Jon Wiederhorn - Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal

J ON:
T O MY PARENTS , N ANCY AND S HELDON, FOR THEIR ETERNAL
SUPPORT, WITHOUT WHICH I WOULD PROBABLY BE WORKING
A REAL JOB .
M Y WIFE , E LIZABETH, AND MY CHILDREN , J OSHUA AND
C HLOE, WHO LEARNED TO FLASH THE DEVIL HORNS LONG
BEFORE THEY DISCOVERED THEIR LOVE FOR S ELENA G OMEZ .

K ATHERINE:
T O MY MOTHER , A NTONIA . T HANK YOU FOR THE WORDS .
P ROUD, PROUD .

K ICK O UT THE J AMS : P ROTO M ETAL , 19641970

M ASTERS OF R EALITY: S ABBATH , P RIEST, AND B EYOND , 19701979

B RITISH S TEEL: N EW W AVE OF B RITISH H EAVY M ETAL S HAPES THE F UTURE , 1980PRESENT

Y OUTH G ONE W ILD: M ETAL G OES M AINSTREAM , 19781992

C AUGHT IN A M OSH: T HRASH M ETAL , 19811991

T HE A GE OF Q UARREL: C ROSSOVER /H ARDCORE , 19771992

F AR B EYOND D RIVEN: T HRASH R EVISITED AND R EVISED , 19872004

H IGH -T ECH H ATE: I NDUSTRIAL , 19801997

A LL F OR THE N OOKIE : N U M ETAL , 19892002

H AMMER S MASHED F ACE: D EATH M ETAL , 19831993

I N THE N IGHTSIDE E CLIPSE: B LACK M ETAL , 1982 PRESENT

W HEN D ARKNESS F ALLS: M ETALCORE , 19922006

N EW A MERICAN G OSPEL: M ILLENNIAL M ETAL , 1992 PRESENT

I was eight years old, sitting in my uncles bedroom at my grandparents house, going through his vinyl. I pulled out the first Black Sabbath record. Theres woods and a witch, and Im a little kid looking at this going, What is this? This is scary. And my uncle goes, Thats Black Sabbath. Theyre acid rock. Im like, Whats acid rock?

So I put it on and it starts with the rain and then that riff comes in and Im like, Oh my God. I was a little kid, scared, sitting in my uncles weird dark room with his black light posters, and I had never heard anything like that. Up until that point I lived on AM radio in the car with my parents, listening to whatever was on WABC in New York. This was my first exposure to anything like that, and I instantly liked it. I went, What else is like this? And we listened to Led Zeppelin and Frank Zappa and everything heavy and weird he had in his collection.

I started asking my parents to buy me records, and I watched stuff like Don Kirshners Rock Concert on TV, and this other show, In Concert, which were about the only places you could see live performance on TV back then. I got way into music. I had a cousin who was twelve years older than me who was a biker and a musician. He lived down the street from us and I used to hang out in his basement when hed jam. Id sit there and watch, and I thought anyone with long hair was the coolest guy in the world, and anyone who had a guitar was the coolest guy in the world. That was my introduction to the world of heavy metal.

We were living in Long Island when I was in fourth, fifth, and sixth grade, and up until I started seventh grade, music to me was really personal. None of my friends were into music. They all played hockey. None of them gave a shit about Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin. So Id just sit in my house and practice my guitar and listen to songs. It wasnt until I was thirteen and starting seventh grade that I met kids who were listening to Zeppelin and KISS and Aerosmith and Cheap Trick and the Ramones, and thats when I really started to blossom.

All through junior high and into high school I gravitated toward like-minded people, and we were the little clique that all wore leather jackets and had long hair. By that time my parents had gotten divorced and I was living in Queens. Bayside High School had almost three thousand students, and the core of our group was about ten people. With the periphery kids who would kind of hang out with us, we had maybe two dozen people that were into hard rock and heavy metal. Others were just into disco or pop. In 1978 in Queens, you didnt have a lot of people listening to Rainbow. But we were into all this British and European hard rock; it wasnt even really called metal back in 1978.

At lunchtime, my friends and I had a little boom box and we would listen to cassettes and put these hard rock surveys together. Wed have a page and wed write down the names Ace Frehley, Jimmy Page, Ritchie Blackmore, Joe Perry. Then wed walk around the lunchroom and try to get people to rate them one to ten and then try to figure out whos the best lead guitar player. This is how fucking nerdy we were at age fifteen! Everything was about music. And there was always the quest to find the next band. You always wanted to be the guy in the group to come in with something that no one had heard yet that was going to blow them away. One day this kid David Karibian came in with the first Van Halen record in his boom box at lunch time. He said, Listen to this, and put on Eruption, and we all sat there with our fucking jaws dropping. We had never heard anything like that before. I remember the first time I heard AC/DC. Another time, my friend Golden brought in If You Want Blood, and it was the first time I ever heard Bon Scott. Holy shit. We were on a constant quest, looking for the next cool band or the next heavier bandwhoever was playing something harder, faster, more intense.

I bought the first Iron Maiden record at the Music Box, which was this record store in Queens, around 1980. I didnt know anything about the band. I had never even heard of them. I bought it strictly based on the album cover because Eddie looked so fucking cool. And then I put it on and heard Prowler and lost my fucking mind, and went in the next day and said, Oh my God, have you guys heard Iron Maiden? And, like, four dudes went, Duh, we got that last month.

We thought we were cool, but we were like the fucking plague when it came to girls. I didnt date one girl all through high school who went to my high school. I didnt go to my prom. As a kid in a leather jacket, ripped Levis, Chuck Taylors, and long hair, you werent getting hot high school chicks. We were the burnouts. Thats what the jocks would call us. They never fucked with us or tried to fight us or anything because I think even they understood we were no challenge at all. You could literally blow on even the biggest one of us burnouts and wed fall over. None of us were fighters. All we cared about was playing guitar.

But the music made us feel strong, and being with other people who were into the same thing made you feel like you werent alone or crazy. Theres a reason I had Ted Nugent, KISS, and Zeppelin posters hanging all over my room. Im not just some fuckin weirdo. Look, theres a whole bunch of other dudes just like me.

By 80 or 81, we had already started getting into heavier, more extreme European metal stuff like Venom, Raven, and Mercyful Fate, and it could never get loud enough. At the same time American hardcore punk bands like Black Flag, Fear, and Circle Jerks were emerging. And all of it was starting to cross over because if you hung out at record stores as much as we did, you would pick up anything in the hopes that you were going to find something cool. To me, there were no genres and there were no categories. It was either good or it wasnt.

Then we got into the British stuff like GBH, Exploited, and Discharge because it was the next most extreme thing out at the time. When I first listened to Discharges Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing, it sounded like nothing I had ever heard before. There was an intensity and brutality to that record and that band that I had never experienced in any other music. I didnt realize it at the time, but years later I recognized, Okay. Thats hardcore. Thats sheer fucking brutality.