History of The New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) - Martin Popoff - This Means War - The Sunset Years of The NWOBHM-Power Chords Press (2015)

Martin Popoff
1
Power Chord Press
PO Box 65208
358 Danforth Avenue
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4K 2Z2
ISBN 978-0-9918963-8-7
Copyright 2015. Martin Popoff
All rights reserved under article two of the Berne Copyright Convention (1971).
No part of this book can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage
and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
First Power Chord Press paperback printing: December 2015.

Printed and bound in Canada.
www.martinpopoff.com
Table Of Contents
Introduction 5
1981– “The fans were very young; people like ourselves, really.” 9
1982 – “We are black metal!” 86
1983 – “They had become kind of Americanized.” 137
1984 – “Let’s not say American because that’s a wimp-out word.” 206
Text Credits 262
Design and Photography Credits 262
About the Author 263
Martin Popoff – A Complete Bibliography 264
Smokin’ Valves: A Headbanger’s Guide To 900 NWOBHM Records 266
3
Introduction
Welcome back, old school metal experts, and I call you that, because if
you’ve stuck with this epic academic exercise this long, you are definitely
deep into this stuff the same way that I am—let’s keep this history alive.
Anyway, as a few words of background, This Means War: The Sunset Years
of the NWOBHM is the follow-up book, the second half, as it were, to Wheels
of Steel: The Explosive Early Years of the NWOBHM. And in effect, both are
parts two and three of a trilogy of books that began with Smokin’ Valves:
A Headbanger’s Guide to 900 NWOBHM Records way, way back in 2014
(that’s a joke).
Now, that first book, for those of you who don’t know, is essentially a book
of record reviews, along with pictures of those records, be they full-length
LPs, EPs or 45s. I tell you this for two reasons: one, that is where all of my
reviewing, my opinion, my elucidation, explanation on who these bands are,
etc., takes place, more so than in these two timeline with quotes books. I
tell you this second because, as part of my mission not to overlap too many
things with all these books I’ve been writing, I’ve included no shots of record
sleeves in this two-volume oral history of the NWOBHM, going with one
image class, essentially the advertisements, which I’ve always gotten a kick
out of, and which, frankly, are just a more interesting way, in some cases,
to present some of those sleeves, hopefully with a little bit of hype text and
other amusing words from the copywriters tasked with those notices.
Now, back to the two volumes of oral history. The first of these books
handled that interesting open-ended lead-up to the NWOBHM , but then only
two years of that period, namely 1979 and 1980. The present volume which
you now hold in your hands, covers the years 1981, 1982, 1983 and 1984.
What I find interesting and telling, especially in accordance with those that
think the NWOBHM was winding itself up by the end of 1980, is that that
first book is actually a longer book than this one, but that there are more
images for this one, bringing the two volumes in at roughly the same length.
The word count part of that would suggest that much of the exciting
events of the genre did take place early on, and then, of course, as it gets
old, having “new” in the title, becomes stupid, just like nu-metal or New
Romantics. The images side of that story points to the fact that after an
initial period of operating underground, in darkness, in poverty, heavy metal
Martin Popoff This Means War 5

for the first time, as we move into the 1980s, became a marketable enough
commodity that labels were purchasing ad space in print mags for these
former pariahs. Heck, we punters and liggers (!) even got our own magazine,
Kerrang! and then a bunch more as the metal army took over, as my
pathetically blinkered view of rock history would suggest.
And it’s interesting also, if you compare the ar tistic quality of the images
in this second book with that of the first, you see a little more thought
and professionalism poured into these visuals as power chords go
populist, immensely pleasing a pre-adulthood Popoff as he turned the
table to 20 in 1983.
I don’t like to repeat myself, but I really need to chuck in a few housekeeping
points here for those who may not have the first book and are wondering
about how I did certain things. So yes, if specific dates aren’t known for
events, they are put at the beginning of each month or year entry. For
example, if only year is known, it occurs before January of that year. Within
January, if the date is not known, it’s put before January 1, January 2 and
so on. Things like early, mid, late, spring, summer... hopefully, I’ve put those
things in a sensible and consistent place.
I didn’t stress unearthing the specificity of every last date too greatly,
because dates are of lesser importance here, than, for example, in my book,
Who Invented Heavy Metal?, where all the timeline entries and quotes were
contributing to the answer of that central question—logically speaking, to
answer it, it’s really important to see who did what when. Here, we are really
just celebrating a genre, telling the story of it, and are not too concerned
with firsts or milestones, although within the entries, I definitely tried to point
out important milestones.
Plus we’re looking at much more of a compressed period—six years,

essentially—and really, no huge storylines in terms of evolution or
development of the music. Interestingly, we’ll be touching on a bit more of
that when I get ‘round to Who Invented Thrash?, in which I’ll throw a little
more interrogation light onto concepts within the NWOBHM such as riff,
speed and degree of blackness and thrashness.
Hands up, does anybody take issue with me ending this book in 1984? I’m
sure there are a handful of people that might’ve gone a year further, and
many more that would’ve ended it in 1983, and indeed some who plausibly
6 This Means War Martin Popoff

might’ve proposed that I could’ve done with a single book on the genre that
ended in 1982. I don’t know, it just never struck me otherwise, going back
to the whole time that I was watching every nook and cranny of the scene
like a hawk in real time, that 1984 was solidly part of it and 1985 was
emphatically not.
I’ve reflected this as well in the Smokin’ Valves record review book, which
also ends in 1984, and so there you have it, a tidy trilogy of books on the
New Wave of British Heavy Metal, closing that big gate on the cover of One
Vice at a Time (by an honourary NWOBHM band!) in 1984, as our sights
shift to California, which really picks up the balls from the cover of Balls to
the Wall (by another honourary NWOBHM band!), also in that year, with a
healthy lead-up, granted, of about 24 months. I quite like trilogies, although
I really only have one other one, and it’s the three books that comprise my
biography of Thin Lizzy. Got some pairs as well, and even got a series of six
books going, namely those Ye Olde Metal oddities. Anyway, might have a few
more up my sleeve, but we’ll see.
Point is, I figured I had one crack at the NWOBHM, and I was determined to
be unapologetically detailed and long-winded—but without resorting to any
quoting from outside press. I’m not averse to that concept, but this was an
exercise where I purely wanted to add to the public record and not recycle
from it.
And I’ll leave you with that, as together we make our way through these last
four years of the NWOBHM, arguably, a pair of mature phase years and a
pair of decline years, following a pair of early years, which was the subject of
the first book. I suppose the fun intellectual parlour game of this one comes
at the conclusion, where various of our heavy metal heroes commiserate
on why the scene had to die. This of course creates a nice bookend to the
intellectual parlour game of the first book, which expends considerable
blood, guts and beer on why the NWOBHM had to be born in the first place.
Martin Popoff
martinp@inforamp.net
martinpopoff.com

1981 - “The fans were very young;
people like ourselves, really.”
1981. As the NWOBHM begins to crest, the flow of do-it-yourself and
small label singles continues unabated. Some of these lesser known
releases from 1981 (specific day and month of release unknown) are
as follows: Anthem - “England;” Badge - “Silver Woman,” recorded at
Impulse in Newcastle; Bollweevil - “Rock Solid;” Brooklyn - “Hollywood;”
Chinatown - “Short and Sweet;” Paul Dale Band - “Alright on the Night;”
Demolition - “Hooker Hater,” recorded at Zella in Birmingham, home
of some early Sabbath and Priest demos; Demon Pact - “Eaten Alive;”
Destroyer - “Evil Place;” Duchess - “Your Love;” Energy - “E.P. II;” E.S.P. –
““The Poem”/“Another Way,” with the instruction, To Play: 1. Bass Down
2. Volume Up; Frenzy - three singles: “This Is the Last Time,” “Blackburn
Rovers” and “Without You;” Fugitive - “Need My Freedom;” Ground
Attack - “Red Lion;” Hazzard - “Snake in the Grass;” from Scotland; The
Headbangers - “Status Rock;” Hellrazer - “The Devil’s Got the Deeds to
Rock ‘n’ Roll;” HGB - “Chase the Night Away;” High Risk - “Must Be Crazy;”
Horizon - “Stage Struck;” Janine - “Crazy on You;” Jody St. - “Fight Back;”
Legend - “Hideaway;” Lightning Raiders - “Criminal World;” Marquis De
Sade - “Somewhere Up in the Mountains;” Meanstreak - “Played it Right;”
Megaton - “Aluminum Lady;” National Gold - “I Need Your Time;” No Faith -
“Double Trouble;” Overdrive – “On the Run;” Overkill – “Elemental;” Radium
- Through the Smoke; Raw Deal - “Out of My Head;” Roadster - “Fantasy;”
Sacred Alien - “Spiritual Planet;” Satanic Rites - “Live to Ride,” on Heavy
Metal Records; Scarab - “Rock Night;” Shader - “Bad News Blues;” Shiva -
“Rock Lives On;” Skitzofrenik - “U.S.A.;” Spitzbrook - “Stranger;” Suspect
- “In the Night;” Trespass – Brightlights EP and Wolf – “See Them Running.”
Tygers of Pan Tang vocalist Jess Cox:

There were a lot of bands! There’s a few NWOBHM encyclopedias
out there, and if you look at the amount of bands… I mean, even I
didn’t realize it, even when I was in it. We knew there were a few of
us, Girlschool and whatever, but looking back in these encyclopedias
that are made, they’ve got like, God, 300, 400, 500 bands in there. It’s
just phenomenal. I mean people later created a bigger buzz about it
than possibly was going on at the time.
Tygers of Pan Tang producer Chris Tsangarides on whether there’s a

NWOBHM sound or not:
I think it has a lot to do with the style of playing that was going on.
And it was fast, it often galloped, and that’s the basic New Wave

of British Heavy Metal riff or groove. And before, with Sabbath,
it would be much slower, nodding your head and tripping out or
whatever. It was more hippie-fied, I suppose, for want of a better
word. This has that energy that the punks used to have.
1981. Amazon issue, on Megamusic, double a-side single “Fallen

Angel”/“Hypnotising You” which is produced by Ashley Howe. Meanwhile The
Midlands’ Sparta issue “Fast Lane,” following up with “Tonight,” both on
Suspect Records. Rare for such a new band, Sparta had by the end of ‘81,
their own fan club with assorted merch for sale.
1981. Nuthin Fancy issue “Lookin’ for a Good Time.” Nuthin Fancy is the
precursor to soft-ish but successful NWOBHMers Terraplane, who in turn
precede blues metal behemoth Thunder, a rare British attempt at a hair
metal competitor.
1981. Persian Risk issue “Calling for You.” Persian Risk are known for
having many recording band connections both before and after their
unsuccessful run, most notable past member being Phil Campbell, present
guitarist for Motörhead, as well as Jon Deverill and Carl Sentance, the latter
being lead vocalist on this single.
1981. Legend, from the Channel Islands, issue a self-titled debut album.
1981. Suspect Records issues their legendary Scene of the Crime

compilation, which features the first output from Savage, who are
represented with two tracks, “Let it Loose” and “Dirty Money.”
1981. Ebony Records flagship band Chateaux begin life, as Stealer.
1981. Nicky Moore Band issue “Year of the Lie.” Nicky would resurface as
Samson’s lead singer after the departure of Bruce Dickinson, later moving
on to Mammoth.
1981. Dragster issue “Ambitions.” The band’s only other output was
S&M track “Do It” on the Heavy Metal Heroes compilation. Both of these
also showed up on the 1996 British Steel Heavy Metal Records Singles
Collection Vol.1.
1981. Buffalo issue their “Battle Torn Heroes”/“Women of the Night” single,
on Heavy Metal Records.

1981. Rose Tattoo issue their second album, Assault & Batter y, a bit of
a breakthrough for the band in the UK and the US. Not only are the “baby
AC/DC” considered an honourar y NWOBHM band, but they also represent
a rare bridge band between punk and metal.
UK journalist Garry Bushell:

Maiden got a few punks and a few skinheads down, but I think
really it was Rose Tattoo who was getting significant numbers
even though, musically, they were more AC/DC. Even if you
go to Maiden gigs now, you still see ex-skinheads, ex-punks. A
small minority, but you still see them there amongst all the other
generations of rock fans.
I believe Rose Tattoo spent quite a bit of time here in ‘80, ‘81
because the audience was so receptive to them. I remember Angry
Anderson going to see a Walls football game and just falling in love
with the football crowd and he wrote the song—how do I remember
all this shit? I don’t know—but he wrote the song “We Can’t Be
Beaten” after going to an English football game.
And then they tried to crack America and, I think the reason
that they didn’t crack America was that they looked a bit strange. I
know it shouldn’t matter so much, but Angry looked great in close-
up pictures. Because he was so short and the other guys were so
tall, they looked really strange on a big stadium stage. I saw them
support Aerosmith somewhere in the northeast, Pennsylvania or
somewhere, and they didn’t really ignite the crowd.
1981. Last Flight issue their “Dance to the Music”/“I’m Ready” single, on
Heavy Metal Records.
1981. Ireland’s Sweet Savage issue their debut single “Take No

Prisoners”/“Killing Time.” The band features Vivian Campbell, soon to join
Dio and then Def Leppard.
1981. Tank tour with Motörhead, with guitarist Fast Eddie Clarke taking a
shine to the band, expressing interest in producing them one day.
Tank bassist and vocalist Algy Ward on his lyric direction and the
band’s connection to Motörhead:
Well, I have the same attitude that I’ve always had. You know, hate
the world and misanthropy. You know what that means? And odium
as well, just hatred. In-your-face, if you don’t like it, fuck off. My
lyrics, I wasn’t into... you know, people say that we were Motörhead

copyists. I wrote most of those incredibly difficult rhythms and riffs
and all that. It was a degree of difficulty that Motörhead... Eddie
could never have played those riffs. It wasn’t no influence on me at
all, because you’ve got to realize that I already knew them. I knew
them since 1977. So no, just because we had the same management... I
mean that is just bad journalism.
1981. Wolverhampton’s Twisted Ace issue their well regarded “Firebird”/“I

Won’t Surrender” 7”, on Heavy Metal Records.
1981. Northern Ireland’s Mama’s Boys—huge Horslips fans—featuring

brothers Pat, John and Tommy McManus, issue independently Official Bootleg.
January 1981
January 1981. Quartz issue “Stand Up and Fight”/“Charlie Snow” as a

second and final single from Stand Up and Fight.
Quartz drummer Malcolm Cope on the age divide between Quartz

and the other NWOBHM bands:
The thing of it was, we felt that our music was like more mature
than some of the younger guys that were doing it. It was a bit of a
progression, whenever you start playing, in that you’ve got to develop
through the time that you’re playing. So we’d been playing for many
years, and we all felt we were a little bit more slick than some of the
guys that were coming out. But there was a difference of about ten
years, I suppose.
Diamond Head guitarist Brian Tatler:
We supported Quartz once and Sean didn’t do the soundcheck,
because he was still in London. He went to see Wolves play
somebody like Crystal Palace or something, in the FA Cup, so
he was actually on his way back. And it was getting time to when
Diamond Head were due on stage, and Quartz came into our
dressing room and said, “Look, you’ve got to be onstage now.”
It’s half past seven or whatever, and we were going, “Well, Sean’s
not here yet; we can’t go on.” And they were going, “Well, if he
ain’t here in ten minutes, you can piss off” type thing, you know?
And anyway, Sean finally come running into the building, like, he
didn’t bother to get changed, he just went straight on, and we did
like a blinding set. And I think this guy had come on to announce
Diamond Head wouldn’t be playing, and then Sean came in, and we
shout, “He’s here!”
January 1981. Fist issue “Collision Course”/“Law of the Jungle,” as their

last spot of product on MCA.
January 1981. Tygers of Pan Tang issue “Hellbound” as the advance single
from their second album, backed with the non-LP “Don’t Give a Damn.” The
a-side reaches #48 on the UK charts. New at lead vocals is Jon Deverill,
ex-Persian Risk.
Tygers of Pan Tang vocalist Jess Cox on ceding mic duties to

Jon Deverill:
As we got bigger, our egos became inflated. This caused bad feelings.
Also, the record company saw Leppard’s US success, and persuaded
the members—quite easily, considering I’d become public enemy
#1!—that to become mega, they needed to become more “soft” and
find a vocalist who could hit the high notes and do harmonies
better like Van Halen, Whitesnake, Journey etc. So I was basically
eased out.
Tygers of Pan Tang guitarist Robb Weir on his band mates:

“Brian (a.k.a. Big Dick!) was always very happy and liked to have
a drink. Rocky was the “thinker,” lots of fun but would always be
strategizing our next career move. John Sykes was mad, full of fun,
ready for anything! And Jon Deverill, he kept to himself mostly,
went to bed early and rarely partied.

Tygers of Pan Tang producer Chris Tsangarides:
The New Wave of British Heavy Metal, as it was coined, was, when
the punk movement kind of stopped, or the press didn’t write so
much about it, and the punk guitarists learn to play a bit better, and
then decided to ditch the Fender amp and buy a Marshall stack, then
they became the New Wave. Because what it seemed was, this type of
rock music had its roots in the old school, but it was 18 times as fast.
It was much, much
faster tempo-wise
than your Sabbath
or Priest or UFO
were. And there
was a real naivety
about it too, an
innocence, because
they were young
kids, they bought
their guitars, their
amps, whatever,
formed these
bands, and then
we have the Iron Maidens, the Saxons, and it just goes on.
And Tygers were one of the bands that came from the north of
England, that were kind of coined in the New Wave of British Heavy
Metal because of the timing. And the type of music they played kind
of fitted, because they all seemed to do that style of riff, if you like.
And yeah, that’s what I always say, New Wave of British Heavy Metal
is punks learning to play with Marshalls instead of Fenders. Punk was
rock ‘n’ roll, same scales, and New Wave of British Heavy Metal was
kind of that, but with more distorted guitar sounds. And the speed
was the same; the tempos were very similar.
January 1981. Venom record “Angel Dust,” which emerges on Neat Records’
Lead Weight compilation, plus the tracks for the band’s first single, namely
“In League with Satan” and “Live Like an Angel.”
January 1981. Neat Records issue Raven’s debut full-length, Rock Until You Drop.
Raven bassist and vocalist John Gallagher:

The first album, I don’t know, it’s just incredible. Actually the most
incredible thing for us was just getting to do a record at that time,
even just get a single out. And the reaction to that was so good they
wanted to do an album, and they’d never done an album before.
And we were, “Okay, great, we’ll do it!” It was just us finding our

feet. We learned a lot from the two guys running the studio, Steve
Thompson and Mickey Sweeney, to the point where we needed a
couple of more tracks and Steve wasn’t there, and I think we ended
up doing that “Hellraiser”/“Action” medley and “Into the Future.”
And you can hear the development of the band from the rest of the
songs to that straight away.
Grim Reaper guitarist Nick Bowcott:

Rock Until You Drop might be one of my top ten albums of all time.
What a great band they were. Prior to them getting all Atlantic’ed-
out, and made somewhat more commercial, when I first saw them
play in England, they were one of those bands that made you go,
“Okay, time to reflect.” Because they actually raised the bar hugely.
Wiped Out is a good album as well, but hearing that first album, it
was one of those ones where you go, holy shit.
January 1981. Dedringer issue “Direct Line”/“She’s Not Ready.”
January 13, 1981. April Wine, an honourary NWOBHM band since their
uncharacteristically heavy 1979 album Harder.... Faster and their stand at
the first Donington in August of 1980, begin a string of UK tour dates.
January 16, 1981. Praying Mantis issue their first single for Arista, pairing
“Cheated” with “30 Pieces of Silver,” which adds a bonus single of two
album tracks, “Flirtin’ with Suicide” and “Panic in the Streets.”
Praying Mantis guitarist Tino Troy:

We were totally “Cheated” by Rainbow who released “I Surrender”
before us. We had to stop after completion of backing tracks. In
actual fact, it was written about some historical tart! Isn’t that what
you wanted to hear? But seriously, we were a good band, good and
different, trying to be Wishbone Lizzy—or Thin Ash if you prefer.
January 16, 1981. Grand Prix issue the delayed “Which Way Did the Wind
Blow”/“Feels Good” in the midst of European tour dates.
Grand Prix vocalist Bernie Shaw:

Coming to England in Christmas time of 1979 and within two
days finding an audition to go to, for Grand Prix, was pretty cool
and so different to anything I’d experienced in Canada. First of all,
everything was original songs, and I was definitely not ready for that.
I don’t know what I really had in mind, but not Grand Prix. The
professionalism was very high; the standard of playing was great,
people were focused. And my first recording contract and everything

was with Grand Prix, playing the Reading festival for the first time—
and there was 26,000 people there! I have really good memories of
Grand Prix, even though the end, when we parted company, was not
very amicable; it got a little ugly and there was a lot of name-calling.
Still, I think the bad time was not as much as the good time, and the
good time always won out.
January 20, 1981. Ronald Reagan and the Republicans take over from
Jimmy Carter and the Democrats in the US. Together with Margaret
Thatcher’s rise to power, this is considered a conservative wave in politics.
Early 1981. Chevy issue “The Taker”/“Life on the Run,” the b-side being non-LP.
Early 1981. Gillan issue “Mutually Assured Destruction”/“The Maelstrom.”
Early 1981. E.F. Band issue their debut, Last Laugh Is on You. Although from
Sweden, the band is universally considered a NWOBHM band, partly due
to their sound, partly due to Brits being part of the band at various times,
namely Dave Dufort, John Rich and Roger Marsden.
Early 1981. Coventry’s Chainsaw issue “Police and Politicians.” Meanwhile

Valhalla offer “Lightning in the Sky,” on Asgard Records.
Early 1981. North East act Hollow Ground issue Hollow Ground, also known
as “Flying High” for its a-side. Hollow Ground came up with six tracks for
the tiny, rare and revered Guardian records label. Four showed up on the

Roksnax compilation, two of which also showed up on this four-track 7” EP,
which adds “Warlord” and “Don’t Chase the Dragon.”
February 1981
February 1981. More issue their debut, Warhead. Like Def Leppard on
Polygram, More find themselves on a major label and an uncharacteristically
metal label, namely Atlantic. The band concurrently release a single, “We
Are the Band”/“Atomic Rock,” the b-side of which is non-LP.
February 1981. AIIZ issue “No Fun After Midnight” in

7” and 12” versions, on Polydor. B-side is “Treason.”
12” version is red vinyl and adds “Valhalla.”
February 1981. Aragorn issue their “Black Ice”

single, recorded at Impulse Studios in Newcastle.
Meanwhile Tor ture issue “Last Post,” white label,
no picture sleeve.

February 1981. France has their
own honourary NWOBHM band in Trust,
who issue their classic second album,
Repression, this month, in helpful English
version in the UK. Post-NWOBHMers Anthrax
(not so much thrashers) would pay tribute to
Trust by covering their song “Antisocial” on
the gold-certified State of Euphoria album
from 1988.
February 1981. Dedringer issue their Direct

Line debut (recorded at The Manor), which
generates two singles, “Maxine,” followed
by “Direct Line.”
February 1981. Vardis issues

a cover of Hawkwind’s “Silver
Machine” as a single, backed
with “Come On.”
February 1, 1981. Motörhead

and Girlschool issue their
joint EP, St. Valentines
Day Massacre.
Motörhead guitarist fast Eddie Clarke:

We were always struggling for recognition as musicians. It was very
odd in Motörhead. We were just the fucking noise band, the loudest
band in the world, you know what I mean? So we never had any real
musician friends and we never had any respect from musicians or the
business as players. So that doesn’t really matter, you think.
But it fucking sort of does. It sort of does, when everybody
thinks you can’t play. And I remember somebody telling me in the
Motörhead office, when I left the band. It was some record guy who
phoned up and said, “Well, what’s Eddie Clarke going to do now?
Because he can’t play fucking guitar,” you know what I mean? It’s
just an indication that we weren’t… our actual souls, our musical
souls, weren’t really fed that well with Motörhead. We were always
like second-class as musicians, we felt. It’s a tricky one to actually
put into words but it’s something we all had to live with and that put
pressure on us because you’re inevitably unhappy a lot of the time,
disenchanted, disgruntled.

February 2, 1981. Iron Maiden issues their second album, Killers, in the UK.
Iron Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith on another characteristic of

the NWOBHM sound, namely the increased dropping away of a
blues influence:
I think it was probably a second or third generation blues. I
wasn’t influenced directly by the old original blues guys. The
people who influenced me—like Thin Lizzy, Purple, Free—they

were influenced originally by the blues and early rock ‘n’ roll. And
Cream, of course, Clapton. So the people that influenced me were
influenced by the blues.
You listen to bands now and you

don’t hear a lot of it. Younger bands, I
suppose they don’t have the same
influences we had. So I think probably
now blues doesn’t have much of a
bearing on it. But then again kids have
got access to so much music. Kids can
download anything they like. I know
a lot of young kids that listen to AC/
DC, Maiden, Purple, Priest, which has
blues influences. So maybe it’s
filtering through.
I must admit, it’s not an obvious
influence in Iron Maiden. All I can say
is I was influenced by it when I was
a kid, but by the second generation
blues, more electrified blues rock. It’s
blues, blues rock, and sort of blues
rock metal. So it’s kind of always
morphing. Now I don’t know what
it is.

Primal Fear bassist Mat Sinner:
Iron Maiden have a very special style inside metal. They are not based
on the kind of riffs, for example, that Judas Priest are doing, with both
guitarists playing together. Iron Maiden was more the melody kind of
riffing style in their big anthems. They were very special in creating an
epic style of heavy metal, with all these long guitar leads and melodies,
and so they have their very own style. As they came back with Bruce
again and made the music people wanted to hear, they exploded and
got really big again. Iron Maiden is an icon of metal.

We only played one show with Iron Maiden, I think, at the
Lyceum, which was terrible. They soundchecked all afternoon, until
the doors opened, and then people come running in. And they said,
“Okay, you can soundcheck now.” And they wouldn’t move their
equipment and things, so Duncan had to set up at the side of the stage.
They just seemed to have no room. And we had 20 minutes to do a
set. So we could only do four songs, because our songs were so long.
And it just seemed like they were almost scared of the competition,
so they just gave us a hard time. And we felt, well, we ain’t going to
blow you off, are we? We just need the exposure. And they wouldn’t
speak to us either. We just didn’t really get much of a feel with the
Iron Maiden guys.
But we were a little… we always thought Diamond Head were
better. We had this protective thing, well, we’re better than any of
these bands. We had a little bit of ego, a little bit of bravado, and
so really, we were looking to the people who had gone before us—
Zeppelin, Sabbath—as our kind of yardstick. We wanted to be like
that, rather than any of the new breed.
February 12, 1981. Rainbow, with new AOR singer Joe Lynn Turner, issue
Difficult to Cure. Like Nazareth, Status Quo and Rush, Rainbow swim against
the tide, creating softer, more commercial music in the face of young bands
rediscovering the magic of metal. The band will remain on this track through
to Ritchie dissolving the band to participate in a reunion of Mk. II Deep
Purple.
Mid-February 1981. Motörhead’s Philthy Animal Taylor, along with the

band’s manager Graham Reynolds, are busted for possession of small
amounts of marijuana. The arrests follow orchestrated raids of various
houses associated with the band.

February 17, 1981. Iron Maiden begin their Killers tour, as headliners at
home, playing theaters and city halls.
February 26, 1981. Judas Priest issue Point of Entry, a lighter, less
aggressive album than British Steel. The record could be framed as a further
step away from a NWOBHM sound, over and above British Steel’s “dumbed
down” approach to song construction. The band subsequently take some
stick for the softer direction, which in itself, demonstrates that a metal army
must have its fill.

Judas Priest guitarist Glenn Tipton:
In a small way, we were sort of experimenting with Point of Entry. If
we hadn’t done that, we would have never come out with songs like
“Solar Angels,” “Desert Plains” or “Hot Rockin’.” You have to push
the boundaries. We like to think that every album Priest has done has
been different, but is also unmistakably recognized as Judas Priest. We
like to think that we’ve entered a new territory again and pushed the
boundaries further, which helps bands like ourselves to have more
room to maneuver.
SPV Records executive Olly Hahn:

I saw Priest in 1981 together with Saxon,
and what I remember is that Rob didn’t
do the stage acting in the show, running
from side to side. Everything was a little
more smooth. But when he put his foot
on the amps, yeah? Everybody was
screaming. And he holds one hand in the
air and everybody was totally going nuts,
yeah? This was something which stuck
in my head. His voice was very
important because he was one of the first
who had a real range.
I mean Dio did too, definitely, but
Halford?! He was—and is—the ultimate
metal singer because he has his low
voice, he can scream, and he screams
when it fits, you know? And that’s great.
He uses his voice as an instrument.
Because he sang the chorus, the notes,
everything, and he used it as a guitar
sometimes, which was my feeling,
anyway, when I heard it the first time.
And I think that was very important that
he used his voice as an instrument. And
the range he had: from very low to very
high, it was unusual at the time.
February 27, 1981. Praying Mantis issue as a single their cover of the
Kinks’ “All Day And All of the Night,” backed with “Beads of Ebony,” following
it up with gigs supporting Gamma.

Our label thought it was a good idea to rehash a Kinks tune after the

success Van Halen had with “You Really Got Me.” “All Day and All
of the Night” didn’t quite get there.
March 1981
March 1981. The Handsome Beasts issue a single consisting of

“Breaker”/“Crazy”/ “One in a Crowd,” all tracks that would show up on the
band’s debut full-length Beastiality, which would arrive a month later.
Heavy Metal Records’ Paul Birch on his major label competitors:

EMI were on the ball, and MCA of course went on and signed Tygers
of Pan Tang, Fist and Diamond Head. With the Tygers and Fist,
they were licensing those artists from Neat. So David would need to
strike up a deal, and of course MCA were really thought of… okay,
they were described as the sixth major, certainly here in Britain. They
weren’t really thought of as a major record company, the truth of it.
The other five were, but MCA were somewhat of a mystery.
March 1981. Diamond Head issue “Waited Too Long”/“Play it Loud,” neither
of them LP tracks.
Diamond Head guitarist Brian Tatler

on the band’s improving status:
It did get easier. When we first
started, we played the Midlands,
little pubs really, anyone with
that would have us. The back of
the pub where they didn’t even
usually have bands. I remember
playing a pub, and they would just
pass the glass around. We did it for
nothing, and they would pass the
glass around and you’d count the
money out, £4.50? That’s a start,
isn’t it? (laughs).
And then, as they say, once we
got a bit more known, we got an
agent from the Midlands called Pete Bates, and he started putting us
in other rock clubs around the UK. So we traveled to Sunderland and
we travelled to Bristol, and we usually used to go down really well in
these places. Word got around about Diamond Head, and then other
people started to book us. And then before long, around 1980, we
we’re getting lots and lots of gigs around the UK at these rock clubs,

and we’d fill the building and we’d be selling our own T-shirts and
our own single and EP and things, and we just thought, that might be
the way to do it; build a following up like that.
The fans were very young; people like ourselves, really. The
uniform of the denim jacket or the leather jacket and the patches on
the back—Rush, Deep Purple, and that’s what you would be looking
at. Probably 16, 17, 18-year-old, mainly young guys, who would all
be wearing denim and leather, hence the song (laughs).

Diamond Head would be one of my favourites of that era, along
with Maiden and Raven, and probably the biggest influence. I loved
the first Diamond Head album, the one they actually put out by
themselves. A friend of mine had it in the white sleeve, and I think it
was signed by Brian Tatler. If anybody wants to hear the roots of a
band like Metallica, buy that.
Our song, “All Hell Let Loose,” which was I guess our most complex
song, you could say that was Diamond Head-influenced; like it had
several things that sort of went off into a completely different thing
halfway through. In the end it was just an excuse for a big guitar solo,
basically (laughs). I’m not going to lie about that. And I guess there’s
some Sabbath in there as well, but to me, Diamond Head and Sabbath
were similar in a lot of ways, with regard to the way Brian Tatler did
riffing. “Am I Evil?” is about as Sabbath as you can get, really.
March 1981. Gillan issue “New Orleans”/“Take a Hold of Yourself.”
Gillan bassist John McCoy on the singles culture associated with the
NWOBHM:
Yeah, at that time everybody put singles out when they did an
album. By the time we got to the Glory Road album, we’d signed
to Virgin Records who were really, really hot at that time. And it
wasn’t really a heavy rock label, like MCA. They saw something in
the band that they knew was a lot more commercial than perhaps we
realized. And we had a couple of ideas for non-album singles and we
did put tracks out from the albums as singles too, and lo and behold
we suddenly had single success. Which kind of gives you a different
audience—at that time you had album buyers and album audiences, and
singles audiences tended to be a younger generation. So we reached to a
really good crossover market, and the singles just took off.
We were a fairly visual band, and we were always on TV in the
UK. Every week there was some TV show that we were appearing
on for a couple of years, that went on. We kind of looked different
from everyone else. A bunch of real characters. But when we had

the success with all the singles, the front few rows turned into sort
of younger girls and guys rather than sort of old rockers with denim
jackets and long hair. We noticed that immediately.
Gillan guitarist Bernie Torme on

whose decision it was to do old
blues covers like “New Orleans:”
Actually mine I think; we were
having a lot of problems finding
singles, and Virgin, our record
company, were starting to lose
interest. Our first single for
Virgin, “Sleeping on the Job,” had
charted around #33, but the only
TV program to go on to promote
it was on strike so we never got
on TV, and it dropped out due to
no airplay. The next single, “No
Easy Way,” did nothing at all. I
said how about a rock ‘n’ roll cover to Mick, our drummer, he liked it.
We both said it to Ian who, being a big Elvis fan, suggested “Trouble.”
“New Orleans” happened because at the time McCoy was producing
Janick Gers’ band, and Ian suggested that they do it to get a hit. They
turned it down, and we did it instead.
March 1981. Boulevard issue “Dawn Raid” backed with “Take it or Leave it.”
March 1981. Motörhead’s Ace of Spades goes

gold in the UK.
Motörhead guitarist Fast Eddie on

perfecting the Motörhead sound:
I had to work into it, without a doubt.
It was very difficult at first. Phil was
having trouble as well. It was a difficult
situation as Lemmy set the stage by the
way he plays rhythm bass. He really plays
the bass like a rhythm guitar so there was
no real bass parts in that band; there was
just this god awful noise coming from the
other side of the stage (laughs). Of course,
that is what made us unique.
I was really a blues player as I loved
bands like Led Zeppelin. I had to adjust

to work with Lemmy. I actually switched from my Les Paul to a
Stratocaster as I found that the Strat cut through the sound better. I
needed to cut through Lemmy’s sound rather than to try to get louder
than Lemmy. The Strat sound is a bit thin but it does cut through and
when you run that through a distortion box it sounds rather nice. I
really did have to adjust my sound to fit Motörhead’s sound. It took a
while to get it right.
When we started out we had headlines saying that we were the
worst band in the world. After about 12 months we began to come to
grips with it and that is when things started to happen. It really did
take a year or so to get settled in, but once we were in the saddle then
we were off and running.
March 2 1981. Iron Maiden issue “Twilight Zone”/“Wrathchild.”
Iron Maiden bassist Steve Harris on the “fan’s band” feel of

the NWOBHM:
Obviously, at the time, we used to go out and sign stuff after a show
for hours. And in the end it was so bloody cold in some parts of
England that we used to get them to come into the venue and we’d
sign stuff. And we felt that we were no different to the fans. We felt
like we were fans, just getting up and playing on stage. So that was
a big difference. It wasn’t like this whole thing of being completely
untouchable, like some other bands were.
Early March 1981. Rage, formerly Nutz, issue their debut LP, Out of Control,
along with “Out of Control”/“Double Dealer” as a single. This was a rare
case of a band actually changing their name “in public” as it were, to
participate in heavy metal.
March 13, 1981. Praying Mantis issue their debut LP, Time Tells No Lies,
on Arista.

The album had an excellent cross section of songs, and a fabulous
producer in Tim Friese-Green. We really worked on the harmonies
together and in those days they were done organically—in other
words, no cut-and-paste crap!
March 13, 1981. Slade is the latest oldies act to cash in on the NWOBHM,
issuing to moderate success, We’ll Bring the House Down, their ninth studio
album. The band had set the stage for a revival with a gig replacing Ozzy at
Reading 1980. In the spirit of the times, the follow-up record would be called Till
Deaf Do Us Part, and its cover art would feature a nail hammered into an ear.

Slade basically were dead and buried. They were barely getting along,
and they had that opportunity to play Reading, and then they put
out We’ll Bring the House Down, unashamedly jumping on that
bandwagon and playing to that audience. But I mean all the fans,
they’d all grown up with Slade, so they’re not going to deny them
being a little noisier than normal by any means.
March 16, 1981. Accept issue their fine third album, Breaker, which
catapults the band into the ranks as Germany’s second honourary NWOBHM
band, after Scorpions.
Accept vocalist Udo Dirkschneider:

We were very lucky that everything was going very slowly.
We started with the first album, which was getting popular in
Germany, but more popular in Belgium or Holland than in
Germany. The second album, we found our first management, and
then we started with the third album Breaker, and it was in a way a
breakthrough in Europe.
We did a lot of headline shows and then we went on tour in the
whole of Europe with Judas Priest. I think that was a very important
tour for us. And yeah, from then on everything goes very quick. We
were in the same studio as the Scorpions, the Dierks studio, and we
know each other very well. Scorpions opened up a lot of things for
German bands, especially in North America, Canada, and yeah, all
over Europe. That was the first band from Germany that were very
international. And what can I say? It was good for us.
But we always said okay, we are harder than the Scorpions.
Scorpion was—I don’t mean it in a bad way—but they were more pop
than rock at this time. But still, no doubt about it, they’re very good.
But we were much heavier than the Scorpions, and of course, also I
have a different voice than Klaus, who is more melodic. My voice was
not that melodic at that time—these days I can sing more melodies.
But when I started with Accept, it was more screaming.
Accept guitarist Wolf Hoffman:

We never really wanted to sound particularly German. We didn’t
want to be associated with any of those bands. Even back when,
that’s one of the reasons we sang in English, always. I get asked this
question a lot, “How come a German band sings English?” We always
felt that we wanted to be competing with the big boys one day. We
wanted to be known. We wanted to make music like our idols and our
heroes did, Deep Purple quite a bit, and bands like Judas Priest, AC/
DC, Iron Maiden.

When we made our first record, it was the time of the New Wave
of British Heavy Metal, and somehow we were the German division
of that whole movement, if you want. And I’m sure it helped us. All
of a sudden there was this whole wave of bands coming and being
popular and such, and we were right along with Saxon and Iron
Maiden, all these guys.
Journalist Carl Begai:

You listen to Accept, and they were reflecting the whole Priest aspect
with the whole dual guitars and so on, which was just insane. They
might have even taken it to another level. They have their take on it.
And live, you had the staged headbanging, again like Priest. Accept
was the same thing, only the guitars looked bigger because they you
had this little singer in among those Flying Vs—it’s just hilarious to
watch. And he’s got short hair, which he and Halford had in common.
It’s somewhat amusing, but the music lets them get away with it,
basically. There is that entertainment factor, and it might even be
considered funny to some degree, but you know, it’s cool to watch.
That’s what it’s about.
Early 1981. Aragorn issue their “Black Ice”/“Noonday” single, Neat’s

seventh release.
April 1981
April 1981. Dedringer issue “Maxine”/“Innocent Til Proven Guilty (live).”

Sticker says “Dedringer Double Pack 4 New Tracks 2 Singles for the Price of
One.” Last two of the four on offer are “Took a Long Time” and “We Don’t
Mind,” with the latter being a different version from that of the “Sunday
Drivers” single.
April 1981. Bitches Sin issue “Always Ready (for Love)”/“Sign of the
Times,” on Neat. Neither of these tracks would feature on the Heavy Metal
Records debut, Predator, after a Neat compilation track called “Down the
Road,” then a Heavy Metal compilation track called “Strangers on the
Shore.”
April 1981. Edinburgh, Scotland’s Holocaust issue their seminal debut

album, The Nightcomers. The proudly and charmingly pro-heavy metal record
shifts the NWOBHM axis back to youthfulness, in contrast against some
bands perhaps acting a bit too grown up.

Holocaust guitarist John Mortimer on The Nightcomers:
It’s okay (laughs). There are some things about it that are very, very
special, but with it, and the live album, especially the live album, when
I listen back to them, I know what it was like back in those days. You
really are talking about a bunch of kids still at school, in the case of The
Nightcomers. Like just really enthusiastic, just wanting to have a good
time and make a lot of noise and play some good songs. And it really
was simple and straightforward. You can see some more adventurous
stuff happening there, but basically it was a bunch of really enthusiastic
young guys. We recorded the first single when we were 16. So when
The Nightcomers actually came out, we would have been 17.
It was actually a very top-notch studio, so we were extremely
excited by all the flashing lights and dials. It wasn’t really bashed
down live. It was very much track by track. I thought it was great,
exciting and really fascinating. I remember one journalist at the time
saying that it sounded like we had been over-awed by it, going into
a big studio to record. But I don’t remember us as being over-awed.
We got on really well with the producer, Robert Bell, who was the
bass player for The Blue Nile, ‘Tinseltown in the Rain’ and all that.
They’re not metal or anything, but they were quite popular in the
United States. It was just a really nice occasion. But it was a shame;
we had trouble with the drummer at that time. Phoenix decided that
the guy who did the initial single wasn’t good enough, so in fact it’s a
session drummer who plays on The Nightcomers, the guy from Pilot,
a great guy and he got those sessions down really quick.
It sold a lot less than people probably imagine. I think it was
something like 3000. I mean, this is one thing I’m very aware of
especially from people from the US who had been speaking to me.
They thought, even Metallica thought, at the time that they were
buying imports and stuff that we were probably in the same sort of
league as Iron Maiden at the time. No! (laughs). But I suppose that’s
one of the good things about having the Atlantic between us. You
can’t really tell. As long as you’ve got a bit of a profile, nobody knows
really what’s going on. But no, it was only about 3000, and the live
album was about the same.
April 1981. Saxon issue their metal-anthemic “And the Bands Played
On”/“Hungry Years”/“Heavy Metal Thunder” extended single.
Saxon vocalist Biff Byford on bringing back metal:

It was a movement, really, that four or five bands were involved with.
And those four or five bands are still thought of as the people who
brought music back from the ‘70s, really. In the early ‘70s, rock was
really big, with Led Zeppelin and stuff, but then it fell off with the

punk thing. And we brought it back, where, you know, Van Halen
broke it for American music, didn’t they? Where before Van Halen
it was REO Speedwagon and Journey and things like that. So it was
a movement, really. Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Motörhead, us, Def
Leppard to some extent, and tons and tons and tons of young kids
who were too young for the Purple, Led Zeppelin, Sabbath period,
they came back to rock music in the ‘80s, and we were there.
April 1981. Vardis issues their second album

The World’s Insane, which generates a
concurrent single release for “All You’ll Ever
Need.” Vardis are essentially the comfort food
band of the NWOBHM, reminding folks of rock
‘n’ roll’s boogie woogie roots.
April 1981. Handsome Beasts issue their loveable biker mess Beastiality,
Heavy Metal Records’ Paul Birch on who the personage is

represented on his label’s iconic centerpiece artwork:
Everyone asks who it is, that image. The thing is, everyone I knew has
worked in record stores, and there’s a guy that worked… I can’t for
the life of me remember his name, but this guy who worked at HMV,
and he designed two things for us. He designed that Heavy Metal
Heroes artwork for volume one. I’d say he looks a bit like David
Coverdale. That was done, I guess, 1978, ‘79. It’s still a mystery.
April 1981. Tygers of Pan Tang issue their second album, Spellbound,
featuring new singer Jon Deverill and newly added guitarist John Sykes, soon
on his way to bigger and better things. Concurrent single from the album is
“The Story So Far.”
Jess Cox, on leaving the band as well as leaving the flash new
guitarist his clothes:
We were kind of very much of a style and a time and we had a
uniform, which was what everybody was wearing. It was spandex,
sadly. Actually I remember selling my spandex when I packed in the
Tygers to John Sykes—£5. So there you go. When John joined—
because he was in a band called Streetfighter over in Blackpool with
Merv Goldsworth first, who later joined FM—but he came over and
joined the Tygers and we shared a flat together for a couple of years
before he left and tried to join Ozzy but eventually joined Lizzy.
But yeah, I mean we all had the same leather jackets, denim pants or
spandex for stage, white baseball boots, plus the curly hair, fringe—
that was pretty much your uniform.

