Did I not provide the world with Cream, the band that walks it like The Who talks it, so that all might partake of the communion of metal?" But the Lord was astonished to find that Cream had broken up, despite a firm mandate from the firmament; and the Lord was surprised at his own astonishment, since there were some egos in that band that rivaled the Lord’s and the split within it was surely predestined.
"With whom shall I replace my beloved Cream?" cried the Lord, "Is there none but knob-twiddlers and Beatle wanna-bees and Country Joe & The Fish? Is there naught but Marianne Faithfull and Herman’s Hermits? Is there none within the kingdom of the cosmos who want to rock heavy?"

And the Lord’s attention was jarred away, for, at that moment, in Birmingham, England, the world’s loudest racket was starting up, an uproar that sounded like bumper cars played with steamrollers. And the Lord did grin, for this had all been foreseen, and he did look down upon those four dimps who had been named as the messiahs of metal, and he did proclaim, "Thou art my favorite sons and for this I will set you up high, and all that is good in metal shall come first from you. And you shall be dubbed Black Sabbath, and you will take up where Cream left off, and you will sound all gloomy and medieval and just plain evil, so that weak-minded dickheads might assume that you work for my Opponent. That way, no one may accuse Me of favoritism on your part. And your road will not be an easy one, for management will screw you over repeatedly, and your individual personalities won’t help the situation one bit, if you catch the drift of the Lord. But no one ever said that being the forefathers and pioneers was easy." Thus sayeth the Lord...

And the Lord was not yet finished, for there were some butter-spines that would never be able to comfortably accept Black Sabbath.
"Whatever became of my beloved Yardbirds?" said the Lord, "Is it possible that, in these dim times, their cacophony has been quenched as well?" And the Lord did gnash his teeth and become really bummed out, because some days the humans seemed to screw everything up and it was tough to be the Lord. But again his attention was stolen away, this time by a river-deep, spark-spitting ultra-blues that was being spewed from the speakers of four yahoos who were calling themselves The New Yardbirds. And the Lord did proclaim "Well, you are not The Yardbirds that I remember--"

"I was in the original group," said Jimmy Page, "And we’re just fulfilling some contracts that were signed when The ‘Birds were still together."

"Pipe down," spake the Lord, "I know this already - I am the Lord, after all - and I’m in the middle of a soliloquy here. As I was saying, I can tell by the glorious sound you produce that you will be worthy successors to The Yardbirds. But that name really sucks, so you shall be Led Zeppelin from here on out. The masses will adore your every twitch, and no ridiculously high level of album sales shall be denied you, and you shall be hounded only by laughable motion pictures about you and poor album reviews by jealous critics. For all this, however, the Lord doth declare that there will be a price. Neither your talent nor your importance shall be questioned, but there shall be those who criticize you for your lack of commitment to, and disdain of, the one true rock and roll that is heavy metal. And you shall be vagabond amidst the true believers, and their relationship will be one of love/hate. But, as rich as you’ll be, it probably won’t concern you all that much." Thus sayeth the Lord...

And the Lord was not yet finished, for a year had passed and it had become time for His prophecy of earlier to be fulfilled. Truly, it was so! Because now, in the record racks next to the first Black Sabbath album and Led Zeppelin's both 'I' and 'II,' there was Deep Purple’s 'In Rock,' and it was what the Lord had intended for them from the very beginning, an intricately raucous beauty that was both graceful and urgent, with cool organ solos that sounded like a UFO landing and guitar work that resembled an air-raid siren with a few shorts in the circuit. And now all that had been going wrong had been put right by the wisdom of the Lord, and in His glory He had decreed that the Age of Heaviness was to begin, and He decreed that many would follow the Holy Trinity of Metal that He had nudged into beginning the revolution, and that there would henceforth be no lack of killer riffs, power chords, and prominent distortion. And the Lord did look down from on high, to survey his metallic creation...

And He saw that it was very, very good...

