Re: Axl #4 on Top 10 Frontmen - Power Hour

Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 18:37:02 +0100
Newsgroups: alt.rock-n-roll.metal.gnr
Size: 19,789 bytes

"BuckeheadNFinck" <email-address-deleted> wrote in message
news:email-address-deleted...
> <<Neither David Lee Roth nor Axl Rose played "heavy metal.">>
>
> The term "heavy metal" is so broad. It depends on how you define "heavy
> metal".
From the Wikipedia Encyclopaedia, the following is definition of Heavy Metal
music;
Heavy metal is an evolutionary product of pop, blues and "classical" music
with a generally accepted life cycle of 20 years, from approximately 1970 to
1990. Its first wave, between 1967 and 1974, was a product of pop and blues,
while the classical element came to the fore in 1978.
In music, heavy metal is progenitor of the "Metal-family" (for example,
heavy metal, black metal, death metal...). Metal derives directly from blues
and rock, even if in some sub-genres there is an evident influence of
classical music. So, even if heavy metal and black metal belong to the same
family, there is an effective difference between them. Heavy metal is mainly
blues-based, with pentatonic scales and a blues-like song structure; black
metal is based on classical music, even if at a first glance it seems to be
only distorted guitars playing very fast a repeating melody.
Rock historians tend to find that the influence of White pop gives heavy
metal its escape-from-reality fantasy side ("...I got a new girl now...")
while African-American blues gives heavy metal its naked reality side
("...since my baby left me..."), Weinstein, 11. For many, heavy metal
crystallizes in the British bands Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath in 1970, an
idea strongly supported Walser, 10. In fact, the history of heavy metal
(from its precursors to the last branch before the crystallization of
thrash/speed/death metal in the late 1980s), is pushed forward by three main
British waves: The Beatles & The Rolling Stones in the 60s; Led Zeppelin,
Black Sabbath and Deep Purple in the 70s; and Iron Maiden in the 80s (from
which sprouted thrash and its mutations eg Metallica, Slayer) and Def Leppar
d (from which sprouted "glam" metal eg Motley Crue, Ratt etc.).
As the original expression of Sabbath/Zeppelin-influenced heavy metal
distorted into punk or seceded to disco in the mid to late 1970s, an
appropriation of "classical" music would fuel the development towards heavy
metal maturity, most fully developed in the work of Eddie Van Halen.
Heavy metal got a push from an intellectual and artistic curiosity when
musicians started to exploit the opportunities of the electrically amplified
guitar to produce a louder, more discordant sound. The origin of the term
Heavy metal is uncertain.
Some theories hold that it was coined by one of the critics for Rolling
Stone Magazine. Others have attempted to trace its origin to the words
"heavy metal thunder" in the Steppenwolf song "Born to be Wild", or the
William S. Burroughs story "The Heavy Metal Kid".
Regardless of its origin, the term may have been used as a jibe initially
but was quickly adopted by its adherents. Bands such as Led Zeppelin, Deep
Purple and Black Sabbath specialised in a "stripped down" sound in which the
Blues inheritance was reduced. The influence of Jimi Hendrix should not be
discounted though, acting as both an innovator in the technical capabilities
of the electric guitar and a bridge between black music and white European
rockers. Some of the original Heavy metallers joked that their simplified
sound was more the result of limited ability rather the desire to innovate.
See power trio.
Some people say The Beatles started to ignite the metal music movement with
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and the song "Helter Skelter" from
The Beatles. Among the many bands to "cover" this song, Motley Crue's
version very strongly brings to the fore the heavy metal undertones that the
Beatles original song implied but failed to explore in their time. This
opinion, however, is open for debate. The earliest song that is clearly
identifiable as prototype heavy metal appears to be "You Really Got Me" by
The Kinks.
The American band Grand Funk Railroad epitomised early heavy metal, and set
an alternative benchmark in which the volume of the music was seen as the
important factor rather than its musical qualities. Douglas Adams neatly
satirised this propensity for excessive volume in The Hitch Hikers Guide to
the Galaxy with the fictional rock band Disaster Area - creators of the
loudest sound in the known universe. It should be noted however, that Adams
was satirising Pink Floyd stage shows specifically - rather than metal in
general.
Heavy metal, as an art form, is more than just music. It is as much visual
as it is audible. Album covers and stage shows are almost as important to
the presentation of the material as the music itself. Thus, through heavy
metal, many artists collaborate to produce a menu of experiences in each
piece, offering a wider range of experiences to the audience. In this
respect, heavy metal becomes perhaps "more" of an art than any single form.
