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It’s time I wrote something about music. Music has always been central to my life. It helps process my feelings, inviting me into a world of power, emotion, and beauty. I usually have something playing in the background, and my tastes are extremely diverse. For many years, I was a confirmed rocker, but generally not the usual suspects, like Metallica or Guns ‘n’ Roses. Sure, I have been to my fair share of Motörhead concerts. I saw Saxon, Blue Oyster Cult, AC/DC…. most of the big names.

As a student, the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) was the only thing going, taking the conventions of classic 70’s rock (à la Zeppelin and Purple) and injecting it with the energy of punk. It was really the only alternative to the synth-rock explosion at the time, the simplicity and “twanginess” of which turned me off. I didn’t want anything to do with the likes of The Human League or Thompson Twins. Too much preening and pretty-boyness for me at the time. I was solid denim and leather!

So, I saw my fair share of the lesser-known bands: Girlschool were relatively big back then, and were one of the first all-female heavy rock bands hot on the heels of The Runaways. For a week, I kind of followed them around from show to show, always grabbing an autograph after the concert, as the four leather-clad ladies had a quick chat with their fans, offering a kiss along the way. I really wonder in retrospect how many cold sores those women developed from the massive number of spotty-teenage lips their mouths encountered!

I saw Diamond Head in Bristol’s Colston Hall one night in January. Their music was a little retro for the time, incorporating a more Zeppelin style blues vibe than the thrash of most of their peers. Renowned for their epic masterpiece “Sucking My Love”, they fit well into the scene from a lyrical point of view, lacking the poetry of a Robert Plant, but hey, sans-Zeppelin (RIP Bonham), they were the closest thing we had for those who missed the 70’s.

After that gig, I connected with a bunch of Welshmen with a band called Boulevard, who had just released their first EP. The bass player took a liking to me, while the guitarist glowered at me in the background. We hung out together for a few hours after the gig, smoking weed, and talking music. The bassist handed me a tape of their EP, featuring another sex-epic called Boulevard Nights, which I gratefully accepted. Returning to my university accommodations, a week or two later, I cheerfully boasted of hanging out with Boulevard to my friend Ian, another HM aficionado. He’d heard them on the Friday Night Rock Show (RIP Tommy Vance), and in his broad Lancashire accent, started ribbing me “BOOL-E-VAARD? Who calls their band BOOL-LEE-VAAARD!? I heard them, they’re CRAP!” I never heard the end of that one!

I seemed to attract the antipathy of NWOBHM guitarists. I had a classmate in my university program, Ann. With her long blonde curly hair, white Afghan coat, and hippy clothes, she was for the first few years of my program an object of unrequited affection. A year or two older than me, she had worked as a secretary before entering university. The lone rockers in our small class of 30, I quickly spotted a fellow fan across the room and gravitated towards her at the first lecture. Sitting next to her, I introduced myself. Pointing towards her Afghan, I said “I’ve got one of those.” “Really?” she said, weighing me up, with my still-fairly-short hair. “Why don’t you wear it?” I had only recently bought the coat from a vendor in North London who still sold them out of the back room of a two-up-two-down. He advertised only in the tiny classified ads buried near the back of Melody Maker. It was a beautiful example of mujahideen-wear: knee-length, and snow-white, with thicker suede leather than was typical, and ornate white embroidery around the edges, but a bit smelly as Afghan coats tended to be. The shopkeeper warned me to keep it out of the rain, which proved to be a challenge in rainy Manchester, prompting me to frequently wear it inside out, with the fleece side of the pelt facing towards the elements, vastly increasing the smelliness of the whole affair, and making me look a little like Manchester’s own version of Bigfoot.

I loved that coat, christened it “Eric”, and began to wear it everywhere, particularly as my hair began to grow and I looked more the part. The week after Ann’s inquiry, I proudly plumped myself next to her at the start of a sociology lecture. “It’s so CLEAN! How is it SO CLEAN???” Feeling increasingly relegated to the “friend zone”, I self-consciously made some excuse for the faux pas of cleanliness and remember doing my level best later to scuff poor Eric up a bit in the dirt of my Mum and Dad’s back garden. But Eric refused to cooperate and somehow maintained his relatively pristine whiteness in defiance of all my efforts.