The band started doing well, and the rest of the band felt that Jess’
singing ability wasn’t up to the ability that they wanted, and I don’t
know if he was pushed or he left or whatever, but they announced
that they’d gotten a new singer and a new guitar player, because
they wanted to go for that twin guitar thing, and that’s where I met
John Sykes. The second album was a lot more grown-up. There was
someone who could sing in a higher register, and they could add
harmony and things. And an exceptional guitarist like Sykes made it
sound that much better, and his songs were in a much different style
than the original Tygers songs, and they started progressing.
Tygers Of Pan Tang guitarist Robb Weir:

The second album is a lot more mainstream because it’s with John Sykes
and Jon Deverill, fantastic baritone, real big almost operatic voice and
very melodic. And John Sykes of course joined me as my other guitar
player, and John did a fantastic job. John was one of those wonderful
guitar players and also one of those kind of smart asses; he looked good
with his long, blonde flowing hair, he played guitar with fantastic skill,
lovely fellow. And worse still, he played guitar better than me, which

I thought, bloody ‘ell, I’ve got to raise the bar here. I’ve got some
competition here. And he remains a friend to this day. The only problem
with John is I don’t speak to him often enough these days. But yeah,
Spellbound was a huge leap in terms of musical direction.
April 1981. Chevy and Limelight conduct a co-headline tour of about a dozen
dates. Concurrently, Chevy issue “Just Another Day”/“Rock On,” their third
and last single. The band parts ways with their label and goes through
significant lineup changes, in September later the same year. By 1983, the
band would morph into an act called Red on Red.
April 1981. Heritage issue “Strange Place to Be” backed with

“Misunderstood,” on Rondelet. Meanwhile, Rhabstallion issue “Day to
Day”/“Breadline” recorded at Airedale Studio, Liversedge, West Yorkshire.
April 11, 1981. Whitesnake issue Come An’ Get It, which hits #2 in the UK. It
is recorded at Startling Studios, Tittenhurst Park, the Ringo Starr-owned studio
used for Judas Priest’s British Steel and Def Leppard’s On Through the Night.
April 17, 1981. Gillan issue their fourth album, Future Shock, which hits
#2 on the UK charts and quickly achieves silver status in the band’s home
country. “New Orleans” had been the advance single (issued in March) and
as usual, the band had scored a minor hit with a single. The initial pressing
of the album includes a 16-page colour booklet.
Gillan bassist John McCoy on the controversy around considering

Gillan NWOBHM:
There may have been a couple of comments here or there. We were
a very unusual band because we had the credentials of Ian Gillan, and,
sure, how can that be new wave? Because he’d been around with great
success for years. It was an odd band, and that was kind of the reason
that it worked so well.
We also had some criticism because Bernie, at that time, his own
band was kind of a punky thing. He was always described as a punk
metal guitarist coming into Gillan, but I don’t know, mate. Bernie
wasn’t a punk, really. What is a punk? It’s just… you go with the flow,
don’t you? And if you got going in a certain direction in order to
work as a musician, then you kind of go that way because that’s what
you have. Remember, all of us were and are working musicians, and in
that time in the ‘70s, I had a wife, a kid, a mortgage, all the stuff that
everybody else has got. You gotta follow the cheque books. You’ve
got to work to live. It’s not that easy, and at that time we all did what
we had to do. And Bernie still has that kind of punk edge.

Gillan guitarist Bernie Torme:
Well, I’m going to rant here. I’m very proud of my time in Gillan,
but for many years there was a lot of justifiable unhappiness over
the way Ian had run the band and treated the people involved, so
there was a lot of reluctance to talk about or be proud of it. Basically,
talking about it would promote the guy who was taking everyone
else’s money, so there was an understandable reluctance to do that,
apart from the fact it left a pretty nasty taste.
The situation changed a couple of years ago when the albums were
acquired by the UK state, the Crown, as part of a bankruptcy. The
Crown agreed we were all due our originally agreed share, the albums
went to Demon, some other DVDs to other labels, and now we
are all paid royalties from them. It was a fantastic sense of closure; I’m
glad I lived to see it, glad we all did.
But again, it doesn’t change the fact that someone acted very badly
and things only changed when the Crown caught them doing the
naughty. It hasn’t left any of us with much regard for the integrity and
trustworthiness of our erstwhile leader, but I still love him anyway,
he’s a fun guy, great singer, undoubtedly one of the greatest if not the
greatest in that area, and gave me the best break I ever had or could
have had. But nobody is perfect and it’s time to move on!
Spring – Summer 1981. Saxon work at Aquarius Studios in Geneva,

Switzerland and Polar Studios, Stockholm, Sweden on tracks to be used on
their forthcoming fourth album.

May 1981
May 1981. Neat Records issues their Lead Weight compilation, featuring
one track each from Raven, White Spirit, Venom, Axe, Blitzkrieg, Aragorn,
Fist, Axis, Bitches Sin, Warrior and Satan’s Empire.
May 1981. Samson issue their classic

third album, Shock Tactics, which
would be the last with Bruce Dickinson
on vocals (a couple years earlier, Paul
Samson had also lost his drummer,
Clive Burr, to Maiden). Lone single
from the album is “Riding with the
Angels” backed with the non-LP “Little
Big Man.”
DJ Neal Kay, on why Paul

Samson didn’t quite fit the
NWOBHM mold:
Paul Samson was a really
good friend of mine. Like Steve
Harris and his first wife in the
early days, my first wife and
I, we used to hang with these
guys away from work. Steve and his missus would come over for an
evening and we, my wife and I, would go down to south London and
visit Paul Samson and his wife.
Well Paul was a
good guitar player, but
Paul was obsessed
with the Hendrix,
Frank Marino-style
culture with blues.
That’s what he played
like, that’s what he
sounded like. And he
used to pull people
because he was an old-
fashioned guy. People
would come to see him do blues. That’s what he did: heavy, heavy
blues. He played a Gibson SG, which was never the choice weapon of
heavy metalers anyway. Whereas in the early stages the Les Paul
became accepted as the lead guitarist’s dream guitar, especially after

the Black Widow came out with gold humbuckers on it and so on.
The old school of guitar went to Fender, the newer school went to
Gibson, and that was until the new Japanese guitars and stuff came
out much later.
But Paul played an SG and an SG was known as a blues guitar,
really. It was a solid body guitar but it didn’t have the real roar,
shall I say, of modern young metal bands or hard rock bands. Paul’s
band was not a hard rock band. He didn’t even know there was a
NWOBHM. He refused to accept he was a part of it anyway, that
rock never went away, and all he was aware of was that he’d play in
a pub one week, he’d play a pub the next week, and he’d play a pub
the week after, and then suddenly the NWOBHM came along and he
found himself a part of it but he wasn’t really.
We had what I can only describe as an altercation at my London
venue. I was invited soon after the publicity for the Bandwagon
took off to put on a monthly or two-weekly show of my own at the
London Music Machine in Camden town. It used to be the BBC TV
theater, held about 1500, which for us was a medium-sized venue.
The manager, Nick Parker, contacted me and asked me if I wanted to
produce my own three-band live show and DJ the evening, put it all
together. Camden town’s like half a mile from the center of London
and it was much easier for members of the industry to come up and
see a band after work.
So I thought yeah, I’ve got to do this because it will be good for
the bands. So I took it on and Paul Samson and some of the others
appeared, and by then Paul had got Thunderstick on the drum kit,
Clive Burr having gone to Iron Maiden. I don’t think Bruce was still
with them. I rather fancy Paul as doing the singing. I can’t remember,
to be honest with you, but basically it was a night that was sponsored
by Paul Samson’s manager Alastair Primrose.
Alastair Primrose put together a thing with me called the Heavy
Metal Crusade. We had been touring colleges and universities. Not
solidly but maybe do two or three at a time. With Paul Samson
always there because Alastair Primrose was his manager and he put
up the money for the Crusade, but it was always either Iron Maiden
or Praying Mantis or Toad the Wet Sprocket or Angel Witch or
somebody. There were always three bands in the Crusade.
And this night at the Music Machine was sort of a Crusade
appearance night, and Iron Maiden were in the middle. I can’t
remember who opened that night. It may have been Toad the Wet
Sprocket. Iron Maiden were immediately below Paul Samson, who
was going to close the show. The trouble was that if the heavy metal
crew gained strength and toured around, it became apparent that the
wrong band was headlining. Paul Samson’s ideas of explosions and

blues and stuff was just not going down with the majority of people
who were younger and who were Maiden fans. This is before,
obviously, Iron Maiden was signed. It’s because Rod came along.
And masses came to a
head at the Music Machine,
because the London
gig, the Music Machine,
most of my fans from the
Soundhouse were there—a
lot of them. And after Paul
Samson played his final
chord, instead of rapturous
applause, there was dead
silence. You could have heard a pin drop. And of course Paul was
fuming and he came off stage, came over to me and said, “Hey you,
you made them do this, didn’t you? You ordered them not to clap!”
And I said, “No, Paul, no. You ordered them not to clap by giving
them stuff they don’t want. And they’re telling you that. And it’s my
audience all right, but they are telling you in a Soundhouse way that
what you are doing belongs to the old days and it ain’t of today. And
all you got was the message tonight.”
And he wouldn’t have it. And I’m afraid that acrimonious
conversation proved to be a metaphorical divorce in the parting of
ways between Paul and I. And Paul had various friends in the music
business. One of them was John McCoy, the bass player from the
Gillan band, who produced an album for him. He had a lot of friends
and a lot of contacts. His manager Alastair was someone who should
never have been in rock ‘n’ roll—really and truly just should not have
been there. I don’t know, he was an estate agent or something and he
dabbled in music on the weekend.
Samson made some good records, but again, there was no continuity.
And Paul’s style of music was not what was going to carry the flag, and
that is more the reason why it did not happen for them more than any
other. Plus he went through all these staged histrionics over here back
then. Nobody liked flashy, young musicians showing off. Didn’t like
people wearing stage gears. You could wear biking leather—that’s all
right—and jeans. That’s it. But if you tried to appear as if you were some
great, grand touring American band, you’d get the cold shoulder. That
was not wanted. To identify yourself as one of the audience was the
name of the game. Bear in mind again that phrase “no radio support.”
There was no way of making heroes in this country other than by street
word of mouth. Therefore if you appeared on the street and you were
one of the street, you’d do well. But if you stuck your nose in the air and
ponced and pratted about, you would not go anywhere.

Ex-Samson bassist John McCoy:
Paul went through periods of trying to find the right band, the right
players. He was a very, very special guy and a very special player, but you
had to understand his way of working, musically that is. In the formative
years of any band I’m sure they’ve all had gigs where they got booed off.
I can remember a few gigs where Neal Kay got booed off, but we won’t
go there. But Paul, I think there was always a sense, particularly with the
Maiden situation, he just got to a level of success with Bruce Dickinson in
the band, and it really was a hot band at that time. And then Bruce went
off to Iron Maiden and I think Paul kind of felt, well hey, I gave you a
drummer, I gave you a singer, what’s going on? But he continued and he
had a great singer join the band called Nicky Moore.
May 1981. The well regarded Geddes Axe issue “Return of the Gods.”
May 1981. Split Beaver issue their “Savage”/“Hounds of Hell” 7”, on Heavy
Metal Records.
May 1981. Wild Horses, featuring Jimmy Bain and Brian Robertson, issue
their second and last album, Stand Your Ground. Released as a single is “I’ll
Give You Love,” followed by one more non-LP single before dissolution. Brian
Robertson would wind up in Motörhead, with Jimmy Bain transitioning to Dio.
May 19, 1981. Blitzkrieg, featuring Brian Ross, issue their debut single,
on Neat, “Buried Alive”/“Blitzkrieg.” Metallica would famously cover the
song “Blitzkrieg.” There would be no Blitzkrieg album until ‘85’s A Time of
Changes, although besides the single, there is the aforementioned demo
cassette from 1980 and a six-track live cassette from 1981 called Buried
Alive.
May 23, 1981. Iron Maiden plays Nagoya, Japan, recording tracks to be
issued as a live EP. The four Japanese dates follow a European tour and
precede an American tour.

June 1981
June 1981. Angel Witch issue “Loser,” backed with “Suffer” and “Dr.
Phibes,” after which the band break up, not reconvening until 1984. Riddles
and Dufort transition to Tytan.
Angel Witch bassist Kevin Riddles:

“Loser” and “Dr. Phibes” were actually two tracks that I was
instrumental in writing. We had been touring and recording and
touring again, the original material. And quite honestly, we didn’t
have much time to sit down and write new stuff, because we were
literally so busy. We would be regularly put on support slots to what
were breaking bands over here then. So bands like your very own
April Wine—we supported April Wine over here on their first UK
tour, proper. And the same with Krokus, same with Max Webster; I
can’t even remember half of them now. We ended up on a Motörhead
tour, we ended up on a Black Sabbath tour.
Which was fantastic, but it didn’t give
us a lot of time to actually get in the
studio and be home for long enough to
actually do any real writing as such. But
I’ve always written, and I still do to this
day. I write songs in my head. I never
write anything down. The premise being,
if I remember it three months later then it
was obviously worth remembering. And
I’m not a great one for technology, and I
don’t sing well enough into a dictaphone
machine to make sense of it. If I keep it in
my head, and it stays with me, it’s usually
worth having.
So “Dr. Phibes” was a riff I had going for months and months,
and I’d use it at a soundcheck. And then Kevin would pile in, and he
would do some harmony guitars and we would mess around with it
and forget it for a month and such. So when it came to the “Loser”
single, we had “Loser” already written. That was done because on
the same label as us at Bronze was Uriah Heep. And we were great
friends with Heep, and I ended up working for them many years later.
But Trevor Bolder had an eight-string bass that he had been given
by, I believe it was Kramer. One of these basses with a steel or an
aluminum neck. And he said, “I don’t like it, I can’t get on with it,
you could borrow it for as long as you like.” So I took it away and
I started playing this “Loser” riff on the eight-string bass. And it

sounded so damn good. That again, I used to fool around with that
soundcheck. And Kevin said, “Right, I’ve got that song.” So we went
into a demo studio, demoed it, put it out and sent it off to Bronze
Records and they said, “Oh yes, we like that, we liked that a lot.”
And so “Loser” came out as the a-side.
Now “Suffer” was a weird one. I believe that was one of the first
ones that Kevin wrote almost from a personal experience. I think he
was having a bit of a hard time with his girlfriend at the time, and
that brought out the slightly melancholy side, shall we say. That was
another one of Kevin’s that sort of appeared, almost like a complete
song: “Here we go, lads, here’s the next track that we’ve got to learn.”
Angel Witch guitarist Kevin Heybourne, on working with Bronze

Records and the break-up of the band:
They paid up, really; publishing and royalties and stuff. We didn’t
have any problems with that at all. I don’t know. They terminated our
contract after a year. We weren’t the kind of band they really wanted.
I always felt that they were trying to control us and make us more
commercial sounding with things like “Loser” and “Suffer” off of
their first single, and I really didn’t want to do that. I wanted to have
the freedom to do what I wanted to do. It didn’t work like that.
There have been so many different lineups, and it’s been restricting
in one way or another, I suppose. I would say that we were an average
live band. I wouldn’t say that we were a great band but I wouldn’t say
we were a lousy band live either. I mean, you’ve got to start
somewhere. I guess there are always problems. I mean, I don’t think
Dave Hogg was that
brilliant a drummer,
to be honest. I could
see when he was
speeding up or
slowing down. He
wasn’t very
consistent. Riddles
and Hogg. Dave
Hogg had to go
because, I don’t know,
a bit of a problem
with drink. He just
slowed down so much it became ridiculous and it made everybody
else look bad. I had to get rid of him. And we got in Dave Dufort. In
1981, we broke up. I’d had enough of what was going on. Things
were getting sort of a little bit hot; people were getting hot under the
collar (laughs).

We supported Angel Witch at The Lyceum, and I remember their
bass amp blew up, and one of their road crew come running up to us,
saying, can we borrow your bass amp? And we said no, because we
had already packed it away in the van (laughs). So I think they had to
carry on without any bass.
June 1981. Girlschool issue

their second album, Hit and
Run. Girlschool are ably
framed as the female answer
to Tank and Motörhead, as
well as mother hens to
Rock Goddess.
Girlschool guitarist
Kim McAuliffe, on
Demolition and Hit
and Run producer
Vic Maile:
Well, of course, it
was our first producer,
and that was a time
when we were really
stubborn and pig-
headed and we didn’t
think we needed a
producer. We thought
we knew it all, at the tender age of 18 or whatever we were. The first
time we met him we didn’t get along at all! We thought we were a
bunch of god knows what. Well, we were, probably, and we didn’t
like him at all, and when we were going to record Emergency, our
very first single for Bronze Records, nonetheless, they made us work
together, Bronze Records did.
Of course, as it turns out, we struck up a great friendship with him
and obviously used him quite a bit over the years. And of course, so
did Motörhead—he did one of their best albums for them, which
went straight to #1. So it was so funny that for that first meeting, that
we got to be great friends afterwards and really liked his work. He
was a lovely bloke as well. He was really funny. He was very quiet
and had this really dry sense of humour. And at each recording
session, we should have twigged—I know, by now—but each
recording session he would be taping us without us realizing, and
then he would give us a tape and we obviously sounded like twats at

the time arguing and doing what we used to do, and it was usually
quite hilarious, really. We had some great times, great fun. Sadly, he
died in ‘89, and he was only 40 something.
But the title track to that album, Denise will probably kill me for
saying this, but Kelly and I had just gotten the song together, which
was, in fact “Hit and Run,” and we
used to have these ongoing battles
with Vic about bass drum. Because
he used to like a really simple bass
drum, and obviously “Hit and
Run” just needed that donk donk
donk sort of sound—that’s what
we were after. Denise kicked up a
stink about it; no, she wanted to
do something different, and there
were tensions, drumsticks flying
all over the place. And in fact, it’s
really a wonder that we actually
got that down and recorded it as it
was. Oh my God! You would just
be saying, “Just play the bloody
thing!” It was quite traumatic, but
it turned out right in the end.”
Also on Hit and Run, “C’mon
Let’s Go” was just Denise really
going mad on the bass drums, and
that’s how we started that one off.
Wasn’t too much drama doing
that one; pretty straightforward.
“Future Flash” was quite a great
one on there, because we did all
this backward stuff on there. That
was a lot of fun doing that, because
we’d never done anything like
that before. That was all Vic Maile
again. I think at one point we are
actually singing, “We are Siamese,
if you please,” on it. It was just
one of these stupid things we were doing at the time. And “Not for
Sale” was of course a song we had written as a feminist-type thing,
because we were fed up with women being used. I don’t know, it
was basically about selling cars by having women draped all over
them. We couldn’t quite understand that one, but that’s what that
one was about.”

Girlschool bassist and vocalist Enid Williams:
For Hit and Run, some songs were written before we went into the
studio, and some were written in the studio. But we’d been together
a bit longer, we were starting to get a little more success and I think
we were more confident, more self-assured. I guess it’s a little more
commercial. It seemed to work.
It was interesting in Canada, because they did release Hit and Run
there, but it was an amalgam of Demolition and Hit and Run tracks. I
mean, we went gold in Canada, which was fantastic. And they had this
kind of competition. It was divided into six different territories and
there was a competition running in each of these different territories.
And they had—let me think—the record shops had the chance of
putting on some kind of Girlschool display. And the workers at the
record shops, then they got taken out to dinner with us (laughs). That
was their prize for doing a good display. Oh, that’s a bit of a booby
prize—poor sods have dinner with us. But presumably, if they did a
good display it was because they liked the band and it wouldn’t be
torture for them.
And I think they gave a motorbike away to the fans who, I don’t
know, came up with this quote or whatever the competition was,
answered some questions. And in each of the six territories, a different
person got a motorbike. I’ve just got this memory about going on
Canadian television and going to some guy, “Right, here’s your
motorbike.” So you know, they certainly spent a lot of money on us.
Angel Witch bassist and Girlschool label mate Kevin Riddles:

I’m not absolutely sure that Girlschool knew, or that they had set
out to be as good as anybody else. I don’t think that was a conscious
decision, not from anything that they ever said, that I heard. But they

were determined to be the sort of first serious British girl rock band.
Absolutely determined that if anybody was going to do it, they were
good enough, and they had the material to do it. So why not?
And the fact they were girls was almost incidental, but they were a
damn good rock band—still are. Haven’t seen them for many years,
but there was no reason for them not to make it, because they were
a damn good band, and writing damn good songs. The fact that they
were girls, hmm, in some people’s eyes it was a bad thing, and in a lot
of other people’s eyes it was a great thing. All right, girl band, there
weren’t that many around, if you think about it.
The one thing I do
like is that they
never sort of came
down to the level of
saying we’re better
than... you know,
they could’ve said
we’re better than
The Runaways,
we’re better than
Heart, we’re better
than this. They
never did that. It
was always, we’re just a damn good band, come in and enjoy us. The
fact that they were a good band should be enough, and I think with
most people it was. It’s proven by the fact that they’re still with us,
that they’re still going.
June 1981. Cronos performs his first show as lead vocalist for Venom, at
the Quay Club, Hebburn, Tyne & Wear.
June 1981. Gillan issue an EP comprising “No Laughing in Heaven,” “One

for the Road,” “Lucille” and “Bad News.”
June 1981. Lancashire’s Turbo, who featured on the New Electric Warriors
compilation, issue 3 Track E.P.
June 1981. Heavy Pettin’ form in Glasgow, morphing out of a band called
Weeper, who had produced a three-track demo before the name change.
Heavy Pettin’ guitarist Punky Mendoza on the band’s new name:

Well, No Heavy Petting was an album by UFO, another band that
certainly influenced us. In the pub days we used to do UFO covers,
and the Heavy Pettin’ came from the No Heavy Petting album cover.

We were in Gordon’s house; okay, what are we gonna call the band?
We were getting to that stage every band does. And Hamie was
looking through his albums, 12 inch vinyl, and there was the UFO
cover, No Heavy Petting, and Haney suggested, “What about Heavy
Pettin’?” And I’d thrown in my penny’s worth, using all the Kiss
songs and all this rubbish, like Black Diamond, and I immediately
thought, well, that’s not very original. And so Heavy Pettin’ was the
best of everything that we had come up with, and then there was what
was called the Kelvingrove Festival in Glasgow, and that’s when we
decided and debuted the new name.
June 1981. The third single from Tygers of Pan Tang’s Spellbound album is
“Don’t Stop By”/“Slave to Freedom.”
Tygers of Pan Tang producer Chris Tsangarides on the promotion of

NWOBHM bands:
We had three shows in England. We had Top of the Pops, which
was all the pop crap. And The Old Grey Whistle Test on which you
would see great acts from Captain Beefheart to UFO or whoever.
And then there was the radio show, The Friday Rock Show, and that
was it. So anybody who wanted to hear any kind of rock music,
that’s what you would have to listen to because there was no other.
And so you would listen to it, and they would be playing what was
going on overseas and stuff, and because there was no Internet, we
relied on the Melody Maker, Sounds magazine, then Kerrang!, of
course, to find what was going on.
But because you are in that sort of circle of heavy metal fans,
rock fans, your friends would tell you, somebody would find out
something about something, and that’s kind of how we all got
on with it. And by that time, I suppose, in the ‘80s, I was in the
industry, the business, and I was getting my bird’s eye view about
what bands the labels were signing, these bands, and then asking me
to work with them.
June 3, 1981. Iron Maiden visit North America to begin a long jaunt, in
support of Judas Priest, who were promoting Point of Entry.
Iron Maiden bassist Steve Harris on the importance of melody,

especially in the live environment:
To me melody is the key to the songs. I’ve always been attracted to
any band or songs that’s got melody in their music. There’s melody in
the guitars and in the vocals. The things with what I’ve always tried
to do with Maiden is basically any guitar melody could be a vocal
melody, or vice versa. And I think if you actually go and listen to

some of the songs, I think you’ll realize that that’s true in most cases,
in probably 90% of the cases, you could put a vocal melody to any of
those guitar melodies, or vice versa.
So it’s always been very central to the part, and essential, if you
like. To me, melody is a song. But you try and incorporate that
with power and aggression as well, and then you have all those
elements—and the progressive thing. This is what we were trying to
do. If you have all those elements, it’s a pretty potent force.
How the melody translates to the live thing I think is pretty
obvious. When you see and hear a Maiden crowd that’s louder than
we are singing along to the melodies—and I was just going back
to the last point—they’re singing the guitar melodies a lot of the
time, as well as the vocal melodies. In a lot of countries you go to
where English is not the first language or they don’t even speak the
language at all, they’re still singing the melodies. And to me that
says it all, really—I rest my case.
June 6, 1981. US release date for Iron Maiden’s Killers, arguably the
strongest spot of NWOBHM product to hit the shores of North America by
that point.
Metal Blade Records’ Brian Slagel:

When I saw the first album cover, I was blown away. At that point
it was the best album cover I had ever seen in my entire life. Just the
whole vibe of it. Me, being a huge horror movie fan, it was perfect.
And of course, the record was phenomenal too. So the record and the
music went hand-in-hand with the cover. To me, at that point in my
life, that was the perfect metal record.
But favourite Eddie of all time is by far Killers. In fact, Killers is
my favourite album cover of all time. Every element of a metal horror
cover I ever want to see is there, with the bloody axe etc. Especially
when it came out in ‘81, ’82, it was such a violently great cover, such
a shocking cover, just amazing. I was working in a record store when
it came out. And I was able to get as much stuff as I could from
Capitol. Because at the time nobody knew who Iron Maiden was, and
someone from the label called up and said, “Sure, have whatever you
want.” So we got these huge posters, displays, a gigantic display in the
record store; it was a lot of fun. But to me, that’s the quintessential
album cover.
Eddie’s brilliant. It’s kind of funny how those things worked out.
But him being associated with Maiden, once you see him, you know
what it is. And it’s a whole extra branding of the band, which is a
really cool issue too. Some of the greatest concert t-shirts of all time

are with Eddie. And it goes hand-in-hand with the music; it works
perfectly. So I think it helps them get stuff out. Certainly it’s a striking
image and people see that striking image, and it leads people into it.
When people don’t know what the music is like, especially back in the
day when we didn’t have MTV and the Internet, a lot of kids bought
albums just based on the cover, and I think their covers helped them a
lot as well.
June 6, 1981. The first issue

of Kerrang!, as a free insert in
Sounds. Sounds had been the
main UK weekly music paper (the
others being NME, Melody Maker
and Record Mirror) that tended
to cover metal. Response would
be so favourable that by October,
an additional 5000 copy run was
deemed necessary.

I was working for Sounds
first and whenever Kerrang!
launched, I did some stuff for
them too. And I was there
when Sounds overtook the
NME (laughs.) We became
the biggest selling music
weekly for quite some time in ‘81, I think. It was a triumph for what I
would call “street rock” in general because Sounds was very much a
down-to-earth cousin,
whereas NME was for the
hip kids; it was for the
students, that sort of end of
rock. We were more for the
guy, the young apprentice
who wanted to go out and
have a good time and get
his rocks off of a great
band, who didn’t really
want to intellectualize about it. Kerrang! was really because of how
hugely successful Sounds was and how even the management of
Sounds realized that there was something different going on and they
were reaching out to an audience that the music paper was now

serving. They thought they could take a chance with Kerrang!. I think
it was purely sales-driven.
Diamond Head guitarist

Brian Tatler:
It just seemed like Kerrang!
was going to be more
specifically about heavy
metal and rock, whereas
Sounds had probably
moved on to loads of other
stuff. When we were, when
the New Wave of British
Heavy Metal was already
being championed, you
were already competing
against New Romantics and
ska, post-punk and things
like that, so it wouldn’t
be full of pages of metal
bands, it would be full of
everything else, really. You
might get the odd feature, a
little column’s worth about
a new band releasing a single, but most of Sounds was across the floor,
and then I think Kerrang! decided to specialize.
Tygers of Pan Tang producer Chris Tsangarides on how important

Kerrang! was to the scene:
Ooh, incredibly, I thought. Back in those days, Kerrang! was a
fabulous sort of flag-waver for that kind of music. It was a very
clever move, I thought, from the go, Because of Sounds magazine,
they changed over, with the journalists going over to Kerrang!, and
specialized in rock music, heavy metal music, whatever. And you
would see everybody who was to do with anything related to rock,
in that magazine. And it did become our little Bible. I would get it
religiously, check out was going on, and it was fantastic.
June 13, 1981. Girlschool issue “C’mon Let’s Go”/“Tonight (live)” as a 7”

and as a 10”, the 10” adding “Demolition Boys (live).” It makes #42 in the
UK charts.
Girlschool bassist and vocalist Enid Williams:

“C’mon Let’s Go” is very much about hitting the road. Because at

that time, our life was really on the road. I mean, our whole life was
the band. There wasn’t anything outside the band. Kim and myself,
yes, around about that time, we had boyfriends who were part of the
crew, and yeah, that was our life. So “C’mon Let’s Go” is just about
hitting the road again.
June 13, 1981. More score a headlining gig at the Marquee, after having
supported Ted Nugent.
June 15, 1981. Iron Maiden issue “Purgatory”/“Ghengis Khan,” both being
album tracks from Killers. The classy, thoughtful, progressive and speedy
band with the green mascot is on a rocket to the top.
June 19, 1981. Iron Maiden, on an off couple of days from their massive
US tour supporting Judas Priest, nip over the border and play their first ever
Canadian dates—June 19 in Toronto, June 21 in Montreal—and then it’s
back into the states.
June 19, 1981. Spider enjoy

having four of their selections
being broadcast on The Friday
Rock Show.
June 27, 1981. Motörhead issue

their single LP live album No
Sleep ‘til Hammersmith, which
peaks at #1 on the UK charts.
The surprise hit record full of
punishing noisy metal is soon to
be heralded as one of extreme
music’s greatest live documents.
Motörhead guitarist Fast Eddie Clarke on hearing he had a #1 album:

We were on the road in the USA with Ozzy in Beaumont, Texas
with Mountain, strangely, opening the show. Because they had to be
somewhere else, Leslie, who is a very good guy, used my amps that
night and I can honestly say they never sounded so good. We missed
all the free drinks we would have been eligible for back in London
and it was all over by the time we returned to the UK. It was a bad
time to have a #1 album, but I can live with that.
Mid-1981. Hammerhead issue “Time Will Tell.”

July 1981
July 1981. Rage issue “Bootliggers”/“Roll the Dice.” Tour duties with Ror y
Gallagher in Europe having finished, the band commence UK dates at this
time. Incidentally, Gallagher, would ignore, essentially, any signals sent by
the NWOBHM, even if his 1979 studio album Top Priority and 1980 live
album Stage Struck are somewhat heavier than the norm for the bluesy
hard rocker.
July 1981. Motörhead issue “Motörhead”/“Over the Top,” both live, with the
a-side hailing from the No Sleep ‘til Hammersmith live album. The single hits
#6 on the UK charts.
July 1981. Demon issue their debut album, Night of the Demon. Singles
emerge for “Ride the Wind” and “One Helluva Night.”
Demon vocalist Dave Hill on the band’s Satanic image:

Well, that obviously has a lot to do with the name Demon and with
the first album and the intro and tracks like “Night of the Demon.”
It was obvious, looking back, especially with the first two albums,
especially the first one, which leaned that way, with “Into the
Nightmare” and “One Helluva Night.” And with the second album
it was more of an observation, things unknown. I remember reading
up a lot about it, people like Aleister Crowley. But I think we
moved on because we were quite serious about what we were doing,
but not seriously into the occult by any means. But there were a lot
of bands at the time that were sensationalizing that type of thing.
And I think that’s why, for the second album, we did tend to move
on. We have a lot more to offer than to have that tag for the rest of
our career, especially with a name like Demon. You’re going to get
stuck with that anyway.
July 1981. Saxon issue “Never Surrender”/“20,000 Ft.”
July 11, 1981. Def Leppard issue their second album, High ‘n’ Dry, a record
pretty much as indicative of NWOBHM themes and characteristics as was
the band’s riffy debut, despite emphatic exhortations from the guys that
they were not part of the scene.

Def Leppard vocalist Joe Elliott:
The big change was that Mutt Lange came in to do the second
record. We wanted Mutt to do the first album, but he wasn’t available.
And we weren’t ready for him, truth be known either. Peter Mensch
was managing us at the time had a relationship with Mutt through
AC/DC. He and just done Highway to Hell, and they were about to
do Back in Black and Mutt had come and seen us opening for AC/
DC. We had a gig in England. And he saw something. He saw a lot
of bad things, but he could see something, otherwise he wouldn’t
have worked with us. And he said to Pete, “I think I can polish this
lot up.” So we brought Mutt on board for the second record and the
difference versus the debut is just ridiculous.
Sonically, there’s a big comparison between Highway to Hell and
High ‘n’ Dry, because of the studio, the producer, the equipment
available. That’s like, you can listen to Gerry and the Pacemakers and
it doesn’t sound that different to the early Beatles stuff either. It’s a

time thing as well. But of course, the way he got the two guitars to
play against each other, or with each other, depending on what suited
each part, was very much a Mutt Lange thing. If you listen to those
Mutt albums, and compare them to the Vanda and Young AC/DC,
you’ll hear—maybe only a tiny bit—but you’ll hear a difference.
And what he did is he stripped our riffs down. He’d tell Pete
or Steve to take certain notes out and make it easier, rather than
musical. You know, Steve never had a problem with that because he
wasn’t a musician (laughs), in the musician sense. Pete desperately
wanted to be. Pete wanted to be in there with Robin Trower, people
who are great musicians, but what we would deem like, boring. You
know, same thing as the reason why punk came along. So Pete had a
problem with it, but not Steve, who just wanted to be Jimmy Page.
Page’s stuff was pretty simple. So he was more about taking stuff
out; he taught us that less was more. That was the big difference
between those two records.
Polygram’s David Bates:

After the first album, they became involved with Mensch and
Burnstein, and Mensch and Burnstein pretty much wanted to do all
their own A&R work as well as management work. So the emphasis
got switched away from London to Peter and what have you. And so
Peter and Cliff took over that role, and the idea of bringing in Mutt
Lange was suggested by those guys. They knew of Mutt because they
had done something with one of my bands, but Mutt was well-known
to us anyway, because when he first came to the UK, the first band
he was involved with was a band called City Boy, and they were on
Vertigo, and that was a Polygram label. So Mutt we knew from those
early days.
Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen:

We never worked so hard in our lives. Just the way that Mutt
would approach songs, his standards were very high, to the point,
sometimes, I think, where they were possibly a little too high. To the
point where I would walk into the studio and I would see Joe just
breaking down, just really believing that he can’t do this anymore.
But Mutt had a certain idea in his head and that’s what he wanted to
go for. That was always the general theme with anything we were
working on, was the fact that it was really hard work. That’s what set
the first record aside. That was fun; it was fun making the first record.
And when we got in the studio on High ‘n’ Dry, we all realized that
the party was over. When you listen back to when those albums
were made, I mean, it would appear to be that ProTools was made
for Mutt Lange. Because he would dissect songs and sort of hone

the good parts of the songs until the good parts were as good as they
could possibly be. And that process itself can sometimes feel a little
contrived.
Tygers of Pan Tang producer Chris Tsangarides on Def Leppard’s
evolving sound:
I really think it was all
to do with Mutt, because
he worked with them
for loads of records,
and he was involved
in the writing process
as well. And being the
type of character he is,
he wanted them to be
what he had in his mind,
and it was realized. It
took a lot of time to
do, and various ways of
recording that they came
up with, and specifically
Mutt, and with that huge
Def Leppard sound,
the huge snare drum,
millions of vocals, and
it was just right, timing-
wise, for the American
market. I don’t know if they knew that, that that was going to happen,
but that’s what they wished, and it did happen. But you never know
before what you’re doing, because if you knew what it was, we would be
doing that every day.
They meant nothing here, absolutely nothing, until Hysteria, when
they had a couple of hit singles over here. But they would be able to
do some huge great arena tour of the states and wouldn’t even be able
to play in some thousand seat venue over here. People didn’t take to
them. I think they said they’re not heavy. It wasn’t until Hysteria they
said, well, they might not be that heavy, but they’re very good. Their
tunes are great, we’re singing them, and they’d been embraced, which
is great, absolutely brilliant.
August 1981
August 1981. Def Leppard issue “Let it Go,” backed with instrumental
“Switch 625,” which plays up the NWOBHM trope of twin leads.

“Let it Go” actually started out as a different song. We actually
played “Let it Go” at the Reading Festival in 1980 under the name
of “When the Rain Falls” or something crap like that, with one of these
melancholic lyrics, “Looking out the window on a Sunday morning.”
And it was twice as fast as we ended up putting it on the record. And
Mutt said, “No, this has got to lope. We’ve got to slow this down,
slow it right down, so those chords actually stand out more.” And we
completely tore the vocal to pieces. I just sat back and listened to him
start making noises over the top of it, and I was saying, “I don’t get this.”
Because that was my first ever sit-in on a rewrite. I was like, hang
on, we’ve just taken a song, and we’ve taken it to bits. We’ve never
done that. We’d actually rewritten songs, but never so rapidly and
so... well, not with an outsider who was like, this guy knows what
he’s doing. It was like, whoa. And I remember it being a lot of, “This
is bullshit; he can’t do this with our art!” Until you realize a day-and-
a-half later that, Hell, it’s way better, isn’t it? We’d all be nudging each
other going, “Great, isn’t it?” (laughs).
August 1981. Diamond Head issue their Diamond Lights EP.
Diamond Head guitarist Brian Tatler on his band’s competitive

advantage:
I suppose I’ve got a reputation for coming up with riffs. I’m always
trying to find the next great riff. And I like arrangements as well. I do
try and put something together so it sounds like it’s in the right order.
But I sometimes think with the earlier songs, things like “Am I Evil?”
and “Helpless” and “The Prince,” I almost think there’s a naivety to
those songs and those arrangements, where we didn’t exactly know
the rule book, and we would write whatever we felt comfortable
with. If we wanted to start with a five-minute guitar solo (laughs), we
would, and you know, four verses, things like that.
Whereas nowadays, you can’t help but conforming to pattern,
where you go verse/chorus. And I suppose the more songs you write,
the more you start writing in a formula, and it’s very hard to write
seven-minute songs that change tempo and go through many mood
changes. Somehow you question yourself too much. Well, you can’t
do that. So you try to simplify things a little bit so you know that
they’ll work. Rather than not taking... well, not any chances, but very
few chances.
But it seemed to take forever for us to get a record deal. At the
time, we seemed to be overtaken by Iron Maiden and Def Leppard.
We were playing live and getting good reviews and we were selling
our own album and all that, at the gigs, and we would record like an

EP or a single. But we knew that EMI had been behind Iron Maiden.
They were getting in the magazines and getting the front pages. They
seemed to be getting the best tours. They were out with Judas Priest
at one minute, then somebody else. And we always seemed like a
poor relation somehow.
August 1981. Iron Maiden issue Maiden Japan, a four-tracker showing up

in both 7” and 12” form, with slight differences in various territories. Total
tracklisting comprises “Running Free” and “Remember Tomorrow” backed
with “Killers” and “Innocent Exile.”
August 1981. The second issue of Kerrang! hits the stands, with Ritchie
Blackmore on the cover.
August 1981. Venom beats up the tracks that will comprise their notorious
Welcome to Hell debut, working at Impulse Studios in Newcastle. The idea
was that these were to be three days worth of demo sessions, but Neat
requests to issue the results as the band’s first album.
Venom guitarist Mantas on the band’s gleefully gritty production

values:
You’re talking about three young guys that went into the studio
basically for the first time. We didn’t know what to expect and we
just did what came naturally. You get a lot of bands coming out that
do it, and we did it ourselves when we started out in the back end of
1979. I had this vision for the band and I formed the band. Everybody
was saying we’re going to be the biggest, the fastest, the loudest—
everybody was saying that. But I think in some unintentional way, we
did it.
We just went into the studio and whether it was because of
ignorance, a lack of funds, whatever, we did something that was
special for the time. I remember a quote from Paul Stanley from
years ago when they were asking about the makeup, this concept
they came up with, and hey, he said it was trial and error. You don’t
call somebody a genius for falling in the river and finding a nugget of
gold, you know? You do what comes naturally, what is in yourself.
And I’ve always said we did the absolute best we possibly could with
Welcome to Hell, and we did the best that we possibly could on Black
Metal and subsequent albums.
August 1981. Scunthorpe’s Gaskin issue their End of the World debut LP,
on Rondelet, home of Witchfynde. The gatefold album arrives on the heels
of their “I’m No Fool”/“Sweet Dream Maker” single. Both songs are on
the album, but in re-recorded form. “I’m No Fool” was in the running for

covering when Metallica was putting together tracks for The $5.98 E.P.:
Garage Days Re-Revisited, which included a track each from Diamond Head
and Holocaust.
Gaskin guitarist and vocalist Paul Gaskin:

Gaskin were a rock band heavily influenced by the blues-based
bands that had gone before us. To name them all would take some
time, but I was into metal riffs that I had grown up with in the ‘70s,
but also the vocal harmonies of the acts from the ‘60s. When I got
together with Dave Norman for the first time, we jammed through
2112 by Rush. He knew all the drum parts, and I knew the vocals/
guitars, but there wasn’t so many genres back then, so we classified
ourselves as hard rock.
As for “I’m No Fool,” that should’ve been released in ‘80, but
Rondelet hadn’t got us to sign a contract, so despite printing the
single, they had to hold it back. We had second thoughts after doing a
few gigs with Neal Kay. He used to call us “Britain’s answer to Rush,”
but thought we needed a front man. We basically wasted a year
trying people out with it not working, so in the end we went back to
Rondelet and signed.
Rondelet Records had been set up by an ex-EMI bloke and his
partner Alan who had a record shop. Witchfynde were their first
signings, and because they’d recorded their debut at Fairview Studios,
Roy put us in touch with them. We did our demo on the Saturday,
and were offered a deal on the Monday after I’d gone to see them. It
was that easy. They were never very good with us though, and we got
ripped off pretty badly.
The first thing they did was gigged us with Witchfynde. They’d just
supported Def Leppard on their first headline tour, and then we
supported Witchfynde. It was good fun, though I remember very little
of it. When you do as many drugs and drink, you tend to forget details.
The debut album was easy to make in one sense, as we had been
gigging the songs for over a year. We only had two weeks to do it in
though, so we needed to be prepared. After putting down the drums
and bass, for the most part, the rest of the work was down to me,
so Dave and Stef, our bassist, got drunk on Newcastle Brown while
watching me. We were a little naive back then, and with hindsight, we
wouldn’t have let the engineer, Roy Neave, put so much reverb on
the recordings. The studio had just bought a “space station,” and he
wanted to experiment with it. We actually recorded two more tracks
than ended up on the album, and they’ve since seen the light of day on
Beyond Worlds End.

Savage bassist and vocalist Chris Bradley, on also missing out on
getting covered by Metallica:
It’s more unluck. They did that Garage Days album and did a lot
of stuff by all the bands that influenced them, and sold six million
copies, and made a lot of money for a lot of people. Unfortunately,
they didn’t put “Loose ‘n Lethal” out. I’m not sure why; you would
have to ask them.
It just seems a little bit strange: I mean if you look at the sleeve
notes for their album, there are all these little set-lists from lots of
different gigs, and you will see “Loose ‘n Lethal” and “Dirty Money”
on there, but they didn’t make it onto the album. But there are lots of
obscure punk bands and lots the New Wave of British Heavy Metal
bands that we didn’t really rate highly. And that was another thing:
we never really felt part of New Wave of British Heavy Metal. But
there’s no point in thinking about it—it was a long time ago. Metallica
didn’t do the song; unfortunately, it would have made us a lot of
money.
August 1981. After Dark issue “Evil Woman” backed with “Johnny” and “Lucy.”
August 1981. Spider issue “All the Time”/“Feel Like a Man,” on City,
following up with UK tour dates through September.
August 1, 1981. MTV launches and the music industry is suddenly

propelled into the age of video. Not only are the NWOBHMers not particularly
photogenic, in their jeans and patched jackets, but most of the bands
never made it to American shores, let alone clear across the country to
the powerhouse that was Los Angeles in the golden age of the rock video,
commencing in 1981 and riding high for the next 20 years.
Saxon vocalist Biff Byford:

The early MTV days were a bit daft, weren’t they? (laughs). A bit
silly. I think it really changed the scene. You either went with it or
you went against it. That was the thing. You’re either, fuck them,
we’re going to make it on our own without them, bastards. Or you
went with it. But I don’t think we did either of them, actually. We
just carried on as we were and made a few videos. A few daft videos
with girls in them, that people tend to like. But it did change things
because it was so big, wasn’t it? So big, so fast. I think a lot of girls
got involved with the whole image of things and then you picked up a
different audience, really, from MTV.

And of course, there’s a big budget involved in the American bands.
Whereas the British bands seemed to struggle a little bit when it comes
to big budget productions. And so it’s hard to compete, trying to make
expensive videos, isn’t it? It’s hard to tour the world. I also think, if
you’re based in America, it’s easier to conquer America, than if you’re
based in England. And so that’s probably why so many American bands
do that. They can tour their own country, can’t they? Whereas in the UK,
you’d tour for two weeks. But if you’re going to fly to American do a
tour over there, it’s going to cost a fortune.
And you didn’t look too good on TV. Maybe some bands were too
dated, and maybe people didn’t want to see that, and you’ve got bands
like Duran Duran who became big on MTV, didn’t they? Which is all
about style and fashion, and of course it’s got very little to do with heavy
metal. Diamond Head definitely never worried about image that much. It
was all about the music. I mean, we didn’t even worry about the business
very much. We were just so obsessed with getting the music right.
August 7, 1981. The Heavy Metal movie premiers in theatres. Even though
the name refers here to the originating illustrated sci-fi magazine,
nonetheless the popularity of the magazine, the film and the double LP hard
rock soundtrack, help the name recognition of the concept embodied by that
term. Attending the debut in the UK were members of Girlschool, Samson,
Iron Maiden and Stampede, with Brian Robertson, newly departed from Wild
Horses, attending with his wife.