Whereas a painting is experienced visually, while a symphony is an audible
experience, a band's "image" and the common theme that binds all their music
is expressed in the artwork on the album, the set of the stage, the tone of
the lyrics, and the sound of the music.
If the audio/thematic components of heavy metal are predominantly
blues-influenced reality, then the visual component is predominantly
pop-influenced fantasy. The themes of darkness, evil, power, and apocalyptic
are fantastic language components for addressing the reality of life's
problems. Further, in reaction to the "peace and love" of the 1960s, heavy
metal develops as a counterpoint culture, where light is supplanted by
darkness, and the "happy ending" nature of pop is ripped away and replaced
by the naked reality that things don't always work out in this world. But
truly, the medium of darkness is not the message, although critics would
seize upon the medium and accuse heavy metal artists of spreading a message
of darkness.
Glitter rock, a short-lived era in the mid-1970s, is the extreme exploration
of the fantasy-side of the reality-fantasy parents of heavy metal. Iggy Pop,
Ziggy Stardust, Alice Cooper and Kiss are among the more popular standard
examples of this sub-genre. Punk rock was a more significant branch that
explored the very politically charged reality-side of the reality-fantasy
parents of heavy metal. The Sex Pistols are the standard example of this
sub-genre.
Heavy metal themes are more grave than the "let's go to the hop" fluff of
the 1950s, when rock and roll came into being. Commentary on war, nuclear
annihilation, environmental issues, political and religious propaganda and
such are standard in heavy metal. Black Sabbath's War Pigs ("...in the
fields a body's burning, as the war machine keeps turning..."), Ozzy
Osbourne's Killer of Giants ("...if none of us believed in war, then can you
tell me what the weapons' for?/Listen to me everyone, if the button gets
pushed there'll be no where to run...") are just two of many serious
contributions to the discussion of the state of affairs. Granted, the
commentary tends to become over-simplified, but then, the fantastic poetic
vocabulary of heavy metal deals primarily with very clear dichotomies of
light/dark, hope/dispair, good/evil which don't make much room for complex
shades of gray.
As heavy metal gave in to the dark, hopeless dispair of "real life," it
evolved into heavier, more brooding forms -- thrash metal, speed metal,
death metal...
The energetic and vitalised music soon found an audience and rapidly spread
to the United States through extended touring. American musicians swiftly
absorbed the agitated style and began to restore a more technically refined
element as well as the Blues element.
An element to be pointed out is that heavy metal is considered by many to be
white/European, in opposition to the blues-based rock, which derives from
Afro-American music. This only means that the majority of the audience and
the players seem to be white. There are, if one chooses to look, several
examples of bands that have disproved this stereotype and the audiences can
be quite mixed--Thin Lizzy's Phil Lynott and Living Colour are good
examples.
The appropriation of classical music is "...specific and consistent: Bach,
not Mozart; Paganini rather than Liszt..." such that "we must ask: if we
don't understand his influence on the music of Ozzy Osbourne or Bon Jovi, do
we really understand Bach as well as we thought we did?" [Walser, 63]. Thus,
heavy metal enters the discourse on the enduring nature of music.
Two talents of Bach stand out as significant in the discussion of heavy
metal, and his influence upon it. "The significance of Bach's music is due
in large part to the scope of his intellect... He was able to understand and
use every resource of musical language that was available in the baroque
era," [Encarta]. Jimi Hendrix experimented with the sounds and effects that
amplifier distortion offered, Led Zeppelin used violins and cellos in their
music, and the legacy of Bach lives on. Heavy metal's experimentation with
different instruments, sounds and technologies is directly descended from
his approach. In the spirit of a pioneering Bach, who greatly expanded the
range of music by using his thumbs at the keyboard, Eddie Van Halen expanded
the range of the guitar, and heavy metal music, by his innovative
"hammer-on" method, using the pick hand to "tap" on the fretboard.
Also, "...when a text was associated with the music, Bach could write
musical equivalents of verbal ideas," [Encarta]. Especially as heavy metal
uses themes of apocalyptic and images of power and darkness, the ability to
translate verbal ideas into musical ideas that successfully convey the ideas
of the words is critical to heavy metal authenticity and credibility. An
excellent example of this is the theme album Powerslave, by Iron Maiden. The
cover is of a dramatic Egyptian pyramid scene, and many of the songs on the
album have subject matter that requires a sound suggestive of life and
death, including a song entitled [[The Rime of the Ancient Mariner]], based
on the poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Pop music is unable to do this, for
pop by its nature can't be all that serious, while heavy metal can deal with
lighter subjects as well as the serious ones.
