Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal (15 page)

BRIAN TATLER (Diamond Head):
Sounds
started raving about Iron Maiden, Samson, Saxon, and Def Leppard. These bands got played on Radio One Sessions and we’d think, “Who are all these young bands our age, nineteen-years-old, doing all this metal stuff?” I bought
The Def Leppard EP
they pressed themselves, and I thought it was really good. Next thing you know, Leppard were signed to Phonogram, and Iron Maiden got signed to EMI. I was thinking this has got to be the next big thing—Diamond Head need to get signed
now
. I thought we’d get picked up on the New Wave of British Heavy Metal thing because after
Sounds
coined the phrase, suddenly it had national coverage and we could play London. We played with Angel Witch and Maiden, and we were able to get around the country and start making our own records.

NICK BOWCOTT:
The first small band I ever saw that actually made me fire a drummer was Diamond Head, followed by Raven. I remember seeing them and going, “Holy shit, someone just raised the bar really high.” It was a great time to be around. We were going through uncharted territory. It was a rude awakening to come to America and meet bands whose main concern was not their songs, but getting signed. They’d say, “I know this person who works for this record label.” It was, like, “What?” It was almost like the music was secondary to getting a deal. Whereas we were just four ugly dudes who think
British Steel
is the best album ever, love Van Halen, write hooks, and have a great singer.

JOHN GALLAGHER (Raven):
When we first got together in the seventies, there was a circuit of workingmen’s clubs. You’d sign up, get cheap beer. You could play bingo, and there would be bands playing. In the northeast of England a lot of them were hard rock bands, like Son of a Bitch, who changed their name to Saxon. There were a lot of punks there so it was a bit rough. We learned our trade from being three feet in front of somebody who was looking at you going, “Impress me!” If you didn’t, they’d throw beer at you or spit on you. We’d do anything to get attention, and we got a reputation as the band that would play and go crazy and throw all our equipment around and smash stuff.

PAUL DI’ANNO:
We used to get all this amphetamine sulfate in these different forms. There was one we’d call cat’s piss because you’d do a line of it and your eyes was watering and your nose is burning. But if you do a gram you’ll be off your face for the good part of two days. We also used to do these pills called Speckled Blues. Take three of them and you could walk from London to Scotland and you wouldn’t even care. I used to stay amped up with it. Unfortunately, that became quite a bad thing for me in the end. Steve [Harris] was always completely straight. Once, he got drunk on the subway going back to East London on about a pint and a half of beer. All of a sudden, he jumped out at Bethel Green completely wasted. We found him on the Bethel Green common half way up a tree.

The quintessential heavy metal warrior, Lemmy Kilmister, may abhor rock labels, preferring to be viewed in the vein of his idols, Eddie Cochran and Jimi Hendrix. However, Kilmister made his most indelible mark during the NWOBHM movement with Motörhead’s self-titled debut, which came out in 1977, the same year as the Sex Pistols’ legendary
Never Mind the Bollocks
.

LEMMY KILMISTER:
Motörhead is primitive brutality, I suppose. It’s rock and roll, you know? People always like rock and roll. You can bop to it if you’re very quick.

DAVE GROHL (Foo Fighters, Them Crooked Vultures, Nirvana):
When I met Lemmy, it was like meeting the fifth Beatle. He was walking out of a strip club and was at the video poker machine. I said, “Hey man, I’ve got a lot of respect for you.” Then I ran away before he could say anything. Years later, when I finally got the chance to work with him, he came into the studio and drank a half a fifth of Jack Daniel’s before he even got in front of a microphone. Then he sang [my Probot] song “Shake Your Blood” twice, and it sounded genius. He played bass on it in two takes. Then we were done and he said, “Okay, who wants to go look at some tits?” One time, I asked him to meet me at the Rainbow for a drink. I had never been there. He’s been going there since 1971—there’s a fucking portrait of him above the bar. He told me a pretty hilarious story about Motörhead drummer [“Philthy Animal” Taylor] being so fucked up on drugs that he tried to climb out of his hotel room through a mirror. Hanging out with Lemmy is a guaranteed good time. He’s like a stand-up comedian. If this Motörhead thing doesn’t work out, he could do well up in the Catskills.