August 22, 1981. The second Monsters of Rock, or “Donington,” featuring
More, Blackfoot, Slade, Blue Öyster Cult, Whitesnake and AC/DC.
August 28 – 30, 1981. Reading Rock 1981 was less heavy and more
eclectic than the previous year’s installment. The NWOBHM scene was
represented by Girlschool,
Lightning Raiders, Nightwing,
Lionheart, Gillan and Samson.
Diamond Head guitarist Brian

Tatler on the falling away of
the previous generation of
hard rock bands:
They weren’t playing clubs
anymore, were they? If
there’s a band in your local
club, you can go see them, and of course, if you want to see Deep
Purple, you have to wait until they play some huge arena, if you could
even get tickets. So I never got to see Deep Purple with Gillan because
they’d split up by the time I got into them. And so it’s great to go
into a local club and there’s 200 kids there, and go see Samson; I saw
Iron Maiden and people like that in tiny clubs. It would be great, the
energy and excitement coming off the band. Like it’s our generation
of bands, and that generation of bands is gone now. It’s almost like
your parents’ bands, aren’t they? Your Black Sabbaths and that. So
yeah, they were happy to move on to the New Wave of British Heavy
Metal, with the kids almost your own age. You’d see bands and they’d
be the same age as you, and that was all so fresh and exciting.
September 1981
September 1981. Girl issue “Thru the Twilite”/“McKitty’s Back.”
September 1981. Bruce Dickinson joins Iron Maiden, after Rod Smallwood
catches a Samson show and is quite taken by their lead vocalist. But first
Bruce auditions for the band, singing “Remember Tomorrow.” The shift from
Di’Anno to Dickinson mirrors Tygers of Pan Tang’s shift from Jess Cox to Jon
Deverill, both bands acquiring singers that are less street and more operatic
and technical. Samson, conversely, will pick up a less photogenic growler to
replace the departed Dickinson.
Bruce Dickinson:
I had to wait three months before they fired Paul, and in the
meantime I did some singing and they had to go through a difficult
time during which time effectively they’d been unfaithful, and they
were waiting for their infidelity... waiting so they could have their
moment. I mean, it’s a terrible thing to say, but it’s true. It was an
awkward period for them—it must have been.
But I mean, I knew that it would work. I knew musically it would
work, vocally it would work. I just didn’t know if the personalities
would work. You know, you can make the personalities work if
there’s desire. Which is basically what I said to Rod, that night.
September 1981. Budgie issue “Keeping a Rendezvous”/“Apparatus,” an

advance single from their forthcoming album. Surprisingly, the band have
considerably lightened their recently acquired NWOBHM tendencies, but
nonetheless have not re-embraced their ‘70s sound.
September 1981. Starfighters issue a self-titled debut

album, plus singles for “Alley Cat Blues”/“Don’t Touch
Me,” followed by “Power Crazy”/“I Want You,” all on Jive,
an imprint of RCA.
September 1981. AIIZ issue a final single, “I’m the One

Who Loves You”/“Ringside Seat,” after which the band
break up.
AIIZ (and future AC/DC and Dio) drummer

Simon Wright:
Those guys were wild, yeah. They were the
two brothers, Gary and Dave Owens. Dave was
the more solid guy. Gary, the guitar player, was a
complete nutcase. Setting things on fire, taking the
knobs off the gear sticks in cars while you’re driving.

It was a good band, it was getting better, but it just didn’t have any legs.
There was just too much turmoil going on. Crazy stuff (laughs).
I’m not on the live album, of course—that’s a misprint that’s all
over the place. That’s not me playing drums on that album, and I’m
not on the EP which is called “No Fun After Midnight”—that’s not
me either. “Ringside Seat” is me, and that poppy one, “I’m the One
Who Loves You,” and I think there was another track, something
about flames, I think.
It was just falling apart, at the time, really. And I had moved on.
I had moved on and got an offer from this band in London called
Tytan. Kevin Riddles—do you remember him from Angel Witch?
And so I was already living down there and stuff, and actually Dave,
the singer in AIIZ moved down with me, and we were sharing an
apartment and hanging out and going out to clubs and trying to find
women. And so as I said, I’d kind of finished by then and moved
on, and I got the job in Tytan. So that was the next thing. It was
just a democratic thing that we all decide that it wasn’t really worth
pursuing AIIZ.
September 1981. Arc issue “War of the Ring” backed with “Ice Cream
Theme.” The a-side track is “dedicated to the inspirational works of J.R.R.
Tolkien,” fantasy being a clear NWOBHM lyrical theme.
September 1981. Witchfinder General issue their debut recording, a single

pairing “Burning a Sinner” with “Satan’s Children.”
Heavy Metal Records’ Paul Birch on signing Witchfinder General:

Well, every band was trying to produce music that was as fast as
Accept, for instance. They’re usually not as good as Accept. Of course
who we went on to sign, every band wanted to perform in that style
of really fast heavy metal. So here’s a band who wanted to perform
rock music that’s really slow, and that was pretty unique. There was
no one else out there doing that, and no other demos we listened to
that had that sound.
I have to say, though, the demos are the worst demos to this day
that I’ve ever heard. But how we got to it... I’ll be honest with you.
Every point of reference I had was record shops. But there’s a record
shop in Wellington, Shropshire, run by a guy by the name of Ian
Bridgewater, and it was just a provincial store out in the country. But
we’re listening to demos, he’s listening through demos with me, and
he heard that and said, “This is it, Paul. You have to sign this band.” I
said you really think so? He said you have to. And he was right. But
the band hardly toured. The band never toured. Hardly performed
any dates. I bet they never performed five dates.

Witchfinder General guitarist Phil Cope:
We rented this recording studio, put that down, and the sound was
good in the studio, but when it actually had come off the record,
it sounded that bassy. But looking back on it now, that record was
probably the birth of doom rock or doom metal.
September – October 1981. Tygers of Pan Tang work on their third album, at
Trident in London and Rock City Studios in Shepperton, with producer Dennis
MacKay of Pink Floyd and Judas Priest fame.

We were writing the songs we wanted to write, because that’s the way
we saw the way forward. That was kind of what the view was of our
job. And we were having an absolute ball doing it, touring the world
and getting sort of notoriety and commercial success. It was the place
to be. But I wouldn’t say we were one of the first bands to champion
heavy metal. Again, it was the NWOBHM—that’s what it was. I mean,
Ozzy was championing the cause with “Paranoid” and “Iron Man”
and all that stuff before the NWOBHM movement was born. So it
was definitely going on earlier. We took that on and freshened it up,
freshened the sound up and carried on with it, almost like a relay race;
we just got our baton off the first runner and hit the ground running.
September 6, 1981. Angel Witch split up, citing lack of success, playing
their last show at the Marquee on this date.
September 10, 1981. Paul Di’Anno plays his last show with Iron Maiden, in
Copenhagen, Denmark.
September 17, 1981. Grand Prix, having recently lost future Uriah Heep
mainstay Bernie Shaw as their vocalist, play their first show with new singer
Robin McAuley, at the Marquee.
September 25, 1981. Tank issue “Don’t Walk Away”/“Hammer On,”

released six months before the classic debut album, Filth Hounds of Hades.
Tank bassist and vocalist Algy Ward on being associated with

the NWOBHM:
When all that fucking load of bullshit was going about, I was in
The Damned. Iron Maiden and Saxon and everything else, I had
nothing to do with all that shit. You have to remember, I was in
The Damned from ‘78 until January 1, 1980, and that’s when all the
Maiden and what was it, Toad the Wet Sprocket and all that God-
awful bullshit was going on.

And I wasn’t interested in all that shit. The first time I saw Iron
Maiden, I went to meet somebody at the Marquee, in Wardour Street.
And there’s this band playing and they were fucking dreadful. It was
awful. And then a few months later, they were on a children’s early
morning TV, and they had a video out at the time called “Women
in Uniform,” which I knew, being in The Saints, was from some
Australian band. And I thought, what the fuck are they doing that
for? And that was the video, and they’re on this kids’ TV show and
they all got custard pied. You can probably find that on YouTube
or some other bollocks somewhere. But the first time I saw them in
the Marquee, they were fucking awful. I think they did a couple of
Montrose covers. They were fucking rubbish. They were really bad.
And I never had been a punk. I was just a person who’s got
attitude. It was a brilliant time. Pete, unfortunately, he couldn’t handle
the alcohol or the amount of stuff he put up his nose. As I said, I’m
not... I’m just myself. The Algy Ward enigma (laughs). What did I
like? Everything about Ozzy right from the beginning until... well,
lately, he’s just coming out with bullshit. Not necessarily heavy metal,
but I liked bits of Rush. Judas Priest, I’ve never liked either. Iron
Maiden, never liked. Oh, Metallica, I liked. I’m Uncle Algy to them.”
Tank drummer Mark Brabbs on being associated with the

NWOBHM:
I don’t think we ever did, to be perfectly honest. And this is no
disrespect to the other bands. I mean, I speak for myself, but at the
time, collectively, we thought most of the bands that were coming out
were pale imitations of the ‘70s rock bands, like Saxon and Samson
and Maiden, and all those sort of things. We thought they were pale
imitations of what went before them.
And so we didn’t actually aim, like I said, to be anything, really.
We didn’t aim to be a punk band. We didn’t aim to be a New Wave
of Heavy Metal Band, and we didn’t aim to be a rock band. But
obviously with our influences, we were going to be a rock band.
And having said what I said, I think, obviously, all those bands have
developed and they’ve got their own sound and they’re all superb
bands, now. But at the start, I don’t think they... it had all been done
before in the ‘70s. And I suppose a lot of people could say, well, we
were an imitation of maybe the Pink Fairies or Motörhead, but we
weren’t. Because there was a lot more influences on us, between us.
And mainly, funny enough, you have to have a very keen ear, but the
big influence on Tank right at the start was the early ZZ Top stuff—
especially with Algy and Pete.

September 25, 1981. Motörhead’s debut sees reissue on Big Beat, the first
16,000 copies being pressed on red vinyl.
October 1981
October 1981. Holocaust issue the four-track Live EP, which captures the
band live at Nite Club in hometown Edinburgh on September 10th as part of
their Raw, Loud n’ Live tour.
Holocaust guitarist John Mortimer on coming from up north:

Scotland was not very active that way. You just got a lot of cover
bands. It was pretty disappointing. The only other band that was any
good at that time was Heavy Pettin’ and they were from Glasgow. I
hate to say it being a Scotsman, but it was a very English thing. It was
really happening in Sheffield and places like that. I mean, anytime that
the English bands came up… I remember seeing Def Leppard on their
first support tour with AC/DC, real nervous looking guys, but they
were great. That same venue that our live album was recorded at, you
got a lot of bands coming up and playing there, Samson, Girlschool.
Our show for that album was a headline gig, maybe 300 people.
And it was quite normal. Most bands who came to play that nightclub
got that kind of audience, between 250 and 500 people; amazing to
think nowadays. It was exciting times, but it didn’t last long though,
before things became very separate. Again, the British media was not
very helpful. They picked up on certain bands, but everybody else
was kind of dismissed. But before we did The Nightcomers, we might
have played four or five gigs, that’s it.

October 1981. The explosion of metal bands that is the NWOBHM, as well
as the success of Kerrang!, is in part responsible for the founding of a raft
of metal magazines, including Aardschock, Acne ‘n’ Dandruff, Hammer,
Teenage Depression, Heavy Music Mag, Phoenix and Killing Yourself
to Die. The fourth issue of Kerrang!, issued this month, includes in its
readers-generated list of top 100 heavy metal albums of all time, Saxon’s
Wheels of Steel at #5, and Motörhead taking the #3 spot with No Sleep ‘til
Hammersmith and #7 with Ace of Spades. Both bands show up again before
we get past #25.
October 1981. Mother’s Ruin issue “Streetfighter;” an album will follow

in 1982. Meanwhile Lancaster’s Bashful Alley record a three-track demo
consisting of “She Only Wants Me for My Body,” “My My My” and “Running
Blind,” the latter two soon to comprise the band’s debut single.
October 1981. Paul Birch’s Heavy Metal Records issues the eventful,
obscurity-filled Heavy Metal Heroes compilation.

The first time we ever appeared on vinyl was on some awful record
called Heavy Metal Heroes by Heavy Metal Records, and we had
a song there called “The Reaper,” which eventually became “Final
Scream,” on the second album. And that was with original Grim
Reaper vocalist Paul De Mercado. The course of the band changed
when Paul was no more. There are singers and there are vocalists.
Like Steve Grimmett is a singer—Paul was a vocalist. He was very

Phil Lynott-ish, and a larger-than-life character that made up for any
sort of range problems or pitch or sort of phrasing issues.
Long boring story, but we were actually supposed to be signed to
Heavy Metal Records, but Paul didn’t turn up for the signing. Yeah,
we were basically held up for about two months. It was really hard,
because Paul for me was—and is still—one of my best ever friends.
October 5, 1981. Saxon issues their

fourth album Denim and Leather and
announce that they will be touring the
UK with a massive 40,000 watt PA and
a 30 foot long eagle-shaped lighting rig
buttressed with 150 aircraft landing
lights. The band’s October tour dates
would be supported by Riot, who found
their Fire Down Under album issued in
the UK due to a petition campaign.
Saxon guitarist Paul Quinn on

Denim and Leather:
We basically were discovering
how to amplify, and
experimenting with getting
little bit crisper in the sound
department. In my case, I grew up with single coil pickups,
both Gibson and Fender, and I always struggled trying to get
the Humbucker to sound as gritty as that. There was a lot of
experimenting with speaker combinations and amp combinations.
Biff Byford on Denim and Leather:

The actual title is from an Alice Cooper song, a song called “From
the Inside,” which is a fabulous album of the same name. And on it
there is a lyric that says “denim and leather.” But obviously there has
been denim and leather before (laughs). But it just twinged a chord in
my head and when we got a chance to write a song, I was looking to
write a song about our audience in the ‘80s to that point, which is the
longest three years anybody has ever spent basically. From 1980 to
1982, actually two years, we had three albums out in two years. It was
crazy really, cramming four years worth of life into that.
Anyway, that’s another story (laughs). But I wanted to write a song
about our fans and “Denim and Leather” fit the bill, really. We had a
big competition in a magazine at the time, I think it was Sounds. That
was the forerunner of Kerrang!. Metal got so big in the ‘80s, they had
to have a separate magazine. So we had this competition and 7000

or 8000 people wrote in. I can’t remember what the question was,
probably something dumb like, “What was my name?” Anyway, the
winners got to come to the studio to record the track with us. So the
singing on the end of the original “Denim and Leather” is actually
fans in the studio, about 30 or 40 of them.
That album, we were getting a bit more experienced, a little bit less
poor (laughs). We made it in Geneva, Switzerland and we mixed it in
Abba’s studio in Sweden. So there was a little bit of calming down.
Our management was calming down and decided that we weren’t one
hit wonders (laughs). So they decided to spend a little bit more money
on us so we spent a bit more time on the album.
Denim and Leather was probably the highest point of those two
years, really. I mean, it had a killer track on there. Also it was the
first album where we wrote two songs before the album as well. The
album was a bit of a mystery really because we wrote “And the Bands
Played On” and “Never Surrender” at least four months before we
wrote the album and the record company released them as singles. I
remember arguing with the management that we shouldn’t put those
songs on the album. In those days you had to add the hit singles on
the album. But “Princess of the Night” on that album is classic, a
classic metal song.
Saxon guitarist Graham Oliver:

I like Strong Arm better than Denim and Leather, which was done
in a bit of a rush. There were things on there that I would’ve liked to
have done again, or to spend more time on. For example, we’d run
out of studio time, and I got, I think, half a day to do all my guitar
solos. So I felt I was a bit compromised on that, because I like to
create something. It takes me time. I like to get in there and create
something that means something, not just one you can rattle off.
Saxon bassist Steve Dawson:

We recorded Denim and Leather in Geneva, in Switzerland.
Basically, we would get a couple of months to write some songs,
because you’re on a big conveyor belt. You write these songs and you
record them and then you go on tour. And then at the end of the tour
you might get two weeks holiday, and then it all starts again.
Writing-wise, I think basically what really set us apart from the
other bands of that time, was that we wrote more of what you could
call a song, rather than just a riff with lyrics, you know what I mean?
If you look at songs like “747” and “Wheels of Steel,” and maybe
“Bands Played On,” it’s more of a tune than just a cliché heavy metal
riff, I would think, and with a singer who sings at the top of his voice.

On the early records, they are credited to Saxon. It was a complete
five-man unit that wrote the songs. So how we used to work is it
was very rare that we wrote songs with electric guitars. We would
go to someone’s house and just have the guitars unplugged, and the
drummer would just drum on his knees or on the table or something.
And when we had the basic thing, we’d go to the rehearsal room and
plug in and do it like that.
Early October 1981. Budgie issue a second album in a NWOBHM style,

Nightflight, which, however is a bit lighter and more melodic than its
predecessor, Power Supply. Still, the cover art, by Derek Riggs of Iron
Maiden fame, is full-on heavy metal fantasy illustration. A second single
follows the release of the album, pairing “I Turned to Stone” with an
instrumental version of same. The band tour the UK solid through Christmas.
Budgie bassist and vocalist

Burke Shelley on the
NWOBHM:
No, not really, took no
notice of it, really. I think
one of the things that took
us into that 4/4 style is
because of John’s playing,
more than anything. He
was much more into that
sort of style. And I like
to work with a guitarist, writing as well, so I think I did find it a bit
exhausting at times, trying to do something different from what was
being hacked out by a lot of bands before us. But we had our own
distinctive sound anyway.
But I like Power Supply. And the following albums after that, like
Nightflight and Deliver Us from Evil, were higher production jobs.
But then again, you know, in the early days we were a bit more naïve,
and our sound was more rough, and there was something about
having more of a slightly edgy sound, as opposed to a smoothed-
out, more produced, and well-played track. Sometimes I like the
roughness, the edge; I don’t want total perfection in anything.
Although in a sense, that is a type of pining for perfection (laughs),
finding the best level of grit.
October 18, 1981. Hawkwind issues a second album that seems to give
some nod to the NWOBHM. The aggressively titled Sonic Attack features on
its cover, a Saxon-like logo as well as lightning bolts.

October 26, 1981. Bruce Dickinson plays his first show with Iron Maiden, in
Bologna, Italy. Heavy metal has a new and exciting discussion point to replace
debate over what Ronnie James Dio was going to do to Black Sabbath.
Iron Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson on his influences:

A guy called Arthur Brown, who did the song “Fire” from the late
‘60s, was a big influence of mine. Peter Hammill from a band called
Van der Graaf Generator, and also Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull,
particularly, his lyrics. Very different influences. As for Gillan, in the
early days it was very much so, but it changed a little bit when I’d
been with Maiden; it became much more kind of operatic than the
Gillan thing.
And Alice Cooper... I was pumping gas at a gas station, aged 16
years old, when “School’s Out” came on the radio. Alice was not
so much in the singing stakes, more of just whole attitude thing at
the time when you’re 15, 16 years old. Alice is more about focused
rebellion; he’s a fantastic cartoon character almost, if you like, and
therefore he’s still successful today—my kid, 11 years old, loves Alice
Cooper (laughs).
October 29, 1981 – March 28, 1982.

Gillan conduct a massive tour of the
UK and mainland Europe, in support of
the October release of Double Trouble,
which is one studio LP and one live LP.
It reaches #12 on the UK charts. The
first single for the album is “Nightmare”
b/w “Bite the Bullet (live),” also issued
in October.
DJ Neal Kay:
I like the Gillan band. I love the
Gillan band. I mean Ian Gillan,
back then, was still a force to
be reckoned with. He left Deep
Purple, but the Gillan band was
real good, and as I said, John
McCoy was a good friend. I liked
the Gillan band very much, but
they’re not a new wave band.
Ian Gillan has been around since
whenever. They weren’t young
young. They knew what they

were doing, but they weren’t ostensibly just because of the new wave.
They appeared because Gillan left Purple, met people, it’s the old
story. It’s not just because of the new wave. They got their profile
high because there was a rock thing happening with the new wave.
Late October 1981. Saxon issue “Princess of the Night” backed with “Fire in
the Sky.”
Late 1981. Portsmouth’s Truffle issue “Round Tower”/“If You Really Want.”
Support slots with Diamond Head, Tank and Spider ensue.
November 1981
November 1981. Dark Star issue their well-regarded but slightly dated self-
titled debut, on Avatar. Meanwhile, AOR/NWOBHM lite hopefuls Grand Prix
issue “Keep on Believing.”

November 1981. Dokken issue their debut album, Breakin’ the Chains.
With lead singer Don Dokken’s connections to Germany, with the band
emerging in 1981 (way before the rise of hair metal), and with the fact
that the album was issued on Carrere and then not in the US for fully two
years, Breakin’ the Chains fell in ver y much with other releases from the
NWOBHM. What’s more, the album’s commercial sensibilities helped
garner it solid reviews, suggesting that a fresh direction for metal might
include an injection of AOR polish and professionalism. When this indeed
began happening over in LA a couple years later—and at the beginning led
by the likes of Dokken, as well as Ratt, Quiet Riot and Mötley Crüe—the
NWOBHM would be effectively dead.
Dokken vocalist on the formula that would soon shift the metal axis
to California:
I think what made us popular in my opinion is when we came
back from Germany, we got passed on by almost every American
label and they all said the same thing. They said that your music
is too heavy and your lyrics are too pop. And that the people who
like your commercial melodies will think you’re too heavy and
the people who like your heavy side will think your lyrics are too
commercial. So the people who like your heavy stuff will find you
too light and vice versa, so you will lose both sides of the fence. And
trying to get both sides, your chances are a billion to one.
And I said, “Yeah, but it’s the one I’m looking for. I mean, what
if we got both sides of the fence?” If we’re going to write these
heavy songs, with George’s heavy riffing, like this chunky stuff like
“Breakin’ the Chains”—that was a really heavy guitar riff for the
time—and “Paris,” with the double bass, that’s a heavy metal song.
If you look back now, like we played that song live and it still
sounds like a metal song today and it was done in 1981. That was the
full-on, double bass “Hot for Teacher.” That thing was flyin’. So it
was really heavy and then I did this huge chorus singing real sweet,
“Paris is burning” and they said, “Well, why don’t you do some
really heavy vocals? It’s so melodic, yet it’s so heavy.” They said,
“Why don’t you do one or the other?” And I said, well I want to
do both. Nobody was really doing that at the time. Either you had
Journey doing melodic vocals and melodic music or you had Accept
or Metal Church doing screaming vocals and screaming guitars.

November 1981. BBC issues their The
Friday Rock Show compilation. meanwhile,
the Nems compilation Live and Heavy
includes tracks from Gillan and
Motörhead, along with hard rockers of the
old guard.
November 1981. Raven issue “Hard

Ride”/“Crazy World.”
Raven bassist and vocalist John Gallagher

on the band’s need for speed:
Our set list, when we were playing the
clubs, we’d finish with “Space Station #5”
or we’d do “Highway Star.” At the time
it was like ‘76, ‘77, so also whatever AC/
DC had on the charts—”Rock ‘n’ Roll
Damnation,” all right, we’ll play that. And
we played half of our own stuff, but most of it was all the faster songs.
Whatever was the killer fast song from the album, that’s the one we’d do.
And then when it came to writing our own stuff, we’d just accentuate
that and just have that out of control nervous energy thing happening.
November 1981. Tygers of Pan Tang

issue their third album, Crazy Nights,
the band going with “Love Don’t Stay”
as lead single, backed with the non-LP
“Paradise Drive.”
Tygers Of Pan Tang guitarist

Robb Weir:
We got a call about two-
and-a half-months after the
second album came out and was
successful in the charts. We did
a big tour, sold out everywhere,
and the record company said,
“Hey great, we love this, lads.
Let’s put another album out in
three months.” So we had three
weeks to write Crazy Nights.
So John went into a room, I went into a room, and out of it all we came
up with another eight songs each. We actually wrote two songs in the
studio because we were two songs short when we played them all,
and Dennis MacKay, the producer, decided which songs he wanted to

record and which songs he liked. I think John went away and wrote the
song “Crazy Nights” and I went away and wrote “Do It Good.”
The album was very quickly produced, I feel, and Dennis MacKay,
again a big name in producing, he’s done Pink Floyd and Judas Priest
and worked with David Bowie, but he needed to fly back to America
to finish a Stanley Clarke album and then fly back and finish up our
album, and I really think our product was greatly affected. The drums
sounds aren’t really good, the guitar sounds aren’t very good, the
backing vocals... it just was not what I thought it was going to be at all.
I thought it was going to be a much bigger, grandiose affair. But the
material is good and it’s a great shame because people who critically
acclaimed it said what a shame, there’s some fantastic material on this
album, but it hasn’t been given its fair crack.
But the cover... Crazy Nights is one of my favourite pieces of
artwork that I really wish I had the original version. That was done by
Rodney Matthews, who did a lot of the Magnum art as well. All he was
told was, “The band’s called Tygers Of Pan Tang, the album’s called
Crazy Nights, what do you think?” And he came up with this fantastic
parody of King Kong, but obviously instead of a great big ape, it’s a
great big saber-tooth tiger at the top of the post office tower in London,
fighting off Tiger Moths. It’s just awesome, really fantastic piece of
artwork, I love it.

November 4, 1981. Black Sabbath issue Mob Rules, their second with
Ronnie James Dio. This incarnation of the band finds success, in some
part due to the new enthusiasm for metal in the UK.
Black Sabbath manager Sandy Pearlman on the fan base as heavy

metal army:
It’s interesting, when I rode down from London to Southampton
to see the kickoff of the 1980 Black Sabbath tour of the UK—
somewhere down there—the train was loaded with kids, punters—
you know this term?—wearing Black Sabbath badges on their worn
denim. I mean I sound literally like somebody writing in the NME
in 1980 when I say this stuff. I could be quoting verbatim from a
news item in the NME.
And then I realized that they were kids who would kill a couple
of days of their time so they didn’t miss the first show, and that’s
how devoted they were. I should have known this because I
remember when Blue Öyster Cult played the Long Beach Arena
in ‘73, their first huge stadium show, I was told by the promotions
there were people—because it was festival seating—kids who’d been
in the parking lot for two days so they could be the first ones in and
they could be at the front, right in the middle of the stage.
So I knew that this could happen. But yeah, I think that in
the UK, and obviously in Heavy Metal Parking Lot, we see the
remnants, the kind of degenerated remnants of this heavy metal arm.
So yeah, I would say that’s true.
And I don’t think Sabbath ever was written off by these
audiences. I think maybe because Dio was a replacement for Ozzy,
that they had a credible replacement. It didn’t look desperate, like
okay, a star in waiting was now center stage, where it supported the
element and the Ritchie Blackmore empire. But now he could be
right there. And Dio was a great crypto-Brit anyway. He looked at
his real audience as the UK and Japan, much more so than the US. I
don’t want to put it that way, but he had a very strong and dedicated
fan base in the UK and in Japan. So you know, I agree that there
was a kind of army in waiting in the UK for this music. There was
a void—you’re right. And I don’t think Sabbath was as out of the
game as you think, because I took that train ride and I went to a lot
of the other shows in the UK and these were right out of the box on
the release of the record. They weren’t doing that well in Europe,
but the shows did really well in the UK.

November 7, 1981. Ozzy Osbourne
(man? band?) issues his second album Diary of a Madman, which is an
instant success, keeping heavy metal exciting for the masses, especially in
the US, where the band would tour relentlessly.

November 23, 1981. North Midlands prog metal act
Saracen issue their Heroes, Saints and Fools debut LP.
The art rock wing of the NWOBHM compound would
eventually detach and go fully progressive rock.
December 1981
December 1981. Jaguar issue “Back Street

Woman”/“Chasing the Dragon” while Leicestershire’s Raw
Deal issue “Lone Wolf.”
December 1981 – January 1982. Tank work at London’s

Ramport Studios on what will become their classic debut,
Filth Hounds of Hades.
Tank bassist and vocalist Algy Ward on the contribution of producer

Fast Eddie Clarke:
Nothing really, he just brought a lot of drink and a load of
amphetamines, that’s all. And said it wasn’t loud enough (laughs).
I like all the albums for different reasons. I like the second one,
because it’s the best sounding. And it’s... unfortunately, Nigel
Gray didn’t know how to do... he did The Police and various other
people, so he couldn’t handle having the loud guitars, you know,
properly. He always had to have some other nonsense on it.
But I wish Filth Hounds was sounding like the second, and I
wish we had enough time on the first and third, that we had on the
second, if you see what I mean. Eddie, he had to finish Filth Hounds
quick to go and do Iron Fist. And then he pissed off, and then went
to what would become Fastway. And then a couple of the songs
on the Fastway album would’ve ended up on the Iron Fist album,
or, well, whatever the next Motörhead album would’ve been, and
he just had enough of that sort of nonsense. And Nigel Gray had,
obviously on the same management, Girlschool, so we thought, why
not give him a go—why not?
Angel Witch bassist and Tank label mate Kevin Riddles:

Tank were, without doubt, the most anarchic three guys I’ve ever
come across. I mean, Motörhead were Motörhead, and they were
just sort of up in the stratosphere as far as we were concerned.
Tank, by their own admission, modeled themselves on Motörhead
offstage. So they wanted to be known as the band that out-partied
Motörhead. And trust me, they did—regularly. And musically, I
mean, I love the first Tank album, Filth Hounds of Hades, I love
Algy’s stuff, what he did, the way he played, everything about
them—I love them to bits.
December 1981. Satan record the tracks for their forthcoming and
important “Kiss of Death” single.
December 1981. Steel issue Steel, on Neat, which is a double a-side

single featuring “Rock Out” and “All Systems Go.”
December 12, 1981. Venom issue their debut album, Welcome to Hell,
simultaneously the most Satanic and lo-fi of NWOBHM offerings. The album
is preceded by a debut single, “In League with Satan”/“Live Like an Angel,
Die Like a Devil.” Meanwhile, Manchester’s glammier Venom bow to the
dark lords and change their name to Rox. Geoff Barton, writing in Sounds,
promptly gives Welcome to Hell a glowing five star review.
Venom drummer Abaddon on wearing the band’s Satanic image on

the band’s (record) sleeve:
To be perfectly honest when we were picking up Satanic books
it was one of the most obvious images. There was that and it was
one of Baphomet, which I think Witchfynde used. It was a really
obvious one to do. We wanted to do our own version of it. I drew it,
and then when I drew the Venom logo and it started kind of going in
and out and this kind of thing, I thought that looks mysterious. And
even now black metal bands have these logos that you can hardly
read, and they’re all kind of indisposed, and I think it came from
there, you know?
And we wanted to have a cover which was just really, really
obvious. The album’s going to be called Welcome to Hell, the songs
on it were in league with Satan. We wanted it to just be as in-your-
face as possible. A lot of people turned around and said we don’t
like our kids having this, like they did with the Rolling Stones in
my time. We used to get the Rolling Stones albums Let it Bleed and
things like this and we used to hide it from the parents, and that was
just as good a part of having that record as playing it. It was like
having a dirty book.
So Welcome to Hell was almost daring parents to say no you
can’t have that. That’s what we wanted. We thought that it would
be something where the parents would react negatively to it, which
quite a lot of them did. Funnily enough Welcome to Hell went into
all the major stores, Black Metal went to all the major stores, and

the one that they banned was At War with Satan, which was the
third album cover, which is basically a brown sleeve. And I was like,
I don’t get it any more, I just don’t understand. It’s just brown. It
just says At War with Satan.
Venom guitarist Mantas on writing with Cronos:

We have pretty much the same outlook. Cronos is very clever with
his lyrics. Sometimes there are different meanings with one or two
lines. We both obviously write more about the darker elements, the
Satanic elements. We also write about things that affect us personally
as well. Cronos influences me in my songwriting and I influence
Cronos in his songwriting. For example, if I write a song that
Cronos really likes, then one or two albums down the line you see
the influence of that song in something he’s written and vice versa. It
always ends up that Cronos’ favourite tracks off a Venom album is
one of my songs and vice versa.
Cronos does write on a guitar and he does write on bass sometimes
too obviously. Obviously as a guitar player, I write things that are
more guitar-oriented, more riffy, involved things. And I know Cronos
will sometimes have a vocal idea and write around that vocal. And
there’s other things which we’ve done in the past where we’ll have an
instrumental section finished and we know the melody that is going
to go over the top or the phrasing that is going to go over the top, and
then write the lyrics to fit the phrasing.
Venom bassist and vocalist Cronos on Welcome to Hell:

It was just additions to metal, wasn’t it? That’s why it was fun. We
didn’t kill Motörhead, we didn’t kill Judas Priest. I kind of figure
if we hadn’t done what we had done and created the explosion we
created, I think bands like Motörhead and Judas Priest and the
whole heavy metal thing in general would have pissed itself. Because
it wasn’t dangerous enough, it wasn’t going anywhere. The sort of
spandex and make-up thing was really getting limp. Every now and
again there has to be an injection of filth into things just to make it
different, you know?
Recap
The major theme of 1981 in the life of the New Wave of British Heavy
Metal is the aggression with which acts established no more than a year or
two ago returned with a vengeance. Motörhead, already celebrating Ace of
Spades going gold, issued a punishing live album that went straight to #1 in
the charts. Gillan also rode the charts high with Future Shock and Double

Trouble, both released in the same year. Also cranking out two albums the
same year is the newly arena-rocking version of Tygers of Pan Tang, making
music for MCA, who were given Spellbound and Crazy Nights in what was a
frenzied 12 months for the band.
Slightly down the totem pole, Samson deliver their stunning Shock Tactics
album, really a showcase record for Bruce Dickinson, who would leave for
Iron Maiden later in the year. As well, Vardis and Girlschool both return with
second albums, although probably the most important second albums of the
year would come from Iron Maiden with Killers, and Def Leppard with High
‘n’ Dry, both stone-cold classics, from two success-driven world-beaters that
aggressively looked beyond the UK towards world domination. Finally, within
this bracket of “established” NWOBHM acts, Saxon return with their fourth
record, the fine and very listenable Denim and Leather, with Biff and the
boys continuing to sing the praises of a very British version of heavy metal to
anyone that would excuse their stage attire.
Outside of the UK, Germany, chimes in
with Accept’s Breaker, France with Trust’s
Repression, Switzerland with Hardware from
Krokus, and Australia with Rose Tattoo’s
Assault & Battery. As for the US and Canada,
there were the usual suspects, including
Riot, Y&T, Triumph and April Wine, with
perhaps one of the brighter spots amongst
the old guard being Blue Öyster Cult, who
capitalized on their inclusion in the Heavy
Metal soundtrack and delivered the lively Fire
of Unknown Origin.
As far as the British old guard is
concerned, it’s a pretty quiet year, with quiet
records from Judas Priest (Point of Entry) and
Budgie (Nightflight). Not quiet at all is Mob Rules, the second offering from
the Ronnie James Dio-era Black Sabbath, which finds the band competing
ably with nemesis Ozzy Osbourne, who at the end of the year delivers the
fine Diary of a Madman record.
Of interest on the media front, the summer of ‘81 saw the first issue of
Kerrang! magazine, heavy metal in the UK getting its very own high profile
periodical, written with cheek. And over in the states, you had the launch
of a music video channel called MTV. We can debate this long into the
night, but one would be on pretty solid ground arguing that MTV became a
marketing juggernaut that emphasized camera-friendly bands and American
bands, both categoricals that tended to exclude guys from Newcastle.
It’s interesting and somewhat disheartening that, really, there weren’t a
ton of new bands joining the NWOBHM fray with their first full-length albums.
As has been alluded to by some of the characters in our story, this may have

been due to the concept of the major labels feeling satisfied to have their
one or two bands, and then closing the door on future signings, for whatever
reason. And so outside of the Warhead album from More, the new records
of the year were on small and independent labels. Within this camp, we had
Raven deliver Rock Until You Drop, Demon with Night of the Demon, Gaskin
with End of the World, Holocaust with The Nightcomers and most notoriously,
Venom, with Welcome to Hell, Cronos and cabal perhaps giving notice that
Britain’s spunky and adolescent new form of heavy metal already needed a
few slaps about the head, neck, face and chest area to remind it that this
music was supposed to be dangerous.
And again, to reiterate, similar to this line of thought is that—surprise!—

we actually have what you could only call establishment NWOBHM bands,
where the genre would have been simply too new to use that term in 1980,
and certainly in 1979. And truth be told, outside of the adorable trio of
puppies known as Venom, nothing offered by the baby bands, the old guard
from the ‘70s, or the new establishment was creating anything particularly
groundbreaking. Nothing wrong with more heavy metal albums, but 1981
was a year of more heavy metal albums.

1982 - “We are black metal!”
1982. Additional singles issued in 1982 for which more specific dating
is unknown are as follows, named by a-side only. For b-sides, catalogue
numbers and full reviews, please consult my book Smokin’ Valves: A
Headbanger’s Guide to 900 NWOBHM Records). Our blizzard of singles
this year include: Centurion - “Two Wheels;” Dawnwatcher - “Backlash;”
Dumpy’s Rusty Bolts - Dumpy’s 2nd Single; Factory - “You Are the Music…
We Are Just the Band;” Founded - “Looking for Love;” Garbo - “The Dancing
Strange;” Iona – “Don’t Cry for the Innocent;” Lone Wolf - “Leave Me Behind,
on the esteemed Guardian label; Masai - “Stranger to Myself;” Masterstroke
- “Prisoner of Love;” Mithrandir – Magick E.P. Nicky Moore Band – “The Other
Side;” Mother’s Ruin -”Streetlights;” Mother’s Ruin – “Say It’s Not True;”
Neon Spirit - “Loser;” Omen Searcher - “Teacher of Sin;” Pali Gap - “Under
the Sun;” Paradyne - “Take Your Time;” Phyne Thanquz - “Into the Sun;”
Predatur - “Take a Walk;” Pyramid – “Star;” Reincarnate – “Take it or Leave
it;” Sapphire - “Jealousy;” Spitfire - “So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll
Star;” Squashed Pyrannah - “Heartstop;” Storm Queen - “Come Silent the
World;” Streetfighter - “Crazy Dream;” Track 4 – “Mr. Charisma” and Turbo -
“Charged For.... Glory.”
1982. Baby Tuckoo form, in Bradford, West Yorkshire; the odd band name
is a literary reference from James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man. The NWOBHM values of a baby band in 1982 seem to be quite
different from those of a baby band in 1979.
1982. Nightwing issue their second album, Black Summer. The band is more
of a ‘70s-style heavy band with prog touches, not really part of the NWOBHM
vibe, but dragged in that direction through their epic album cover art.
1982. Angel Witch, having broken up, reform with a radically different lineup,
i.e. Kevin Heybourne and two new members, one of which is Roger Marsden,
ex-E.F. Band.
1982. Voltz issue their Knight’s Fall full-length, on Airship.
1982. Brockley doom merchants Pagan Altar, in operation since 1978, issue
a self-titled cassette demo, but then nothing official until 1998, inciting
comparisons with America’s Pentagram, but shifted a generation later.

January 1982
January 1982. Gillan issue “Restless” b/w “On the Rocks (live)” as a single.
January 1982. Tygers of Pan Tang issue “Do it Good” as the second single
from Crazy Nights, backed with “Slip Away.” Also this month, Diamond Head
become label mates, signing on with MCA.
January 1982. Def Leppard issue as a single, a pioneering early power

ballad called “Bringin’ on the Heartbreak,” backed with rocking non-LPer
“Me and My Wine,” which becomes the subject of a particularly charming
NWOBHM-friendly production video.
January 1982. Girl issue “Old Dogs”/“Passing Clouds.”
January 1982. More lead singer Paul Mario Day (also ex-Iron Maiden) leaves
the band, scotching the planned release date of January 4th for the band’s
second album. Also this month, soon-to-be Iron Maiden drummer Nicko
McBrain leaves French rockers Trust.
February 1982
February 1982. Handsome Beasts issue “Sweeties.”
February 1982. Motörhead’s Motörheadbangers fan club opens a US

branch, with a PO Box in St. Louis, Missouri.
February 1982. The top ten “bores,”

according to Kerrang! readers voicing their
opinions in the annual readers poll, are
Adam Ant, Mods, Ritchie Blackmore, Futurist
Music, Motörhead, Status Quo, Top of the
Pops, New Romantics, Tony Blackburn and
the Royal Wedding. However Motörhead also
take #3 best band, as well as #1 best album
for No Sleep ‘til Hammersmith. Biff Byford
wins Tight Trousers (Male) and Kelly Johnson
of Girlschool takes Tight Trousers (Female).
More significantly, Kerrang! goes bi-weekly,
which speaks volumes for the volume of
metal up for discussion.

February 12, 1982. Iron Maiden issue “Run to the Hills”/“Total Eclipse.”
The a-side presents to the world a classic Iron Maiden “gallop,” which is
also a rhythmic riff pattern used by many other NWOBHM acts.
Iron Maiden bassist Steve Harris:

I think the gallop thing has worked because it’s aggressive. It’s fast,
it’s aggressive, you can put really good melodies over it. You can
interchange and do all kinds of stuff with it. It’s sing-along, it kind
of does everything, really. That’s not to say we sat down and thought
it’s got all these elements, let’s do that. It wasn’t like that at all. To
be honest a lot of that really came from Bebop Deluxe, believe it or
not. There’s an album called Sunburst Finish and there’s a song called
“Sleep That Burns” on it , and it’s very much where a lot of that sort
of stuff came from.
February 19, 1982. Long-suffering and impossible to categorize, Magnum

get a bit of a boost from the NWOBHM with their third album Chase
the Dragon, given many heavy metal fans’ appreciation of the band’s
prog rock tendencies. Marillion, IQ and Pallas also do well, prompting
talk of a new wave of British prog. Magnum’s sound is heavier, more
conventionally written, and oddly
somewhat poppier than that of
most prog bands, establishing
them as somewhat of a crossover
act in the wheelhouse of
Limelight, Saracen and Shiva. The
band’s use of Rodney Matthews
as cover ar tist helps the
association with metal as well.
Magnum vocalist Bob Catley:

Our first album, Kingdom of Madness, came out in 1978, and
people felt we were a dungeons and dragons band, because of the
artwork and some of the songs on there. So we had been called that.
That also came out at the time when there was something called the
New Wave of British Heavy Metal happening at the time, so we were
put into that slot as well. God knows why, but it didn’t do us any
harm, and we probably got more publicity than we would’ve gotten
otherwise. We didn’t mind that. We did do a couple of heavy songs
like “Back to Earth,” stuff we don’t do now because we’re not like
that anymore. But we were put in that bag, but that’s okay.
And we’ve been called orchestral rock (laughs), prog rock,
symphonic rock. Make another one up, you know? Because of the
keyboards, I suppose, the grandiose keyboards. They make us sound

like Emerson, Lake and Palmer (laughs). So I don’t mind what people
call us, as long as they enjoy the music and come round see us on tour.
Call us what you like, really. It’s all the same to me. I know what we
are. We’re just a damn good rock band, and that’s enough for me.
But everybody thought we were NWOBHM, so we just went with
it and did what we did. Call it what you like, but it was called New
Wave of British Heavy Metal. It was in the same camp as Iron Maiden
and Saxon, people like that. What the hell. It did us no harm at all. It
brought us to a lot of people’s attention, so I think was good that it
did happen. But we’ve never been a heavy metal band. We were a rock
band, a musical rock band, with harmonies and shit like that. We’re
not heavy metal. We can be quite heavy metal on stage when we need
to be, as on record. And we have very many lighter moments of
course, but you wouldn’t call us a cabaret band because we do a
ballad—we’re still a rock band.
February 22, 1982. Baron Rojo issue their second

album, Volumen Brutal, and Spain has their own
honourary NWOBHM band.
February 25, 1982. Iron Maiden begin their Number

of the Beast tour, called the Beast on the Road,
comprising many dates in the UK and Europe.
Iron Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith on

Bruce Dickinson joining the band:
Well, rock solid, great voice, great range,
and he’s very musical, he writes great songs, so he made an all-around
contribution. He’s probably one of the best front men in the business,
in terms of
performance and
still being able to
sing; it’s pretty
amazing. He
brought all that.
And then later on he
contributes to the
writing and he’s
full-on.
Bruce is slightly
more operatic and
probably has more range than Paul. His voice is a bit more durable;
it’s more like an instrument. I like Paul’s voice, he had a kind of a
rough gravely voice. I mean he had technique, as well. He could

hold notes. That was the difference, really. I’d say Bruce is more
operatic. With Bruce’s voice we could explore the more proggy side
of the band, especially now, as opposed to the more rock ‘n’ roll side.
Although we did some rock ‘n’ roll stuff when Bruce and I started
writing, “2 Minutes to Midnight” and “Prisoner” and all that stuff
which is more straight-ahead.
Iron Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson on Maiden’s particular

distinction amongst the pack:
Because it was manifestly different to all the other bands. And it was
just so bloody scary. I mean, it was really a fearsome thing, to go see
Maiden. You’d never seen anything quite like it. I mean, most of the
bands, most metal bands at the time, were relatively polite, really. And
most punk bands were, in their way, quite self-absorbed. You know,
they were pogoing or being gobbed on or making sure their safety
pins didn’t bugger about. But Maiden was just right there, in your
face. And musically spot on. You know, musically it was really sharp.
And that’s what made it completely unique. There was nothing like it.
February 27, 1982. Venom are the subject of a major feature, a two-page
spread, in Sounds, text by Gary Bushell, photography by Ross Halfin.
Early 1982. Guardian Records issue their Roxcalibur compilation, after

recording all the bands in January. As obscure as Guardian, Bleak House
issue “Lions in Winter.”
Early 1982. Ebony Records issues the Metal Fatigue compilation as their
first release; a highlight is new signing Savage, who appear now on record
for the second time, after their debut on the Scene of the Crime compilation.
Early 1982. Fist issues their second album

Back with a Vengeance, on Neat, after
having been dropped by MCA after their
1980 debut and revamping the lineup in
July of 1981.
Early 1982. A young metal fan named

Brian Slagel issues the first of his Metal
Massacre samplers. A huge NWOBHM
aficionado, his hobby aided and abetted by
his job duties at Oz Records, Slagel and his
subsequent nurturing of young LA bands
unwittingly takes part in shifting the metal
axis from England to Los Angeles.