But I digress… NWOBHM guitarists seemed to have it in for me. Ann for a time had been dating the lead guitarist of a fledgling heavy metal band called Grim Reaper. Nick was either a Chemistry or Physics student, a few years older than me, and had pretty good technique. I had accompanied Ann one night to see one of their earlier gigs, in the common room of a university hall of residence. The room probably held 100 of us max. Nick was a big guy, probably six feet and broad (I’m not), with long blonde curly hair, square jaw, and a mean expression. He was a real shredder, skillfully running up and down the fretboard, face turned heavenwards with every sustained note, for solo after interminable solo. They were OK, in the typical NWOBHM style that I had now begun to tire of slightly. Enjoyable for what it was, and skillfully played, but not my cup of tea.

A few weeks after the gig, Ann came to the lecture hall in tears. Nick and she had an argument and split. I gathered that he had said some pretty mean things, and now there she was, crying on my shoulder. Ever the helpful friend(zoned), I saw my opportunity to console the distraught object of my unrequited love. “Who cares about a poxy little band like Grim Reaper anyway?”, I declared, which seemed to cheer Ann up considerably.

A week later, Ann apologetically approached me after a lecture. “Ummm, Nick’s pretty mad at you.” “What do you mean, I thought you guys broke up?” “We got back together. I told Nick what a great friend you were, and how you cheered me up with your poxy little band comment.” “You Did WHAT?” “Yeah, Nick’s pretty mad. Says he’s going to beat you up the moment you show your face.” No good deed goes unpunished, it seems.

That Tuesday night, I decided to visit the “Heavy Metal Disco” in the basement bar of the student union. Strobe lights flashing, amid the thunder of the amps, I entered the room for a quick beer and headbang only to spy Nick leaning against a column across the room, or rather he spied me! Beer in one hand and lifting the finger of the other in my direction, with the meanest expression that I have ever seen directed my way. As he marched across the room in my direction, I tried to make my escape and headed for the door, only to find my egress blocked. Towering over me, Nick took me by the scruff of the collar and pulled me into the corridor outside, throwing me against the wall. As he lifted his fist, for the first of many anticipated pummels, I protested “Nick, I am really sorry, I didn’t mean it! I only said that to make her feel better. You’re a BRILLIANT GUITARIST, and your band is AMAZING!!!!” Maybe it was the terror that he had plainly infused in me; maybe it was my sniveling apology; or maybe it was the “skinful” that he’d already consumed, but Nick took a moment, fist inches from my face, and then let go, returning to his beer and scythe in the disco, receding into the distance through a strobe-lit haze of machine-generated fog. Never to be seen again.

Nick and Ann broke up for good a few weeks later, and I didn’t visit the HM disco much after that… and when I did, it was never solo. A couple of years later, Grim Reaper became fairly big, even achieving some measure of success in the States. The title track to their debut album was ranked at No. 38 on VH1’s Most Awesomely Bad Metal Songs Ever countdown, according to Wikipedia.

I’m not saying that it was my brush with Grim Reaper that turned me away from metal, but my tastes did become a little more refined after that incident. While I continued to love progressive rock — which I still do — I had little to do with heavy metal in later years as I discovered the wonders of UB40, Joe Jackson, and the Smiths. I finally entered the ’80s and cut my hair before leaving for my exchange year in the United States, where I discovered Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills & Nash, and Neil Young. I also acquired an appreciation for blues, jazz, and soul, one of the most memorable concerts I’ve ever attended being John Lee Hooker on campus in 1982.

After moving to the US, Eric got left behind and resided in my parents’ attic for a few years. I was dismayed upon a return visit one year to discover that Eric had been thrown out with the trash by my dad, so I’m afraid that Eric will never become a family heirloom to be passed along to future generations of spotty-faced university students.

I may not be banging my head anymore, but I do sometimes pull out a classic from the era, and sometimes I remember the day my head was almost quite literally banged by one of its future stars…

…and Eric, rest in peace, old friend.