Thus, heavy metal has a broader scope and capacity to address more of the
human experience, sharing the range of emotional expression that we hear in
the work of such composers as Tchaikovsky or Grieg. Ultimately, we see
clearly that, to be successful in this critical component of the heavy metal
code, technical and artistic insights are paramount.
The explosion of guitar virtuosity founded in the leadership of pioneer Jimi
Hendrix a music generation earlier was ushered to the fore by Eddie Van
Halen, and many consider his 1978 solo appropriately called Eruption as the
significant new dawn in heavy metal history. Ritchie Blackmore (formerly of
pioneer Deep Purple), Randy Rhodes (w/ pioneer Ozzy Osbourne formerly of
Black Sabbath) and Yngwie Malmsteen would solidify this explosion. All of a
sudden, classical guitars, even nylon-stringed guitars, were commonplace at
heavy metal concerts, and classical icons such as Liona Boyd became
associated with the heavy metal stars as peers in a newly diverse guitar
fraternity where conservative and aggressive guitarists could come together
to "trade licks" (recently MP3.com featured a collection of Ms. Boyd's music
which featured her collaboration with such rock stars as Pink Floyd
guitarist David Gilmour and the great Eric Clapton, as further evidence of
the "open" associations that cross musical genre divisions among the
respective leaders).
This explosion would cool down in the music of Ronnie James Dio (who himself
had a tenure at lead vocals with the legendary Black Sabbath) and continue
to settle towards Iron Maiden, who may be the final and complete
consummation of "pure" heavy metal in the lineage of the "grandfathers" -
Hendrix, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. After Maiden, metal
would push the limits of aggressive loudness in thrash metal, speed metal,
black metal and death metal, and return full circle through the vanity of
the Los Angeles scene's "glam" or pop metal lead by Mötley Crüe, to a popish
romantic metal of Bon Jovi, before its energy dissipated altogether and
"alternative" (or "grunge") evolved out of Seattle in the work of Nirvana,
Pearl Jam and Soundgarden.
Some might differentiate by observing that pure heavy metal doesn't sing
about love, while many glam metal song titles include the word "love" -
compare the entire song list of Iron Maiden's many albums which will offer
not one use of the word to the knowledge of this contributor, while Motley
Crue's first hit was a song entitled Too Young to Fall in Love, immediately
positioning the band as a commercially-driven glam act, rather than having
anything substantial to "say". In some respects, one might argue that the
glam metal scene of the '80s was the child of the glitter movement in the
'70s, and the visual similarities between the two, with the make-up and
faciful costumes, makes the argument more compelling. Ultimately, "pure"
heavy metal would position itself at the periphery of pop culture, never
quite at center, and metal denizens will contend that the move towards the
center was a commercialism that compromised both the artistic integrity of
the form and the opportunity for messages to be taken seriously.
The influence of classical music on Van Halen and Randy Rhoads helped heavy
metal adopt "...a new professionalism, with theory, analysis, pedagogy, and
technical rigor acquiring new importance," [Walser, 84].
In the early 80s the New Wave of British Heavy Metal made metal music very
popular (especially in Europe) with Bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and
Motörhead. This period influenced all metal sub-genres and can be considered
as their common roots. Sub-genres of heavy metal are numerous:
Thrash Metal: A very aggressive and rhythm-based style of metal. Examples
are Slayer, Overkill and early Metallica
Power Metal: Clean vocals and hymn-like choruses are charactistic for this
style. The lyrics are often based on fantasy or sci-fi themes. The most
famous bands are: Iron Maiden, Helloween, Blind Guardian and Hammerfall, the
first of which is British and the latter three continental European.
Death Metal: Extreme music with low-pitched guitars and growling vocals.
There is no common theme in the lyrics, they range from splatter (Cannibal
Corpse) and war (Bolt Thrower) to Christian motives (Mortification). Besides
the mentioned, Death, Morbid Angel and Entombed are other important bands.
Black Metal: A precise defintion for this style is very hard to give. One
approach is strictly based on the lyrics, which are satanic or otherwise
occult. Bands: Mayhem, Darkthrone and Venom (early black metal).
Nu Metal: Newest form of heavy metal, usually features down tuned guitars (7
string guitars are common), sampling artists/DJs and angst-ridden, hip-hop
influenced vocals of bands like Korn, Fear Factory, Papa Roach, Staind, Skid
Row, Orgy, System of a Down, Drowning Pool and Limp Bizkit.