PAUL DI’ANNO:
One time I was standing with Lemmy at this place in Camden Town. He used to go up there, drink Jack Daniel’s and Coke, and play the slot machines. I was there trying to keep up with him. I didn’t realize I’d been there for nearly six hours, and I wondered why I couldn’t move. I was absolutely fucked out of my mind. Lemmy’s just standing there talking away to me, and I’m thinking, “How the hell does he do this every bloody day?” He’s insane. I’m surprised he’s still alive.

Released in 1981 during the heart of the NWOBHM movement,
Killers
was the first of nine Maiden albums produced by Martin Birch. While groups like Witchfinder General, Samson (featuring future Maiden front man Bruce Dickinson), Angel Witch, Girlschool, and Tygers of Pan Tang were still heating up, Maiden was going supernova.

PAUL DI’ANNO:
The first big tour Maiden did in England was Priest’s
British Steel
tour, which was fun. Then in ’81 they wanted us to come over [to America] with them because they weren’t selling tickets, as we were the new boys and
everybody
wanted to come and see us. An interviewer said, “How will it be with you and Judas Priest?” and somebody in our camp said, “Ah, it’ll be no problem. We’ll kick their asses. They’re all old men.” Apparently Kenny (K.K.) Downing was a bit pissed off. Unfortunately, I got blamed for that.

K.K. DOWNING:
All credit due to Maiden that they were gunning to overthrow the mighty Priest or aspiring to one day. We thought that was great because that’s all we ever did when
we
supported bands—try to take the stage away from them. And it made us work harder.

BRIAN TATLER:
Maiden were a little bit rock star-ish, I thought. They didn’t give us a sound check. They would spend hours sound-checking and by the time it was our turn, the doors were open and all the crowd poured in. I think they probably thought we were some Northern upstarts trying to steal their thunder.

MARTIN POPOFF:
The New Wave of British Heavy Metal is super important because, number one, it really helped define heavy metal. You had a uniform, you had four or five songs on every record about how great it was to be metal, no ballads, the playing was elevated. Even Black Sabbath sounded simple compared to a lot of these bands. Everything about these bands was heavy metal, so really, if you could go back and find shreds of things that define heavy metal along the way, this was a place where all of them came together.

EDDIE TRUNK:
Saxon I still love, but they’ve never emerged beyond a club act in America. You hear that [NWOBHM] title, you’re like, “Oh my god, like fifteen huge bands came from that.” But no. NWOBHM was just a scene and a fertile time for British metal. But in America, unless you were really tied in and really a freak for it, it didn’t really resonate.

BIFF BYFORD:
[Saxon’s 1980 album]
Wheels of Steel
came out the same time as Judas Priest’s
British Steel
, so it was a bit of a race up the charts at one point. We were one of the biggest bands of that time, from 1980 to 1982. We were probably bigger than Maiden back then. Our first U.S. show with Mötley Crüe was the first time we’d ever played in front of twelve thousand girls and four guys. That was a time of liberation for a lot of young girls, and rock ’n’ roll seemed to be the catalyst. There were a lot of girls in America. Not too young. But young enough, and old enough, if you know what I mean.

NICK BOWCOTT:
Back then cocaine was a very social drug and the girls were surprisingly willing to do things they probably shouldn’t have, on reflection. It was a wonderful time pre any nasty social diseases. Grim Reaper wasn’t formed in the hope of getting laid, but it was a nice fringe benefit.

JACKIE CHAMBERS (Girlschool):
Girlschool found itself in such a male-dominated arena we were bound to be hailed by some (especially early on) as just a novelty band. But we managed to get past that without being hell-bent on proving a point. I still think a lot of guys felt a bit stupid listening to or admitting to the fact that they liked—and God forbid were playin’ air guitar to—a bunch of girls. And no, we never thought of ourselves as anything other than a rock-and-roll band. The fact that we were an all-girl band wasn’t an issue to us—just everybody else. Although we weren’t really bothered by any outright sexism ourselves.