Fist guitarist Dave Irwin on the difference between Back with a
Vengeance versus 1980’s Turn the Hell On:
Fist’s first album contained a mixture of some older songs that we
had written when we were called Axe, plus new songs. The old songs
were tried and tested live and we knew they went down well with
audiences. But the second album was done with a different lineup so it
obviously sounds slightly different—although still very recognizably
Fist! I have favourites from both albums but think the second album’s
overall sound is closer to how we were.
Neat Records had got us the deal with MCA, and they also signed
fellow Neat band Tygers of Pan Tang. The positives of that were
getting an album released on a major label, going on tour with a name
band and recording at a well-known studio, but the big negative was
not really having any control over the sound and production of the
first album, which didn’t capture the sound or energy of the band
even though there are some great songs on it.
All told, Fist were—and still are—a high energy, no nonsense rock
band. We were influenced by bands like Black Sabbath, Montrose,
Trapeze, early Scorpions, Van Halen, Deep Purple etc., too many to
mention. But as well as doing the usual powerful heavy metal/rock
band stuff, we tried to write memorable, catchy songs with good
choruses. Keith Satchfield, our original vocalist, came up with some
great lyrics that were a bit different from the normal style of rock
lyrics—although we were happy to that also. So yeah, things like
“Name, Rank and Serial Number,” “You’ll Never Get Me Up (In
One of Those)” and “Terminus” were a bit outside the norm.
It was great times, great memories, like with the first Fist lineup,
releasing our first single, “Name Rank and Serial Number,” which
is what you’re in a band for—getting that record out! Another one
is playing a full British tour with UFO and being asked to do two
nights with Iron Maiden at London’s legendary Marquee club. But
with Fist’s second lineup, best memory would be playing at our
local stadium at the Rock on the Tyne festival, with Diamond Head
and headliner Rory Gallagher, who is one of my favourite guitarists,
plus supporting Motörhead at the Hammersmith Odeon. Actually
another one would be recording a session for BBC’s Friday Rock
Show, presented by Tommy Vance. It’s what our albums should have
sounded like!
Still, I suppose like any movement—punk music was the same—
it will inevitably slow down and be replaced by other trends. But
there is still a great interest in this type of music and we have played
some fantastic gigs this last year, including headlining the opening
night at Brofest in Newcastle, plus playing the Keep it True festival in
Germany and Heavy Sound in Belgium.

March 1982
March 1982. Spider issue “Talkin’ ‘Bout Rock ‘n’ Roll”/“‘Till I’m Certain”
on Creole.
March 1982. Vardis issue Quo Vardis, which coughs up a single release for
album track “To Be with You.”

March 1982. Tank issue their debut
Filth Hounds of Hades, supporting
Motörhead’s dirtying up of the NWOBHM,
emphasizing speed, roughshod production
and hollering vocals. Concurrent single
release is “Turn Your Head Around,”
backed with “Steppin’ on a Landmine.”
Tank drummer Mark Brabbs:

Peter, and Al used to jam before
I joined the band; they used to just
get together and they used to be out
in the garden at my parents’ house.
They’d be in the garden jamming,
just two guitars each. I’d get out of
bed, get up in the morning, and they’d still be out there. They’d be
out there writing the songs; most of the songs on Filth Hounds were
written that way—both of them on guitar. It’s definitely the two of
them. They were the main instigators of that album, really.
And then when they got me in, that’s when we’d get started, sort of
taking the songs apart. I mean, nearly all the songs that Algy and Pete
wrote that way, they were all fast. Every single one was 100 miles an hour.
Like “Blood Guts & Beer,” and the song “Filth Hounds,” they were all
sort of twice the speed, and I slowed them down (laughs). So when the
arrangement came, I did a half beat, so to make it sort of more bluesy and a
bit more playable, and a bit more distinctive as opposed to just every song
being 100 miles an hour. And once I started doing that with their riffs,
that’s when we started doing songs like “Stormtrooper” and “Heavy
Artillery,” where they were more mid-paced. But if it was up to Pete and
Algy, everything would’ve been 100 miles an hour (laughs).
As for what Fast Eddie did, with all due respect, not much, really.
Because on the first album, you know, we’d spent a year, like writing it
as such. Just in the studio writing
songs. Then we spent a good
nine months touring it before we
actually got in to record. We went
to DJM Studios, and put down,
just the demos, with the DJM
engineer. And then Eddie came
along, and produced the single,
with a guy called Speedy Keen,
which was quite good. And I just think, he’d already done Girlschool
and wanted to just do another album. But as it happened, nearly
everything was done, so there was not, you know, not being disrespectful

to Eddie, because he’s done a good job, but there wasn’t really much left
for him to do apart from get a sound up, possibly, which the engineer
would’ve done anyway. So there wasn’t much rewriting in the studio.
Once we got in to do the album, it had all been done.
There was a ridiculous amount of drink and drugs. Well, especially
the first... oh no, probably the second album as well (laughs). Yeah,
there was. I mean, the first time we walked in to do the first album,
there was, I think two crates of Carlsberg Special Brew, there was
three bottles of whiskey, three bottles of vodka, a bottle of brandy, a
big chunk of cocaine, speed, rather, and we partied. And, you know,
the next day, it was exactly the same again. We were quite naïve. We
were only young lads, and so we thought, this is great. Of course, the
bill was ours, which we didn’t realize at the time. But it was great. I
wouldn’t change a thing. It was great fun. We had a great time.
But it wasn’t really a habit. It’s just young lads kipping, girls,
excesses. When you’re 21 and you’re given that sort of freedom, it’s
hard not to go off the rails bit. But really, to be perfectly honest, when
we got to the second album, in the studio, we started to be a bit more
sensible about what we were actually doing there. We knew to not
just party. The first album was definitely a party feel.
Generally, we’d go on forever. We’d sort of get there about... the taxis
would pick us up, we’d get there about 11, mid day, and we just go through
the night. But we did that on all the albums. But with the second album, as
I say, we were a bit more sane. And the third album was party time as well,
but only after we’d recorded. You know, we didn’t have that excess as we
did on the first recording. That was fun, but it wasn’t to be repeated, not
quite to that excess (laughs).
March 1982. Tygers of Pan Tang issue a muscular cover of “Love Potion No.
9” as a single, with different b-sides for the UK and US releases.
March 1982. Wolf issue “Head Contact” amidst

extensive UK tour dates with Scorpions, who were
about to break big with their new album Blackout.
March 1982. Uriah Heep issue Abominog, which

finds the band storming back on the strength
of the NWOBHM, which paved the way for easy
reception of all things heavy, another notable
beneficiary of this phenomenon being Budgie.
Abominog was a much heavier, rawer album than
the album before it, sporting an altered lineup (all
new except Mick, with Lee Kerslake returning to
the band), completely new sound, and an album cover featuring a slobbering
red demon.

Uriah Heep guitarist Mick Box on whether the NWOBHM had
inspired Abominog:
No, I don’t think it was an inspiration because we were still
doing our own thing. You’d still tend to go your own way. You
generally play music that excites you and you hope to get it across
to everyone else, and that passion shows through. But it was a
great moment for us, because again, as well, it was accepted readily
by the British press, which… they don’t always help their own
(laughs). But this time they were just full of praise, and it was
unnerving (laughs).
It was a very, very ‘80s album, I have to say. But it was a massive
album for us, and it opened up a lot of avenues for us in America
again. It was great, and we went out and tour on the back of it with
Def Leppard, who were of course huge at that time, the biggest
thing since sliced bread, over there. It was a great time for us, a very
exciting time, because it really did open up the market overseas,
which was wonderful.
Basically that whole album, it was almost written at the audition
stage (laughs), of the band. Because we all got together in one room,
just to try to see if it was going to work, and within a couple of weeks
we had actually written that album. And there was never any need for
me to say you’re in or you’ve got the job, because it was so natural
that we just moved on at a rate of knots and it was all done.
Uriah Heep drummer Lee Kerslake:

Remember, there was a brand-new band with John Sinclair, Pete
Goalby, and Bob Daisley came with me from Ozzy, and with Mick,
and we decided to write another heavy album. And everybody,
like Mickey, they all loved Diary of a Madman, and we kept some
ideas that we hadn’t used with them, we put them down, and that
eventually became Abominog.
March 1982. Light touch

Grand Prix issue a second
album, called There for
None to See. Ex-vocalist
Bernie Shaw will
eventually wind up in
Uriah Heep. New Grand
Prix vocalist Robin
McAuley (ex-Raw Deal) will
eventually join forces with
Michael Schenker.

March 1, 1982. Krokus issue their sixth album, One Vice at a Time. For
all intents and purposes, Switzerland’s biggest band ever is an honourary
NWOBHM on the level of Germany’s Accept and Sortilege and Warning, both
from France. Upon the death of Bon Scott, vocalist Marc Storace was one
candidate considered to replace Scott, as was Nazareth’s Dan McCafferty.
Krokus vocalist Marc Storace on One Vice at a Time:

Our producer Tony Platt worked with AC/DC and it gave him
the credibility to work with us. From my point of view he was really
great. We worked together again on Alive and Screamin’. With Tom,
again, it was great working with him as a singer. The other guys, I
don’t know, they always find the hair in the soup. I am an easy-going
guy to work with. For me, just open the microphone and let me do it
and then we can go over corrections. I am like, “Let’s warm up. You
do the levels. Then we can go for some takes. Once we do a few takes
then we start jumping tracks.” We just go for the best one and then let
the other guys in and see what they think, then do repair work.
The thing is we worked at Battery Studio doing One Vice at a Time
with Tony Platt. AC/DC was in the same studio mixing For Those
About to Rock, the one with the cannon. “For those about to rock—
boom—we salute you!” Mysterious things were happening. We
already had a design with a cannon to be on our album cover on
One Vice at a Time. What we ended up doing for our album cover I
find nicer today. We put the gates there, which we later had built to
use live.
But AC/DC was mixing there and they were there with Robert
John “Mutt” Lange. Malcolm Young was there, and he liked keeping
an oversight on things. Most of the time, he was in the green room
smoking. He was friendly. Then Robert “Mutt” Lange popped
his head in while I was doing a take. The take was “Playing the
Outlaw.” He hung around for a while. They were talking and stuff
and it was amazing. I popped my head in and listened to something
by Brian Johnson. The music was going in and out so I could hear
him raw. I was like, “Wow, what a special voice this guy has. If I try
to sing like him I will destroy my voice.” It is all scratchy. Oh boy,
too much for me—I would ruin my voice!
Bon and I have the same influences. We have the same likes. When
you go back into his history and see some of the old stuff that
Bon sang in his videos and stuff before AC/DC, and you see that
he was also into that fashion thing, which I was with Tea. In the
very beginning of Krokus, we dropped that and became more like
rock ‘n’ roll animals. Now we are into the leather and denim again.
Leather and denim was a big thing in the New Wave of British

Heavy Metal. The hard rock fans had patches on the jackets of their
favourite bands. It was a great sight to see when you saw a sea of
jackets. Everybody had their patches and they would walk by and
you would watch everyone that walked by to see what band was on
the jackets. Everyone had a collector’s item and he was wearing it and
he never washed it!
Early March 1982. Girl issue their second and last album, Wasted Youth,
which reaches #92 on the UK charts. It is a considerably scrappier affair,
representing a search for answers, which was perhaps starting to happen
within the genre writ large.
Girl vocalist Phil Lewis on Wasted Youth versus the debut:

We weren’t musicians, we really weren’t. We hadn’t been trained
in anything. It was really like three chord rock. We were surprised as
anyone that at first we got a deal and before we know it, we’re on tour
and our music is being taken seriously to the point of actually being
analyzed. That was weird. I mean, musically growing—and growing
up period—in public is difficult, sometimes painful, and that’s what
we did. The first album was just kind of like rough ideas, and then the
second album we’d been on tour a couple of times and we had an idea
of what was going to work live. Because when we wrote the first Girl
album we’d never done a tour or anything.
Sheer Greed was good; they definitely captured something, the
effervescence I think we had. The second album, we had been out
on tour with some very heavy bands and we knew the riffs and the
grooves that worked and we just sort of actualized them. But we just
weren’t that good. And it was weird to find us lumped in with the

NWOBHM. We were listening to bands like Japan and David Bowie
more than the metal. And Jet Records, they were sort of tuned into
the metal scene, and that’s where they pushed it. But it was a little
difficult because we weren’t really that heavy.
Early March 1982. Soldier issue “Sheralee”/“Force,” on Heavy Metal

Records; the track is the follow-up to their appearance on the Heavy Metal
Heroes compilation. Like Trespass, Soldier are considered to be a band that
could have gone places had a full-length record come to fruition.
March 13, 1982. Demon

issue “One Helluva
Night”/“Into the Nightmare,”
the final single from the their
1981 debut.
Demon vocalist Dave

Hill on Demon’s
French record label,
Carrere:
They were quite good,
because in terms of
British bands, they
had Saxon plus Rose
Tattoo, from Australia.
At that time, for the
first two albums, they
were the right company
to be with. Initially
they were very much
a European disco label
and Pete Hinton was very much a rock guy and he was responsible
for a lot of the newer bands. He was instrumental in turning Carrere
at that time into a main force. Looking back at that time, they were a
good label for us. I remember that Carrere had one of these big parties
in England at the time, and most of the bands in there, Saxon, those
bands were always around at that time. Although we didn’t actually
do a lot of appearing with one another; we didn’t actually cross paths
very much.
March 19, 1982. Death of Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Randy Rhoads. One of
the great quasi-NWOBHM bands loses a star attraction as exciting and buzz-
worthy as Ozzy himself.

March 29, 1982. Iron Maiden issue The Number
of the Beast, their third album and first featuring
Bruce Dickinson as vocalist. The album has sold 14
million copies worldwide, peaking at the time at #1
in the UK and #33 in the US, extra buzz afforded
Maiden through the “Satanic panic” of the early
‘80s, a fear of the devil in heavy metal music (and
child care centers) stirred up by TV talk shows and
self-proclaimed modern-day witch-hunters.

Going from Paul down into Bruce was a
tough transition in a lot of ways because we
had already been successful and it was very
tough because we knew there was an element
of danger in changing personnel. But we
knew we had to do it because we knew we
couldn’t long-term stay with Paul, because he wasn’t really interested
in touring and being on the road for long periods of time.
So that was one of the main elements, and then when Bruce joined
I think he just brought another element to the band because of his
enthusiasm for one thing, but also his vocal style. His voice has a lot
more power, so you could
actually write more intricate,
difficult things, if you like,
and throw them at him and
he’d just lap them up. But
also, his vocal style I think
was probably more
mainstream rock, really, than
metal. Though he can sing
higher, his vocal style was
more akin to someone like
Ian Gillan than, say, Paul
Rodgers or Robert Plant. So
it gave us a different element
yet again.
And change, it’s like
anything. If you have to
have a change, make sure it’s
a good one. You’ve got to
make sure someone’s as
good or better, and he was better without a doubt. And so right from
the start, okay, we’d come out of a really strong album and the

pressure was there. The first two albums, bulk of that material, I
think there was only three new songs on the second album. It went
from the four or five year period before that when those albums
were made.
So you come to the third album,
there’s a lot of pressure, we’ve
got a new singer—and we’ve got
no material left. We’ve run out
of material, and we’ve only got
about three weeks to write it. So
there was a lot of pressure, really,
to come up with the goods. And
that’s what set the scene for the
way we write to this day. We allow
a four-week period to write, and
just put immense pressure on
ourselves. It’s kind of a masochistic
thing to do, but it works.
As for the songs, well,
“Hallowed” has been in the set
since we first recorded it in ‘82. It’s
28 years old now, that song, and it still feels as fresh as it was written
like two years ago or something. And I don’t really know why that
is; it’s just one of those songs. But we’ve got a few songs like that that
we still play—even “Number of the Beast”—that don’t feel old. “Iron
Maiden” itself, from the first album, in fact, still feels energetic and
frenetic as ever.
Again, whatever feels right is right, I think is the answer to that
one. That’s more where that story end. It’s still feeling right now. We
still play it, we still enjoy playing it, it’s still a really strong song. If
someone had said to me at the time, “Are you still going to be playing
that song 30 years away?,” I probably would have laughed at him. But
it’s still there and it’s still an essential part of Maiden.
And I suppose if I had to say to someone who’s never heard
Maiden before, to listen to something that describes Maiden the
best, it probably would be that. It’s got a good sing-along, it’s
got melodies, it’s got harmonies, it’s got a quiet intro, it’s got an
ominous beginning, it builds up to a crescendo at the end, goes a bit
mad at the end, and it’s got the return at the end almost, a bit more
regimented—it’s got everything.
Journalist Carl Begai on Iron Maiden’s lyrics:

Steve Harris borrowed from books and put them to music. They took
from the whole realm of fantasy and as well, they might use actual

cultural references or literary references, like “Rime of the Ancient
Mariner” for instance. And yeah, they raised it a notch or ten with the
storytelling, which, of course, Maiden made cool. It no longer had to
be dumb boy/girl shit all the time.
SPV Records executive Olly Hahn:

On Number of the Beast, they told stories, like “Children of the
Damned” about a guy who would be hanged or “The Number of
the Beast” or “Run to the Hills,” and on Piece of Mind, “Flight of
Icarus.” And many bands adopted that and said, okay, I want to tell
stories too.
Iron Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson on Number of the Beast:

It was the third album, which traditionally is the album that a lot of
people pay attention to. And on the third album, they had something
extra to throw into the plot, which was me. So it was a combination
of Maiden’s style, which was already fairly well-established, along
with me, and they also had the maturation, if you like, of Adrian and
Dave working together. Adrian hadn’t been on the first album. They
wanted him on, but he turned it down. And so Killers, he just came
in and played the parts. By the time it got to Number of the Beast, we
were all jelling together.
And you know, I think the vocals made a bit of a difference,
frankly. Paul had a very guttural voice, and it had a style and a charm
which was unique. How far it could go was, you know, questionable.
I think Steve was questioning that. He wanted a voice that could do
a lot more with a bigger range. And I stepped into the breach, really,
and I suppose, as well as the range, I also had a kind of theatrical
approach to the presentation, and also to the delivery. You know, I’m
not effectively a sort of blues-based American-sounding singer.
Diamond Head guitarist Brian Tatler on the NWOBHM’s

crowning moment:
I suppose maybe the peak
might have been Iron
Maiden’s releasing Number
of the Beast, and it becoming
like a #1 album, and then
being on things like Top
of the Pops and things like
that. So it’s almost or kind
of mainstream, isn’t it? It
was played on Radio One, and most of the other bands could only
aspire to that. But it did seem there was a bit of bandwagon-jumping.

Anybody that was a bit rocky was suddenly, “Oh yeah, we’re a New
Wave of British Heavy Metal band.” And if you were a true new
wave, you kind of looked down your nose at these bands, jumping on
the scene in 1982, ‘83, ‘84, and saying, “Well, where were you?”
March 29, 1982. Girlschool issue their “Wildlife”/“Don’t Call it Love” single,
also available as a three-track 12”, which adds non-LPer “Don’t Stop.”
April 1982
April 1982. Mama’s Boys issue their

debut single of many songs to come,
“Belfast City Blues”/“Reach for the
Top” while Panza Division offers the
promising “We’ll Rock the
World”/“Standing on the Outside”
and Silverwing chime in with “Sittin’
Pretty” in 7” and 12” formats. Best
of the bunch, Holocaust issues the
“Coming Through” 12”.
April 1982. Jaguar work on their

forthcoming “Axe Crazy” single at
Impulse Studios in Newcastle. Adding
insult to injury at being late to the
party is the fact that their sound is so
convincingly an embracing of original
NWOBHM tenets.
April 2, 1982. Diamond Head issue the Four Cuts EP, continuing to build a
complicated catalogue, which speaks nicely to the indie culture of the NWOBHM.
April 3, 1982. Motörhead issue “Iron Fist”/“Remember Me, I’m Gone” as

an advance single from Iron Fist; it rises to #29 on the UK charts.
Motörhead guitarist Fast Eddie Clarke on the writing of “Iron Fist:”

I’d kind of give that one to Lem. See, we’d been in rehearsal; I can
remember this actually. We’d sit there and we’d be trying to write a
tune. And Lemmy would go, “Okay, let’s do one like this” (sings the
“Iron Fist” riff), you see what I mean? And that’s how that one came
about. So he started doing that, and I remember coming in and Phil
just started playing the drums. And once we’d jammed off on it, then
we shaped it up later.

April 10, 11, 1982. Witchfinder
General record at Metro Sound
Studios, Mansbury, tracks to
comprise their seminal neo-doom
debut, Death Penalty.
Heavy Metal Records’ Paul

Birch on the band’s low
expectations:
The guys were emerging.
Didn’t realize then, probably
still don’t realize now, quite what they’d got. But they quite possibly
traveled a much further distance than they ever imagined they would.
Many rock bands believed they were on a straightforward trajectory
to Mars. These guys believed they were on a straightforward
trajectory to the other side of Stonebridge, where they came from. So
their expectations weren’t particularly high.
But their abilities
outweighed their
expectations, which is
the reverse of most rock
groups, whose expectations
outweigh their abilities
(laughs). There was another
group called Witchfynde,
who were signed to
Rondelet Records. Plus
there was Angel Witch. So
there was a bit of confusion
at the time because of
Witchfinder General. But
once dust was settled,
people could see they
were different groups and
they weren’t competing in
exactly the same space.
April 17, 1982. Motörhead issue Iron Fist, which is considered a bit of a
disappointment after Ace of Spades. It peaks at #6 on the UK charts. It’s
the last Motörhead album for guitarist Fast Eddie Clarke.

Motörhead guitarist Fast Eddie Clarke
By Iron Fist we were getting a little bit dry on ideas. They weren’t
coming so easily. We were having to work harder and also we were
being more picky about them. We were kind of finding fault with
everything. It must be the same for all bands. It just gets a bit tricky
when you’ve done four albums. You start scrutinizing everything
and you start disallowing things because you don’t want to piss the
fans off. We can’t do this, we can’t do that, and then at the end of the
fucking day you’ve shot yourself up the ass, and it made Iron Fist a
difficult album to do.
And we didn’t use Vic Maile on that either. That was one of the
instances where Phil’s drum kit came into it again. He changed his kit
again. And when we came to do Iron Fist and we did some demos,
some early recordings with Vic, Phil didn’t like the drum sound he
was getting down there and he had a big row with Vic Maile and he
refused to work with him anymore.
So we had to find another producer. Well, in those days producers
didn’t come cheap. They were really expensive. And of course, we
weren’t getting very much money because our management didn’t
pay us much, a couple hundred pound a week. So we were getting
these producers like Chris Tsangarides, John Anthony, people like
that, and we’re sitting down and one of them says, “Well, I’ll do it
for £10,000.” And me and Phil looked at each other and said, “Well,
fuck that” (laughs). And then the other guy wanted 20 grand! We said,
“Fuck this,” know what I mean? So at the end of the day, it was like,
I had just done a Tank album, and they’re all going, “Well, why don’t
you do it?” So it was kind of a bit like that. So I ended up doing it,
although it was really Will Reid Dick, the engineer guy who we had
worked with before. But these things kind of happen, you know?”
Motörhead drummer Phil Taylor on Iron Fist:

I don’t know if it was rushed or not. I mean, as each album came
and went, it got quicker, as in the time it took to record an album. We
were never ones to stay in the studio for a lot of time. For one, we
couldn’t afford it, and for two, we weren’t that kind of band. Most
of the stuff we played live in the studio, and then there would just be
obviously guitar overdubs and bass overdubs and vocals of course.
But all the drums and all the albums were always live. I never did any
overdubs, and the rhythm guitars are always live. But I don’t really
remember Iron Fist taking any less time to do than any of the others,
really. I seem to remember there was a bit of animosity or shit going
on, because it was produced by Eddie and Will Reid Dick. It was very
low-key and was probably mainly between Eddie and Lemmy.

April 26, 1982. Iron Maiden issue “The Number of the Beast”/“Remember
Tomorrow (live),” with the a-side becoming one of the biggest songs of
the entire NWOBHM era, if indeed one allows Bruce-era Iron Maiden into
the club, or for that matter, 1982 into the temporal parameters of what
constituted the genre.

Before Bruce joined, I wrote most of the stuff because no one else
was writing, so the pressure was on me big time. Once Bruce became
embedded in the band and he became more confident and he was
able to start writing, then it was great, and we were both heavily into
history. So we both, over the years, have taken a lot of things from
historical moments in time, or literary stuff. Sometimes it’s fictional
but most of it has a historical essence to it.
I think he did a degree in history or something like that. I didn’t get
that far with it; I kind of got bored and left. We were both heavily into
that kind of stuff, and I think lyrically you’re looking for something
you can get your teeth into when you’re writing. You really need
something that’s strong that you can visualize when you’re writing.
You get strong melodies, and then you get a feeling for the melody
and it sparks off some sort of element of what you’re going to write
about. And then once you’ve got the basic element of what you’re
writing about, if you’ve got something like history, if you don’t know
about it already, you can go and research it and find out more; it just
gives you a lot, lyrically, to use.
I don’t really know why those things worked with the sound of
Maiden, really, because we never really analyzed it. We just did it and
that’s what felt right to do. So we never really sat back and thought
does this suit it or not because it just did. And we didn’t really
question it. And also medieval stuff like Jethro Tull kind of influenced
our music, and that British medieval feel came about from the similar
schooling that we all had, the subjects we were taught in school,
and the whole sort of Britishness, if you like, with the way we were
brought up.
And that had a big influence not only on the melodies—because
there’s lots of kind of medieval influences in the melodies—but also
the lyrics. But if you listen to Wishbone Ash, the Argus album, you
can hear Maiden all over it. Not because we’ve nicked bits, because
we haven’t, but it’s just, again, the medieval feel to it. You listen to
some of the Jethro Tull stuff, same sort of thing. Even if you listen to
thrash now I think people would be able to hear it.

May 1982
May 1982. Saxon issue

a single LP live album
called The Eagle Has
Landed, which features new
drummer Nigel Glockler, who
had replaced Pete Gill in
late 1981.
Saxon guitarist Paul

Quinn on the hiring
on of Nigel:
We got him in for
the Eagle Has Landed tour, which is what it
became to be called later. I don’t know what
we called the tour, but Pete Gill injured his
hand, and Nigel was in a band with half of
our management team, David Poxon, called
Krakatoa. And not only was he a fan, but
among some of the other people we had to
audition, he was the only one who could
handle the gig. Others were like pretending
that they could play their instruments (laughs),
and he could actually do it, even though he had
been in what amounts to a popular punk band
at the time, which was Toyah.
And he’d got that kind of English shuffle
style already by then. The difference between
him and Pete Gill was that Pete Gill was more
John Bonham, and Nigel was towards Neil
Peart and Ian Paice, which fit in great with our
style as well, because we were a punky version
of most of these bands (laughs).
Saxon drummer Nigel Glockler on getting the Saxon gig:

I knew one half of their management team; I’d been in a band with
him during the late ‘70s. He made the first move and rang me up. I
think they had heard my playing on a hit single I had with the band I
was with, so they were up for me coming along.
I had a blast with them one Sunday evening to see if it would work,
as I’d offered to stand in for a couple of weeks, as I had recording
commitments with Toyah, the band I was in. We got together in
Brighton on Monday, and the first gig was on that Wednesday and

I’d bought tickets to see them! It’s actually two days I had to learn it
all, but I did have a notebook for guidance for a couple of weeks after
that. I’d written stuff down like which guitarist starts what song, etc.
May 1982. Ethel the Frog offshoot act Salem issue their double a-side
single “Reach to Eternity”/“Cold as Steel,” managing some coverage in
Kerrang!. Although there would be no further output (until reunion), two more
demos would emerge, in ‘82 and ‘83.
May 1982. Motörhead and Wendy O. Williams, ahead of the band’s first
headlining tour in the US, enter studios in Toronto (backing tracks) and New
York (Wendy joins in) to record a rendition of Tammy Wynette’s “Stand by
Your Man,” prompting Fast Eddie to quit the band.
May 1982. RCA betray their status as also-rans,

with their heavy-ish compilation Hot Shower.
May 1, 1982. Iron Maiden continue their Number

of the Beast tour, but now in America, supporting
Scorpions who are promoting Blackout.

June 1982
June 1982. Bitches Sin issue their one and only LP,
Predator, on Heavy Metal Records, who also issue
Split Beaver’s When Hell Won’t Have You. Both,
logically, should be advancing the genre over the
records of 1980 and 1981 but neither do.
June 1982. Bernie Tormé issues his debut album,

Turn Out the Lights, which generates a single in
“America”/“Chelsea Girls.”
June 1982. Shywolf, formerly Spoonful and then

Blitz, issue “Lucretia.”
June 1982. Tygers of Pan Tang issue the surprisingly poppy “Rendezvous” as
a single.
June 1, 1982. Iron Maiden continues touring the states, now supporting 38
Special who should have brought bigger firepower.
June 3, 1982. Raven issue their second album, Wiped Out, produced by
Keith Nichol and recorded at Impulse Studios, Wallsend, Tyne and Wear. The
album is both faster and more muscular than the debut, Raven establishing
themselves as true pioneers of speed metal, if not thrash.

I don’t know if it was an improvement in the sound over the debut,
but it’s definitely more wild and energetic. We ended up with this
guy who took over the engineering, and it was one of his first ever
projects. That is an example where the wrong mix was used on an
album. That’s why the vocals are a little low on the whole thing. We
had been writing and they were songs that were relatively fresh, that
we were writing around Rock Until You Drop, and you know, you
can only put so many songs on a record. We just really wanted to
make a crazy record. And I think the whole thing was done in maybe
six or seven days. That and the Crash Bang Wallop EP, were just bang,
really quick.
June 7, 1982. Girlschool

issue their third album,
Screaming Blue Murder.
The polish and
mainstream songwriting
on the album helps
underscore the idea that
the NWOBHM is running
out of them—ideas,
that is.
June – July 1982.

Tank occasionally get
sober enough to record
tracks for their second
album, at Surrey Sound,
Leatherhead. Producer is
Nigel Gray, known for his
work with The Police.
Mid-1982. Three singles

from the middle of
the year are Bashful
Alley’s “Running Blind,”
Buffalo’s “Mean
Machine” and Moby
Dick’s “Nothing to Fear.”

Mid-1982. Ebony issues their second important compilation, Metallic Storm.
Mid-1982. Gaskin issue their second LP,

No Way Out (heavier and less dated
against the debut—a vast improvement)
as well as their “Mony Mony” 7”. The
band would break up in Februar y of the
following year.
Gaskin guitarist and vocalist

Paul Gaskin:
No Way Out was a different
album altogether. If anything we
over-compensated on this and made
it too dry. Also, we weren’t sure
if Bren should sing on it or not, as
he had only been with us a short

time, and mainly for his front man skills. I didn’t want him to sing
on it, but Dave did, and we had many clashes over that and other
things, but I gave up in the end. It was recorded during the Falklands
conflict, so between takes, we would be glued to the TV to see the
latest. And that single, “Mony Mony,” that was just a stab at getting
radio play. It worked too—we were played on all the major radio
stations in the UK, but it never charted sadly.
We toured with Wishbone Ash, which was brilliant and a
nightmare at the same time. We toured in a converted single-decker
bus, and the damn thing kept breaking down. Fortunately, Baggy
was a mechanic, so he pretty much kept us going, though sometimes
he would be playing on stage still covered in oil and grease from his
labours! It was our first major support tour, so we made the most of
it. But half-way through we had run out of money, so we used to steal
Ash’s sandwiches out of their dressing room to stop from starving. It
really did get that desperate. Still good fun though.
July 1982
July 1982. Rage issue “Woman” as the

only single from Nice ‘n’ Dirty, issued
this month.
July 1982. Dumpy’s Rusty Nuts issue “Just

for Kicks” and then quickly find people
take offense to their name, precipitating a
change to Dumpy’s Rusty Bolts.
July 17, 1982. Judas Priest issue

Screaming for Vengeance, which finds
the band heeding the call of their metal
army in revolt and reversing the jets on
the “pop metal” of Point of Entry, this
one being a much heavier album, even if
the sound is still dumbed-down and not
the cerebral metal that garnered them such a reputation in the late ‘70s. All
told, the record subtly represents an Americanization of Priest, which, in the
wider context, represents a shift of aggregate metal attention away from the
UK toward the US, specifically California.
Judas Priest vocalist Rob Halford:

The tremendous reaction to Screaming for Vengeance was propelled
by the way radio embraced the song, “You’ve Got Another Thing

Comin’” which became part of rock ‘n’ roll history. You get a record
that goes platinum pretty quickly in America, at least, and naturally
everybody’s stoked and excited and you’re ready to get to that next
level, whatever that might be. There is always an element of uncertainty
in rock ‘n’ roll. You play your heart out and you write and record
the best you can, but there is no guarantee what the outcome will
be. Having said that, we were completely immersed in this amazing
time that we had, particularly in the States, which wound up at the now
iconic and infamous US Festival. We shared the stage with our mates
on 5/29/’83: Ozzy was there, Crue was there, Triumph was there, Van
Halen was there, the Scorpions were there—and Priest was there.
Summer 1982. Rox issue “Hot Love in the City,” an early attempt from a UK
band trying to participate in a growing shift toward the coming metal revolution
happening across the pond. Meanwhile, Legend issue a second and last
album called Death in the Nursery and Apocalypse issue “Stormchild.”
August 1982
August 1982. Black Rose issue their debut single, “No Point
Runnin’”/“Sucker for Your Love.”
Raven bassist and vocalist John Gallagher on bands from elsewhere:

Obviously the whole Newcastle area was very influential, just because
there was a couple of studios. There were a few bands from down in
Durham; Black Rose was a band from down there that were pretty good.
Saracen, our old friend Lou used to sing with them for a while. Sheffield
was Def Leppard and I think that was about it. Manchester… I mean
there were one-offs. Cardiff had Persian Risk, decent band, and Scotland
had Holocaust. And there were a lot of bands obviously around the
London area who could gravitate to the business end of things.
August 1982. Jaguar issue their “Axe

Crazy”/“War Machine” 7”. The single is a
big seller for Neat, and got the band in the
Kerrang! and Sounds charts. Both tracks are
available on the ‘99 reissue of Power Games,
as is compilation-only track “Dirty Tricks.”
Neither “Axe Crazy” or “War Machine” made it
to either of the band’s two records at the time.
August 1982. Saracen issue “No More Lonely

Nights”/“Rock of Ages,” both of which are
album tracks. Meanwhile, Stockton-on-Tees
AORists Mass issue “Rebel With A Cause.”

August 1982. After leader Kenny Cox completely guts and reconstitutes the
band’s lineup, More issue their second and last album, the classic Blood
& Thunder. Oddly, it’s issued in the US but not in their home country. Also,
previous month, the band issue the non-LP “Trickster” single, backed with a
version of “Hey Joe.” Also in August, ex-More vocalist Paul Mario Day and his
new band Wildfire are busy recording a debut record in Belgium.
August 1982. Phil Collen, ex-Girl, lands the gig as Def Leppard’s new
guitarist, replacing NWOBHM heart and soul of the original sound Pete Willis.
August 1982. Heavy Pettin’ issue “Roll the Dice”/“Love Times Love,” on
Neat, just before the band ink their deal with Polydor.
August 1982. Tygers of Pan Tang issue their fourth album, The Cage, which
takes the band in a poppy direction. The album is a UK hit, selling over
200,000 copies and spawning two Top 50 hit singles, “Love Potion #9” and
“Rendezvous.” Concurrent with the release of the album, “Paris by Air” is
issued as the album’s third single. Also in ‘82, Japan issues a compilation
called Tygers of Pan Tang.

MCA wanted us to do well in the States and thought we needed a
more melodic approach, so they drafted in Peter Collins, who’d never
done a rock album before. We were the guinea pigs. He’d only done
pop artists before. And he did a fantastic job on the album, but the
only trouble is we wrote about three or four songs for the album. All
the rest were from outside songwriters, which really… it saddened
me, because I thought to myself, Wild Cat went to the charts at #13,
Spellbound charted at #18. And this is not the rock charts—this is the
national British charts with Earth, Wind & Fire, Michael Jackson,
Diana Ross and all these massive artists. For a NWOBHM band, as it
were, to chart that high, I thought to myself, well we must be writing
okay songs here, because people are buying them.
So I couldn’t see why the record company wanted us to play outside
songwriters’ songs, because that was a form of parody, a form of early
karaoke, and it really went against the grain. And so the product, The
Cage, which is the most commercial Tygers album, maybe it wasn’t really
a Tygers album. I don’t know. It certainly was a million miles away from
Wild Cat, that’s for sure. And it did okay. I think it did sort of mid 30s,
but it certainly didn’t achieve a place as high as Wild Cat or Spellbound.
August 1982. The flow of singles from the Gillan band continues unabated,
with “Living for the City”/“Breaking Chains” and “Living for the City”/“Purple
Sky,” both this month.

August 1982. Spider issue the “Rock ‘n’ Roll Forever” four-track EP on RCA,
as well as a single version.
August 1982. Demon issue their second album,

The Unexpected Guest, on Carrere. “Have We
Been Here Before?” is issued concurrently as
a single.
Demon vocalist Dave Hill:

Compared to the first album, the
songs on The Unexpected Guest tended
to be more of an observation of things
unknown. “Don’t Break the Circle”
was about the 13 disciples as opposed
to the 12 disciples at sort of the devil’s
table, as it were. “Sign of the Madman”
was actually about the guy who shot John Lennon; that’s how that
came about. And I think even in “The Spell,” we mention the 13
disciples. I think “The Spell” was an observation on something we
read about Aleister Crowley at the time. Apparently there was some
sort of reference in a book about when he tried to summon up the
devil (laughs) I think in the 1920s in a room in Paris. So that was
mentioned in there. There’s a track on there, “Strange Institution,”
that was based around my father, who died at that time. He just
became a different person; he had changed. And it was just another
observation on things that take over for people and you don’t know
why these things happen.
“Have We Been Before” was a good straight track, that one. We did
play that a while ago and we hadn’t played that for quite some time.
We tried to put together some acoustic tracks when we did do that
one. But that was very much a deja vu type thing about things that go
on in life; I think that one speaks for itself. “The Grand Illusion” is
about getting mixed up on drink and things overtake you. We always
had this underlying thing about, not so much, the devil thing, but
things that are just unknown to everybody, why these things happen.
And I think once we got in the flow of writing the album, they were
all along those sorts of lines.
As for the gatefold pictures, that was just something we used
on stage at the time, the mask of the Father of Time and the other
one depicting The Madman. In the early days, I used to come out
of a grave on stage (laughs) and we did certain characters like The
Madman and the Father of Time. So that represented something we
were doing on stage at the time. I don’t know who’s idea it was, but
they were put into the album. It was just something we were doing

as part of the stage show and it tended to work. I think the reason
that album came off so well is because it was simply written, simply
recorded; it was nothing more than that. We were basically going for a
very simple rock album, very commercial.
We did quite an extensive tour in Britain at the time, because we
did two albums with Carrere. We were actually due to do quite an
extensive European tour with Ian Gillan, which strangely enough,
didn’t come off at the time. That was the one thing we can maybe
point a finger at Carrere. The album charted in Britain and got great
reviews, and they should’ve got behind it in Europe, because it did
well in Europe as well. But we didn’t tour Europe, which was a
problem. They should have got behind it, because we knew there
were a lot of tours we could’ve got on. We did a lot of interviews,
we did the circuit, all the things a band should do. But with the stage
show we were using, and with the popularity of the album, I think
Carrere could have taken it further. There were signs there that the
album was breaking. There was nothing more we could do. We had
written the album and the band was performing it; the reviews were
great. And I think Carrere were getting to the point where, it wasn’t
long after that they went off the rock thing totally and went back to
disco. The album was right, the band was right, everything was right,
the company just didn’t go with it. The timing was not right.
August 1982. Warrior issues a three-tracker, a-side being “Dead When it

Comes to Love.” The material was recorded live in the studio in March of
‘82. Meanwhile, Liaison issue “Play it with Passion”/“Caught in a Landslide”
on Catweazle Records.
August 2, 1982. The first Edinburgh Jam Heavy Rock Festival features
Grand Prix, Pallas, Snakebite and Chainsaw, along with a Scottish Open
Headbanging Championship.
August 13, 1982. Venom issue their “Bloodlust”/“In Nomine Satanas”

single, which wins single of the week in Sounds. From the sessions that
generate the single tracks also comes “Senile Decay,” later issued on a
compilation.
Venom guitarist Mantas on the NWOBHM:

I think it came along at the right time. People were waiting for
it but they didn’t know what they were waiting for and then it just
happened. In Britain there was a huge convergence of metal. It was
amazing; it was a breath of fresh air. I remember in Newcastle, every
Friday and Saturday night you could go to a club called the Mayfair
you would see Angel Witch, Samson, Witchfynde, Iron Maiden,

Witchfinder General. Every week you can guarantee there was
someone there. And it was just needed at the time. Without that metal
had become stale.
And getting onto a different thing, with us coming out and saying
we are black metal. I remember doing an interview with a journalist
years and years ago and it was just before the recording of the album
Black Metal, and at the time in Britain, if you had long hair and a
guitar, you were considered a heavy metal band. So you had all the
likes of Journey, REO Speedwagon, Foreigner, all these AOR types,
they were all considered heavy metal bands in Britain. And we
thought, well if this is fucking heavy metal, we want nothing to do
with it. We came off the back of the punks. We didn’t give a fuck, we
wanted to tear people’s heads off, we wanted to turn everything up to
15 and make a noise.
So we said if that is heavy metal, it’s got fuck-all to do with us, so
we turned around when they said what are you? Because Britain has
to pigeonhole everything, you’ve got to be in a category, so we said,
“We are black metal!” And then now fuckin’ hell, presto, here we are,
every band in the world is a black metal band. And after that Black
Sabbath even got called a black metal band. But the NWOBHM
had such a huge impact and it’s making a bit of a comeback as well,
because a lot of those bands are playing at the Wacken festival—
they’re all there again. Thin Lizzy is headlining one night. How I
don’t know (laughs). I don’t know where Phil Lynott is. But I’ve
always said that anybody who is flying the flag of metal has to be
doing some good at some point. Anybody who is in a metal band
and continues this form of music is doing something good. Because
without evolving, it becomes extinct. You’ll be forgotten about. So
anybody who is out there, get a guitar and get a metal band going.
Venom bassist and vocalist Cronos on being out of tune:

Yeah, we didn’t give a shit. All the first Venom records are all in a
different tuning. We used to just say, “Who sounds in tune?,” and
then we’d just change to match that guy. And we changed speeds a lot
too. That was all part of it. A song should change, it should never be
the same time after time after time. One other thing about the tuning
as well, which is quite interesting, like Mantas would go home and
put on a Kiss album and sit and play his guitar to it, but he would
have to tune his guitar to the album. And when he came to rehearsals
the next time we would just tune to him. So it was whatever we
had been playing in the house. We would tune to whatever we were
playing last.

August 21, 1982. The third Donington fest, featuring DJ Tommy Vance, Anvil,
Uriah Heep, Hawkwind, Saxon, Gillan and headliner Status Quo.
Saxon drummer Nigel Glockler:

That’s a great festival to play. Monsters of Rock ‘82 was my first
big outdoor show and I was extremely nervous, particularly as our
management had decided to leave my tech in the US. I ended up

setting my kit up wearing a disguise. We flew to NYC the next day.
The audience was amazing, but I was too stressed to really enjoy it.
Diamond Head guitarist Brian Tatler on Tommy Vance and The

Friday Night Rock Show:
Yes, that was important. Everybody wanted to be on that as well.
There was Sounds and there was The Friday Rock Show. You’d listen
religiously to Tommy Vance. And you often came to do a session
with Tommy Vance; that would be a big moment. You’d have to get
your songs together and right, do this, do that. And to hear yourself
on the radio was such a thrill to a young band. It’s just an amazing
feeling, being broadcast to millions of people (laughs). So I can
remember the first time I heard a song the radio, and even the first
time they announced the name Diamond Head, was exciting: “Ladies
and gentlemen, Diamond Head,” or whatever. That was, “Rah!” I
think we leapt up and cheered, in the room; it meant finally getting
recognized (laughs).
August 27, 1982. Praying Mantis issue, on Jet, “Turn the Tables,” backed
with “Tell Me the Nightmare’s Wrong” and “A Question of Time.”