Goth Metal fuses the bleak, icy atmospherics of goth rock with the loud
guitars and aggression of heavy metal, finding the middle ground between the
two styles in a melodramatic sense of theater and lyrical obsessions with
religion and horror. Bands: Theatre of Tragedy, Paradise Lost, Lacrimosa and
My Dying Bride.
Doom Metal is inspired largely by the lumbering dirges and stoned, paranoid
darkness of Black Sabbath, doom metal is one of the very few heavy metal
subgenres to prize feel and mood more than flashy technique. Bands:
Candlemass, Cathedral and Anathema.
Neo-Classical Metal: The most renowned artist is the Swedish axeman Yngwie
J. Malmsteen. In neo-classical metal, the traditional toolbox of metal
song-writing is used, but with a twist: all of it takes place in a structure
that is heavily influenced by baroque music. The chord progressions,
arpeggios, broken chords, and speedy scale runs of neo-classical metal are
borrowed for the most part from Johann Sebastian Bach, Antonio Vivaldi and
Niccolo Paganini. Although Malmsteen is the most well-known proponent of
this branch of metal, classical elements used in heavy metal and hard rock
date back to Ritchie Blackmore of Deep Purple and Eddie Van Halen's
innovations in the late 1970s.
Progressive metal: combines elements of progressive rock and heavy metal.
Bands include Dream Theater and Symphony X.
Glam metal: Glam focused on stage craft and appearance (leather, spandex,
long hair and makeup being very common), and generally uses a lot of "feel
good" rhythms and catchy lyrics. Glam Bands: Motley Crue, Ratt, Skid Row,
Poison, Dokken, Greg Howe, Vixen, and Cinderella among many, many others.
The most used lineup for metal is: a drummer, sometimes using a double
bass-drum; a bass guitar; a rhythm guitar; a lead guitar; a singer;
sometimes a keyboard player can be found. Guitar playing is very important
in heavy metal. Intricate solos and riffs are a big part of heavy metal
music. Guitarists use sweep-picking, tapping and similar techniques to
obtain amazing fast playing. Heavy metal is not limited, however, to the
standard outfit of guitars and drums. The Finnish cello quartet,
Apocalyptica, has created their own version of heavy metal, difficult to
categorize but leaning towards the darker side of metal. They apply various
familiar effects to their sounds such as the all-familiar distortion,
chorusing, flanging, etc. to create their style, which has fallen under a
mixed assortment of applause and criticism due to their deviance.
There is a great variety of ways that heavy metal singers sing, from clean
vocals to a high-pitched wail to a deep growl. The black and death metal
scene tend to use distorted and guttural voices (for example try to listen
to some songs of the Florida band Deicide). Generally it's hard to
understand what the singer is "singing". Often, the text is considered to be
too crude to be spoken out clearly (try to listen to Cannibal Corpse), but
there are some bands that will have very good lyrics obscured by the style
of the singing.
Studies have shown that the average metal fan may know the lyrics, but not
understand or be able to explain the meaning of the lyrics. Indeed, for
many, "...we can thus identify with a song?because it is the voice [tone],
not the lyrics, to which we immediately respond". As a comparison, consider
the abstract brush strokes of Barnett Newman and others that don't
necessarily represent "something" but evoke emotional response in the
viewer. Thus, we may suggest that heavy metal music has translated abstract
visuals into abstract sound. Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit is an
excellent example of a lyric that is obscured by the angst-ridden tone, yet
it is precisely that tone that evokes the emotional response to the song.
Some heavy metal performers include:
Anthrax - Black Sabbath - Blue Oyster Cult - Budgie - Burzum - The Cult -
Children of bodom - Corrosion Of Conformity - Deep Purple - Deicide -
Danzig - Darkthrone - Dokken - Down - Fear Factory - Frankenshred -
Godsmack - Greg Howe - Guns N' Roses - Infectious Grooves - Iron Maiden -
Judas Priest - King's X - Led Zeppelin - Living Colour - Yngwie J.
Malmsteen - Marilyn Manson - Megadeth - Metallica - Motley Crue -
Motorhead - Nightwish - Obituary - Ozzy Osbourne - Pacifier - Prong - Puddle
Of Mudd - Queensryche - Queens Of The Stone Age - Saxon - Slash's Snakepit -
Slayer - Skid Row - Static-X - Stryper - Suicidal Tendencies - Tool - UFO -
WASP