LEMMY KILMISTER:
Girlschool came along about two years after the Runaways. They were a great band and I loved them, but they never became famous because they couldn’t afford to tour the U.S. I took them out with us in 1979 when we toured for
Overkill
because I heard their song “Take it All Away” and I thought it was fucking excellent. I always supported them because they were great girls. They loved rock-and-roll, same as me. Their guitarist Kelly Johnson was amazing. It was really sad when she died from cancer [in 2007].

Paul Di’Anno played a major role in Maiden’s initial success. But two albums into the band’s more than thirty-year career, he was fired for excessive drug use and replaced by Bruce Dickinson.

ALBERT MUDRIAN (author,
Choosing Death
; editor in chief,
Decibel
):
Those first couple Iron Maiden records were pretty rough-and-tumble, whereas when they hooked up with Bruce Dickinson the songs became more epic, and you got this overblown and ridiculous presentation. But the thing about Maiden, even when they were playing with Di’Anno, and then were moving on to the style with Dickinson, their presentation was tied together. They had their logo and their album covers with Derek Riggs, which incorporated the band mascot, Eddie, who was in the stage show. That was ingenious. There weren’t a lot of heavy metal bands outside of Alice Cooper that had that huge focus on that area of presentation and that was something that hooked people early on. The band was going to sell a lot of shirts no matter how many records they sold just because they had a great logo and this great presentation.

PAUL DI’ANNO:
During my last tour with the band, me and Steve almost came to blows right before we went on in Glasgow. He was going, “Yeah, you’re fucking up. You can’t be bothered anymore.” I said, “Oh, fuck you.” I was about to fuckin’ hit him and then the intro came on and we all forgot about it and went onstage. We finished that tour and [management] says, “Paul, come into the office, we want to have a word.” I said, “I think I know what it’s all about so I’m gonna tell you anyway what I want to do before you say anything.” I said, “I’ll just move on. It’s the best thing for everybody.”

BRUCE DICKINSON:
I was with Samson; we all knew each other. Clive Burr, the original Maiden drummer, was in Samson for two years before Maiden. It was a big hodgepodge of musicians who all went to each other’s shows and toured with each other. Everybody knew who did what, and who was capable of what. The first time I saw Maiden I was blown away. I was a big Deep Purple fan when I was a kid.
In Rock
[1970] first got me going. The feeling I got off Maiden was like that—no disrespect to Paul, [Di’Anno]—I looked at Paul and went, “Goddamn, I want to be up there. God, if I was singing for that band, wow, what stuff we could do.”

PAUL DI’ANNO:
I knew Bruce. Fucking hell, they were horrible—Samson, I’m sorry to say. Bruce was pretty good, but the way he used to dress was awful. We used to make fun of him. It always looked like Stevie Wonder dressed him. It was all mismatched and he had this beard. He’s all right, Bruce. If he could leave his ego behind he’d be all right.

BRUCE DICKINSON:
A year later, I was doing a show [with Samson] at Reading Festival, and Rod Smallwood, who is Maiden’s manager, came up after the show, and Steve [Harris] had been in the audience. They’d both come to check me out. Rod said, “We’d like to offer you the chance to audition for Iron Maiden.” I was, like, twenty-two, but I was full of piss and vinegar, and I said, “Look, mate, if I audition for the band, I’m going to get the job. So let’s not muck about. First, I’m gonna be a bit of an awkward customer, and I’m going to have a lot of opinions, and if you don’t want that kind of a guy in the band, tell me now so we don’t waste our time.” I thought, “Wow, did I really say that?” He went, “Okay, fair enough. That won’t be a problem.” I went down, I learned both albums. They only wanted me to learn four songs, but I had a couple weeks so I learned everything they’d ever done and walked into rehearsals and we bashed through a big chunk of their entire repertoire. Steve wanted to get me in the studio that day, but one wasn’t available, so a week or so later they came back and got me in the studio, and we did four songs so they could have a listen to what I sounded like in the studio. That took a couple hours, and they said, “Right, that’s it, let’s go get drunk, it’s happened.” And the next album was
Number of the Beast
.