After a hearty fry-up one morning, “Turn the Tables” was jammed
and written in two hours, start to finish. Our fastest ever composition.
Praying Mantis (and ex-Grand Prix) vocalist Bernie Shaw:

Joining Praying Mantis was really cool. Again, there was a very
different approach: they were a lot heavier than Grand Prix at the
time, and there was only a couple of vocalists—Tino Troy and Chris
Troy were doing the main singing. We didn’t get as much recognition
as we thought we would have. We had a good strong fanbase, but we
didn’t really light the world on fire. That’s why the drummer Dave
Potts said, “Look, let me manage this. Our managers don’t know
what they’re doing. Let me manage the band, we’ll get in another
drummer, and we’ll take us to another plateau.”
So we got in Clive Burr who had just been sacked from Iron
Maiden, who was a very, very good friend of ours, and we tried
to do that. We did an album in Germany as Clive Burr’s Escape,
but it just didn’t have the impact that we hoped it would have. We
thought everybody would say, “Oh, yeah, Clive Burr—great!”
And they didn’t. They kind of said, “Clive who? Why did Praying
Mantis change the drummer? Why did they change music? Why
did they do this?”

And we lost, I think, a lot of our fans rather than gained a lot of
new fans. Out of that, we went back to Praying Mantis for one show
at the Marquee, just to kind of say thank you. And that was the one
show that Mick Box came to! So having that one farewell opened
another door for me and another chapter of my life, meeting Mick
and getting into Uriah Heep.
August 27-29, 1982. Reading

Rock 1982 was even more full-
on metal than 1980’s. Friday
featured Against the Grain, The
Angels, Overkill, Stampede, Tank,
Praying Mantis, Baron Rojo, Randy
California, Diamond Head (replacing
Manowar on short notice) and
Budgie. Saturday featured Just
Good Friends, Bow Wow, Rock
Goddess, Grand Prix, Bernie
Tormé, Ore, Cheetah, Gary Moore,
Blackfoot, Tygers of Pan Tang, and
Iron Maiden headlining. Sunday
featured Terraplane, Chinatown,
Spider, Marillion, Twisted Sister,
Wilko Johnson & Lew Lewis, Bernie
Marsden’s SOS, Dave Edmunds,
Y&T, Jackie Lynton Band, Michael
Schenker Group.
Bruce Dickinson on the

significance of Reading:
I would say, if you’ve ever been
on a roller coaster, and you get
cranked right to the top—click
click click click—and then,
down the other side, and at some
point you get to the bottom, and
well, we just didn’t get to the
bottom. The roller coaster… we
just kept plummeting for about
the next four years. So we were
just on an adrenaline rush, for
four years, nonstop. I have no
idea what that does to you in
time (laughs).

That’s one of best Diamond head gigs I can remember, for me. That
was so exciting to get that gig and to play to 10,000 people. And it
also was at night, and we were last but one band on; I think Budgie
were headlining, so we were on before Budgie. And so we probably
went on about eight o’clock, and it was dark, and the lights and great
crowd and a good atmosphere, and we seemed to be just on the cusp
of greatness, possibly. Just on the cusp of getting up that ladder,
making the right moves and taking the right choices. So to play a huge
festival like that was another stamp that Diamond Head must have
been getting somewhere, must be good.
A few bands had done Reading before us—I think Girlschool. So
yeah, you get like loads of bands doing Reading like Iron Maiden and
Tygers Of Pan Tang and all those bands, so yeah, it was definitely on
everybody’s radar. Like I said, some of the bigger bands were kind
of not doing that much at the moment. And so there was a gulf. You
know, if you’d built up all these rock fans, if you’re Led Zeppelin or
something, and then split up, as they’d done in 1980, what are these
fans going to listen to? They’re going to listen to Iron Maiden or Def
Leppard; they’ll go and listen to what else is a bit rocky, and what
they like. Can’t see Led Zeppelin here.
September 1982
September 1982. Wendy & Lemmy issue “Stand By Your Man”/“No

Class”/“Masterplan.” The a-side is a duet between Motörhead’s Lemmy
and Wendy O. Williams of The Plasmatics. “No Class” is performed by The
Plasmatics and “Masterplan” by Motörhead. The novelty single was enough
to cause Fast Eddie Clarke to want to leave the band.
Motörhead guitarist Fast Eddie Clarke:

Obviously, it was a bit of a difficult time, at first. I will be honest
with you; I never thought I would move on from that band. I really
thought I would die in Motörhead. I didn’t want anything else but
then they decided to do this thing with Wendy O. Williams, which I
was really forced into doing. Lemmy always liked woman performers.
When he told me that we were going to do “Stand by Your Man”
with Wendy I said, “I am producing this album and that is not going
to happen.” Lemmy got mad and started arguing. I got mad and
was yelling back, but what I didn’t realize at the time is that he had
already had enough of me.
We went up to Toronto and we started recording it. I was always
the one who cracked the whip. I was the one who did the production

and I was the one who was involved in any business deals. They were
always saying, “Eddie, what do you think?” It was always me that
had to go in the room and do the talking. I think Lemmy just got fed
up with it. It wasn’t my fucking idea to do it but they were always
asking me and I was always the one that would say, “Fuck you all, I
will just go in and talk to them.” I had been a foreman on the boat and
I had done a solo album and I knew a bit about putting bits and bobs
together, on the other side of the business, as it were.
It got to the point with that song that I couldn’t live with it. I told
Lemmy, “I can’t live with this. If you’re going to do this, then I’m
going to leave the band as this is rubbish.” Lem goes, “I will tell you
what we will do. On the front of the record we will put that this has
nothing to do with Fast Eddie Clarke.” I said, “Man, you’re missing
the point; Motörhead is my band as well. It’s our credibility that is
on the line here.” I thought Motörhead was in danger of becoming a
laughing stock. Lemmy said, “Well, if that’s how you feel then fuck
off then.”
I told them that I would do the American tour and then I would
leave the band and they said that was okay. Over the next couple of
days they were all wearing Plasmatics t-shirts and they were digging
on me. They also carried on doing the recording without me. They
were playing it in the bus on the way to New York. I was losing it. I
told them, “Man, you’ve got to stop playing this song or I’m going to
fucking lose it.” I told the manager that he needed to do something or
that war was going to break out.
Of course, war did break out. In the hotel, we had a meeting and
the war broke out. I had talked to management and told them that
the track was rubbish and they said they all agreed with me. When I
said, in front of the band, “You all said it was rubbish,” they were all
standing there being silent. All of sudden I was all on my own with
six or seven people who were all saying I was a twat because I didn’t
like this record. In your heart of hearts, you know it’s rubbish but
they won’t say it in front of the band. I had enough and I left.
What happened next was quite funny as I got chased out of the
hotel by one of the big fucking roadies. I had to drop him in the
corridor so I could get to the lift and get away. It was all a bit over
the fucking top. All I had was a bit of Canadian money. I said to
the guy at the desk at the Holiday Inn in New York, “Give me
twenty bucks…quick.” I wanted to jump out in the street and get
in the first cab.
It all got funny that night. We were supposed to play the following
day. I sat up all fucking night waiting to hear some news. There was
no news. They had two roadies minding me at this time so I couldn’t
leave the room. When I look back on it now, it’s all quite funny.

Anyway, I get a call at quarter of ten the next morning and am told
that Lemmy said he would do the show under one condition. That
condition was that I had to go to the show and do my soundcheck
first and then I would have to leave the building and then the rest of
the band would go in and do their soundcheck.
I am in fucking New York, man. I’ve flown all the way over here
from England so I want to do the show. I do what they wanted and
then I am ready to go to the dressing room. They have this huge
dressing room but I don’t get to go in there. I get this little boiler
room with one chair. There is a bottle of Vodka on the table and a
little pile of white powder on the table and I am all on my own. I did
but the show, but it was a funny show as we were obviously fucking
hating each other.
September 1982. Satan issue “Kiss of Death,” on Guardian. One of

the grails of the NWOBHM singles, this 7” was highly collectible due to
the fact that neither track showed up on the band’s lone LP at the time.
As well, the label is well-regarded boutique imprint Guardian, and the
music enclosed is true and grim NWOBHM. The band’s other impressive
collectible is as participant on the Roxcalibur compilation, which features
two non-LP Satan tracks, “Oppression” and “The Executioner,” both with
original vocalist Trev Robinson.
September 1982. London’s Stampede issue their debut single, “Days of

Wine and Roses”/“Photographs.” The band is a commercial-leaning Polydor
hopeful, featuring hotshot guitarist Laurence Archer, who would later enjoy a
brief spell with UFO.

September 1982. Battleaxe issue
“Burn this Town”/“Battleaxe,” on
Guardian. Both tracks show up on
the full-length debut of the following
year, although re-recorded. Both
were also on the legendar y
Roxcalibur compilation.
September 1982. A few indie singles issued

this month include Ore’s “Your Time Will
Come,” Geddes Axe’s “Sharpen Your Wits,”
Limelight’s “Ashes to Ashes” and Stormchild’s
“Rockin’ Steady.”
September 1982. Venom produce the two-

track Live E.P. Sept ‘82 video, primarily to
show venues what to expect (and provide in
terms of facilities) if they dare bring Venom
into their place.
September 1982. Post-Angel Witch act Tytan

issue “Blind Men and Fools.”
Angel Witch bassist Kevin Riddles on the death of Angel Witch

and the equally unfortunate tale of Tytan:
Well, Angel Witch, I always tell people—and it’s quite true—
that incarnation of Angel Witch sort of died a natural death. We
weren’t going to be able to go any further than what we were
doing. We’d been doing it for five years or however long it was.
We couldn’t actually see where we were going to go from there.
And punk had hit and obliterated all the rock gigs that we used
to be able to do, and as I say, it sort of withered on the vine.
And I had lots of ideas for songs that weren’t going to be Angel
Witch songs. And in fact “Dr. Phibes” was sort of a clue to where I
was going in that slightly more melodic way. And so when it withered
on the vine, our drummer at that time was Dave Dufort, Denise
Dufort’s brother, and we decided to go off and see what we could do,
see if we could find some people to come on board with us.
And strangely (laughs), a certain Bruce Dickinson had just left
Samson, to join Maiden, and I’d got on the phone to Paul and said,
“Look, I know you’ve been auditioning singers. Did you find
anybody that you like?” Because at that point he hadn’t picked

up yet a fellow called Nicky Moore. And I said, “Did you find
anybody you liked, that you didn’t go for?” He says, “Not really,
they were all pretty crap.” But he said there was one guy that
sent me a tape from Tamworth, near Birmingham, he sent a blank
cassette. And he said he’s either the most stupid singer or the most
optimistic, because I think he thought I was going to send him the
material for him to learn. And I thought, yeah, that’s my kind of
humour. If that was done in a humorous way, I want to meet him,
and that’s how I met Kal Swan.
Our first single, “Blind Men and Fools,” it’s a protest song, if
you like. I don’t suffer fools gladly, shall we say. I especially despise
politicians, for various reasons. But the song is sort of my political
protest about, you know, it’s very apt at the moment, and probably
pretty pressing, but it’s basically, you want us to pay your taxes, you
want us to fight your wars, you want us to make your friends rich,
but when it actually comes down to it, what the hell are you doing
for us? It was that the price that we’re paying is way too high. And
whenever we want anything, you turn into blind men and fools.
That was the idea. And bear in mind, I was an angry young man in
those days. Of course, now I’m blissfully happy now and settled,
and I find it difficult to be angry anymore. Writing songs is a little
harder than it used to be.
But after that... okay, it’s a bit of an involved story, and I suppose
it almost sounds like an excuse, “Oh, I could’ve been a contender”
type of thing. But literally the story’s this. We were signed to a label
called Kamaflage Records, which was a small one-man outfit, which
was part of DJM, Dick James Music in the UK and Europe who
were one of the top music publishers at the time, along with Warner
Chappell, people like that.
And their main money earner was Elton John. And Elton John
decided, as did a few people at the time, McCartney and Michael
Jackson, decided to sue his publishing company for the rights to his
songs back. He’d signed them away, you know, decades before, and
Dick James Music had made a fortune off them and he decided he
wanted them back. And someone, I think maybe in North America
or somewhere had sued their publishers and got the rights to their
songs back. So Elton John thought he would do the same.
That coincided with us being in the studio, and we were
recording our debut album while this was going on. And at the
conclusion, once we finish the recording of the album, we took it to
Abbey Road, and it was mixed and mastered at Abbey Road. This is
‘82, into ‘83. It was all very fast, very quick.

And all of a sudden Dick James Music had gone; they stopped
music publishing, they shut down Kamaflage Records and two or
three other labels that they had because they had to get every penny
they had to fight this lawsuit with Elton John. Which, perversely, they
actually won, but by then, their business had gone. So although they
still kept the rights to his songs, they didn’t have a business anymore.
This literally coincided with us finishing the album and the
album was being ready to be released, and all of a sudden the record
company is disappeared. So that’s why the album wasn’t released
early ‘83, because it was owned by Dick James Music, but Dick
James Music didn’t exist anymore.
So it literally sat on the shelf. We couldn’t get a hold of it. We
didn’t have the legal clout to fight them, to release it, and so we went
off and did what I always do. We got some tours, we got some gigs,
we did the BBC Friday Night Rock Show. We did a Radio Caroline
tour, we supported Tygers of Pan Tang, and so we went off and did
what we wanted to do. We wanted to be out on the road playing
songs and entertaining people, hoping that this situation would
resolve itself and somebody would pick the album up. Eventually
they did, in 1985, but unfortunately by that time it was too late.
September 1982. Tank issue a cover of the Osmond Brothers’ “Crazy

Horses” as a single, backed with “Filth Bitch Boogie.”
September 1982. Witchfinder General issue their classic Death Penalty

album, which adds neo-doom to the set of sounds comprising the NWOBHM.

The album covers were Paul Birch’s ideas. He was the manager/
director of Heavy Metal Records. It was his idea to use pin-up model
Joanne Latham, in the graveyard. We had previous pictures from
the early days of the band, in graveyards, and it suited the image
because… I always thought Witchfinder General was a good name
for a rock band. Back to the cover of Death Penalty, I thought that
worked really well. It looked really good. It was really early in the
morning when we got out to this graveyard, and the sun was just
about to rise. I was still half cut from the night before. I’d been down
to the pub (laughs), and that worked out well.
For Death Penalty, we had had that material for a couple of years.
It was recorded in two days so it’s quite rushed. I look back at Death
Penalty and I’ve always loved it, but if I could get back in and remix
those tracks, I would, because I didn’t feel they were mixed properly.

September 14, 1982. Iron Maiden continue to tour the states, now
supporting Judas Priest for the third Maiden and third Priest record in a row.
September 18, 1982. New York’s Twisted

Sister handily ingratiate themselves as
honourary NWOBHMers by recording
their ass-kicking debut album in the UK,
releasing it, initially, only in the UK, and
having London’s favourite barfly Pete Way
produce the thing. Under the Blade is the
bold and boisterous record at hand, and UK
journalists rightly embrace the long-suffering
band of rag dolls. Atlantic would release the
album only when the band broke off of Stay
Hungry, putting it out on July 14, 1985, but
with a polite remix, leaving the original UK
record defiantly singular.
Twisted Sister guitarist Jay

Jay French:
It was an exciting experience
to finally get the chance
to make a record after
struggling for ten years. You
know, it was primitive, but
it was fine. Pete Way from
UFO produced it, but he did
not do much producing. He
was drinking a lot at the time, so Mark Mendoza ended up producing
a lot of it. But it was a fun experience. We recorded it on a mobile
truck in a barn in southern England, and the amplifiers were separated
by hay bales; I remember that. I remember the farmer said that his
chickens laid 30% more eggs while we were there.

New York’s Twisted Sister—hugely influenced by Sabbath, Priest
and AC/DC. You’ve just got to listen to their Under the Blade
album and you go (laughs), ‘Okay, that’s Priest, that’s Sabbath, that’s
AC/DC.’ I think the reason why someone like Twisted Sister was
taken up by English fans was because, although we were a little
unsure about the image—because that whole hookers in drag thing
wasn’t really part of the English scene—the attitude and the music
really did connect immediately, and the attitude of Twisted Sister
was very much the middle finger salute to all the authority figures.
To your parents, to your teachers, to your boss, to the security
man at the mall, to the cops. What was the words? “We look pretty
strange to you, so how do you look to me?” It’s that attitude, that
defiance, and I suppose that was taken on from Priest as well, that
articulating what metal was supposed to be. What it was against, as
well as what it was for.
Twisted Sister vocalist Dee Snider on Pete Way:

He’s a doll, a sweetheart, a lover of rock. He wasn’t much of a
producer, but at that time we were in an indie deal, and we were
looking for anybody who could give us a bit of notoriety, and UFO
were English legends. Fast Eddie Clarke ended up coming down and
jamming and doing a guitar duel with Jay Jay on “Tear it Loose.”
And Fast Eddie and Pete Way were forming Fastway at the time, so
it brought a sort of attention. And hey, Pete put in the good word
for us with Lemmy, so things happened for a reason. But Pete was
an awesome guy. And some people feel that Under the Blade had a
certain rawness. It was recorded literally in a barn with a mobile unit.
October 1982
October 1982. Raven issue their seminal Crash, Bang, Wallop EP, on Neat. The
band continue to inhabit and champion the speedy, frantic side of the NWOBHM.
October 1982. Gillan issue “Long Gone”/“Fiji,” the single coinciding with UK
tour dates.

October 1982. Dumpy’s Rusty Bolts issue “Boxhill or Bust,” backed with “It’s
Got to Be the Blues.” Meanwhile Dedringer issue their “Hot Lady” single.
October 1982. After a spate of singles, Spider issue their debut album,
Rock ‘n’ Roll Gypsies, on RCA. Spider are likened to Vardis, the two
bands being the boogie bands of the NWOBHM, comparisons to Status
Quo being inevitable. “Talkin’ ‘Bout Rock ‘n’ Roll” is quickly issued for a
second time as a single, backed with “Down ‘n’ Out.”
October 1982. Wolverhampton’s highly conceptual and theatrical Cloven

Hoof issue a four-track EP called The Opening Ritual, which rises to #18
on the heavy metal char ts, garnering praise from both Geoff Bar ton and
Tommy Vance.
October 1982. The disconcer tingly commercial-sounding Mama’s Boys

issue their Plug it In album, which generates two singles, “In the Heat of
the Night” and “Needle in the Groove.”
October 1982. Tygers of Pan Tang issue “Making Tracks” as the fourth
single from their radio-friendly fourth album The Cage.

October 1982. Wishbone Ash, although around since the early ‘70s,
issue an album that proposes participation in the NWOBHM. Twin Barrels
Burning sports cheap heavy metal illustration for cover art and was the
band’s heaviest record to date, although really not that heavy. It also was a
success, reaching #22 on the charts.
Wishbone Ash guitarist Andy Powell:

Most definitely, Thin Lizzy were influenced by our twin-lead
sound, because, when they first came out from Ireland, one of the first
shows that Phil Lynott saw was Wishbone Ash playing the Lyceum
Ballroom in London; I know that for a fact. And, of course, Iron
Maiden is well-documented as a heavy metal band influenced by us
as well as more alternative bands who bring the twin-lead into their
music. Well, everybody’s influenced by everybody else, and we’re
certainly influenced by bands that we grew up with.
We’re melodic, and there’s an element of English pastorality about
our music, so some of our songs are quite mellow and thoughtful.
I mean we can rock—when we need to rock, we certainly rock
out—but it’s all about dynamics, light and shade. We can be very
soft rock and we can be hard rock. Sometimes people don’t have the
imagination, and these days everybody is very used to putting music
into certain brackets, so they see pictures of us with guitars and they
think, “Oh, this has got to be hard rock,” but it’s not necessarily.
October 2, 1982. Accept issue their highly regarded fourth album,

Restless and Wild, a beloved record for NWOBHM fans. The quality of

the band’s music underscores the idea that metal is being considerably
improved upon outside of the UK as well, and by bands who could be
considered usurpers of the throne once commanded by predecessors, in
this German example, Scorpions.
October 8, 1982. Tank

issue their second album
Power of the Hunter. The
record contributes to this
sense of the NWOBHM
being represented by
an increasingly vibrant
“roughshod” wing, also
occupied by Venom and
Motörhead and even
Jaguar, but recently
vacated by Girlschool.
Tank drummer Mark

Brabbs on making
Power of the Hunter
with Nigel Gray:
Well, a lot of
people weren’t very
happy with what he
did. But then again,
he had a lot harder job, because we hadn’t actually bedded all the songs
in. We’d literally come off recording the first album, did another tour,
and the management put us in the studio for a month and said, “Write
a new album.” And, which we did, in a month, whereas Filth Hounds
took a year and a half, maybe, from start to finish. Or maybe two years
from start to finish, to actually get that out.
Whereas Power of the Hunter, we literally had a month to write an
album. I think Eddie would’ve liked to have done the second album.
But we thought, especially with Nigel coming up, and he had great
success with The Police, so we thought we actually needed someone
with a bit more producer’s experience, because these songs hadn’t
have been worked through yet. And so we were looking forward to
his input. Which, again, funnily enough, was minimal on the song
arranging/writing front.
But he did do a couple of tricks with his actual production, of the
finished sound, but a lot of people said they were disappointed. But
I think some of the songs are really quite strong. Like “Power of the
Hunter” is great, “Some Came Running” is good. “Used Leather,”

“Red Skull Rock;” that was an original song meant to go on Filth
Hounds, but didn’t make it. But we quite liked that one. And Algy is
a great Marvel Comic fan, which is why he wrote “Red Skull Rock.”
That album was written the usual same way. Algy would come up
with some riffs, and then we’d go in the studio and play it through
and work out the groove for it and what felt good for it. It’s just that
we had a lot less time to work on them and bed them in. We couldn’t
get out on the road and play them through. Because we literally had
to write it and then go into the studio and record it. So it kind of
lost its bedding-in period, as I say. Maybe if we would’ve been given
another year to write that album, it would’ve turned out slightly
different. Again, we didn’t have time to abuse the songs (laughs).
Whereas we did with, like I say, if you listen to the early demos,
there’s a lot of songs that were mid-paced and when they got to the
album stage they were very fast. Where maybe some of the mid-paced
stuff on Power of the Hunter might’ve got a bit more edgier, had we
taken them out on the road and, like I say, abused them (laughs). I
guess it’s a lot tamer than Filth Hounds.
October 16, 1982. Diamond Head issue their second album, Borrowed
Time, which coughs up a single in “In the Heat of the Night.” Touring
begins two weeks later. Borrowed Time is the band’s second album in a
row now that feels unfinished, even ill-conceived.

We were signed in ‘82, to MCA, and we did another little toilet tour.
By the end of the year, we had released our second album, Borrowed
Time, and then we did a proper tour, playing the Odeons. That was
the tour you aimed for—playing the Odeons, where you played
Hammersmith Odeon, Birmingham Odeon, Sheffield City Hall, all
those, and they’re all about 2000, 2500. But once you reached that, there
wasn’t much beyond that. Now people play the NEC and the Wembley
Arena, but there wasn’t so much of that then. It was all slightly before
that; so the peak would’ve been doing the Odeons.
I mean it was a lot of hard work, but also a lot of satisfaction, because
you could see yourself getting there. You could see the graph slowly
going up. We’d done the work, we did the records, done the little clubs
you could name, and now we’ve moved up to the Odeons, and so that’s a
fantastic feeling, to be playing to a thousand people a night, 2000 people,
rather than 200. So yeah, we felt the band was on the up, and that’s where
you want to be, going up, not coming back down again.
October 16, 1982. Samson issue “Life on the Run”/“Driving with ZZ,” which
comes with a free live single recorded at the Mildenhall Festival.

October 16, 1982. Bernie Tormé issues a double single comprising
“Shoorah Shoorah,” “Star,” “Search and Destroy” and “Possession.”
October 23, 1982. Budgie

issue their last album for
many years, Deliver Us from
Evil. It is a second step away
from the NWOBHM sound
enthusiastically embraced on
Power Supply. “Bored with
Russia” is issued as a
concurrent single.
Fall 1982. E.F. Band issue

their second album Deep
Cut. The band would issue
one more album, ‘85’s One
Night Stand, before breaking
up in ‘86.
Fall 1982. Prog-tinged

NWOBHM act Shiva issue in
1982, two singles, namely
“Rock Lives on”/“Sympathy” and “Angel of Mons”/“Stranger Lands,” plus
one album, Firedance.
Journalist John Tucker on Shiva

being a rare NWOBHM band
influenced by prog rock:
It’s there, in the likes of
Shiva; they took some of the
Rush elements and progressive
elements. A couple other bands
were very much along that line.
So it played a part but in a limited
way, I think, because punk had
kind of shown that the days of
the four-track double album were
over. And I suppose besides, a lot
of these bands banged out singles,
with what little they could afford.
So it had to be short, sharp and to
the point.

Brian Tatler will tell you the reason they did “Shoot Out the
Lights” as their first single is it was catchy and it was the only song
they had that was three-and-a-half minutes long. So elements can be
drawn from prog quite nicely, but I don’t think it was what most of
these bands were about. They’d seen what punk was about and they
pulled out short, sharp and to the point. Yes, you can be flowery, yes,
you can play lead until the cows come home, yes you can push it to
the max, but you can’t go on. Not many of those early songs go over
the four, four-and-a-half minute mark.
Late 1982. NWOBHM royalty Blitzkrieg morph into Avenger.
Late 1982. Soon to be cult favourite Chateaux issue “Young Blood” while
Goldsmith offer “Life is Killing Me” and Knock Up chime in with “Telling Lies.”
Late 1982. Savage issue their kerranging “Ain’t No Fit Place”/“The China
Run” 7”, on Ebony.
Savage bassist and vocalist Chris Bradley:

“Ain’t No Fit Place” was a comment on the situation in the UK at
the time—you try to be relevant in the subject matter of your songs.
The lyrical themes are basically a reflection of what is happening at
the time or what’s been happening recently. “Ain’t No Fit Place”
was written in 1981, and it was all about the inner city riots that we
were having at that time in this country. Someone said recently that
we were a very political band, but we’ve never seen it like that; we’re
more socially aware—I suppose this is the right way of putting it
across. We’ve always written songs about real things as opposed to
demons and wizards and devils and angels. We write about real stuff,
the things that are relevant.
Savage guitarist Andy Dawson:

When Savage started out, I was 15 and we were totally into Thin
Lizzy. When Live and Dangerous came out I was 15 and it was a
huge influence, which you can hear on our early albums. But I don’t
think we were mature enough to explore it properly. When Loose ‘n
Lethal came out I was 19, and a lot of songwriting we did in those
days was done out of naïveté; it was very simple and direct which
obviously worked. But you grow, and not always to the best effect.
Sometimes naïveté is a great thing because you just go balls-out, not
a care in the world.

November 1982
November 1982. Rock Goddess issue their debut

single “Heavy Metal Rock ‘n’ Roll,” in 7” and 12”
formats.
November 1982. Silverwing, featuring

new guitarist Alistair Terry, issue “That’s
Entertainment.”
November 1982. Mendes Prey issue “On the

Borderline” while Surrey’s Static issue “Voice
on the Line” and then throw in the towel in
Februar y of ‘83.
November 1982. Witchfinder General issue their Soviet Invasion! EP which

features two non-LP tracks, “Soviet Invasion” and “Rabies,” with a live
version of the debut album’s “R.I.P..”

“Soviet Invasion”… at the time, it was all America and Russia
were the two big superpowers, and we always felt it was a threat in
England. One was always at the other’s throat, but it has been pushed
over, over the years now. But back then, it just seemed that it would
be a good title for a song. And I thought it was a really good sound.
That was the sound of Witchfinder General for me. “Burning a
Sinner” was quite the opposite.
When we started the band, we didn’t really have a direction
towards doom. In fact, it was like… well, it was just all the rock bands
mixed together. But we just seemed to drift that way, into the doom,
because we were playing slow music and nobody else was doing it at
that time. But I think when we were playing live, the slow music just
wasn’t going down that well. People just didn’t want it. At the start of
the ‘80s, all the fast rock music came along—Iron Maiden, Motörhead
and all that—and people just didn’t want this slow music. And I don’t
think we really just did it justice at that moment in time.
Heavy Metal Records’ Paul Birch on the NWOBHM being a

singles culture:
Punk entirely paved the way for that—entirely. In fact, on my desk
I have a photograph of Anthony Wilson from Factory Records, and
Anthony was a fantastic inspiration to me, to be honest with you.
But Iain McNay from Cherry Red Records was an inspiration, and
so was Marty Mills, Beggars Banquet and the people who ran Albion
Records. There was a lot of punk labels, 1976, ‘77. We did come to

sign other punk bands to the Revolver label. So we signed bands like
the Cockney Rejects, the Misfits. Obviously we signed the metal bands,
but we were, ourselves, influenced by punk, no question about it. And
I think there was some crossover between some heavy metal bands, just
in the same way that heavy metal and rap crossed over at Def Jam and
such. They found a way of collateralizing heavy metal with rap music,
and I think that was also going on with punk to some extent.
November 1982. Fist issue “The Wanderer” as a non-LP single, backed with
“Too Hot.”
November 1982. Holocaust offshoot band Hologram issue a metal-lite

album called Steal the Stars.
Holocaust guitarist on the new direction for the band after the live album:
Unfortunately Phoenix went with the idea, understandably, of the
more American-oriented thing, because they thought that would be
more commercially viable. I mean, hindsight is perfect of course, but
in fact we would have been much more commercially viable with
the stuff that me and Nicky wanted to play. It really was like thrash
and grindcore before its time. Basically, myself and Nicky, what we
wanted to do was play music that was more… I was going to say
was more abstract, but in today’s terms, it would be called more
purely metal. We wanted to play things that were extremely fast and
were extremely slow. So it was going to be like a nuclear version of
Motörhead and Black Sabbath. That was the idea.

But we also wanted to mix that with things like early Genesis and
King Crimson. Now on the other hand, the other three, Gary, Robin
and Ed, they were really into the Van Halen American rock star-type
thing and they wanted to play bright and breezy heavy rock. It just
became impossible after a while. I would bring along a song and they
would look at me blankly and say that’s just noise. And it is really
ironic, because that kind of noise is what became the big thing just
a few years after. It’s a real shame. But they were into this American
rock star stuff, Van Halen, Journey, Bon Jovi.
November 1982. Samson issues Before the Storm, their first album with
Nicky Moore on vocals, and their first with major label Polydor. Three singles
are generated from the album, “Losing My Grip,” “Life on the Run” and “Red
Skies,” all with non-LP b-sides.
Ex-Samson bassist John McCoy on Nicky Moore:

I had known of Nicky Moore and his amazing voice since the late ‘60s
when he had a band called Hackensack. Many years later. when he was
singing for Samson, having replaced Bruce Dickinson, he was still an
incredible vocal force. I did an album project aside from Gillan with Nicky
Moore and Paul Samson which was released as Joint Forces. I became
increasingly impressed with Nicky’s voice. My wife Linda and I decided
that the only reason he hadn’t made it bigger was because of his fat man
image. Remember, this was the mid- and late-’80s when all rock groups
were skinny big hair clones. Linda came up with the idea that the best way
to make Nicky look “good” was to have everyone in the band as big or
bigger than him. Thus, the idea for our later band Mammoth was born.

November 1982. Valhalla issue “Coming Home” while Evesham’s Strategy
issue “Technical Overflow”/“Astral Planes,” on Ebony. A highlight of the
month, however, is Crucifixion’s “Take it or Leave it.”
November 1982. Tank issue “(He Fell in Love with a) Stormtrooper”/“Blood,

Guts and Beer (live).”
November 1982. Neat Records issues their 60 Minute Plus Heavy Metal
Compilation budget price cassette sampler. Meanwhile, that label’s cheery
headbangers Jaguar toil away on tracks for their debut, at Impulse.
November 1, 1982. Venom issue Black Metal, a confounding and lethal

mixture of nascent thrash and nascent black metal that turns the NWOBHM on
its ear, through the deafening suggestion that perhaps the business is moving
toward stronger stuff. The album, recorded in six days and issued in a variety
of vinyl colours, generates five star reviews in both Sounds and Kerrang!.
Venom bassist and vocalist Cronos:

In Venom, we created an image and the band is that image and
it really stays within the band. We work at the band a lot. I don’t
understand how you could have a hundred other jobs in life and
still concentrate on your band. So we had to narrow the whole thing
down into that area and call it Venom. It encompasses the whole
scene of rock ‘n’ roll but it also introduces the elements that we feel
Black Sabbath touched upon but didn’t really go there. A band like
them would say for example , “The demons are chasing me; oh God
help me, God help me.” Well, Venom says, “We are those demons”
(laughs). We used to say that Black Sabbath were more like Hammer
Horror films, and we’re more like The Evil Dead and Hellraiser and
all the fuckin’ rest of it. It’s like Venom are more scary.
November 5, 1982. Australia’s Rose

Tattoo issue their third album Scarred
for Life, arguably the high point of their
participation in the world metal scene,
as an honourary NWOBHM band.
November 20, 1982. Whitesnake issue

Saints & Sinners, which reaches #9
on the UK charts. The album contains
“Crying in the Rain” and “Here I Go
Again” which will become huge hits,
rerecorded for the smash Whitesnake
album five years later. Always a stretch

to call Whitesnake a NWOBHM band, nonetheless, their distinction
is their emergence from very much a UK-only phenomenon into the
ranks of hair metal titans.
December 1982
December 1982. The Reading Rock compilation includes NWOBHMers

Terraplane, Stampede, Chinatown, Grand Prix and Spider.
December 1982. Stampede issue their debut LP, The

Official Bootleg. Like MC5 and AIIZ, their first kick at
the can is a live affair.
December 1982. Heavy Metal Records issues

Heavy Metal Heroes Volume 2. Other compilations
this year include One Take No Dubs: Live in the
Studio and Steel Crazy. As well, Ebony issues
their third compilation—and third of 1982—
Metal Maniaxe.

December 1982. Pali Gap issue “Under the Sun,” backed with “The Knives
are Out.”
December 1982. Old-to-new school straddlers

Starfighters issue their second and last
album, In-Flight Movie.
December 1982. Legend issue—as with all

their product, on their own label, Workshop
Records—Limited Edition Four Track Single,
which features four songs not on the Death in
the Nursery album from earlier in the year.
December 1982. In the indie single

department, Aurora issue “I’ll Be Your
Fantasy,” Seventh Son issue “Man in the
Street” and Trux issue “Bad Luck.”
Recap
Rolling into 1982, we find a year exhibiting similar vim and vigour
to the previous one, with a spate of records new and old adding to the
metal cause.
Still, the theme again is one of a diminishing number of baby bands
entering the scene. There is a similar quantity of new singles coming out,
but no major label signings, with the only first albums of any significance
being Tank’s Filth Hounds of Hades and Witchfinder General’s Death
Penalty, with Tank proving that speed kills by issuing a second album
before the year is out.
Bands well into their careers and catalogs, and issuing new albums this
year include Samson, Girlschool, Vardis and Tygers of Pan Tang, while bands
issuing their second albums include Girl, Fist, Gaskin, Raven, More, Demon
and Venom.
Over into the old school, and there’s some lead in the pencil from Uriah
Heep, who deliver the fetching Abominog record, Judas Priest, who storm
back with Screaming for Vengeance, and Krokus who grind out the fine
One Vice at a Time album. Not so old are Germany’s Accept, who deliver
Restless and Wild, while Budgie chimes in with what will be their last album
for many, many years, Deliver Us from Evil.
Saxon has their own productive No Sleep ‘til Hammersmith moment
with their live album, The Eagle Has Landed, while the masters themselves,
Motörhead, deliver the rushed Iron Fist, over which acrimony in the ranks
grows, with Fast Eddie, shockingly, soon to leave the band.

An even bigger personnel story of this year is ex-Samson belter Bruce
Dickinson debuting on his first Iron Maiden record, The Number of the Beast,
which is far and away the celebrated NWOBHM album of the year, even if
Iron Maiden continue to expand beyond their ties with the local scene.
A curious wrinkle of the year is heavy metal heroes Holocaust, changing
their name to Hologram and issuing a lighter, more progressive album called
Steal the Stars. Perhaps one could argue weird stuff like this, and arguably
tepid albums from Motörhead, Girlschool, Girl, Tygers of Pan Tang and
Vardis, represent the scene running out of gas or searching for answers or
sensing within itself some amount of ennui.
Other than that, there are still heavy metal compilation albums being
made and this year’s Reading festival was very metal and Monsters of
Rock still rocked. I mean, metal was still strong in the UK, but there exists
the subtle subplot that the excitement around it was methodically shifting
to America. Shockingly, Ozzy Osbourne’s beloved virtuoso guitarist Randy
Rhoads would die in a horrific and needless fly-by prank, but the fact of the
matter is, it’s artists like Ozzy (who missed nary a beat despite the death in
the family), as well as a reinvigorated Judas Priest, Scorpions, Maiden and
Def Leppard, that were generating more excitement than any of the young
upstarts. And pointedly, that excitement was in America, whose music fans
were now waking up from the reality that neither punk nor the happy post-
punk known as new wave were as rebellious as they would have liked.
And so one might hypothesize that the firestorm of metal activity
that was about to kick off in Los Angeles and San Francisco was more so
sparked by metal’s renewed popularity in the US, rather than an academic
ingestion of the raw DNA of obscure records from the UK by the likes of
Brian Slagel, Lars Ulrich and writer buddies of mine like Bob Nalbandian,
Ron Quintana and John Strednansky.
And so we end our snapshot of 1982 on a curious note, with a debate,
perhaps. And the debate is this: did the NWOBHM jump the shark in 1982? I
mean, as I’ve suggested before, there are people who believe the NWOBHM
was over in 1980, and the purist in me can indeed cop to the fact that,
yeah, I suppose the concept loses its newness by the end of that year. So is
1981 the year of fruition, of maturity? Your humble author would argue that
both 1981 and 1982 are years of fruition and maturity, and that even 1983
could be argued as a third year of impressive productivity, even if America
would be going its own way with its own metal beginning in 1983 and more
so in 1984.

1983 - “They had become kind of
Americanized.”
Headbanger’s Guide to 900 NWOBHM Records). Our list for 1983 includes:
Camargue – “Howl of the Pack;” Chinawite - “Blood on the Streets;” Cynic –
“Suicide;” Desolation Angels – “Valhalla;” Desperate Oates - “Burning Alive;”
Dragonslayer - “I Want Your Life;” Energy – “Nowhere to Hide;” Friends –
“Night Walker;” Fury – “River Deep Mountain High;” Hell issue “Save Us
from Those Who Would Save Us,” produced by Darryl Johnston; Influence –
“No Survivors;” Lotus Cruise - “Billy’s Got a Gun;” McCoy – “Oh Well;” Midas
– “Can’t Stop Loving You Now;” Moselle – “Call Me;” North Star – “Too Many
Chances;” Radar - “Leave Her Alone;” Seducer – “Call Your Name;” Severed
Head – “Heavy Metal;” Smokin’ Roadie – “Midnight;” Snakebite – “Blow You
Away;” Tora Tora – “Don’t Want to Let You Go;” Tracer – four tracks under the
misspelled title Chanelled Aggression; Trans Am – “Crazy World;” Warrior -
“For Europe Only” and Wikkyd Vikker – “Black of the Night.”
1983. Rogue Male form, in Northern Ireland. The band’s conceptual

biker metal sound would have been as much an outlier in the thick of the
NWOBHM as it was when their debut album, First Visit, was released in
1985, a true wilderness year for British heavy metal.
1983. Sledgehammer issue their eccentric, loveable, ragged debut album,

Blood on Their Hands, produced by Chris Tsangarides, issued locally on
Illuminated and then reissued in Europe on Belgium’s Mausoleum imprint,
through the band’s deal signed in October of ’84.
1983. Spartan Warrior’s debut, Steel n’ Chains is

released on Guardian Records.
1983. Due to the success of Iron Maiden, Samson’s

Survivors is reissued.
1983. Guardian issues the Pure Overkill compilation

while Mausoleum issues Metal Prisoners. Neat issue
All Hell Let Loose, highlighting the capable heavies
on their quintessential NWOBHM label.

January 1983
January 1983. Dedringer issue their second and last

album, Second Arising.
January 1983. Def Leppard issue “Photograph”

as the advance single from Pyromania. The song’s
poppy bounce foretells the rise of hair metal, which
will summarily replace the NWOBHM in popular hard
rock consciousness. The UK single serves much the
same function by putting power ballad “Bringin’ on the
Heartbreak” on the b-side. The US single rocks harder with “Action! Not
Words” as its b-side.

Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen:
We looked more like Duran Duran than, say, Metallica. So it had a
huge appeal. There were lots of girls going crazy, and a lot of guys
liked it as well, so it had a real genuine crossover.
Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen on “Photograph:”

The original idea was a carryover from High ‘n’ Dry. And I think
that was really Joe’s obsession with Marilyn Monroe, and I guess
his frustration of not really ever being old enough to really know
her or be around when she was at her peak. So yeah, that was Joe’s
obsession with Marilyn. I guess that’s pretty natural for a red-blooded
Englishman (laughs).

I was working on Thunder and Lightning, Thin Lizzy, and my
assistant engineer was sharing a flat with Mutt Lange’s assistant
engineer when he was doing Pyromania. So there had been reports
going backwards and forwards, because we were actually on the same
label, Lizzy and them. And I remember the A&R guy coming in
saying, “Oh my God, they spent however many millions and they’re
still not finished.” He’s pulling his hair out. Well, they all had to eat
their words because of the success that they had.
For me, it peaked then, way before then. The moment they went
off to America, they were no longer considered New Wave of British
Heavy Metal. Because their music style had changed. They had
become kind of Americanized, for want of a better word. That’s not a
derogatory thing. That’s how they evolved, and fantastic.
But the old type of New Wave of British Heavy Metal… Tygers
kept it going until their natural demise. Iron Maiden kept it going
until they evolved into the elaborate stuff. But pretty much even the
older stuff is similar to the newer stuff. They got their style pretty
quickly, I have to say. But yeah, they stopped writing about New
Wave of British Heavy Metal. Something else had come up. They had
stopped writing about it in those terms.
And then of course came the LA business, which was being called
heavy metal in the states. And I’m thinking, they’re not heavy. What
are they talking about? This is rock ‘n’ roll, rock music, yes, but not
heavy metal. It just ain’t. Interesting though.
January 1983. Stoke’s excellent Le Griffe issue a 12” called “Fast Bikes.”
When Kerrang! erroneously calls the band French, suddenly, Le Griffe gather
a significant following in France.

January 1983. Metal-friendly record label Music for Nations opens for
business, helmed by Steve Mason and Martin Hooker, whose Secret
Records issued early Twisted Sister product in the UK. Neither are pleased
with the state of heavy metal in the UK at the time and thus find themselves
working deals mostly with American acts.
January 20, 1983. Def Leppard

issues their third album Pyromania,
which is considered by metal fans
and early supporters to complete
the transformation the band had
embarked upon away from a
NWOBHM sound to something
much more Americanized.
Def Leppard guitarist

Phil Collen:
It was going somewhere
that no one had really gone
before, really. It was fusing
pop music with hard rock,
but keeping it… a lot of
American bands had done it,
like Journey, Foreigner,
Styx, that kind of thing. But
it was a bit sweet. We still maintained the hard rock element of it, I
think. That was a bit more punk-influenced, actually, or kind of AC/
DC. It was a bit more screamy and shouty than beautifully-sung
vocals. We got like that later, but that’s because we improved as
singers, I think. But initially it was trying to blend everything, really,
and Pyromania was the first one.
It was kind of like a rockier
version of Queen or Boston, but
keeping a bit of the edge. But you
want to push the boat out, and
working with Mutt Lange was
just amazing because he’d hear
stuff that we wouldn’t necessarily
have heard before. And he was
a huge country fan and a rock fan. He produced Back in Black,
Highway to Hell, Boomtown Rats, lots of things, and he was really
open-minded so I think that was really appealing. We didn’t just
want to be another rock band. He was going, “Well, you can sound
like everyone else. You can be a copy of Led Zeppelin and a copy of

Thin Lizzy or Queen and all these bands, or you can do something
different. Or you could blend it all.”
Angel Witch and Tytan bassist Kevin

Riddles on Def Leppard’s formula
for success:
When you think of it, from that era,
there was only two or three bands that
actually broke huge in America. I’m
initially thinking of Leppard, who were
so big in America because they had what
the Americans were looking for, but
with a little bit of edge, because of where
they came from in the UK. So they had
polished, brilliantly written, brilliantly
constructed tunes, but still had that little bit of edge. And that’s
what lifted them up above most American bands.
The other ones to make it, because they were just damn brilliant
were, of course, Maiden. They just took America apart, because
Americans had never really seen a deal like that. But opposite
of Def Leppard, there were American bands that seemed more
European, and I’m thinking of Van Halen at the time. I always
looked at them and thought they were like a European band
wrapped in an American band, because they had that edge, they
had that something.
February 1983
February 1983. Diamond Head issue their poppy and arguably career-killing
“Call Me” single.

We started in ‘76, and we didn’t actually get signed to a deal until ‘82.
So we spent pretty much six years getting to that stage. And then by
that stage, with MCA, they were then kind of suggesting, write a hit
single. Which ended up being “Call Me.” And I mean, we felt obliged
to, because we had just signed this deal, and they were demanding a
hit single. And we thought, okay, we better at least try. We can’t say,
no, we ain’t doing that. So we tried, and we came up with “Call Me.”
But it seemed strange that they signed us for one reason and then they
asked us to start adding choruses and harmony backing vocals and
things (laughs).