You hear it all the time...it is nothing less than the eternal, mug-thumping, chest-pounding dispute, the barroom discussion that fuels more than a few beer-soaked arguments, the conflict never resolved, the question never answered.

"Besides Sabbath, there wasn’t any real metal in the Seventies."

It never ends...at least not as long as metal fans congregate for a dialogue on the subject of their affection. The really hellish thing is that anybody can share their thoughts on the matter - and, oh, you can bet they’ll share their thoughts. And everyone’s an expert. And everybody has an opinion. And everybody has a different opinion.

"Yeah, I like it. But it’s really not metal."

We’ve all got our very own take on it, and we never change anybody else’s minds. Once the discussion gets rolling, though, we just can’t quit the field; it transforms us into junkies in need of a fix. Separately, we’ve all weighed our own judgments, decided on our own criteria, and come to our own conclusions. Communally, the debate descends into a collective free-for-all with all the profundity of "I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I," where every statement is prefaced by "Well, the way I see it..."

"Well, the way I see it, there was some really great music in the Seventies. But, except for a few bands and an occasional album, it wasn’t metal. It was hard rock."

My oh my, and once the "Heavy Metal vs. Hard Rock" theme pops up, then the sparks really fly, get out the hammer and tongs, keep your head down because we’re all in for a bumpy ride. Definitions fly as to exactly what and who is "hard rock," and notions of how a band qualifies or fails to qualify for "metal" are tommy-gunned left and right, and soon our participants are basically talking to themselves, only out loud. A subculture in love with the sounds of their own voices, that’s what the metalhead community is.

"Who is metal? Who isn’t metal?" Ah, the favorite topic, the point of contention that perpetually splits us into the two camps, the Excluders (with their narrow, purist definition of metal) and the Includers (who favor a broad, tolerant field of heavy music). The thing is, no two Excluders have ever agreed on exactly what it is that’s desirable to leave out. And no two Includers could ever come to a consensus on the precise conditions upon which we ought to let something in. So, it’s back to the battle royal for us, and some of the most spirited and hateful sparring occurs between supposed allies.

Somebody orders another round, because every mouth has gone dry from voicing its master’s singular, lonely opinion. Gulp, gulp. Then we return to the melee, swinging this way and that, turning on former associates, joining in short-lived agreements, descending into desperation ploys and shock-value sentiments.

Then some dude, with a straight face, actually says "Kiss was only metal up until 1977 or so." Now we know we’re not in Kansas anymore - and speaking of Kansas, they’re definitely not metal, or they definitely are, or they may have been metal but now aren’t, or quite possibly they weren’t metal but now are. And my head is reduced to lolling on my shoulders, my skull is swimming from the dreaded Opinion-Overload; this is all because, no matter how many times I have this discussion, it still succeeds in confounding and intriguing and exhausting and enthralling and frustrating and pissing me off. It has run down to some hour early in the AM, and we’re still discussing metal minutia with all the fervor of Bull Run, and the bartender isn’t asking us to leave, no, because now he’s involved in the discussion too, and no one ever converts and no one ever retreats and the loudest evaluations always come from those who know the least.

"Sabbath was first, of course, but then we didn't see another thoroughbred metal band until Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, and Slayer." And I may be drunk and pop-eyed and sick of this conversation, but there’s no way I’m gonna let that particular chestnut take root in the dirt. But, before I can respond, somebody else takes the baton, and they disagree with the guy but in a way that’s, believe it or not, even stupider than the original conjecture.

Everybody is the matador and everybody is the bull.

I find myself sinking fast, punch-drunk, half-certain that maybe we’re all full of crap and that our time could be much better spent, but I know this all serves a function, that the mere fact that we’d dispute the matter so ardently is a good sign that metal is still very much an issue, that it still crawls under some of our skins and never leaves. But, man, some of these people have just the dumbest ideas (Venom was more important than Judas Priest? In what parallel universe was that?).