February 1983. Quartz, having lost their MCA deal, sign to Heavy Metal Records.
Raven bassist and vocalist John Gallagher on luck being part of

the equation:
I know Quartz had a lot of help initially from Tony from Black
Sabbath, who either produced or helped them out with all that. I
don’t know, again, it’s just one of those things that you’ve got to have
the full package and you’ve got to be at the right place at the right
time. I mean look at Diamond Head. There’s another band reaping
the rewards of most of their creativity big time. But I mean they just
happened to have some great songs, great presence and all this—
and business-wise an absolute nightmare. But you’ve got to have
everything and you’ve got to be in the right place at the right time.
That’s just life; that’s just the way it works. Without that, all you can
do is the best you can and get on with it.
February 1983. Rock Goddess issue their self-titled debut, on A&M,

produced by Vic Maile. The album reaches #65 on the charts. “My Angel” is
issued as a single, backed with the non-LP “In the Heat of the Night,” as the
girls hit the road in February and March supporting Def Leppard. “My Angel”
reaches #64 in the charts. Maile, who also famously produced Motörhead
and Girlschool, would die six years later, of cancer at the age of 45.
Angel Witch bassist Kevin Riddles on Rock Goddess:

They were welcomed like you wouldn’t believe, simply because
they injected a bit of glamour and humour into what they were doing.
And they were ridiculously young at the time. I mean, when they
first came up, as it were, Julie, the drummer, was still in school if I
remember rightly. And again, they were just a damn good band. I
saw them numerous times, worked with them—I tour-managed them
when they supported Def Leppard in Europe. And they went down
an absolute storm. And yeah, just a damn good band.

February 18, 1983. Spider issue “Why D’Ya Lie to
Me”/“Footloose and Fancy Free,” on RCA. The band decr y
RCA’s insistence that the band commercialize their sound
through syrupy harmonies and remixes. By year’s end,
the band would be off the label but picked up by A&M.
Early 1983. Ace Lane issue their See You in Heaven

full-length on Expulsion and Roadrunner, and also on
Mausoleum with different cover ar t.
Early 1983. Ebony Records issue the Metal Warriors

compilation.

Early 1983. South London’s Sabre issue “Miracle Man.” The band emerge
from the ashes of Switchback, due to a guitarist search in Melody Maker.
Meanwhile, Briar issue “Rainbow (to the Skies).”
Early 1983. Savage issue, on Ebony, their superlative NWOBHM statement

for the ages, Loose ‘n Lethal.

Myself, Chris and the drummer Mark played all the rhythm tracks
live. The second guitar player Wayne doubled up on some of the parts
and there were some parts that I doubled up on, because I was sort
of more of a tight player than him. But essentially the whole rhythm
track was done live, set up and play, no click tracks or nothing.

Loose ‘n Lethal was a collection of all the best songs that we’d
written between 1981 and 1983 when we put the album together. But
there are three songs at the end of the CD version of Loose ‘n Lethal
which were from the ‘70s; in fact, there’s one song on there, “Back
on the Road,” that was the very first song that me and Andy wrote
together. We weren’t particularly happy about putting it out because
on that early stuff we were still learning our craft.
The songs that become the Loose ‘n Lethal album had been out
before that but they didn’t sell so much and weren’t so widely
available, so not many people knew of them. We did the double
A-side single, “Ain’t No Fit Place”/“The China Run,” and again

didn’t sell that many, but it got Ebony Records to get us to do an
album with all those songs. We didn’t really want to miss out on four
of our best songs being on the album because they’d been out in a
different format before.
Writing back then, all the members of Savage gathered in the
rehearsal room, Andy would come along and we’d decide on a riff
and we’d thrash it up together as a band. I’d sort of take it away
and come up with bass parts and ideas for lyrics and melody and
then come back to Andy and say, “What do you think?” We used
to write this way for the first two albums, when it was just a core
of me and Andy.
March 1983
March 1983. Witchfinder General record songs for their forthcoming second
album, at Horizon Studios in Coventry.
March 4, 1983. Terraplane issue “I Survive”/“Gimme

the Money.”
March 4, 1983. Thin Lizzy launch into a flagrant foul

of an album called Thunder and Lightning. Produced
hard on the ears by Chris Tsangarides, this last
Thin Lizzy album turned out to be a cynical play for
heavy metal status after a bank of highly respected
albums that addressed heavy only when Phil’s
writing called for it.
Scott Gorham:
I just think that we saw that there were a lot more bands at that point
leaning towards the metal side of things, so we thought well, let’s trip
the light fantastic on this one, see what happens. It’s why John Sykes
came into the band, was to have us lean more towards that direction.

In fact, I’d gone to Phil a few months beforehand, saying that, you
know, I actually wanted out of the band. And I actually didn’t really
want to do another album. I just thought we should knock it on the
head. But he was the one who said, “No, let’s do the one more album,
the one more world tour,” kind of thing, and, “I know this kid who
is a great guitar player,” and that happened to be John Sykes. And
that’s how John actually got in. And we started writing the songs, and
started listening to his guitar tone, and my tone changed a little bit on
that one, to kind of match was going on.
March 17, 1983. Wrathchild issue their debut set of recordings, the
Stackheel Strutt four-track red vinyl 12” EP.
Heavy Metal Records’ Paul Birch on the tangled business affairs of

Wrathchild and Ebony Records’ Daryl Johnson:
Oh bloody hell, yes. He put us in a very difficult position. Our
A&R man was Dave Roberts used to be in Silverwing; they became
Pet Hate. He and I were in New York at RCA with Wendy Goldstein
and her A&R department, a guy by the name of Bruce, I think.
Anyway, they were going to sign our rock group, Wrathchild—they
loved Wrathchild; we loved Wrathchild. And we were going to sign
the band to RCA, so everything was on.
But we’re in the west Midlands of England, which is to say we’re
about 120 miles north of London. About 200 miles north of London
was Ebony Records. And they signed Grim Reaper. Now we’d done
a track with Grim Reaper with Nick Bowcott on one of our Heavy
Metal Heroes albums. And what happened, Bruce from RCA had
come over to the UK to see Grim Reaper, to see how they were
getting on. They’d paid a very significant sum of money to Ebony as
an advance. And we were talking like a quarter million dollars, which
was a lot of money back in the early 1980s (laughs).
Now they got here and they were appalled to find that the group
were drawing in the tens. So popular were Grim Reaper in the United
States that Nick Bowcott became a VJ on MTV. And I remember, I was
over at the New Music Seminar, and I sat with Nick, and he recounted
the story of what happened. The people that ran Ebony Records pretty
much did a runner. I mean literally you hear of people running off with
the money, and I think they just went underground. They disappeared.
So RCA America said, “Well this small label in the north of
England… and now we’re looking at signing Wrathchild from
this other small label in the north of England… forget it, it’s not
going to happen.” So they couldn’t… record companies don’t
want to break other record companies’ contracts directly because,
as Benjamin Franklin would say, a threat to justice anywhere is

a threat to justice everywhere. So they saw to it that it would be
okay for a manager to do that.
So they had a manager, Peter Morticelli, and he was from upstate
New York, he came over and he became the new manager of the
group Wrathchild. And he said, “We will have our day in court and
we will win.” And I said, “Well, you may have your day in court, but
it won’t be for five years.” And five years later they still hadn’t had
their day in court. And the group were… not signable. I regretted
that. And I wouldn’t do that today, and if I could turn back the clock
I would do things differently. And I would work out a deal.
March 21, 1983. Saxon issues their seminal Power & the Glory album.

Saxon guitarist Paul Quinn:
The producer Jeff Glixman was heavily into Purple and he’d fire
his Hammond up at any opportunity; he and me, we’d have a go at
a jam. It’s a pity we didn’t record them actually. But he was busy
playing Hammond and not sitting down with a 24-track. There were
whispers that people were going to turn us into AOR monsters
if they weren’t careful, but in the case of Jeff Glixman, he’d done
heavy bands before and we weren’t too worried about that. We were
experimenting with our sound maybe a little too much around that
album and maybe Crusader.
Saxon guitarist Graham Oliver:

Well, Power & The Glory, that’s the one that I had the most part in
songwriting. I even named the song. I took the line from “The Lord’s
Prayer.” Because I’d heard somebody say “power and the glory.” And
it just inspired me to write the riff. And I did this riff, and the solo is
mine in that, all the guitar at the end is mine. “Midas Touch,” that’s
my riffs as well, and “The Eagle Has Landed” is Paul Quinn. He is
very Hendrix-influenced; that’s Paul Quinn, who is playing the solo
in that. So we could mix it up a bit.
“Watching the Sky,” that’s another one of my riffs. That came
about when we were in Bakersfield. I forget which tour it was, but
it’s about ‘82, I imagine. We were in America, in Bakersfield, and we
saw something like an unidentified flying object, and we didn’t know
what it was, and we read reports in the paper the day after that other
people had seen it. So we just coined that song, “Watching the Sky,”
and added a bit to the riff that I started. Paul Quinn... now that’s
really interesting, because that was a really off-the-wall run. And

Edward Van Halen heard that, and I used to know his girlfriend. He
shouldn’t have had a girlfriend at the time (laughs), but he did, and
much more; I shouldn’t have known her, but I did. She told me that
Eddie Van Halen heard that and he said it was a fantastic intro to a
solo, which I thought was really flattering—for Quinn anyway.
“Warrior” is a Paul Quinn riff, but we all put the song together.
And “Redline,” that’s one of my riffs. I was inspired to do “Redline”
from the old Montrose album, you know, that kind of riffing album.
Yeah, that’s where I got the idea from, because I was a kid when
that came out and it was a really influential album for a lot of rock
musicians in England, the first Montrose album.

I rate that as one of the best albums we ever made. Working with
Jeff was fantastic, but we didn’t know what to expect. You know,
you get these names put forward and you turn up at the studio, you
heard what he’s done and then you meet. We did it at Access Studios,
and he just came from the start as really one of the band. And what
he used to do, well, the studio was quite large, and Jeff Glixman is
a keyboard player, and so what we would do before we would do a
take, we would all go into the studio, including Jeff, and jam to some
songs, maybe a blues song or Hendrix or something. And then when
we were all fired up he would run back up into the control room
and say, “Right, do a take.” And it worked real good. Because there
was no “him and us.” Because a lot of the producers sort of stifle
your performance, because they’re trying to make things perfect,
and rock ‘n’ roll music isn’t meant to be perfect. It’s meant to be a bit
dangerous and edgy.
What Jeff also did, first of all, he built all these little cabins if you
like, like a little garden shed. And he put all the guitar speakers and
the bass speakers inside these cabinets, so the whole room was just
dedicated to the drum kit. Just for the mic’ing it up. You couldn’t
hear the guitars. You could hear them through the headphones, but
you couldn’t hear them in the room. Unlike today, it was done on
tape, on 24-track tape, so editing was a lot more difficult than it is
now with ProTools. So it meant that the band had to play and play
tight. And he just used a technique of close mic’ing of the drum kit,
and then another set of mics so many feet away, and then another set,
you know, at the edges of the room. Because Access Studios is a really
massive studio. So he had a mixture of three different layers of mics,
to get the sound, because obviously then, sampling was in its infancy.
So you would have like three sheds (laughs), inside this room,
and then just the drum kit in the middle. And we just played around
Nigel, egging him on, getting him to put a good performance in,

and then we would listen in to our instruments on the headphones.
I think the real secret to it was Jeff Glixman’s enthusiasm. He was
so enthusiastic about getting the performance out of the band and
making it a good time—that’s the secret.”

It was the first album I ever recorded out of the UK and it was an
important one for me, as it was my first Saxon studio album. I felt I
had something to prove. After all, Pete Gill was well liked so I had to
put my stamp on things.
We recorded in Atlanta. I loved working with Jeff Glixman, the
studio was excellent, and we even found a fantastic Indian restaurant
in the city, which, funnily enough, was run by two Brits! And to top
it all, Steve Walsh from Kansas dropped by to say hi too. He’d left
Kansas and had his Streets project going.
I was so happy when the album reviews came out, too. We’d all
worked so hard on the writing and recording. I loved Jeff’s drum
sound too. Actually, the production as a whole really worked, as the
album had some balls.
We toured with Maiden in 1983. Of course there’s always rivalry
between bands, but generally it’s nothing nasty. You just want to be
better than anyone else! We had Power & the Glory out, and they
had Piece of Mind, incidentally, my favourite album of theirs. It was
a great tour; both bands got on really well and Steve and Nicko are
good friends to this day.
Saxon vocalist Biff Byford on why Power & The Glory turned out so well:
I think it’s because we sort of got into the sounds. We really didn’t
like the sounds of the first three albums. They weren’t really hi-fi,
frankly, for us. They were all blood and guts in there. There were
no sort of finesse sounds. And don’t forget Jeff Glixman was an
American, so you get more of a polished sound.
Power & the Glory was the first album we did in America. Our
business manager, Nigel Thomas, always wanted us to be spending
time in America because he always thought that if you are going to
be popular, that was the place to be popular, to be lastingly popular.
Because the English music scene was, and still is, very faddy. You can
be quite big for a couple of years and then after that you’re gone. This
goes for pop music as well as rock music. So he wanted to consolidate
our success in America. And he basically insisted to the record
company that we use an American producer. So we were writing
the songs in a place called Battle, which was the site of the Battle of
Hastings, 1066. And Jeff Glixman came to see us and we liked what
he said and he had some pretty wacky ideas and we went to Atlanta,

Georgia to make it. He was a great guy.
A lot of people in Europe think that is our best-sounding album.
And I don’t think it sounded too American. I think it sounded a
bit Deep Purple-ish. It sounded a bit ‘70s English, which I suppose
can be construed as American. I mean, there are a couple of songs
on there that are heavily produced for radio. But generally, “Power
and the Glory” and the other power tracks, they are just quite good
solid rock. It was the first album we had where the actual sound
was great from a hi-fi quality point of view. All our albums before
that were just aggressive, with energy, enthusiasm and brilliant hook
lines, you know what I mean? (laughs). But Power & The Glory was
quite special and it was the first time we spent any length of time in
America and we had a good time really.
I’ll tell you what Jeff did. He built a big box about 15 ft. square
and put the guitar cabinets in it and put the microphones in there and
that’s how he intended to get his guitars sounds. We had great fun
actually, because he plays keyboards, Jeff. And he had a Hammond
organ in there. Any time we went into a jam, he’d dash through the
door and start playing the Hammond. It was quite good fun actually.
He was a nice guy. But it does sound good, Power & The Glory did.
Also Nigel is a massive part of that album. When he came into the
band it was like we had a fifth member. You see, Pete Gill didn’t really
have much to do with writing songs. In fact, a lot of the time he didn’t
even turn up for rehearsals, later on in his career.
April 1983
April 1983. Saxon unleash the cracking title track from their fifth album as a
single. “Power and the Glory” is backed with oldie “See the Light Shining.”
Saxon drummer Nigel Glockler on the NWOBHM:

I was playing in other bands when the NWOBHM exploded onto
the scene, originally, but it was like a breath of fresh air in the middle
of all the punk/new wave stuff. I remember seeing the first Saxon
album in my local record store. I got Wheels of Steel, Strong Arm and
Denim. I had the first Angel Witch album plus a couple by the Tygers
of Pan Tang. It was all good stuff, but, like any new musical event,
all the record companies were falling over themselves to get in on the
act so, inevitably, there were a lot of bands signed who didn’t break
through and got forgotten—gems to be discovered maybe?
But for that record, everyone was working really hard. We were
staying up sometimes until five o’clock in the morning, writing lyrics
and stuff. Graham and Paul were coming up with some great riffs.

Which, I mean, you have to have that, because the riffs provide the
backbone and the spark of every song, really, unless you’ve got a
melody chord sequence. But basically with us, we need riffs. And
then you can take it from there. It’s either riffs or a chord sequence
that is great for Biff to sing to.
And we were all having a go at what’s up. Everyone was tossing
around, because I play a bit of bass. Biff used to play bass, and
Dawby was playing guitar as well his bass—everyone was swapping
around all over the place. As we do now, actually. We all swap around.
Whoever’s got a spark in their head gets on that instrument, and
however good they are at it, we try to hear what everyone’s doing and
we take a listen—that’s how it works.
So again, everyone was involved. At that particular point, no one
had any sort of home recording gear, so basically we just met. We
spent a little while up in Suffolk, where the trucking company that
we used to use was, so we started there. We did some on the road,
actually, at soundchecks. “This Town Rocks” came out of a jam, at an
American soundcheck. “Eagle Has Landed” started off live, just the
basic idea, and then me, Dawby and Paul had a jam in the studio at
The Manor, and so that took it a bit further. But no, it was just all of
us together throwing ideas about.
The one big thing for me, for that album, was that although I had
done the live album, it was important to me to put my stamp on
things. Because I was aware of how well loved Pete Gill was. So it was
a great test for me, sort of a proving ground for me. Not so much for
the band, because I was touring with them before we wrote it, but for
the fans. I felt I had to prove myself to the fans.
April 1983. Nightwing issue Stand Up and Be Counted, plus the album’s
lead single, “Treading Water.”
April 1983. Feeder band Persian Risk issue their “Ridin’ High”/“Hurt You” single.
Persian Risk (and future Motörhead) guitarist Phil Campbell:

I asked Lemmy for his autograph when I was 12 originally. Then my
previous band, Persian Risk, supported Motörhead back in 1983,
and then I turned up to the audition with two different types of
amphetamines and that’s, I guess, probably why I got the job. Persian
Risk were really good, yeah. I formed that band. We used to practice
all the time and I’m quite proud of it, yes. They went a bit soft after I
left. A couple of them still owe me money, but we won’t worry about
that. We used to listen to Kansas and Rush and things. We used to
practice a lot and get everything, maybe over-practiced. But I have
no idea about the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. That’s too far

back—I can’t remember Saxon and things, you know? For me, heavy
metal’s never gone away, you know?
April 1983. Salford College of Technology puts on the Glam Rock Festival,
featuring Silverwing, Cloven Hoof, China Rogues, Sacred Alien and
Wrathchild. If the NWOBHM is in the process of being supplanted by glam
metal from the UK, events like this prove all too graphically that the UK
won’t be participating in the next metal phenomenon.
April 1983. Fastway issue their self-titled debut album. Like Def Leppard,
the band eschew a NWOBHM sound, and direct their efforts toward America
to succeed. The band consists of Fast Eddie Clarke, ex-Motörhead, Jerry
Shirley, ex-Humble Pie, and an unknown young singer named Dave King. Pete
Way is already out of the band by the time the album is issued, on CBS.
“Easy Livin’” is the first single, followed by “We Become One.”
Fastway guitarist Fast Eddie Clarke:

We were on our way. Once again, when I left Motörhead, I was
bubbling with riffs. Pete Way said, “Let’s have a jam” and when we
did, every jam turned into a song. Pete was in a similar situation
as me, as he had been kind of forced out of his band because of his
behavior. I was forced out of my band due to my behavior. We both
also liked to have a drink.

I met with Pete and we had a drink and then I went to see this guy
I knew and asked him if we could use his rehearsal room on credit
because we didn’t have any money. He agreed to let me pay him later.
Topper Headon from the Clash was just down the road and we got
chatting and he said, “Ah, this is fucking great, I’ll play drums.” The
next thing I know we get to rehearsal the next day and Topper is on
drums, Pete is on bass and I’m on guitar and it just sounds great.
It was the first time I had played with a proper bass player in seven
years. Pete is a wonderful bass player. I was playing some solos and
my guitar had never sounded so sweet. The underlying sound of
Motörhead made it so I had no bass to lean on to play a solo. I was
always struggling with my sound. I didn’t realize until I played with
Pete that the problem was that I didn’t have a proper bass guitar for
my sound to be soaked into. From there on it was fantastic. Topper
was great but he had some issues and problems and he had to leave.
We were really three outcasts. He told me that he was not in the right
place and that he had to leave.
One of Pete’s fans told us that Jerry Shirley was painting and
decorating in this town just outside of London. We met up with him
in a pub in London and he comes in all covered in paint. Jerry was
one of the greatest rock drummers of our time and he is standing
there covered in paint. He liked to drink too, which was handy. We
sorted it out and he agreed to join the band. We started rehearsing
with Jerry and it sounded great.
Pete was there when we got Dave. We did this all together. When he
left, I got a bit bitter and twisted and I decided to carry on anyway. I had
no idea where he had gone. For a couple of days, I was quite worried,
but then my management told me what was going on. I actually did not
believe he had gone with Ozzy; it didn’t really make any sense as I really
thought he was 100% committed to our band. I thought it was going
really well and I wrongly thought we were good buddies.
I didn’t see Pete again until 1988. I actually ran into him in the
street; I kid you not. I was outside of my flat in London and I
saw him and said, “Pete, what are you doing here?” He came in
and had a cup of tea. It was six years after he left before I saw him
again. I didn’t push him on it. I really like Pete; he’s a lovely fellow.
His biggest problem is that he was too soft and that led to people
taking advantage of him. Sharon wanted him in Ozzy’s band and
she told him how great it would be and how famous he would be
and he took the bait. There were some issues with his UFO record
company, Chrysalis, but it was nothing that we couldn’t have sorted
out between us. We got off to a rocky start and then it all got really
fucked-up. Fastway seemed to be doomed from the start, really.

April 11, 1983. Iron Maiden issue “Flight of Icarus,” a song framed by a full-
on NWOBHM gallop.
April 22, 24, 1983. Venom play the US for the first time, headlining shows
at the Paramount Theatre in New York. Support for the show, arranged by
Jon and Marsha Zazula, is Metallica.

When Venom first came over to the states we sent the equipment
to the States. When we did the thing with Johnny Z, it was the
Rock and Roll Heaven thing in 1983. And Venom packed up all the
equipment to go into the big warehouse where we had it all. And
there was another big shipment, huge big containers that had all of
the pyrotechnics in it, which was all going to go separately. The last
crew people that packed that gear away just assumed that the other
big container was to go with everything else. So they packed it away.
Well, it wasn’t for days that we went back to the warehouse and
realized that the container had already gone.
And by this time the container was already on a huge ship. This is
like three months before the first Venom gig in the States. So it’s on
the ship on its way across the fuckin’ Atlantic. Three months later
we get to America, get to Jonny Z’s house, and we’re standing there,

going, “Where’s our truck, where’s our truck?!” And Jonny couldn’t
understand why we were nervous, and we’re fuckin’ sweating,
shitting ourselves, because what if it went up?
There was nothing we could do, nobody we could tell, you
couldn’t turn the ship around, you couldn’t bring it back, but there
was a whole load of fuckin’ pyro going across to America which must
have been done very illegally. Because the Customs guys didn’t open
it up or anything and there it all was. And we opened up the truck
and out came the container and there was all the pyro. And honestly,
Jonny Z was like, “What the hell is all that!?” And we’re like,
“Probably enough to blow up half your country” (laughs). So that
was a fuckin’ real scary one. Because that would have been us—we
would never have been playing in the States; we would have just going
to jail forever.
April 28, 1983. Honourary

NWOBHM band from Switzerland
Krokus issue their seventh album,
Headhunter. You intrepid author
turns 20.
Krokus vocalist Marc

Storace:
When the time came to tour
with Def Leppard we had
Headhunter behind our
ass. It made us stand on
stage with open shirts and,
how can I say it… we stood
proud and we kicked ass and
we showed no mercy. To us,
Def Leppard sounded like
a pop band. We had the meanest album Krokus ever wrote to date
and it was also the most metal album we ever wrote. We composed
that with the producer of Judas Priest, Tom Allom. He made sure we
kept the edge. It was heaven, for me, working with him. It is a pity he
stopped producing.
Spring 1983. Driveshaft issue “Heartbreaker” while Mithrandir chime in with

“Dreamers of Fortune.”

May 1983
May 1983. Raven issue their

“Break the Chain” single
which finds the band adding
some welcome bottom end
to their previously panicked
deliveries.
Raven bassist and

vocalist John Gallagher:
“Break the Chain” we
knew was a great song,
just from the get-go.
But we couldn’t get the
chorus together. I had
basically the whole song,
and Rob said, “How
about ‘Break, break the
chain’?” Cool. There
we go. Recording that
album, Udo got mortal drunk on cognac, and he was singing “In
Trance” by the Scorpions, which we thought was the funniest thing
we’d ever seen, Udo in a drunken drawl, “I wake up in the morning,
and the sun begins to shine.” He was staying at a little guest house
about 15, 20 minutes away from the studio. And the guy from the
studio saw himself as a real sharp guy with his sports car, and Michael
Wagener, the producer, had a Porsche, and the two of them would
race each other down these stupid two lane roads and they nearly got
frickin’ killed. A hundred mile an hour in England; oh Jesus Christ.
So it was frantic, pretty frantic.
May 1983. Stampede issue “The Other Side”/“The Runner” while J.J.’s
Powerhouse, formerly Quad, issue “Running for the Line,” Tygers exile Jess
Cox issues the AOR “Bridges,” and great NWOBHM hope Geddes Axe issue
“Escape from New York.”
May 1983. Mausoleum Records forms in Belgium, the label going on to

issue metal from all over the world, with an emphasis on mainland Europe.
The NWOBHM is represented early with signings Witchfynde and Wildfire.
May 1983. Holocaust issues Live (Hot Curry and Wine), a rare gatefold
independent album, further distinguished by its cartoon illustration of the
band and its bevy of tracks not on The Nightcomers.

Holocaust guitarist John Mortimer:
Part of the reason that the second album was a live album is that there
were real major disagreements about what kind of stuff we should
play. Again it came down to me and Nicky on one side, Garry, Robin
Begg and Ed “Dinky” Dudley on the other. We were all still good
friends, but we had major disagreements about direction. Phoenix did
want to do a second studio album, but we thought it would be best to
just get the live stuff out in the meantime as a kind of stop-gap until
we all figured out what the hell we were going to play.
May 1983. Kevin Heybourne, having disbanded Angel Witch, announces his
new band Blind Fury.
May 1983. Venom issue “Die Hard”/“Acid Queen,” both non-LP.
Venom guitarist Mantas on his biggest influence:

I would say that the guy who is fucking personally responsible for
me going to a music store and buying a guitar and saying I want to
be in heavy metal bands is K.K. Downing. I mean, I saw that guy in
concert and he was the epitome of the heavy metal guitarist for me.
Fuckin’ hell, Priest ruled, great. And I thought that’s great, I want to
fuckin’ form a band. So if K.K. Downing reads this interview and sees
that, fuckin’ hell, I influenced him to form Venom, who went on to
create a completely new musical segment... we really don’t have that
much in common with Judas Priest, but they were an influence, in
the same way that Kiss were an influence on me as well. In that way
Venom have influenced the new generation.
I even looked like him (laughs); yes, I would say so, sure. I got the
Metalworks video recently, sort of the history of Judas Priest, and
there is a black and white shot on there, just a still shot of K.K. and
I’ve got a shot from some European concert of mine and it’s nearly
identical—it’s scary (laughs). Yes, in the early days, I went out and
bought the Flying V, and thought that’s it. So there you go K.K.—
you’re responsible for the whole fucking lot.
May 1983. Uriah Heep issue Head First, a second album in the upbeat
heavy metal style of Abominog. Meanwhile a band with future Heep
connections, Grand Prix, release “Give Me What’s Mine.”
May 1983. France’s take on Kerrang!, called Enfer, launches, with all
content in French. Further proof of the goodly climate for metal all across
Europe in the low ‘80s.

May 1983. Tank sign with Music for Nations and add Mick Tucker on guitar,
making the band a quartet.
May – July 1983. Heavy Pettin’

work with Brian May and Mack
at The Townhouse, London and
Union Studios, Munich, on what
will become their debut album,
Lettin’ Loose.
Heavy Pettin’ guitarist

Punky Mendoza:
We had Mack producing
the album, and Mack had
worked on AC/DC albums,
and he used some of the
tricks and technology and
understanding he learned
there. And Brian’s sound
was basically Brian from the
beginning, Brian May from
the very outset. Brian had said he wanted to try to capture us as live
as possible. He wanted to capture us as the band we were when he
heard us playing live, and in a rehearsal studio. And I think Brian did
his best, under the circumstances with kind of young lads, new to
the game. I think Brian and Mack did the best to try to capture that
rawness of the band.
I think Mack brought his engineering skills. Mack certainly
followed Brian May’s vision, like, this is his first project in the studio,
this is what I want to do, I want to capture this band live. And Mack
was the man to act as the technical side of what Brian’s ears were
hearing. So Mack was certainly trying his best to match what Brian’s
vision was, sound-wise, was in his head. And because of the close
connection to Queen, and because they’d been working together for
so long, that was an easy thing to do.
Mack would be working on drum sounds, bass sounds, and
whatever, and then Brian would come in at that stage with fresh ears
and say, no, this is the way I think it should sound. And they would
have an agreement or disagreement on that and just take it from there.
But we were really there as his project, if you know what I mean.
We felt that we were his project, and we put a lot of trust in Brian’s
experience, and his gentlemanly conduct, and his putting a lot of trust

in Mack, and him being chosen by Brian to do it justice. Looking
back, as his first project, he tried his best with us. He put effort into it,
and a lot of extra time into the band and that album.
May 2 1983. Iron Maiden begin

their Piece of Mind tour, first in
the UK, then Europe, then over to
North America, headlining for the
first time, and back to Europe.
Support in North America is
Saxon and Fastway.
Saxon guitarist Paul Quinn

on the North American tour:
Fast Eddie, he’s got a
sardonic sense of humour,
so we could relate to that,
being British. We were
fans as musicians anyway.
They’d been through some
famous bands themselves.
Maiden, we’d known quite
a few years, because I saw
recently on a Facebook
page... I forgot who posted it, whether was it Bruce, but it was this ticket
from Manchester University, which is kind of the University College, of
us, Maiden and Nutz playing together, which is when we first met them;
I would imagine it was ‘78 or ‘79.
Saxon drummer Nigel Glockler on Saxon leaving the tour mid-

way through:
Yeah, it was a management thing, which I was pissed-off about it
actually. We were on an equal footing with Maiden, audience reaction-
wise, definitely. I think if we had stayed on that, we would’ve broken
America big time. It’s very frustrating that they didn’t commit us to
do that, but you know, I’m not one of these people that feels bitter.
It’s like well, what’s the point in bloody worrying about it, quite
frankly. We’re still here now, and we’re on the up again, and I figure,
you know, that’s great. I mean, a lot of bands of that era are gone.
We’re still here, and we’re still relevant to the fans, because they’re
still buying our albums and coming to shows. So you know, great.

May 16, 1983. Iron Maiden issue Piece of Mind, a superlative work, and
arguably the record that creates the Maiden sound as we know it, due
in no small par t to the arrival of drummer Nicko McBrain, ex-Trust, to
the fold.
May 27, 1983. Motörhead issue the “I Got Mine” single, featuring new
guitarist Brian Rober tson, known for his twin lead work with significant
NWOBHM influence from the ‘70s, Thin Lizzy.
Motörhead bassist and vocalist Lemmy on not breaking in the US:

We never did and I think that it is a bit late for that now. Seriously,
I’ve always felt that we were a pretty good band and I always have
thought that we deserved more attention in America. We’ve been
putting albums out here since 1982. If it takes making a movie about
one of us to get us more recognition then I say, “Let’s do it.”
I just do what I do and that is to be the bass player and vocalist for
Motörhead; that’s my title. This is what we do—we kick ass. As far
as the popularity goes, I never saw the point of letting them win. If
you let them win then the whole thing was for nothing. You’ve got
to prove it. You’ve got to say, “Yeah, I was here and I shit on your
hydrant”—you’ve got to leave your mark.

May 28, 1983. A large bill Saxon
show at the Leeds Queens Hall
includes two late entry “honourary”
NWOBHM bands as support acts,
Twisted Sister from New York (a
year before that band’s big break
with Stay Hungry), and Anvil, from
Toronto, Canada. Along for the world
metal expo are Spider, Girlschool,
Battleaxe and Slade’s Noddy Holder.
End of May 1983. Vardis issue a

compilation called The Lion’s Share.
The NWOBHM is now significantly
long in the tooth that its bands are
issuing hits packages.
June 1983
June 1983. Def Leppard issue “Rock of Ages” as a single, perpetuating

the band’s methodical killing of the NWOBHM through the invention of
dance metal.

Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen:
I think that was one of Mutt’s ideas. We spent quite a bit of time
getting the whole sort of cowbell intro going. It’s funny, because Mutt
had this whole counting-in going, where instead of saying “1-2-3-4,”
he would sort of make lighthearted fun of various groups around the
world. And one of the counts was “Gutten-Gleben-Glatin-Globin,”
you know? And that was pretty interesting. Various people have
written in saying, “Oh, it means running through the forest softly,”
all these different translations. Knowing Mutt and his background,
he speaks Dutch really fluently, so I think a lot of it came from his
background. It was really just a bit of fun, as was “Rock of Ages” just
being a play on the biblical Rock of Ages, as it were.
Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen:

We had a different agenda for starters. You’d come out to LA
and these guys would be scary guitar players. They were great; it
was really cool. Great guitar players. The harmonies would be more
American, and we were going somewhere else with it. The punk
bands would be screaming and we’d have that in our thing. It was
more AC/DC than, say, Journey. So there was that whole thing. And
the fact that we were the same age as bands like Duran Duran, and
MTV was exploding, it was a perfect outlet, if you like.
We looked like a pop band, sounded like a rock band, but the
songs were a bit of both anyway. It was really cool and we really
enjoyed the process. We got lumped in with the NWOBHM which
we were nothing to do with, really. It was just a time thing. Just
throwing us in that category is easier to do than making a new sub-
genre or sub-category.
So I can see why that would happen, but I think we were very
different and our approach was very different. We were very much
about making records, about making albums you can play in 20 years
and go, “Wow, this is really cool. A lot has gone into this, a lot of
substance and depth.” Not to knock these other bands, but again, it
was a different agenda, a different approach. Our thing was making
records that sound a bit different to everyone else. But I can see why
they would put us there, because it was more a time period than
anything else.
Tygers of Pan Tang producer Chris Tsangarides on the exploding MTV era:
There’s not very many English bands that can carry off the look
that Mötley Crüe had. In fact, there’s not that many anywhere,
really. But you’re likely to carry it off if you come from Los Angeles

(laughs). For some reason, all the glam bands that came over here,
sure, yeah, fine, but you see some band over here playing in a dodgy
pub with the big hair and the makeup, and they’re... what’re you
doing? You’re playing in some piss ant pub?—ain’t gonna happen. So
although they were embraced, that scene didn’t really take off here. It
was one band that kind of looked a bit like that, Tigertailz, that I had
worked with. We did an album called Bezerk which is really kind of
good, I have to say.
But that was it for that style of music look. I can’t think, to be
honest, of many other bands, over here, that went for it. We don’t
look like that at all, and couldn’t look like that. We don’t have the
suntan, for a start. Or at the time, the tattoo parlors to get them cool
tats and so on. But it was embraced because it was still rock. It was
rock ‘n’ roll—you can shake your head to it.
June 1983. Sweet Savage issue their second single, “Straight Through the
Heart”/Teaser”—the a-side would morph into a Dio song, and not “Straight
Through the Heart,” but rather “Caught in the Middle.”
Sweet Savage guitarist Vivian Campbell:

Almost all of the songs I contributed on the first Dio album had
originally started off as songs with my first band, Sweet Savage, back
in Ireland. I mean, a lot of them were either half-baked songs from
Sweet Savage or songs we had written in Sweet Savage but hadn’t
recorded. Because I mean, Sweet Savage... we were an aspiring band.
We didn’t have a record deal; we released a couple of independent
singles but we never actually recorded an album.
We just did a bunch of live gigs and a lot of them were just songs I
had written with Sweet Savage that I just took the chords of them and
changed them very slightly. But they hadn’t been recorded yet and
they were songs that I had written so I felt somewhat entitled to do
that. “Straight Through the Heart,” however, was actually generated
from a Jimmy Bain riff; that was mostly a Jimmy song. “Stand Up and
Shout” was another Jimmy song. But “Rainbow in the Dark” was an
old Sweet Savage tune, “Caught in the Middle” was a Sweet Savage
tune and “Invisible” was a Sweet Savage tune.
You know, Metallica cover a Sweet Savage song, and it was so
strange because we sounded so much like Metallica. I mean the
singer... we were a four-piece, two guitars, bass and drums and our
bass player Ray Haller was the singer and he sounded just like James
Hetfield. I mean, he really, really sang in that way. And we actually
were very much a speed metal band, although we didn’t mean to be.
We had a very nervous drummer and if we rehearsed or wrote a song
at 100 beats per minute, by the time we played it, it was closer to 140.

So we tended to do everything a lot faster than we really should have.
And having a singer that sounded just like Hetfield. So in a weird
sort of way, could’ve been Metallica and it became very, very ironic
that Metallica started covering one of our songs. Then it became even
more ironic when I saw a Metallica set list, and I noticed that they
started with a song called “Breadfan” by Budgie. And that’s how
we used to open our show, with Sweet Savage, way back when. We
opened with “Breadfan;” it was so weird! I’m going, hang on, they
cover one of our songs, they open with “Breadfan,” the same cover
we opened with.
In fact, there was a second cover they did by a band called
Earthquake, that we used to play as well. And that’s totally bizarre
because it’s a really, really obscure cover. It’s the only track I ever
heard of this band; some California band. I had never actually heard
the original until Ray Haller, the bass player and singer from Sweet
Savage, he was the big music fan and he would listen to all this
obscure music, and he brought an album or single to rehearsal or
whatever and said, “Listen to this song, it’s very obscure, no one is
going to know it, we should cover it, it’s great.” And then to find
out that Metallica did that as a cover as well! It makes me think
that somewhere along the line, someone in Metallica heard a lot of
bootlegs of Sweet Savage (laughs). Which is good; in a way it’s very
flattering, but it’s strange, too.
June 1983. Stampede issue their second album, albeit first studio album,
called Hurricane Town, on Polydor.

June 1983. Raven issue their classic third album, All for One (working
title: Athletic Rock). It emerges simultaneously on Neat Records and Jonny
Zazula’s Megaforce Records. The album is produced by Michael Wagener
and Udo Dirkschneider.

We started demoing those songs, but we were just sitting around
and Jess Cox from Neat said I don’t want to do another album again.
And we did a Radio One session. They had a rock show with Tommy
Vance, probably still does. And they invited us to come down and do
a session, which is like a badge of honour. The great bands always did
this. So it started out with the guys going down for an interview—and
getting in a car wreck. I couldn’t go down because I was working
at that time. They were stranded in London with no money. So me
and me dad got all the equipment and drove a truck down in like the
thickest fog you’d ever seen in your life.
And then we were in this real studio doing a session, and there was
no going back. We said we aren’t going back to Neat after this. So we
bitched and moaned and David Wood said, “Who do you want to
use?” And we said, “Well this band Accept has got this great record.”
And he said, “Well, do you want the guy who did the Accept album?”
And it turned out to be Michael Wagener, who we didn’t know from
Adam, but he was working with Udo, and we put a partnership
together. At that time, Udo had basically left Accept, just after they
finished Restless and Wild, and he rejoined them almost immediately.
Don’t ask me.

But we found a studio down in London, and that was basically
taking everything to do a new level. We were up in a Newcastle and
we worked on songs for about a week, basically just taking out the
extraneous rubbish. and Michael would say, “Well, don’t sing it here,
sing it here.” And he just kind of helped us with the arrangements,
and we spent about two weeks recording.
Obviously after we did Wiped Out, which was who can play the
fastest, sing the highest, make the most frickin’ racket, we just figured,
let’s just go the other
direction. You know, you
figure out when you start
playing larger halls and
you’re playing really
complicated stuff, it just
gets lost. Stuff that has got
a bit more groove really
cuts through better. So we
tried to play to that. Play
for the sound, is how we
called it. If you play a little
simpler and more direct
with a good sound it’s
really going to cut
through. And as I say, we
got together with Michael
Wagener, who at the time,
was in partnership with
Udo, because Udo’s
standing in Accept was up
and down. He was thinking of just packing again, being a producer
type deal. But luckily for music fans, that didn’t happen (laughs). And
that’s the first time we did real pre-production. They came up, we sat
for a week, just playing songs, going over them, went down to
London, did the album in about 15, 16 days, I think. And it was a
blast; we had the greatest time.
So the songs are slower because we felt we had been there, done
that at the time with Wiped Out. We got nothing but slagged for that
album. This is nothing but speed, speed, speed. Of course it’s a joke.
A year or two later you had Slayer and Metallica and all these other
people disappearing into the sunset. But we felt, let’s do something
we hadn’t done, and covered the bases in terms of having mid-paced
songs, put more of a groove into things. It was a great album to play
live, just about everything on it.

June 1983. Grand Prix issue their third and
last album, Samurai, before breaking up in
early 1984. The album generates two
singles, “Give Me What’s Mine” and
“Shout.”
June 4, 1983. Motörhead issue Another

Perfect Day, which reaches #20 on the
UK charts. Guitarist for the record is Brian
Robertson of Wild Horses and Thin Lizzy
fame, a controversial choice confirmed as
such by his short hair, his insistence on
wearing shorts on stage during the US tour,
and his equally succinct and disciplined
guitar lines.

Motörhead drummer Phil Taylor:
A lot of the songs on Another Perfect Day, Robbo came up with
most of the riffs—as you can tell, it’s a different album. And me and
Robbo basically worked on them all, and Lemmy, well, as in most
albums, although Lemmy won’t tell you that, most of the time it
was me and Eddie or me and Robbo were doing all the rehearsing,
coming up with riffs, and then Lemmy would come in somewhere
towards the end, and just come up with his bass riff. And Robbo was
more of a perfectionist; he knew his way around the desk. I mean,
me and Lemmy don’t get on anymore so I don’t care what the fuck I
say about him, but basically he plays the same fucking thing in every
song. Sorry, almost, that’s what he does virtually. And he gets away
with fucking murder.
Motörhead bassist and vocalist Lemmy:

Brian Robertson was great. I just couldn’t get along with him,
but he was a great player. But Phil is a fantastic guitar player and
so is Eddie. I was a guitar player but I was so fucking mediocre I
switched to bass. I play rhythm guitar bass. Brian Robertson had
problems with it because he was always bitching about it. He used
to say, “There is no bass. How can I do this? Can we set up another
bass drum? I need bass.” I said, “What makes you think that I
wanted bass?”
June 4, 1983. Sabre issue, on

Neat Records, their “Miracle
Man”/“On the Loose” single.
Also early in the month, Neat
issue a four-track compilation
EP called One Take No Dubs
and a single from insider Jess
Cox pairing “Bridges” with
“Check it Out.”
June 10, 1983. Cloven Hoof

record three selections for the
BBC Friday Rock Show.

June 10, 1983. Tank, now with second guitarist Mick Tucker, ex-White Spirit,
issue their third album, This Means War.
Tank bassist and vocalist Algy Ward:

We recorded it on a mobile, 24-track mobile outside a warehouse.
No, things weren’t going well. Things weren’t going well. Peter
wasn’t well. Addiction held him, not always playing. The songs
had all been rehearsed. Some of the songs didn’t work out as they
should’ve done. Mick, only wrote… He came in about three-quarters
of the way through; most of the material had already been written.
Pete was trying to come up with riffs and stuff like that, but he was
either drunk or whatever. And couldn’t come up with the riffs to put
over what we already had.
“Laughing in the Face Death,” “Just Like Something from
Hell,” “Hot Lead”... we already had all those. It was more like
“Echoes” and “This Means War” that the riffs were... I had stuff
for the song, but didn’t have the riffs. We already had the stuff
for the songs, but I was waiting for Pete to put the riffs on, you
know, come up with riffs. So Mick did them. And I was working
so much. I always had problems with my voice. You know, it was
just too much. Being on tour, and also being in the studio, I didn’t
have time to rest. Didn’t have any holidays from 1977 to 1983. I
took vocal training, but it didn’t make any difference. All they
said was just fucking rest (laughs). It was a long time being on
the road, ‘77 till ‘83, without having a break. I mean, a real break,

apart from getting Christmas off or something. Especially with all
that noise. There was no such thing as in-ear monitoring or any of
that back then.
Tank guitarist Mick Tucker:

The first two albums had the punk edge—Filth Hounds of Hades
and Power of the Hunter. I joined the band in 1983 on This Means
War, and I had come from a band called White Spirit. I took Jannick
Gers’ place in White Spirit, and I had more of a classic rock sound; we
were doing a lot of classic rock with a bit of AOR thrown in. I went
down for a jam with him and I got offered the job, so I thought it was
quite interesting.
It was a very rough punk edge to it, but when I joined the band I
started getting really involved in the writing. So I think that’s more
where the metal side came out in time. We sort of changed from that
album on. I mean we did Honour and Blood, which me and Algy
wrote the whole album. We co-wrote This Means War together, all the
tracks. I just think it gave it a more classic rock edge. The sad thing is
after that album, Algy decided to take a year off. We could have been
out on the road. I thought that would have broke the band in Europe
big time, but obviously his attitude was “can’t be bothered.” And that
was it, really—and nothing I could do.
Tank drummer Mark Brabbs on This Means War producer John

Verity and the making of the album:
He was great. He was probably the best producer we had. Again,
no disrespect to the other two, he really got into the song, into the
music, he was getting the sound. I think he got the sound just right.
And you listen back now, it’s a very ‘80s rock sound, but it’s still a
very powerful sound. He got the Tank power, the power we had when
we played live. He’s got it on record. I think we didn’t get it on the
other two. They were quite raw, especially Filth Hounds. The actual
power we had, especially with Algy’s bass playing, and my drumming
and the guitars thrashing around there, he managed to hone the power
that we had and put on record—he’s done a great job there.
We did the backing tracks on a mobile, with the Rolling Stones
mobile. I think it’s called Moulin Rouge, which we had parked on the
side of the canal. And we did all the backing tracks on this mobile,
with John Verity. And then we used to go to Frank’s Funny Farm,
which is a late-night boozer in Camden town, and stayed there until
about six in the morning, get driven back to our houses, start again at
midday the next day. So it was a good experience actually, good fun. It
was always a laugh with the lads; Algy, me and Pete, always had such
fun. Great company.