Finally, I’ve had enough, I’m throwing in the towel, I don’t want to play anymore. I’d do anything for you people to just shut up, I’d agree to anything you say, I’d abdicate the throne and surrender with the condition of free passage. Leave off already, give me a break, let’s take a time out, because this particular ship has already sailed and, for that matter, sunk. Fine, fine, I’m calling it quits, just give me the treaty and I’ll sign it. You want me to agree that hard music didn’t have an "identity separate from rock ‘n’ roll" until punk came on the scene? You got it, pal; your drivel makes perfect sense to me. You want me to admit that Uriah Heep was progressive rock, Dio was pop-metal, and Iron Maiden was less pivotal than Pantera? Okay, whatever you say. I mean, hey, I’ve been listening to and reading about and collecting this music for nigh unto sixteen years now, but what does that have to do with anything? Never mind that you’ve never bothered to read a book on the subject, or that you’ve got a laughable historical perspective, or that you’ve been into metal for precisely twenty months and you own about fifteen CDs, all of which were selected on the basis of whether your frat brothers would be impressed by them or not. What you say is gospel, my friend.

I wilt under your superior metal knowledge.

I’ll get the lights on my way out.

There are those among us, gentlemen, who would turn the world of heavy metal into the equivalent of an elite night club, where if you don’t know someone who knows someone, or if you don’t talk the right way, or you don’t dress in the proper manner or sound the accepted way or sing about the right things, then you’re not about to be let in by the Cro-Magnon bouncer at the door. "So sorry," he’ll say, "But you’re hard rock...and this is a heavy metal club." Or they might call you "alterna-rock" or "quasi-punk" or "neo-glam" or "pomp-AOR," but it all amounts to the same thing: the door is locked to you. And when you ask why? "Because if we allow in everybody who comes knocking, then the club won’t be ours anymore."

Friends and comrades, I submit to you that not only is this attitude musical suicide to any art form that condones it, but also that it goes against everything that metal stands for. Heavy metal has long been a symbolic finger in the air against anybody or anything that expects conformity. It has been the eternal outsider, reviled by critics, alternately loved and loathed by the mainstream, embraced completely by the few but fervent. Throughout its long, productive existence, it has asked that the music under its rubric contain only a handful of common elements: distortion, to denote fire and enthusiasm; power chords, to indicate strength and force; and guitar riffs, to which one might bang one’s head. Beyond this deceptively simple formula, the genre has allowed - and expected - a wide variety in expression and execution, a diverse palette of artists and art.

Yet there are those who persist in treating this revered music as a country club, with greens fees, drink limits at the bar, and membership restrictions up the ass. And the most problematic facet of the issue is that this exclusionary dogma is somewhat understandable. After all, the Excluders have heavy metal’s best interest in mind. They observe with wariness and outright suspicion any acceptance of metal from outside our musical community. This suspicion is not unwarranted; metal has been dealt with harshly whenever outsiders who have nothing to do with the subculture - like the corporate music industry or the mainstream rock media - meddled in the genre. The Excluders also fear that metallic music will become diluted or weakened by the acceptance of a variegated, motley bunch of bands. And, for this reason, the Excluders have never really endorsed or promoted Seventies metal, which was about as variegated and motley as one could expect from any one decade. (I bet you thought we’d never get back around to the matter at hand, didn’t you?) So they sneer when you play Led Zeppelin, never mention Deep Purple at all, and relegate the artists of the Seventies to the secondary-citizen status of "hard rock."

Firstly, gentlemen, I would just like to assure you all that metal is dilution-proof. It has been thirty-odd years since heavy metal first reared its regal head, and it has had to endure both underground status and popular acceptance, both the rigid dogma of "metal scenes" and the fast-and-loose loyalty of fads, both the hostility of "Rolling Stone" and the Chicken Littles in its own camp who keep prophesying its imminent death. It has been well over a quarter century, and metal is far, far from the edge of expiration. No amount of infiltration by "non-metal" influences could ever wipe this bedrock away.