So the mobile was just in a factory, just a big warehouse on the side
of the canal. I’m trying to think what canal now. It was the canal that
goes down Camden, Camden way. Great Western, the Great Western
Canal. We just hooked up there. And again, John Verity did all the
positioning of various different amps and curtains and God knows
what else to get the sound he wanted. And then we did the vocals and
keyboards up in his own studio up in Yorkshire, up north. Which
was fun. It was probably the most recording and the best recording
we’d done with my time in Tank. There was a sitting room, a massive
mixing desk, and they set cameras up in the warehouse so they could
see you going on. It’s like a normal studio set-up, except it’s a mobile
studio. I played drums for a band called Dumpy’s Rusty Nuts, of all
bands, and I did live recording at the Marquee, with the same mobile,
funny enough.
About two weeks we were there. Two weeks in the warehouse,
and then we took about a couple of weeks off, and then we went up
north to John’s studio for about two weeks. And that’s where we did
the vocals and the mix. I think we did the guitar solos up there too.
Girlschool, and Rock Goddess all came up to the warehouse. I think
they were touring at the time, and they all just walked up and did a
couple of backing vocals for us, which was quite fun (laughs). But you
could barely hear them.
We didn’t tour the album, unfortunately. That’s almost the start of
the breakup of the Brabbs brothers, in Tank, really. We were really
proud of the album and all the press were very happy with it. People
who didn’t like Tank were turning around and saying, wow, this is a
big difference. I actually enjoy it. Even people who didn’t like Tank
were coming around saying this was a great album. So we thought,
okay, this is great. We had a tour of the US and Canada planned and
we hadn’t been to Canada. So that was on, plus another European
tour planned. We used to call them toilet tours, which is like smaller
venues of England.
And all this was planned, and everything kept getting cancelled
and postponed, and this, that and the other. And then out of the blue,
Algy and Mick fired Peter, without me knowing. I think we did a
couple of dates at the Marquee, and that’s about it that we did for the
album. And obviously it all became awkward for me, and it was a case
of, yeah, I was sort of, “Why wasn’t I in the conversation?”
Peter had a big problem at the time, that was eventually affecting
his guitar playing, but I think he could’ve got over it; I don’t know.
We could’ve discussed it, but it was a fait accompli. They fired Peter
without telling me. I found out from Pete. And so when I phoned
Algy up, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is a democracy. Even if we would’ve
asked you, it would’ve been two against one, so there’s no need to

ask you.” Which I thought was a bit unfair, you know. Especially
since all we’d been through—we were brothers, all of us. So I thought
that was a bit harsh. So I put up with it for a couple of weeks, but we
never actually got back to playing together. And tours kept getting
cancelled. And funny enough, I had an audition with AC/DC, and
got through to the last two. And the guy who got it, I actually used
to see drumming for Tytan and I used to teach drumming to, and that
was Simon Wright.
Mid-June 1983. Jaguar issue their

Power Games debut.
Jaguar guitarist Garry

Pepperd on the Jaguar sound:
I think the obvious
band, certainly, that we
well respected was Raven,
because, obviously, same
label, so we met them now
and again, and they were
brilliant. I would say they
were just fantastic. So
much energy there; I would
certainly say we looked up
to them and respected Raven
big time.
But I don’t know, some
of the other bands were
perhaps a bit slower and
ploddier than we were.
Also in those days, we were very young and punk was certainly a big
influence on us. So we took elements of punk as well, the speed and
energy of punk, really. Plus we couldn’t play very well (laughs). But I
don’t know, we just liked to play fast.
I loved the early Iron Maiden. I actually preferred them with Paul
Di’Anno. All right, he’s not a patch on Bruce Dickinson vocally,
but again, they had a bit of a punky edge to them, and when Bruce
Dickinson joined, they lost that and went with their more epic kind
of songs. And Diamond Head we liked a lot, although we weren’t
anything like them.
June 18, 1983. Bitches Sin issue a six-track cassette EP featuring a-side
“Out of My Mind” with “No More Chances,” “Overnight,” “Watch Out,” “Ain’t
Life a Bitch” and “Day In, Day Out.”

June 20, 1983. Iron Maiden issue as a single, swell British anthem
“The Trooper.”
June 25, 1983. Demon issue their third album, The Plague, which finds the
band moving in a proggier and poppier direction.
Demon vocalist Dave Hill on the evolution of the Demon sound:

Yes, it’s a strange one, really. We started off, as people tend to
mention, as a sort of New Wave of British Heavy Metal thing. We
were doing simple commercial rock, but we progressed in traditions
that maybe bands of the ‘70s, the Deep Purples and the Yeses... as
albums went on we did progress and try to offer more than the same
thing each time. And as far as whether we run with the progressive
crowd, I don’t think really. We’ve just developed over the years;
Demon has its own sound and I think it is difficult to pigeonhole. We
started off with the demonic name and the first album being Night of
the Demon, but I think we got over that some years ago. We just try
to offer something different each time we do an album. Some bands
do 15 albums, and each one sounds very similar, but we try to move
on with each album.

Mid-1983. Tokyo Blade issue their debut single (under that band name), “If
Heaven is Hell”/“Highway Passion.
Mid-1983. Chateaux issue their debut Chained and Desperate album, the
first of three quality Grim Reaper-esque NWOBHM howlers, no surprise, given
that Grim Reaper vocalist Steve Grimmett guests on the album.
Grim Reaper vocalist Steve Grimmett:

Basically, they were from a neighboring town, Cheltman, and they
lost their singer about two weeks before they were going into the
studio to do a single. So they asked if I would do it, and I was well up
for doing it, and talked to the rest of my guys, and they were okay.
And yeah, we went and did a single. So I did two songs for them.
And then about three, maybe four months after that, they asked me
to go and do the album. Because they still hadn’t found a singer. So I
went to my guys and said, “Look, you know, they want me to do this;
have you guys got any problems with that?” “Well, no, we haven’t.”
And between that, between doing the single and doing the album for
Chateaux, Grim Reaper won a battle of the bands, a local thing, which
gave us 24 hours in a 24 track studio. So we came up with a demo,
basically, and I took the demo to Ebony Records, and six weeks later
we were signed.

Steve is still singing. God bless him, as he should do. I’m somewhat
biased, but based on what other people tell me, he’s one of the
best vocalists to come out of England in the ‘80s. The guy has an
incredibly strong voice, an incredibly loud voice as well. And also,
I think to a degree, the voice doesn’t fit the person. I remember the
first time I actually took Steve into a studio, and this was before Steve
actually joined the band, and I took him to a local studio, and it was
like, “Oh, really?” And half an hour later it was like, “Oh my God,
how can we record this guy?” Because he’s so loud.
July 1983
July 1983. Sounds announces that drummer Duncan Scott and bassist Colin
Kimberly have both left Diamond Head.

We played with Diamond Head, and to be honest, Sean Harris was

the biggest dickhead I’d ever met. We backed them up very early on
and they not only soundchecked for days it seemed, but Sean would
go around to every instrument and he’d be on the drum kit for ten
minutes and then the guitar and then the bass and then he’d go a
‘round again to the point where we didn’t even get a soundcheck. And
I just thought he was such and arrogant twat.
July 1983. Xero issue their “Oh Baby”/“Hold on” single, two versions at 7”
and one at 12”.

July 1983. Quartz’s third and last studio album, Against All Odds, emerges
Quartz drummer Malcolm Cope on the mission for Against All Odds:
Just find more melody, in an effort to broaden our market record-
wise. The other thing was—great designs—we wanted to get to
America. We felt that there was a much bigger market, if we could be
a bit more melodic than what we’d been doing.
Quartz guitarist Mick Hopkins:

The title Against All Odds comes from the fact that it took so long
to do, because of having to move from studio to studio. The first one

started, had problems with the recording with the machines, so we
moved elsewhere. So in the end, we used three studios, and I came up
with, “We gotta get this done. It’s against all odds.” And they went,
oh, we can use that as the title. But it was a bit of a departure from
what we were doing before. Because you’ve got a new bass player,
new singer, different ideas.
But were away too long; that was the problem. Because you’ve
done an album with a major company, and then you’ve got nothing.
You just go around and you’re playing. But eventually it comes to a
point where you think, well... although we got Against All Odds out.
But there’s such the gap between the two, that people tend to lose
track because they don’t know what you’re doing or whether you are
still around. And they’re not seeing any advertisements or anything.
July 1983. Saxon issue “Nightmare”/“Midas

Touch,” both tracks from Power & The Glor y. The
band’s tour for this album and these singles in
the US, with Fastway and Iron Maiden, would
constitute a rare NWOBHM assault on North
American markets.
Saxon bassist Steve Dawson on touring with

Fastway and Iron Maiden:
Fantastic, great. Yeah, we all got on very
well. Nobody got a big ego, so nobody was
wanting to put one over on the other, as in
not enough room on the stage or the sound
or anything. We worked with Fast Eddie
before, when we toured with Motörhead on
the Bomber tour, so we were old mates. But
Fast Eddie is a really funny guy. He’s just
got like a really dry sense of humour. And
Dave King, the singer at that time, he had
just been in local bands in Ireland. It was
all new to him, and so he was just having a
fantastic time.
And everybody in Iron Maiden, Bruce, Steve
just sort of… You see, we all worked
together before. Iron Maiden and ourselves
were on the tour circuit in England for a
long time before we got a recording contract.
So we knew them, you see; we’d come across
each other lots and lots of times. And in fact,

on one bill, we played in London when Paul Di’Anno was singing for
Iron Maiden—it was Iron Maiden, Saxon and Samson, and Bruce
Dickinson was singing for Samson at the time. All three of us on the
same bill, and we did that lineup for about four or five shows. I mean,
at that time we were all skint and got no money, and we shared a
common goal.
July 1983. Tank issue “Echoes of a Distant Battle” backed with “The
Man that Never Was” as the only single from This Means War, in 7” and
12” format.
July 1983. Witchfynde issue “I’d Rather Go Wild”/“Cry Wolf.” Both tracks
are from the forthcoming third album, which features a switch on lead vocals
from Steve Bridges to Luther Beltz.
July 1983. Aragorn split up, drummer Mike Ellis moving on to AIIZ. The band
had recorded 12 tracks worth for a shelved album tentatively called Night is
Burning. These surface on a 2003 Castle compilation called Noonday: The
Aragorn Anthology.
July 1983. Battleaxe issue the first of the band’s two albums, Burn this
Town, notorious for its amateurish cover illustration, which, as the story
goes, was intended to be used only as a rough sketch and not the final art.
July 1983. Silverwing issue their one and only album, a live affair, called Alive
and Kicking, after which the band transition into dirty glamsters Pet Hate.
July 1983. Motörhead issue “Shine,” backed with “Hoochie Coochie Man,”
after which Lemmy hires guitarists Phil Campbell and Michael “Wurzel”
Burston in place of the departed Brian Robertson, and drummer Pete Gill for
the departed Philthy Animal Taylor.
July 25, 1983. Metallica issue their debut album, Kill ‘Em All. The record
reads like a harsh and unkind summary of all the bits of shrapnel from the
NWOBHM that strike the listener straight between the eyes. Adding insult to
injury, many of the most eager headbangers who bought the album wound
up with an English copy, on feisty upstart Music for Nations, a phenomenon
that would be repeated with regard to the band’s second album.

August 1983
August 1983. Raven (and Udo Dirkschneider

from Accept) issue a kerranging rendition of
Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild.”

That was just a bit of fun, because he
has a voice like a friggin’ bulldozer. We
were, “Come on, you gotta sing,” and
he’s like, “No, no.” “Come on!” It was
funny, because we were trading off lines
on “Inquisitor” and in that slower part,
Michael Wagener, the producer, said,
“There is just no way he can sing that.” And I said why not? And he
said, “Because those consonants are just not in the German language.”
August 1983. Diamond Head issue

their “Making Music” single, in 7” and
12” formats while another singles
machine, Girlschool, issue “1-2-3-4
Rock ‘n Roll.”
August 3 – 5, 1983. Post-Blitzkrieg and

pre-Blind Fury act Satan record their
seminal Court in the Act album.
August 20, 1983. The fourth

Donington fest, featuring DJ Tommy
Vance, Diamond Head, Dio, Twisted
Sister, ZZ Top, Meat Loaf and headliner
Whitesnake. Note the shift toward
more American acts, but not so much
glam yet.
August 26, 1983. Avenger issue their

first single, “Too Wild to Tame”/“On the
Rocks,” having just added a second guitarist. The band is soon to switch
singers, Brian Ross moving to Satan, and Satan’s Ian Swift joining Avenger.
August 28 – 30, 1983. Reading Rock 1983 features lots of metal but is
actually quite a mixed bag, including two almost completely non-metal days
of the three. There would not be another Reading Rock until 1986, at which
time the metal quotient would be even further reduced.

September 1983
September 1983. Black Rose issue their “We’re Gonna Rock You” four-track 12”.
September 1983. Black Sabbath issues the brutally heavy Born Again
album, featuring ex-Deep Purple and recent NWOBHM singer Ian Gillan, who
will last one album and one tour with the Sabs.
September 1983. Sleaze rock

disasters Wrathchild issue “Do
You Want My Love,” on Heavy
Metal Records.
Heavy Metal Records’

Paul Birch on his attempt
to complete the set with
Mötley Crüe:
We were running that
alongside what we were
doing with the band. I
mean if I go back just a
few years earlier, when
I was at Midem, the
people that ran this label
called Greenworld... it
was to become a label
but they were actually a
distributor at the time.
They were out of California and they went on to sign Poison.
Greenworld was the name of the distributor, and then I think their
label was called Enigma.
They would never offer us Poison. They got the band signed, I
think, to EMI. But in 1982 they turned up at Midem and offered us
two groups. One was Cirith Ungol, who I didn’t want to sign; an
interesting record sleeve, but I didn’t want to sign them. And the
other was Mötley Crüe. So we said, “Okay, yeah, Mötley Crüe, we
want them. Never heard of them.” They weren’t known, but it’s
true to say that even in 1982 when the NWOBHM is happening, in
other areas of the world there are other rock groups and other sort of
emerging genres, and they’re all sort of coinciding, if you like.
The very same year we signed Accept. Gaby Hauke came and saw
me from Breeze Music in Pulheim and in Cologne there was Deiter
Dierks Studios, and we signed Accept. We did Restless and Wild.

So I was determined to sign Mötley Crüe. I just couldn’t get to the
bottom of why they wouldn’t sign. Six months later I was still trying
to sign the group. Turned out that Greenworld didn’t have Mötley
Crüe signed and that they were sort of fishing for a deal for the group.
They weren’t actually signed.
September 1983. Diamond Head issue their third album, Canterbury,

working title, Night of the Swords.

There were several problems that Canterbury created. But one of
the things was that we weren’t afraid to experiment. Rather than keep
repeating ourselves, we thought it was okay to try different ideas,
bring in acoustic guitars and keyboards, piano, anything we liked,
anything goes. Some of the bands we liked did that, like Zeppelin and
Queen; they weren’t afraid to experiment. But, if you’re Zeppelin
and Queen, you’ve got a sales base, you’re already huge, and if you
do make an album that nobody likes, you won’t go down the toilet.
But if you’re Diamond Head, you’re still trying to establish your
audience. And then to make a very different style, to almost change
direction, is a risky thing to do.
So I think a lot of the fans that liked the first album, Lightning
to the Nations, which was raw and exciting and powerful, suddenly
listened to Canterbury... why’d they change direction when they had
it in the first place? This is a great album; why don’t they do more like
that? Whereas we didn’t think on those lines.

And also, the first album didn’t sell, did it? I mean, no one would
even sign us. We had to put it out on Happy Face Records, indie label,
sell it ourselves at gigs, and get rid of it like that. And I think our
manager took the tape to the labels and said, “Would you like to sign
Diamond Head?” They all
said no, and to receive
that... our album we
thought was the best we’ve
got. The record companies
don’t want to sign you. You
then look back on yourself
and think, oh, you must be
doing something wrong. We
didn’t think, oh, the
management is rubbish or
the record companies don’t
know what they’re talking
about. We just thought,
hmm, all right, well, we’d
better try something
different. So we’re going to
try write something that
people will sign us, or a
label will sign us for.
So we kind of made a
mistake there. And maybe
we just got bored with trying to force something out of heavy metal.
You give back to the music. You don’t just take from it and say I’m
going to be influenced by this band and I’m going to sound a bit like
them and do more of the same and I’ll define me style and just churn
out album after album. I never wanted to do that anyway. I thought,
you know, Zeppelin had been creative, Sabbath had been creative, we
should be creative. We should be as original and progressive as we
possibly can and give something back to this style of music that we
absolutely love.
But it was just too much too soon. A couple of people said that
we were overreaching—you’ve gone too far too quickly. That album
probably should’ve come out like a few years later. But once we’d
established… we’d never even been to America at this point. We’d
never done a single date in the US, whereas bands like Maiden had
toured maybe two or three times, you know, starting to build up this
big following, whereas all we’d ever done is go ‘round and ‘round
the UK. And you can’t become a big band just being in the UK. We
didn’t realize that (laughs).

Diamond Head were one of the best unsung bands. They got a deal
very late and when they recorded... I think it was Canterbury, they
actually wrote it in the studio, because they were signed to MCA. I
couldn’t believe MCA paid for them to write an album in the studio.
It was something like £300,000 they paid, and then released the album
and it bombed and they dropped them. But the Borrowed Time
album, I really liked that; there’s some great songs on that one.
September 1983. Birmingham AORists Tobruk issue their “Wild on the

Run”/“The Show Must Go On” single.
September 26, 1983. Mötley Crüe issue their second album Shout at the
Devil and suddenly the metal axis shifts to Los Angeles.
Diamond Head guitarist Brian Tatler on the rise of hair metal:

Well, I suppose I thought it was strange, all the makeup and the big
hair and hairspray and all that. It just wasn’t for me. And I look back
to the older bands, like Deep Purple, and they wouldn’t do all that.
It was a band that would go on stage as they were. They might have
a nice shirt on, I don’t know (laughs), but I thought, I don’t want to
be wearing makeup and having me hair done and all that. And so it
didn’t really appeal, to go down the image route. It just seemed wrong
somehow. We didn’t want to have to do that to get noticed.

October 1983
October 1983. Rage issue their third and final album, Run for the Night,
along with single “Never Before.”
October 1983. Heavy Pettin’ issue their debut

LP, Lettin’ Loose, on Polydor. They are touted
and hyped as Glasgow’s version of Def
Leppard. Laurence Archer from Stampede
figures that Stampede’s career was stopped
dead by the label throwing all their hard rock
resources behind Heavy Pettin’—and Heavy
Pettin’ felt the same about Polygram throwing
their efforts behind Bon Jovi, literally sending
them packing home amidst tour dates with
Mötley Crüe, so Bon Jovi could take over. A
series of 7” and 12” singles ensues, beginning
with the anthemic “In and Out of Love” and
very quickly thereafter “Rock Me.”
Heavy Pettin’ guitarist Punky Mendoza on the band’s sound:

Gordon, Gary and Hamie being the main songwriters, I would
say most of the influence came from AC/DC and Def Leppard,
no doubt about that. And myself, I was always interested in what
was happening in America at the time, in the ‘70s. Everybody in
America at that age seem to be into Kiss, and I would like to think

that some of the guitar playing and the chords that I was using on
the first two albums were influenced from that style of playing—and
that’s how I tried to make it slightly different from the AC/DC/Def
Leppard sound. But I know some of the guys in Def Leppard are also
influenced by bands like Kiss and Aerosmith. I mean even Montrose,
and Ronnie James Dio in Rainbow, plus the influence of Mutt Lange.
October 1983. Waysted issue their acclaimed debut album, Vices. The band
features UFO members Pete Way and Paul Raymond. Although they never
broke big, their potential break came with high profile dates backing up Iron
Maiden. The album reached #78 on the UK charts. “Women in Chains” was
issued on shaped picture disc, backed with “Can’t Take that Love Away” and
“Love Loaded” was the subject of an expensive production video.
Waysted vocalist Fin:

We were a raw, in-your-face, guitar, bass, drums and voice band,
no-frills British rock along the lines of the Bad Company’s of the
world. It was Pete who put the band together. He had found Ronnie
Kayfield, the guitarist... Ronnie would be selling guitars gigs in the
states when Pete used to play with UFO, and he would keep bumping
into Pete. And then when the Waysted project was put together,
Ronnie was suggested. He came over and him and I rented a house
together in Twickenham, and that was a great, great time.
Ronnie did most of the riffs, but he had a problem cutting it live,
Ronnie, with high anxiety attacks a lot of the times, so he was more
like a bedroom player. And technically, he’s really great, and I got on
really well with him, but he didn’t play dirty enough.
Plus there was friction with Paul Raymond, because he was like a
bad apple, really; playing the pop star role. But yeah, he didn’t… he
blotted his own copybook. Looking at record deals and things like
that, he’s looking for more money, kind of overstepping the mark,
really; not being a team player.
With Vices, we recorded in Battle, in Hastings, on the south coast
of the UK. And we recorded in the ballroom of a hotel, with the
Manor Mobile, the backing tracks, and then we went on to a studio.
So the big drum sound, which was Pete’s idea, that comes from
recording in the ballroom of the hotel.
But the best part was that video. There was a lot of money spent
on that video, for “Love Loaded.” It still gets airplay. It was like
three big sets. We were playing on like a motel/hotel rooftop, and
then we jump through a skylight into a typing pool, and there’s
about 20 secretaries all dressed identical with blond wigs and office
gear. And six of them were a dance troupe called Hot Gossip that

were pretty big in the UK around that time. And they tear their
clothes off and then tear our clothes off, and then we ended up in
a dungeon. And it was banned from MTV back then, because of an
accidental flash of nipple. And because there’s one scene where I’m
in an electric chair (laughs).
October 1983. Girlschool issue their fourth album, Play Dirty, which
generates a single in “20th Century Boy.”

October 1983. Mama’s Boys issue their third album,
Turn it Up, which yields two singles, “Too Little of You
to Love” and “Midnight Promises,” each in 7” and
12” versions.
October 1983. Diamond Head issue yet another

poppy Canterbur y single, “Out of Phase.”

The songs on the Canterbury album were
little diverse for some people’s tastes. We had a
little bit of stick around that period, in ‘83, for
making that kind of record; it was ambitious,
shall we say. Some people just didn’t get the
direction change, and how far we had come
from the first album to that third album.
Our producer Mike Shipley did a lot of
clever things, things I’ve picked up about how
to mic up instruments and things like flanges,
just little detailed effects. I mean, he was a
master of his art. It was a bit hard to pick up
on what he was doing, but you could tell he knew his stuff. He put
us through the mincer, Mike Shipley did; that was a really difficult
album to make, Canterbury.
You don’t know sometimes what goes on behind the scenes. It
could’ve been a meeting between our A&R man at MCA and Mike
Shipley, but because Mike Shipley had just finished engineering
Pyromania, I think he was trying to give us a bit more gloss. The
album before, which was Borrowed Time, the sound wasn’t great, but
then again, Canterbury is a little too soft, really. The guitars could’ve
been heavier. There are some good songs on there, but it could’ve
been a bit ballsier.
Mike was forever picking us apart on tuning and whatever. “Your
guitar is not in tune.” You know, you’d have to re-tune your guitar
over and over again, and just play the thing until Mike was happy
with it, really. Yeah, he was meticulous. I mean, I only met Mutt
Lange once, so I don’t know what he’s like to work with, but the
stories are all there, aren’t they? In terms of being meticulous. But
Mike, yeah, Mike was picking us apart on things like tuning all the
time, and that was something we had never even considered before.
We would play to click tracks and do layers and things. It was all
new to us, really. We were pretty much a garage band up until the
Canterbury album and he sort of opened our eyes to the wonderful
world of production.

I don’t think we had much of an advance from MCA, and that
album did cost a lot of money. But it’s a case that the album never
recouped. Diamond Head never made any money on that record,
because it would never go into the black. It would cost so much to
make, but it didn’t sell many copies. So ultimately, it was just in the
negative, you know, a minus sign with respect to royalties. We never
made any money off any of the Diamond Head albums, really.
But Canterbury didn’t sell any more than Borrowed Time, and
the reviews were a little mixed, so, you know, I don’t think it was
the breakthrough the label were looking for. Especially when you
compare it with something like Pyromania, which had done probably
seven million copies by then. We were struggling. I always think we
should have toured the states and I also think we should have changed
management, but it’s all too late now, isn’t it?
October 1983. Rock Goddess issue their Chris Tsangarides-produced

second album, Hell Hath No Fury, which stalls at #84 on the charts. There
would be a single in 1984, plus one further album in ‘87 (but not with A&M),
called Young and Free.
October 1983. Tysondog issue “Eat the Rich” while Emerson proposes
“Something Special,” both on Neat.
October 1983. Tygers of Pan Tang, their lineup in tatters, bide time with a single
pairing “Lonely at the Top” with “You Always See What You Want to See.”
Original Tygers of Pan Tang vocalist Jess Cox on his successor, Jon
Deverill:
Well Jon left and went to acting college, and he’s, as far as I know, still
treading the boards in local theater, in Cardiff where he’s originally
from. But as far as I’m aware, he just stayed as an actor. Now I’ve
never heard of him in anything, doing anything. Whether he does it
part-time and does some other work, but he’s certainly not in music,
that’s for sure. When he left; that was it—he was gone.
Tygers of Pan Tang guitarist Robb Weir:

After the Tygers, I formed a band with Brian called Sergeant. We
recorded an album, but because of personal differences at that time,
it was never released. It is of note that right after The Cage, the
band had demoed a fifth album, but it never came out, and the band
disbanded. But Jon Deverill hired some local musicians and made two
further records which were awful. Sorry Jon, but you can’t record
Tygers stuff with no Tygers! Anyways, after that I owned a jewelry
shop for five years, worked as a bus driver for one year, then as an

inspector on a rapid transport system, Metro Trains, here in Tyneside.
Now I have four kids and run a mobile catering unit! From rock ‘n’
roll to wok ‘n’ roll!
Late October 1983. Bernie Tormé issues his second album, Electric
Gypsies, on Zebra, which sees release in North America as well and is
a minor hit. Original Whitesnake drummer Dave Dowle joins Bernie’s
band for the ensuing October/November UK tour dates. “I Can’t Control
Myself”/“Black Sunday” is issued as a single, but it’s “Wild West” that
captures hearts.
Late 1983. Wildfire issue their debut, on Mausoleum, called Brute Force
and Ignorance. The band features Paul Mario Day, vocalist on the first
More album.
Wildfire drummer Bruce Bisland:

The first album is a bit of a disaster (laughs), which was a great shame,
really. Because in those days we were more interested in what was
to drink (laughs), what flavour the beer was, as to actually paying
attention. I mean, that was our first album, really, isn’t it? But I
definitely think with the second album, we started to get where we
were going.
Late 1983. Ebony issue a fifth helpful compilation, called Metal Plated.
Late 1983. Singles issued at the close of ’83 include Rage’s “Cry from
a Hill,” Lyadrive’s “Anytime” and Prowler’s “Forgotten Angel.” Meanwhile,
Jeddah issue their version of “Eleanor Rigby” and Dealer release “Better
Things to Do,” which is mastered at Abbey Road.
Late 1983. Tokyo Blade issue their full-length self-titled album, on

Powerstation. The “Powergame”/“Death on Main Street” single follows,
after “If Heaven is Hell” which emerges mid’83. The band’s first single,
however, “Double Dealin’,” was issued under band name Genghis Khan,
earlier in the year.
Late 1983. Witchfinder General issue “Music”/“Last Chance,” both songs also
found on the band’s second and last album (for many years), Friends of Hell.

We always felt we could write a catchy song for a single and
“Music” worked okay. I remember being in the mixing room with
Robin and Dave listening to Zeeb record the vocals to this track.
He started, “When I was a young boy” and “16 I married it” and

“Dreamed of making records” and “Making people happy” and we
just looked at each other and said this makes no sense. Zeeb knew
what he was doing when he put the rest of the sentences through the
other channel. And the lyrics to “Last Chance” are about going in a
time machine, going back to the start, to see the start of life.
November 1983
November 1983. Elixir—previously Purgatory and Hellfire—open for

business, late for the party, especially given that the band’s debut album,
The Son of Odin, wouldn’t see the light of day until June of 1986.
November 1983. Grim Reaper’s

See You in Hell is issued by Ebony
Records, and is then licensed to
RCA for release in North America
early into 1984.
Grim Reaper vocalist Steve

Grimmett on recording with
the notorious Daryl Johnson,
owner of, and producer for,
Ebony Records:
As a guy, he was always okay. But then that’s the only side he ever
let you see of him. He’s a bit of a conniving son of a bitch, really, to be
perfectly honest with you. He was in it for himself, and he was getting
really large advances from RCA, when we went with them—and we
weren’t seeing it. I mean, we never saw any money, Grim Reaper, and
I still haven’t. And I know where a lot of it is, and I’m in a legal battle
at the moment, and we’re trying to sort that out.
Basically what he was doing, he started off in a very small house
with a 24-track machine and the desk to go with it. He didn’t do too
bad for a lot of bands, and then he got all this money from RCA,
these advances for us, and basically bought himself a mansion with
it. But where he lived, just to let you know, it wasn’t very much to
buy a mansion out there. But he built a whole new studio. And that’s
where it all started going wrong with him, because he didn’t set it up
properly. We did the third album, actually, in his studio, and before
we got home, it sounded awful. It sounded great in the studio, but it
sounded awful once we got home. And RCA actually rejected it, and
that’s when we decided it was time to leave him and go with RCA.
But the first Grim Reaper album sounded great. We really liked it,
and the second one sounded good too; obviously, for the states, it was
remastered, which made it sound even better.

Anyway, See You in Hell was a big whole new experience for us. I
was the only one, at that time, that had recorded anything. Sorry, up
until the demo, I was the only one who had ever recorded in a 24-track
studio. But it was an experience. We were all staying at the same hotel.
I mean, we had a good laugh, and it was good tracking, and we were
focused enough and well practiced enough to get it done in four days. It
was pretty much running through each track. And I think we actually
captured something in that album. And I know that was what Max
Norman was looking for in the next one, but never materialized.
It really did capture something. I don’t know what it was, but it
did. We were well rehearsed, we were up for it, and we were doing
our first album and so excited. The whole thing was so exciting. It
wasn’t until much later on we found out exactly what was going on.
But whenever we talk to people, See You in Hell always ends up being
everybody’s favourite.
But it’s funny, because when we started out in the states, we were
seen as devil worshipers, because of the Grim Reaper name and all this.
And I had an interview, we have loads of interviews, and they were
saying, “Your lyrics are all about demonic stuff.” And this very last guy,
it just got me and I got really pissed-off about it. And I said, “What
are you saying?” And he said, “Look at that, ‘Dead on Arrival;’ what’s
that all about?” “You haven’t got a clue, have you? You haven’t listened
to this and you certainly haven’t read the lyrics. And if you had done,
you certainly wouldn’t have said that to me.” And I said, “Here’s the
album, here’s the lyrics, go away and read them, and then I’ll redo this
interview with you.” Which we did, and it was all okay, and he said,
“I’ve got you.” And basically it’s about one of my best friends who
died on the motorway, in an accident. And he just pissed me off.
But that was the whole thing. You know, we were always, always
struggling with being devil worshipers. It was like God, nobody got
it. Grim Reaper, what was the thinking behind that? Well, it’s a great
name, and it conjures up all sorts of album sleeves to me, it’s this and
it’s that. They didn’t even know what a Grim Reaper was. It’s one
of the Four Horsemen. It’s in the Testament in the bloody Bible for
God’s sake. And nobody got that either. And we were just saying,
look, if you’ve ever seen any of the Hammer House of Horror on
TV, that’s what this is. You know, each song is a three, four minute
Hammer House of Horror—that’s all it is. We don’t worship the devil,
we don’t do this, we don’t do that.
Grim Reaper guitarist Nick Bowcott on See You in Hell:

I personally think there’s something magical about any band’s
first record, because you go in and you’re just so jacked-up to be in
a studio, making a quote unquote real record. Bear in mind the fact

that the whole record from start to finish, including mixing, took
three days. It was like the first day was getting drum sounds and the
other sounds, and then putting all the bass tracks down, including
all the rhythm guitars. Day two was vocals and lead guitar, day three
was mix.
The guy who ran Ebony Records, which was like a startup label
at the time, his genius, if you can call it that, was having a 24-track
mixing board and machine in the dining room of his house, the front
room of his house, with no real acoustic treatment whatsoever, which
was the recording studio. The band would literally be in the living
room, and he would go through into the control room, which was,
effectively the dining room. And it was a council house too, like a
semi-detached house. So why he didn’t get evicted is beyond me.
He did very well early on. Unfortunately, he didn’t pass the good
fortune onto the bands at all. Long story short, he ended up being put
out of business by being exposed by one of these, like ATV shows
which dedicated to like 40 minutes to him being a huge con artist,
and literally shut the guy down. Because he went very quickly from...
fast-forward two years from that, he’d gone from this sort of very
lower middle class-like council house kind of dwelling into literally
a mansion. And thankfully he, by all accounts, doesn’t have anything
anymore. Which, I have no sympathy whatsoever, because he robbed
us blind and effectively cut my career short.
But I think he was smart enough to license a lot. Like he licensed
stuff off to RCA. I think he licensed Shy off to RCA, so I think he got
big bucks from that. Plus his outlay was relatively minimal. I think
combined, like the total sales of all three of our albums worldwide
were—and this is all three together—in excess of half a million. So he
would take his chunk of that. That’s some money.
Anyway, that record, the way the thing was recorded, like there was
no isolation per se. So the drum tracks had guitar bleeds. And the guitar
and bass were literally done in the same room with no form of isolation
whatsoever. So the bed track was essentially live. Basically, our idea of
a take was, if we started and finished together, it was a take. It wasn’t
until later on, you go, hey, maybe I could’ve done that part better. I
think that could’ve added perfection, but it takes away from character.
And bear in mind the fact that we had been playing those songs for
three-and-a-half-plus years live anyway. And so most of the stuff was
literally first take. Because it was almost like, I wouldn’t say autopilot,
but it wasn’t like we had just written the songs the day before, and
now we were trying to record them. They were tried and tested songs
that we had played together for at least two... like the newest track
on there would’ve been at least six months old, which meant we
would’ve played it at numerous shows.

So anyway, yes, the band we played without Steve. And then it
was Steve and guitar overdubs. Most of the record just has one extra
overdub on the rhythm. A couple of the tracks have three. So Steve
was done separately, and then guitar overdubs, like doubling the
rhythm and/or tripling in a couple of cases, and also solos, which
were done separately. So that was basically day two. And they weren’t
long days either—just by virtue of the fact that because he was in a
residential dwelling, you’d have to stop by 6:00.
And the bottom line is, how do I feel about the first album? There
are definitely some flaws on it, but I think they add, rather than
detract. I know there are some parts that Steve finds very hard to
listen to, because he feels like he could’ve done that a lot better. And
there were some parts I would’ve liked to do again. But in retrospect,
if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And the bottom line, we never were Def
Leppard anyway. We were never going to make Pyromania.
November 1983. After Dark issue “Deathbringer.”
November 1983. Music for Nations issue their Hell on Earth sampler, which
graphically represents the coming US onslaught (Ratt, Virgin Steele, Talas,
Manowar and Metallica), at the expense of the NWOBHMers (Tank, Battleaxe
and Rox).
November 1983. Def Leppard issue “Foolin’” as a third single from their smash
third album, Pyromania. By this point, Pyromania is a massive hit in America, but
resentment at the band’s focus on their America-first strategy continues.

“Foolin’,” when we wrote the lyrics, that was definitely a nod to “My
Generation,” the stuttering “F” bit (sings it). We kept throwing things
out there like, “We want it to sound like The Who!” And they were
like, “No you don’t, but you can do this.” And it was like bringing
all the bits in. “You can’t make a record that sounds like 1964.” It was
the idea that nobody had stuttered since Bachman Turner Overdrive.
And then even when we did that, I specifically remember, on the
“ooh” part of the “foolin’,” they brought into it massive amounts
of vibrato to sound like singers. It had to be screamed, it had to be
terrorist-like (laughs), but at the same time it had to have a quality
to it that was like alien to what everybody else was doing. So it was
totally a unique sound.
Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen on Pyromania:

When I joined I definitely could see that the difference between
the first and the second album was pretty huge. And the difference

between the second and third album was even bigger. And I also think
the difference between Pyromania and Hysteria was massive. I think
with each album, it got more open-minded. I think with a lot of rock
bands, they are very close-minded. All this stuff we were talking about,
the leather thing, oh no, you can’t use that influence, all the clichés.
When I joined the band I could sing a bit as well, which was
different (laughs), because I know there were big vocals going on and
that, but it all kicked in. The band really was influenced by Queen,
and I think we wanted to be that, but not just that. We wanted
Zeppelin, we wanted Stevie Wonder, The Police, The Fixx, a lot of the
punk stuff, three-minute songs.
And when I joined, all the songs were written already for
Pyromania, so I just had to play solos on top, basically, and do a bit
of singing. Just my impression of it was, I had never heard anything
quite like it, because it was an absolute hybrid, a rock hybrid. We
were still a rock band. When I heard a lot of American bands—and
I’m not slamming these by any means—but Styx, REO Speedwagon,
they were very sweet vocals, very high. We weren’t. We owed our
thing to punk and that’s where we come from, you know, “Won’t Get
Fooled Again,” “Holidays in the Sun,” “God Save the Queen.” That’s
where we were singing from, only we could do it in tune. It was a
totally different attitude.
But by doing that, it allowed us to still think we were cool. And
we really didn’t want to be in that bracket with all those other things.
Then we brought the clean guitars and, the Andy Summers thing,
which no one had ever done. On Hysteria especially, it’s right across
the board, African Burundi drums on “Rockit.” We’ve got crystal
clear guitars where we’re trying to sound like The Fixx and The
Police, and then the vocals, but done with conviction. And I really
think that during the ‘90s, we lost some of that conviction. And I
really believe that. And honestly, not just because this is the new
album, but I do believe now on X or Ten, that we’ve got that back.
Angel Witch bassist, Tytan bassist and Rock Goddess tour

manager Kevin Riddles on Def Leppard’s distancing itself from the
NWOBHM:
It was pretty obvious that they were going to do that very, very
early on. And I think it was partly, again, very clever management,
because they had Peter Mensch involved right from pretty much the
word go, if I remember my history. And I think he knew exactly what
was needed to break in America. And he saw in Leppard, something
where they could be the first big British band in America to break it,
but they had to do it the American way. They almost had to become
more American than American bands.

And to do that, I think, they had to alienate themselves a little bit.
True story, and I’m not talking out of turn—anybody can find this
information out. But they had a UK and European company called
Why Bother Ltd. And whatever that was... why bother selling
T-shirts, why bother touring, why bother recording, and that was the
name of their company.
Because, you could not persuade British and European fans to pay
ticket prices that would cover the cost of touring. You couldn’t do
it. You know, if ticket prices were say, I don’t know, £5 for a ticket,
people would complain. If Def Leppard wanted to cover their costs,
then the tickets would have to be £12, for instance. But British bands
wouldn’t pay that, and European fans wouldn’t pay that. American

fans would. It was a very clever strategy, and you cannot argue with
success. You really can’t. It worked brilliantly.
I mean, they were the biggest band in the world at the time. They
were monstrously big. They came over here, and I was great friends
with Rock Goddess, and their manager John Turner, Jody’s and
Judy’s father, asked me to tour-manage them, because they’d got this
European leg of the Pyromania tour with Leppard.
And so off we go. You know, it’s all gung ho, and Johnny hockey
sticks into Europe, and there’s Leppard driving around in two Volvo
state cars and going from gig to gig, and Rick Allen’s brother, Robert,
was their tour manager, and it was all right down to the bone, and
there were shows that were cancelled due to poor ticket sales and
things like that. So we’d be stuck in places like Florence in Italy for a
week, because the two gigs had been cancelled and things like that.
So yes, they had a backlash in Europe and the UK because of the
thing in America. But I think the point was, it worked so well in
America, that they kind of didn’t mind. Yeah, it was great to come
home and do gigs at home, but the important place was America, and
that was the strategy from the word go, and it worked brilliantly.
November 1983. AOR hopefuls Shy, featuring the high, high vocals of Tony
Mills, issue Once Bitten, Twice Shy, on Ebony, otherwise known for much
heavier, darker acts.
Journalist John Tucker on Kerrang!’s admiration for American “wimphem:”

We didn’t have an AOR scene as such. We had very limited
radio play. You had The Friday Rock Show and that was your lot.
A lot of the stuff was stuff we didn’t do, and that’s really when the
NWOBHM unraveled, when all of a sudden all these American bands
were in Kerrang! and the albums were easy to get a hold of now, as
imports. And so many British bands tried to sound American, and
we didn’t want that. We wanted the American bands. I don’t want
Emerson doing “Something Special”—that does nothing to me. I
want to hear the first Bon Jovi album.
And I think the fact that fans adopted this and wanted this, and the
bands thought okay, we can do that, but you can’t. I guess because
there’s a lot of difference between living in sun-drenched LA and
having this band and living in rain-drenched northern England and
having sod-all to your name. There’s more to life than just sounding
like an American band. You have to have the whole ethos, otherwise
you’re just pretending, and I think that’s where a lot of these bands
came unstuck. They tried their damndest, but they could not do it.

November 1983. Masked Samson drummer Thunderstick issues his “Feel
Like Rock ‘n’ Roll?” four-track 12”.
November 1983. Witchfinder General issue Friends of Hell, their second and
last album (before reunion). Friends of Hell, like Death Penalty, emerges on
Paul Birch’s beloved and arch-NWOBHM Heavy Metal Records label. Issued
as a concurrent single is “Music”/“Last Chance,” both album tracks.

Friends of Hell was written in a month or two, and recorded in two
weeks. We had more time in the studio to get the songs better. It was
a good mix on Friends of Hell. I do prefer the earlier Death Penalty
material to Friends of Hell, but Friends of Hell has its good moments.
It was a completely different style of recording for us. Basically, all

previous material was just going into the studio and playing it live,
straight through, and that was it. But Friends of Hell, we had the
time to put things down and get them right, basically—the guitars
alone took two or three days. Graham Ditchfield went in and put the
drums down for two days, and then we had to ask him to leave the
band after that. Looking back on it, I just wished we would have met
our drummer Derm Redmond a lot earlier. Because Derm was just a
different dimension in the band, a very powerful drummer, and it’s a
pity we didn’t have him.
As for the Friends of Hell cover, by the time we all got to the
graveyard—and there was a lot of us to get there—the sun had rose,
and it just looks awful. It looked like a comedy of errors. It didn’t
work at all. And the press really knocked it. Straight away, it was up
against it. Friends of Hell was probably our best produced album, and
it should have gone down okay, but they knocked it straight away,
because of the cover.
Friends of Hell producer Robin George:

Absolutely great guys. They’re from the Black Country, which
is right in the middle of England, and it’s called the Black Country
because of all the factories and furnaces, and it’s like Dante’s Inferno.
They were just so down-to-earth, really nice kids, man. Not like you
would imagine at all.
They weren’t the best players, but it worked; it worked for what
they were doing, and I hear that they are now sort of lauded as the
best of whatever their genre was called, whether it was black metal or
pink metal, I don’t know. It just worked. They knew what they set
out to try and achieve, and they got close, but unfortunately, wrong
record company, I think. Otherwise it could’ve been a very different
story for them.
I engineered the first album for them, and then produced the
second. I preferred the second album, personally. But I was much
more involved, obviously, producing. I’ll never forget. We were
working in the studio in Coventry, in England, and on the last day,
when we finished the mixes, the studio owners opened up all of the
fire extinguishers etc. and just wrecked their own studio. They were
so excited, excited that the product was finished and they loved it, the
songs and so forth. And of course we all joined in. But I had to do a
quick escape. I was lost on the lift, basically. Those were the days.
Death Penalty and Friends of Hell cover model Joanne Latham:

I put that photo shoot together except for the police cars and fake
cops. There’s also an eerie story attached to that experience—don’t
forget, I’m writing a book. I’ve had messages from certain members

from time to time, and a lot of their fans write to me. “The model?”
(laughs). I was the star of the show then, babes; it was me that got TV
coverage and national press for the release of that album. I styled the
shoot, booked models, provided props and a lot of the costumes. I
was very much in the public eye myself at the time. Being a local girl,
it was perfect for the band. Yeah, memory lane. Paul Birch lives just
around the corner from me—rip-off merchant!
Yeah, the sun did rise, but you can’t blame that for the fact that the
album didn’t sell. There was no follow up publicity—Birch’s error.
The band should have been out there giving it fucking plenty, i.e.
guest appearances, pop mags, a documentary, whatever. Whenever
Paul Birch came across raw talent, his eyes became too fucking big for
his belly… greedy, untrustworthy, a bloodsucker. The guys had talent;
they were buzzin’, creating, living, lovin’. They got a deal and man
they were happy. Then “greedy bollocks” is too busy thinking how
he’s gonna get his greasy hands on the money he knows they’re gonna
accumulate. He screws them over and retreats into his sick world of
delusion. Karma—he’s an ugly, horrible man and nobody will give
him the time of day. I would not like to be him for a second.
Heavy Metal Records’ Paul Birch:

Well I think that with the second of the two albums, Robin George
was the producer, and I think he made a difference. He was quite a
producer. Pretty good vocalist in his own right, and he got his own
career with Bronze Records as an artist. A friend of mine—actually
we’re both at the same business school—by the name of Pete had
taken over as managing director at Bronze Records. Yes, I mean I
think it was probably those production values that Robin brought to
that album.
As regards those covers, well, they were my ideas. I have to say
I wouldn’t be doing album covers like that today. And it did sort of
define an entire genre, in a sense, that was to follow it. And I think it
came from the realization that you could only get so far with music
press. But you weren’t going to get anywhere with radio. Radio just
wasn’t there. Could be on Tommy Vance on a Friday night, but other
than that, there really wouldn’t be radio.
The great thing about music press is it could be exported, and so
the press would travel. And radio didn’t travel well in those days. Of
course radio travels really well today, but it didn’t then. But the one
thing that you really wanted was millions of readers rather than just
a few thousand readers, and to reach millions of readers, you really
needed mainstream press. But mainstream press doesn’t respond to
promotion. So by antagonizing the mainstream press with, “Isn’t this
disgusting? There should be an end to this straight away!,” we were

able to manipulate the media and the media are happily manipulated,
if they can sell newspapers. And when you put a page three model
like Joanne Latham in these really odd, almost Hammer situations...
and in fact that’s what we were really trying to get to. It was tongue-
in-cheek but it was sort of like a Hammer Horror kind of approach.
But there were no references—there were no other references.