Secondly, I’d like to tackle the old adage "Today’s metal is tomorrow’s hard rock." It is a slippery, pernicious attitude, this belief that the metal fans from a past era were listening to something that was somehow "less metal" than the stuff that metalheads of the present are listening to. The Hard Rock-Heavy Metal dichotomy is a false one. For all I can tell, the difference between "hard rock" and "heavy metal" is merely the difference between the phrases "my house" and "my home." There is some difference in tone and texture. In a pinch, though, either will do. In short, these terms are interchangeable. There are those in our midst who can’t stop patting themselves on the back for being so much more advanced then those Seventies primitives, who mistakenly labeled groups like Blackfoot and Angel as "heavy metal" when they were so obviously "hard rock." To them, I say "What’s the difference?"

Perhaps an illustration of the point is in order. I have here a ruler, and also a copy of Jasper and Oliver’s International "Encyclopedia of Hard Rock and Heavy Metal." The first is a common instrument of measurement; the second should be one of maybe four or five books that ought to be required reading for anyone who dares call himself or herself a metalhead. It is not a perfect work by any means. It has a copyright date of 1983, but its information is really only cogent through 1982; it is really most complete and useful when dealing with the Seventies. And there are some highly questionable content issues, such as calling Tom Petty as "metallic-sounding" or the inclusion of Peter Frampton and The Cars. What it does provide, however, is a fascinating snapshot of the metal fan’s perspective at that time, only a year or two before heavy metal would really break wide open. It’s an eye-opening read for any metalhead, simply because it shows clearly what was considered important and noteworthy in that period. And those priorities don’t always coincide with what a current fan might think is crucial.

Allow me to elucidate on this. Under the heading of "Metallica," it mentions that the band was founded by Lars Ulrich and also that they "sound like Motorhead." Aside from this, there’s very little information. Using my trusty ruler, I find that the entire entry measures a little less than an inch.

For the sake of comparison, let’s do some more measuring. Hmm. The entry under the heavy-blues band Savoy Brown is nearly six inches. The much-maligned Grand Funk Railroad clocks in at well over seven. And the boogie-driven hard rock of Status Quo ends up with a whopping sixteen and a quarter inches. Other bands that crush Metallica in the tale of the tape: Slade, Samson, Nazareth, Montrose, and also (from the critical poultry-metal contingent) Chicken Shack and Atomic Rooster.

What am I trying to get at? Am I trying to convince you that these groups were somehow more important in metal’s history than Metallica? Of course not. Nothing could be further from my mind. The core of the issue, however, is that we later metalheads have our own baggage of skewed perceptions and needless biases. It seems commonly accepted as fact that Metallica burst onto the metal scene like the Second Coming and transformed the musical parameters of it almost overnight. A cursory glance at this encyclopedia shows us that this was not quite the case. At the time, the band that would spearhead the prevailing metal expressions for the next ten years was just another up-and-comer. More of a going concern for the metal faithful of that period were Triumph, Blue Oyster Cult, the legendary UFO, and the immortal Thin Lizzy. These prime examples of Seventies metal were considered the cornerstones of the genre in 1982.

But, at one time or another, I have heard all of the above classic-metal originators get redefined by some Excluder as "hard rock." I ask you: to what end? Is it wise to subtly denigrate the former mainstays of our art form and strip them of the mantle of metal? Is it somehow desirable to constantly downgrade our history so that our present might seem a little more bad-assed? Does it seem like a good idea to amputate some of the most dynamic, creative, and powerful music ever made from our musical birthright on a freakin’ whim?

In fact, to any person here who believes that Thin Lizzy or UFO were anything less than heavy metal, I invite you to approach the podium and I will gladly sock you in your goddamn teeth!

I’m sorry, really, that was quite inappropriate. But the sentiment stands. Such is the vehemence with which I stand before you...