Witchfinder General came from Stourbridge, so there was that
little bit of rivalry between us and them. And they thought they
were better than us and we thought we were better than them and
we would go watch them, and they would come watch us and shout
things at us and things. They had nicknames for us, like Plaster of
Paris and Drunken Scott, Colin Pimply... I think I was Brian Rattler.
But it was just a friendly rivalry, no harm done; we never got up to
fighting (laughs).
They made that one album that had the controversial sleeve on
Heavy Metal Records, and they did a few gigs and then it all kind of
folded. The second album looked a bit more contrived though, didn’t
it? Like, okay, we had some press on the first one; I think they got
front page on the News of the World, for the first one. But with the
second one, it was like, let’s repeat what we did on the first album.
But I don’t think anybody picked up on it.
November 1983. Witchfynde issue their

third album, Cloak and Dagger, which
finds the band returning to the heavier
direction of their first album.
Witchfynde guitarist Montalo, on

the replacement of vocalist Steve
Bridges with Luther Beltz:
I mean, we got on well with both
of them. It always has been in the
band; we never had any conflicts at
all. I guess Steve was a much more
placid type of person than what
the Luther Beltz character was.
But also, of course, it was really
myself and Gra who were the main
creative aspects of the band. It
was Gra who used to write all the lyrics to the songs, basically, with
myself to put the music together. And so it was really a case of having
somebody to put that across, which both Steve and Luther did.

The production had a lot to be desired on Cloak and Dagger. We
don’t understand why that was, because we actually put in a lot of time
in the studio and with the producer on that one. But the production was
very poor and we have no idea why. I mean, the memories are a bit of a
blur to be honest, and I don’t really get involved in the production side.
Also it was the first attempt, after the first two albums, to write more
structured songs. And I don’t know if that was a good idea or not.
Witchfynde vocalist Luther Beltz:

Cloak and Dagger was my first album with the band, and it was raw
and full of aggression; it was an exciting time with magical tunes like “I’d
Rather Go Wild,” which I wrote in the studio about a wild Saturday
night getting arrested and having a ball. And that album cover... look
closely and you’ll see all the song titles represented there.
Heavy Pettin’ guitarist Punky Mendoza on Witchfynde:

We supported Witchfynde, which was quite an experience, because we
saw ourselves as being a light, Def Leppard-type band, perhaps, and
not sounding like Iron Maiden. We felt that’s what we were going for.
We were new and it might be difficult for us to express, but we thought
somebody was going to get us somewhere along the way. And we played
with Witchfynde, and it was a weird experience, because it was almost
like being in one of these movies like The Wicker Man. They were
completely different from us, and they kept themselves to themselves,
and they were just totally in the dark side. We felt on the light or even
white side, and they were on the darker side. They did a great gig, they
had a great audience and they were really nice people at the end of the
day, but it was totally different from anything we’d ever been involved in.
December 1983
December 1983. Quartz issue “Tell Me Why” as the only single from their third
studio album, Against All Odds, after which the band break up, to be reformed
for 1996’s Resurrection.
December 1983. Paul Di’Anno’s much publicized band Lonewolf is put to rest,
with Paul citing lack of gigs, poor management and fan reaction to the band’s
metal-lite direction as factors.
December 1983. Gary Moore issues his moderately successful Victims of the
Future album, which features Neil Murray on bass and Ian Paice on drums,
Ian’s last credit before taking part in the quickly-upon-us Deep Purple reunion.
At this point even Gary Moore, known disdainer of metal, is somewhat throwing

his hand into the hard rock ring. Arguably, 1982’s Corridors of Power was an
attempt to address the new metal reality as well.
December 1983. Bitches Sin issue a 12” EP featuring a-side “No More
Chances,” “Overnight” and “Ice Angels.”
December 1983. Nightwing issues “Night of Mystery.”
December 16, 1983. Satan issue

their Court in the Act LP, and the
lack of buzz around the event
points to a feeling that we are
indeed late in the game for British
metal.
Recap
There’s some satisfaction

in pointing out that the facts
on the ground would suggest
that the NWOBHM was still
generating some great metal
in 1983, even if the press and
some of the original fans were
declaring the party over.
Neat Records was still
kicking, bringing us first records
by Hellanbach and Jaguar, along
with a classic from Raven called
All for One, significantly in conjunction with a young upstart of an American
label called Megaforce, also the home of first records from Anthrax and
Metallica. But more interesting was a new competitor on the block, Daryl
Johnson and his notorious Ebony Records label, Johnson busying himself
with issuing dark and obscure compilations, but more importantly, massive,
important debut albums from Savage, Chateaux and Grim Reaper. Paul
Birch, over at Heavy Metal Records, kept busy as well, subjecting the world
to the second Witchfinder General album, Friends of Hell, as well as Against
All Odds, from a faltering Quartz.
Down a miscellaneous pathway, 1983 also gave us records from ,
Spartan Warrior, Holocaust, Stampede, Tokyo Blade and Battleaxe. From
that bunch, Holocaust, I suppose, was taking a step back by doing a live
album, and nothing much else there was all that impressive, except for
Tokyo Blade, who embodied within their flash look and stadium rock sound,
a spot of ambition towards where Def Leppard was taking things.

An even more direct shot at Def Leppard was Scotland’s Heavy Pettin’,
who issued their lively Lettin’ Loose album, basically a salve on the wound for
all them Def Leppard fans who were decrying the new direction of the band.
And what direction was that? Well, the big story of the year would be
Pyromania, which found the glamour boys on a fast track to success in
the US. Joining Def Leppard on an assault on the states was Iron Maiden,
with the hugely exciting and thus logically successful Piece of Mind, Saxon
with the astonishingly aggressive Power & The Glory, and a new mid-level
supergroup of sorts, Fastway, with a competent and commercial self-titled
record, lead into the charts by a stripper pole anthem called “Say What You
Will.”
Still, both Saxon and Fastway would fizzle, as would Motörhead, who
found themselves, with one third of their trio gone, replacement at the guitar
slot being Brian “Robbo” Robertson, who proved very quickly to be an ill fit
for the band. By year’s end, Another Perfect Day would be a distant memory,
and Lemmy would find himself the sole member left from the classic lineup,
not returning with a proper new album until 1986’s Orgasmatron.
Other bands drumming themselves right out of the business would be
Witchfynde, set back by a switch in lead vocalist, for their competent Cloak
and Dagger album, Demon going weirdly progressive and commercial for The
Plague, and Diamond Head doing much the same with their disastrous and
expensive Canterbury flop.
And that’s pretty much it, with some of these NWOBHM storylines
being supplanted by metal narratives from other sources, such as Krokus
somewhat putting aside their AC/DC mimicry for something a bit more
Priest-like with Headhunter and Quiet Riot achieving the first Billboard #1
heavy metal album with Metal Health. As well, both Scorpions and Accept
were on the ascendance, as were home country old school acts like Judas
Priest and Ozzy Osbourne, while Sabbath at least stayed in the news through
their surreal hiring of Ian Gillan to replace Ronnie James Dio, soon to set the
metal world on fire with Holy Diver and The Last In Line. Granted, I haven’t
provided dated entries for all of this, but you get the point: metal was
healthy in general despite a lack of happy stories from the commercial side
of things back in the UK. Creatively speaking, that’s another story: the deep
metal fan had much to cheer about whilst buying records made in 1983 by
British heavy metal bands.
To reiterate, I don’t want to over emphasize 1983 as the year when
American metal bands took over. But one could indeed say that 1983 was
the year that the story of heavy metal becomes an American one, and
less so a British one. And what I mean by that is that the talk of the town
revolved around metal bands from various parts of the world—America and
Britain included—finding out that the land of the free and the home of the
brave is where metal mania could be located and exploited—and, as it turns
out, for years to come.

1984 - “Let’s not say American
because that’s a wimp-out word.”
Headbanger’s Guide to 900 NWOBHM Records): Argus – “Holocaust;”
Chainsaw – “Long Legged Woman;” Chaser - “Raiders;” Joker - “Back on
the Road;” Lonely Hearts – “F.M. Fantasy,” produced by Pete Hinton; McCoy
– “The Sound of Thunder;” Orion - “Insane in Another World;” Samurai -
“Fires of Hell;” Scarab - “Poltergeist/Hell on Wheels;” Sheer Khan – “Last
Generation” and Street Legal – “Rolling On.”
1984. Rock Goddess issue the Chris Tsangarides-produced “I Didn’t Know

I Loved You (Till I Saw You Rock and Roll)” which reaches #57 in the UK
charts. The band tours widely, with Y&T, Def Leppard and Iron Maiden.
1984. Leicester AOR act Chrome Molly issue an EP called You Said, on
Bullet.
1984. Grim Reaper issue as a single, in the US only, “The Show Must Go
On,” the lone ballad from See You in Hell.
Grim Reaper vocalist Steve Grimmett:

I didn’t actually write that—that was the previous singer. But I really
liked the song, and we kept it within the album. And so we got to
tour the states right away. I think the first lot of touring we ever did
with anybody else, in fact, was with Uriah Heep, and that was in
the states. But here for that album, we were just touring ourselves,
basically, doing two or three gigs a week, just going out on our own.
I’m pretty sure we didn’t tour with anybody over here.

“The Show Must Go On” is an interesting one, because it was
actually written by our first singer, Paul De Mercado, who was a big
Phil Lynott fan. But that was fine because half our stuff... we were
Grim Lizzy—we would do four or five Thin Lizzy covers. And Paul
liked Phil Lynott because a lot of the songs revolved around women.
And “The Show Must Go One” was just one of Paul’s legacies. It was
a break-up song.

1984. Bernie Tormé issues his third album, Live, on Zebra.
1984. Sane Records issues its raw and rare It’s Unheard Of compilation.
1984. Ex-Iron Maiden singer Paul Di’Anno issues, on Heavy Metal Records, a
self-titled album from his new band Di’Anno. Surprising everyone, Paul aligns
himself with the AOR wing of the party. The Rockfield-recorded album coughs
up a single called “Heartuser.”
Heavy Metal Records’ Paul Birch:

The closest we got to Iron Maiden was we did an album with Paul
Di’Anno, and then later of course Bruce Dickinson produced the
Wrathchild videos for us. They’re on Nuclear Rockout. He was an
interesting man, very clever. Paul Di’Anno didn’t enjoy great health,
to be fair. He was managed by a husband and wife, the husband being
Olaf Wyper, interesting chap, who founded Vertigo. And I’m not sure
just how many people acknowledge that, because I was a big fan of
Vertigo. I mean bloody hell, anybody interested in rock music should
be, because we’ve got a lot to thank Vertigo for, frankly.
Certainly the album that Paul came up with for us was a lot lighter,
AOR kind of lighter. And I’m not sure that was exactly the right
direction for Paul. I went to a lot of Paul’s gigs and we never saw
audiences of more than 300 people. This would be ‘84, but then it was
something new. That’s exactly where we would have been.

The live audiences, in any case, in Britain, have always been
disappointing. Because unlike in North America, what we didn’t have
was a culture of people who were willing to go out and experiment,
go to a venue on a Friday night because they could trust the venue
that there would always be good bands on—even if they’ve never
heard of the bands. And that happens, as you know, in Canada, and
happens across the United States.
But here in the UK it doesn’t. To some extent there was an
audience at the Marquee. It was a very small audience, and the
Marquee themselves realized if they were going to make money, they
had to book bands that brought with them their own crowd. Dingles
had a bit of an audience. There were a few venues, probably about
eight venues around the UK, that had an audience, but you couldn’t
count them in the hundreds. You counted them in the tens. It’s mad.
But it gave us a platform on which to sign other bands from the
United States and from further afield. Like Bow Wow from Japan and
Smashed Gladys from New York.
January 1984
January 1984. Girlschool issue “Burning in the Heat” as the second

single from Play Dir ty.
January 1984. Bernie Tormé issues a 7” and 12” single pairing the non-
LP “My Baby Loves A Vampire” with a live version of “Lightning Strikes.”
January 1984. Angel Witch founder Kevin Heybourne leaves Blind Fur y to
mount an Angel Witch reunion, with Blind Fur y bassist Pete Gordelier and
original Angel Witch drummer Dave Hogg included in the new configuration.
January 1984. Saxon goes with the upbeat and hummable “Sailing to
America” as the first single from Crusader, backed with “A Little Bit of
What You Fancy.” Parallels to Def Leppard’s “Hello America,” and all the
baggage that song resulted in for the Sheffield band, are palpable and
indeed underscored by the band’s newly Americanized sound.
January 1984. Brian Ross is fired from Satan.

January 4, 1984. Judas Priest issue Defenders of the Faith, a heavy record
in the vein of its predecessor. Again, the title underscores the band’s
position as spokesman for metal, as champions for metal, which was the
whole idea of the NWOBHM in the first place—to be unapologetically into
this stuff. Arguably, Defenders of the Faith was the band’s heaviest album
since Killing Machine, as Priest perhaps subconsciously—and finally—realize
that the NWOBHM had made heavy metal cool again.
Judas Priest guitarist Glenn Tipton on title track “Defenders of the

Faith,” a late period anthem expressive of a NWOBHM sentiment:
That is a typical Priest anthem, and we get the crowd to sing along
with it. We’ve always tried to include anthems on every album and

“Defenders of the Faith” is above-all, a real anthem. We’ve never
regarded a Priest concert as being all about Priest—it is always about
Priest and the audience. It is the whole thing that counts. It’s an event
and it’s something we all take part in. That is why we like to get them
to sing along with“Defenders of the Faith.” Our fans even sing along
with the lead breaks! It is what we always wanted. We didn’t want
to be up there as just a band. We want to be part of an event with
the audience. That is what is important to us. The fact that we join
forces with the audience every concert—they know that we’ve got
such faith in people that have been with us for so long, and so it’s
the loyalty element as well. They have been there with us; those are
the reasons we are still around.
Judas Priest vocalist Rob Halford on the heaviness of Defenders:

“Freewheel Burning,” “Rock Hard Ride Free...” it is all metal, metal
and metal. You can never get enough metal, man. That is what I like
about Defenders of the Faith; it is a very strong sounding record with
resilience and determination. ”We are a heavy fucking metal band and
if you don’t like it you can fuck off.” It is that kind of attitude that I
love about Priest.
January 10, 1984 – March 24, 1984. Semi-NWOBHMers Waysted tour

America as support to Motley Crue and Ozzy Osbourne. The band’s drummer
at the time was original Def Leppard session drummer Frank Noon.
Waysted vocalist Fin:

Frank Noon was the quiet guy in the band, and being exposed to

the life and times to the wicked Waysted men was pretty much an
eye-opener for him, especially on that legendary tour that we’d done
with Ozzy and Motley Crue back in ’84. I spent more of our time
on Motley Crue’s bus than I did on our bus. Tommy Lee and I were
like brothers. I’ve still got a bunch of photographs in my memorabilia
trunk of various aspects of me and Tommy Lee. I was teaching him
Scottish, and he’s teaching me “awesome”s and “gnarly”s.
January 20, 1984. Venom issue “Warhead”/“Lady Lust,” both non-LP, in a

variety of formats and vinyl colours.
Early 1984. The long-suffering Cloven Hoof

issue a self-titled debut, on Neat.
Early 1984. Tokyo Blade issue the “Midnight

Rendezvous” EP followed by the “Lightning
Strikes” EP. Within a few months, vocalist
Alan Marsh will be replaced by Vic Wright.
Early 1984. Valhalla issue “Still in Love

with You”/“Jack,” on Neat, who are
evidently (and rightly) worried about
nascent American hair metal killing the
vibe in England. Jess Cox issues “One
in a Million,” also on Neat who are label
of choice as well for Crucifixion’s “Green
Eyes”/“Moon Rising”/“Jailbait” 12”.
Early 1984. Other singles issued just into the new year
include Le Griffe’s “You’re Killing Me” 12”, TNT’s “Back
on the Road”/“Rockin’ the Night” 7” and Liaison with
“Only Heaven Knows,” Lady Jane with “The Sheer Power
of Rock” and Saracen with “We Have Arrived.”
Early 1984. Post-Silver wing act Pet Hate, from

Macclesfield, issue their debut, The Bride Wore Red, on
Heavy Metal Records. The band’s raucous, stripped-down
sound represents a deft moving away from NWOBHM
tenets, although the band would not be rewarded
commercially speaking for its valiant effor ts.

February 1984
February 1984. Manowar issue their seminal third album, Hail to England,
the title of which proclaims loud and clear that things are better overseas
even for American bands of a heavy metal stripe. What’s more, the album
didn’t even see US release, with North Americans having to buy the UK
Music for Nations version. Hail to England reaches #84 on the UK charts.
Manowar bassist Joey DeMaio:

A great record. For me all the albums are great and I love them all
the same. But Hail to England is a record that came at a time when
England was at the vanguard of the heavy metal scene. And England
had said, wow, Manowar is incredible, this band is super powerful, we
gotta have it. And it was a way of saying thanks to the English fans.
Manowar guitarist Ross the Boss:

Well, starting out it was kind of difficult for the band and with the
record company and everything, and so once we put out Battle
Hymns and Into Glory Ride, we were getting an extreme amount of
press from England. I mean, they were really, really behind the band.
Kerrang!, Sounds, all the other magazines, they really liked the band
and they were giving us a lot of great press. And there was a lot of
interest from England. So we figured, we want to go to England, and
you know, start there. And that’s what we did. And we would write

our third album and it would be called Hail to England, and you have
the song with the message, “hail to England.”
February 3-12, 1984. Venom and Metallica tour Europe under the banner
7 Dates of Hell, or, in the early stages, At War with Europe.

The end of the gig and everything with Metallica, on the last date
of the 7 Dates tour in Europe, we actually sawed all of Lars’ drum
sticks nearly in half, put talcum powder all over the drums, then
put Venom pyros underneath his drum riser. This was back in
1984, them backing us up. So they get out on stage and they go
straight into fuckin’ “Metal Militia” and the drum sticks are just
going snap snap snap snap snap. The rest of the band are looking
at Lars and going, “Come on, what are you doing?!” And then all
this talcum powder is going up in the air. The guy can’t breathe.
And just when he gets his shit together, we detonate the pyro
under his drum riser which throws him all to shit. And then we’re
at the back of the venue throwing tomatoes at the band.
Venom guitarist Mantas on the band’s adventures in Europe,

specifically an incident from the fall of 1983:
We’ve had a police escort through countries, we’ve had police
escorts out of countries (laughs). There was one weird thing that
happened. We were over in Switzerland and we had done some
promotion and we drove all the way to Holland, Amsterdam
airport. And we got there late at night, about two hours ahead of
the flight. And we noticed a huge police presence at the airport.
And we had this Dutch driver who had been taking us all over
the place on this press trip. And we went outside to basically get
the suitcases out of the car and we were going to say goodbye
to the Dutch driver; his name was Eddie. And we were about to
check in and all of a sudden this little bus pulled up and it was full
of police armed to the fucking teeth, I’m not kidding you, rifles,
the whole lot. And we thought there must be some sort of terrorist
activity going on.
And we’re getting our suitcases out and then boom, the back
doors of this thing opens and we are surrounded by police
pointing rifles at us. They emptied our suitcases out into the road,
they checked everything. And it turned out that someone had
identified Cronos as some guy who had been stealing car radios
and breaking into cars in the fucking car park, you know? We

were arrested and taken to this Dutch police station. We were all
separated, passports taken off us and in my suitcase I had a martial
arts weapon, nunchaku sticks? and I used to take them with me,
just to practice. What do you do on the road? Just to mess about
with. And I was going to get done for that. And eventually there
was an identity parade and this went on until three or four in the
morning. We had to phone the record company, and eventually
we were released. Obviously it wasn’t us who had done it. We had
been driving all day.
February 24, 1984. Dumpy’s Rusty Nuts issue their one and only album,
a live affair called Somewhere in England. Dumpy Dunnell’s drummer on
the album was none other than Tank’s Mark Brabbs.
March 1984
March 1984. AORists Baby Tuckoo issue a debut album called Firstborn. It
generates a single pairing annoying cover “Mony Mony” with “Baby’s
Rocking Tonight.”

March 1984. Samson issue Don’t Get Mad, Get Even, their second album
featuring Nicky Moore on vocals. Two singles are floated from the record, “Are
You Ready” and “The Fight Goes On.” Two months later the band call it quits.
March 1984. Saxon continue playing Saxon-lite, issuing “Do It All for
You”/“Just Let Me Rock.”

March 1984. Drummer Phil Taylor quits Motörhead. Now two-thirds of one
of the NWOBHM’s marquee acts is in shambles. By the time Lemmy re-
establishes the band significantly, he’ll have moved to Los Angeles.
March 1984. Spider issue “Here We Go Rock ‘n’ Roll,” backed with “Death
Row;” available as 7”, shaped picture disc and 12”.
Early March 1984. Nightwing issue My Kingdom Come, which reflects a

lighter, proggier sound than previous.
March 2, 1984. Legendary mock rockumentary This is Spinal Tap is

released to theatres. Saxon swears up and down it’s about them.
March 9, 1984. Heavy Pettin’ issue the anthemic “Love Times Love” as a
world-beating single.

March 16, 1984. Venom issue their third album, At War with Satan, which
is banned from HMV and WH Smith stores for its Satanic content. The
band’s distribution in Canada since the first record, through Banzai Records,
is beginning to pay off: At War with Satan takes the #1 spot on Metallion
magazine’s Hard Chart, as compiled by Montreal’s legendary heavy metal
store Rock en Stock (although it must be noted that Rock en Stock and
Banzai were both owned by the same record honcho, one Michel Meese!).

Back in the Witchfinder General days, there used to be loads of shit
about banning covers like that. And look on the back of the Welcome
to Hell record. We had that record banned immediately because it
said, “We drink the vomit of the priests.” It’s mad. Boom. Banned.
And other shops wouldn’t stock it because it had the symbol of
Baphomet on the cover. And then when Black Metal came out, that
was just the end. Nobody would fuckin’ have that. Because that
was the devil on the front, and on the back, more talk about fuckin’
shagging vicars or whatever. Oh, they hated that.
Spring 1984. After Dark record tracks for a debut full-length tentatively
called Masked by Midnight. The material eventually sees the light of day in
1995, on Art of Music.

April 1984
April 1984. Holocaust issues No Mans Land, on which they start to stray
from the NWOBHM sound.
Holocaust guitarist John Mortimer on the confused direction of No

Mans Land:
It’s because we hadn’t actually planned to do an album. Phoenix
tried the Hologram thing and it completely failed. And by this time I
had gone to play with Steve Cowen and Graham Cowen, who are of
course part of the band now, but they had only been playing like less
than a year. And we were just quite happily knocking ideas around,
but we didn’t really have proper songs.
Phoenix got in touch and said they reckon it would be a good idea
to do another Holocaust album and could we do one right away? So
we thought, what the hell, and we went at it. And I tried to do the
vocals and I had never sung before. I mean, there are some good riffs
on that on that album but it’s dreadful. Steve hadn’t been playing very
long, and neither had Graham for that matter. So what we tended to
do was things that sounded a bit like Motörhead or AC/DC or punk.
It was just a bit of a laugh, but it’s not such a laugh listening back to it.
April 1984. Sledgehammer issue their “In the Queue” shaped picture disc
single, backed with “Oxford City” and “1984.”
April 1984. Street date for the US version (a remix) of Whitesnake’s Slide it
In album.
April 1984. Thunderstick, operating in an alternate NWOBHM reality, issues

his one and only album, Beauty and the Beasts.
April 1984. Black Rose issue their debut

album, Boys Will Be Boys. The band’s
vaguely Def Leppard-ish/hair metal sound
would go further in that direction for 1987’s
Walk it How You Talk it. The title track is
issued as a concurrent single. The band
would share stages with the likes of Atomic
Rooster, Budgie, Pretty Maids, Raven, Spider,
Terraplane, Trust and Vardis.

April 1984. Spider issue their second album, Rough Justice, on A&M.
April 16, 1984. Saxon issues

their Crusader album, which is
seen as a bit of a sell-out after
the ferocious Power & the
Glory. The album, recorded in
LA and produced by Kevin
Beamish, is a bellwether that
the NWOBHM is on the decline.
If a leading band like Saxon is
losing steam, maybe the whole
scene is fit to be buried.
Saxon vocalist Biff

Byford on the
Crusader era:
I think we’d lost our
boyish naïveté by that
time. We lost a bit of
that world, where it first
feels really great. I think
it was a sense of writing
songs then, rather than
just running on with

sheer adrenaline and emotion. But yeah, I think Power & the Glory and
Crusader were our biggest selling albums around the world. But there
was a sense that they were bringing in producers to produce us, whereas
before it was more of a team—a team of mates, really, making records.
Saxon guitarist Paul Quinn:

I think that was a band that were confused about their direction. The
track “Crusader” is pivotal battle metal that we know how to do but
some of them were variants of pop music. We wanted to keep writing
music that we were happy with, but sometimes the album got away
from us when we should have said, “This producer’s not working”
or, “This material’s not working.” We should have gone home and
tried again six months later for that album. But the Power & the
Glory album was a happy period. Jeff had got a studio full of gear that
we were familiar with anyway, a Neve desk and that kind of thing.
It didn’t sound American—let’s not say American because that’s a
wimp-out word—but it didn’t sound AOR.

We were under pressure from the record company and management
to crack the US, even to the point where we were pressured into using
Kevin Beamish as the producer. Kevin’s a really nice guy, and he’s
done some really big albums; it’s just that I don’t think he was right for
us. Now if Jeff Glixman had produced it, who knows?
I can see why some people might say we were selling out, but it’s one
of our biggest selling albums in Europe and when we play the tracks
live, they’re heavy and powerful. It just goes to show how important
the production is!
There are some great songs on Crusader. The title track is one of
our most popular songs live. And I mean, Crusader was huge on the
continent and in South America. I’m talking from a personal point of
view, but personally I didn’t like the production of Crusader. Like I
say, I think if Glixman had done it, it would have been a lot better.
I don’t like drum sound all. People love the album, but in my eyes,
I think the drum sounds could’ve been better.
Power & the Glory, when you put it on, the sound jumps out at
you. It really does—it grabs you by the throat and pulls you in, you
know? And again, to reiterate, I think it’s a shame that Crusader
didn’t do that. But that’s another thing where management wants us
to go with this guy. Which went on further as we were touring in
America, management making decisions about stuff that we didn’t
really agree with. But hey, we were naïve and went with it.

Crusader was my lowest point ever in making records, because
the guy that our managers wanted to produce was Kevin Beamish,
who was famous for producing REO Speedwagon, like wimpy AOR
rock, which, there’s nothing wrong with that—it’s great—but it didn’t
work for a raw heavy metal band from England. And he was just the
wrong person, and I had endless arguments with him about how it
should sound. I mean he watered the sound down. If you could hear
the original demos of those songs, they were really in-your-face. But
he watered them down, and if you listen to the backing vocals, it all
sounds like REO Speedwagon.
I mean, Crusader is okay, but it just isn’t how it should’ve been.
It should’ve been tons heavier, and that just shows you how you
can make a mistake. But, our manager, Nigel Thomas, wanted us to
become big in America, and he wanted to get an American producer,
who basically watered it down. That was a big mistake, because
the American people have got their own—and probably Canadian
people—have got their own bands. They don’t want to hear a
watered-down version of their favourite band; they want something
new.
You’ve only got to look at Iron Maiden for that, because they stuck
to their guns and never really changed, even to this day, and possibly
AC/DC. They just do what they do and the public went along with
it, whereas if you try to see into the future and say, oh, if we do it like
this, that continent will like it. That’s not really going on. There are
lots of bands who’ve tried that and failed. And that’s what happened
with us.
May 1984
May 1984. Bernie Marsden’s post-Whitesnake situation Alaska issue an

AOR album called Heart of the Storm; an album called The Pack would be
issued the following year before the band break up.
June 1984
June 1, 1984. Venom play their first London show ever, at the Hammersmith
Odeon, the recording of which will be used for future video release. Support
on the night is Dumpy’s Rusty Bolts.

June 29, 1984. Yorkshire’s Maineeaxe issue
their professional and polished debut album,
Shout it Out, which is a rare baby band album
from the NWOBHM that enjoyed Canadian issue
and widespread Canadian distribution. The
record generates the singles “Gonna Make You
Rock” and “The Game.”
Mid-1984. Saracen issues their second album,

Change of Heart, for Neat. The band had always
been proggy but now further move away from a
NWOBHM sound by getting poppier as well.
Mid-1984. Samurai issue Sacred

Blade, on Ebony. It is the band’s
first of two albums, last being
Weapon Master from 1986.
Mid-1984. Le Griffe issue the five-

track Breaking Strain EP, which
turns out to be their last bit of
product. Meanwhile Glasgow issue
“Stranded.”
Mid-1984. NWOBHM supergroup

Lionheart, with greatly altered
personnel since their 1980 founding,
land a deal with CBS in America
and produce an AOR album called
Hot Tonight. Producer on board is
Kevin Beamish, credited with ruining
Saxon’s Crusader. The band would
split in 1986 after one record.
Mid-1984. County Durham’s Dark Heart issue their debut album, Shadows
of the Night, on the quickly growing Roadrunner, and by the fall of ‘84, part
ways with their vocalist. Interestingly, Dark Heart is a band without any
single releases, representing a canary in the coalmine with respect to the
concept that the genre is generating less of that indie single base on which
to keep building.

Mid-1984. Middlesborough’s Holland issue their one and only album, Early
Warning, on Ebony, who also unleash Chateaux’s sterling and authentic
second album, Fire Power.
July 1984
July 1984. Battleaxe issue their second and last album, Power from the Universe.

July 1984. Mama’s Boys issue, as their fourth
album, a self-titled, which finds them now signed
to mid-sized imprint Jive. The album includes a
cover of Slade’s “Mama Weer All Crazee Now,”
which is also issued as a 7” and 12” single.
July 1984. Heavy Pettin’ play a gig at London’s

Astoria, for release as a commercial video.
July 1984. Jaguar issue This Time, their last

album before reunion. The band makes a shift to
a much poppier direction, forever to be locked in
NWOBHM consciousness with Savage, who pull a
similar move after a stirring heavy metal debut.
Jaguar guitarist Garry Pepperd:

Looking back on that, of course, it was a big mistake. But simply
what happened was, we didn’t do anything premeditated. It was just
simply, we were young, we were 21, 22, whatever, and we were just
trying to write better songs, I guess. It just kind of happened. I think
the first song we wrote on there was called “Last Flight,” which was
certainly more melodic than anything we’d done up until then, and
it was like, this is great. It’s a real song! And we just got stuck into
it, really.
But we were quite hurt by lot of the criticism of the album. In
some countries, it got really bad reviews, and we were accused of
selling out for the money and this, that and the other, which was
ridiculous because we never had any money. But it just happened
because we were learning. Plus we loved all sorts of stuff. Our singer
Paul Merrell at the time was a Lou Gramm and Foreigner fan. But
bands like U2 were just coming up and that kind of came into the
music. Because we were really big U2 fans at the time—The Edge’s
guitar playing in those days was kind of unheard of. So that was
thrown into the pot, as well as Big Country and Simple Minds.
As for playing live, the biggest tour we did was with Girlschool,
because we shared the same management company, in those days,
with Motörhead’s and Girlschool’s management, plus a really
muscular guy called Thor who was fond of blowing up hot water
bottles. It was my birthday on the tour, and we decorated the dressing
room walls with curry—again, as you do, on your birthday. And
certainly we did a lot of one-off gigs with bands like Vardis, The
Rods, people like that. It was fun. I ended up divorced, I must admit,
which I don’t want to go into. I’m a good boy now. Just the usual
stuff, getting drunk and being stupid. Actually, what caused Chris

Lovell to leave the band, we filled his bed with baked beans. It was
very funny, and he didn’t see the funny side, and he said, “Well, I’m
leaving” (laughs). But nothing all that exciting, which also goes for
being down in Bristol—we didn’t tend to see anybody successful,
really. We used to catch the members of Motörhead cleaning their
cars, which was, “Hey... what are you doing?” (laughs).
July 1984. Fastway issues their second CBS album All Fired Up.
Like the debut, the record has more of an American hard rock feel.

Fastway guitarist Fast Eddie Clarke:
The first Fastway album was very easy but the second album, All
Fired Up, was more difficult. You can really hear that in the album;
we had to dig it out. It’s still a good album. My biggest gripe about
that album is the production. I really had a row with Eddie Kramer
about it as it didn’t sound anything like the first album. I said, “Why
would we want to move away from that?” We had a winning formula
and the first album sounded really great. We used the same studio and
the same equipment but Eddie was in a different place.
When we did the first
album, Eddie had not
worked for a while, so
he kind of did it right
down the line, as it was
a good opportunity for
him. Once that was a
success, he went right
back to, “Hey man, I’m
the great Eddie Kramer.”
You can tell that he
didn’t pay as much
attention to the second
album. Quite often, I
play the two albums
back to back, just to
remind myself. The
second album sounds
nothing like the first
one; it hasn’t got it.
There are a lot of
things that changed
after a year in a band that has tasted success. I do think Eddie Kramer
came up short, but add to that the fact we had been touring for eight
months; I think we needed a bit more time to regroup. The material,
at times, was also lacking in finish. By that I mean some of the songs
sounded like we had not spent enough time on them. Once again,
Eddie had a hand in this by wanting to cut the recording short, so he
could get home. Sadly, all these things were part of the story and also
personalities were becoming a problem, people getting carried away
with our relatively small amount of success. Unfortunately, that is the
nature of the beast.

July 1984. Spider issue “Breakaway”/“The Morning After.”
July 1984. Warfare, the baby Venom, issue the Noise, Filth & Fury 7” EP.
Warfare drummer and vocalist Evo:

We were well after the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, which
was 1980. We were back end of ‘83. I got the idea, I got the concept
in me mind, and then I formed the band in ‘84. I got signed straight
away. I was still with The Angelic Upstarts when I got signed with
Warfare. I put the concept to Roadrunner Records and they went for
it straightaway. I actually got the record deal before I even had a band
(laughs). The first EP was Jeff from Venom, Mantas from Venom, and
Algy from Tank who played on the first single. But they knew me
from my punk days, you see? We were all new to it. It was quite a cult
scene at that particular point.

Warfare had some good ideas when they first started, but it just shit
the bed early. It didn’t go anywhere, did it? Of course, early on, we
even got involved in one of their early records. We said, “Yeah, let’s
jump in and clang our instruments and have a bit of fun.” But later
it was like pissing up the wall, you know? I mean, they were more
like a punk band. I don’t know why they were called metal. I know
they wore studs and leather jackets like Motörhead and Girlschool...
well, probably more like Girlschool for them (laughs). But they just
seemed to fizzle out, you know? What a shame. I think they lost the

purpose, they lost the anger. I mean there are a lot of bands, even
from your side like Cro-Mags and things, that I would consider to be
a thousand times more hardcore than something like Warfare.
July 27, 1984. Metallica issue their second album, Ride the Lightning, which
makes the most powerful and professional NWOBHM statements of all time
look twee and thoughtless by comparison.
Summer 1984. Witchfinder General disband, ten years before a doom revival
populated by the likes of My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost, Cathedral and
Anathema, would prove them visionaries.
Witchfinder General
guitarist Phil Cope,
on the effect of bad
touring decisions on
the band’s demise:
Heavy Metal
Records cocked that
one up badly. We
had a tour in 1983,
but they stalled the
album release, and
then basically we
went on the road, playing all the Friends of Hell material, but it hadn’t
been released at the time. So the tour went okay, but not as good as it
should have done.
I’ve never seen any sales figures. I had a statement from Heavy
Metal Records in 2006 saying there’s an amount, that I was owed so
much money, but I’ve never seen a penny of it. But that’s just on CDs
in the UK; that’s not worldwide. I’ve never gotten a penny off of
Heavy Metal Records since the band split in 1984. It must’ve sold a
lot, those two albums. But I’ve never seen any statements or anything.
I haven’t got a clue now. And whatever money Paul gave us in the ‘80s
went straight into the equipment, the vans, PAs, the light show; we
personally didn’t make a penny out of it. But it kept the band going.
We never got out of the UK. We did put in the press that we’d got
to Germany, but it wasn’t a tour, really. It was just press, bullshit. I
remember we did do a gig down in London with Buffalo, who were
on the same record label. It was all Hells Angels, so the littlest bloke
was about six-foot-six. So whatever they did, and whatever they
said, we had to do (laughs). But we had a good laugh. We didn’t play

with too many of our contemporaries. I mean, I have lately become
friends with Cathedral. I did go see them at Donington and met them
backstage, and we’re quite good friends now. And I’ve always been
friends with Brian Tatler, ever since… I remember Diamond Head’s
first gig. I was there and I saw them come on together. I really did
think Diamond Head was going to make it, but obviously Metallica
took their place and that was it.
Summer 1984. Spartan Warrior issue their second and last album, a
self-titled, on Roadrunner. It also sees release on Banzai Records out of
Montreal, Canada. Meanwhile Chariot, recording for record store offshoot
label Shades, issue a full-length called The Warrior.
Summer 1984. Bath area band Bronz, with roots back to the mid-’70s, issue
a debut on Bronze Records called Taken by Storm, which generates the
single “Send Down an Angel”/“Tiger.” Through Bronze’s deal with Island, an
assault on the US was mounted, with the band pegged as support for Ratt.
A second album called Carried by the Storm was recorded but then Bronze
Records went into receivership and the band was no more.

August 1984
August 1984. Wrathchild issue their debut album, Stakk Attakk, for Heavy Metal
Records. The band is distinguished as the most extreme and Mötley Crüe-ish
glam band in the UK, a nation with practically no glam bands at all.
Polygram’s David Bates, on why the

UK didn’t participate in the coming
glam metal explosion:
Nope, I think the UK and the
US completely split, some years
ago. If you take the start of MTV,
at that point, we were coming up
with Duran Duran, Tears for Fears,
Culture Club, and you guys were
still coming up with Journey and
Ratt or whatever. So that’s where we
schismed, I think, there. Suddenly
MTV had all these videos, and it’s
well-known that we had lots of
videos and MTV took all those
things, and that did quite well, but it
wasn’t rock.
And at that point, what American rock stations were into was not
what was being played on radio in the UK. And I think even to this
day we’re miles apart. You look at modern college radio stations and
what they’re playing, and what’s being played in the UK—miles apart.
We’ve never ever been close. Britain has always looked for something
new, something fresh, something different, something contemporary,
something inventive, and North America has always gone very “steady
as she goes.” It’s always been rock-influenced.
And I think when you got to the point where the hair bands were
going, you know, we were just into a million different things and it just
didn’t register. It didn’t make any sense. I mean, Bon Jovi was truly the
odd one out. When it came to Top of the Pops or something like that, or
on Radio One, there weren’t that many rock bands being played at that
point. Bon Jovi was one, but you’re absolutely right—Nikki Sixx and all
those bands, no, it just didn’t kick in.
Wrathchild producer Robin George on Heavy Metal Records:

I’ll tell you about the office. It was in a little, very beautiful old cottage,
just on a main road in Wolverhampton in the Midlands. That was where
they ran their affairs from. Other than that, not really any comment. I
worked with Paul quite a lot, and I produced the Wrathchild album for
him as well. Which, I mean, it charted but went out of stock, all over
England, so it was quite a lost opportunity.
August 6, 1984. Iron Maiden issue “2 Minutes to Midnight” as the bracing
first single from Powerslave. Both the song and the album present Maiden as
keepers of the NWOBHM flame, admirably, against the pressures there must
have been to suppress their British-ness.
Iron Maiden bassist Steve Harris on why his band became the biggest
of the NWOBHM batch:
It’s difficult to say, but I think it really all boils down to songwriting
and strength of material. Because I think that’s the key. You can be
the best singer in the world, and if you’re not singing or playing great

songs, people aren’t going to want to listen to ‘em. But I think the
songs are really, really strong. The standards that we set for ourselves
are really high, and to me it’s that, mainly, I suppose.
August 9, 1984. Iron Maiden begin their nearly two-year World Slavery tour,
in support of Powerslave. The double live album Live after Death would be
recorded on this tour.

Ex-Iron Maiden guitarist Dennis Stratton on Iron Maiden’s dominance:
Out of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal... see the thing is,
when I was growing up, I was listening to Uriah Heep and Deep
Purple and David Coverdale has always been my favourite vocalists,
with Paul Rodgers. Next generation, the bands that you had coming
from England at the time were Tygers of Pan Tang, Def Leppard,
Saxon, Maiden, Samson.
There were bands that were all trying at the same time, which was
the NWOBHM, but Maiden had the biggest record company in EMI.
We were all doing the same-sized shows but it was only a matter of
time, when it got to the 1980s, that you saw that Maiden were gonna
keep going up and up and up and up and other ones were falling
behind. I think that goes to show now.
The biggest surprise was Def Leppard, who couldn’t play a
gig in England. They couldn’t sell a record and yet they went to
America and they became huge. That just goes to show, just ‘cause
you’re not big in your own country, it doesn’t say you can’t do it
somewhere else. When Def Leppard came back to England, I did a
tour with them with Lionheart after Maiden, because we actually
had people coming to our shows. They had to have three or four
bands on the list because they couldn’t sell tickets. Then they get
a multi-million seller in America. It was just strange. But that list
of bands on the heavy metal side of it were also-runners. They just
didn’t have what Maiden had.
August 18, 1984. The fifth Monsters of Rock or Donington, featuring

Mötley Crüe, Accept, Y&T, Gar y Moore, Ozzy Osbourne, Van Halen and
headliners AC/DC. Note the complete absence of NWOBHM, indeed
ver y little British content at all, and also the emergence of Mötley Crüe.
August 31, 1984. Of ficial release date of Wrathchild’s cover of Gar y

Glitter’s “Alright with the Boys,” which is also on the debut album,
issued the same month. Crüe they weren’t; nor were they Hanoi
Rocks—or W.A.S.P..
September 1984
September 1984. Nightwing issue non-LPer “Strangers are Welcome,”

backed with a new recording of “Games.” The band break up after a live
album in 1985, and reform for 1996’s Natural Survivors.

September 1984. Tokyo Blade issue the Night
of the Blade LP.
September 1984. Waysted, now knocked down

a peg from Chrysalis to Music for Nations,
issue a self-titled five-track EP.
Waysted vocalist Fin on the Waysted EP

and Chrysalis losing patience with the
band:
The plan with the EP was just to
develop the writing more. Frank Noon
had gone, and we met up at the end of the
Ozzy tour, and it was just Pete and I that
were the main members of the band, Pete and I left to do auditioning.
The first drummer we got in, we just got him in because we liked
him. Didn’t matter at all that he wasn’t that great. And then Pete got
Andy Parker in and he saved the day. He’s a class act, Andy Parker,
and a top drummer. And little Neil Shepard, our guitarist, was a good
player. He was only 17, but again, when it came to playing live, like
Ronnie Kayfield, he wasn’t cutting it.
With Chrysalis, it wasn’t that they were bad to us. There were just
certain things—you know, more Pete stories—where they finally kind
of had enough. Pete and I turned up to do a press conference with a
room full of Japanese journalists. We had flown down from Glasgow,
and on the plane going down, there were a couple of friends from
bands in Glasgow. And whenever something like that happens, Pete
tends to try to drink people under the table and impress them with
the amount of alcohol he can take.
So while we’re on this plane, coming down on the shuttle from
Glasgow to London, the stewardess comes by, and Pete goes, “I’ll
have ten of this, I’ll have ten of those and ten of them.” By the time
we get to Heathrow, Pete is pretty pissed, and these other guys are
completely pissed, and they’ve got business meetings to go to too. We
had a press conference at Chrysalis, and Pete turns up and he ends
up falling asleep on the table. And I’m sitting there with a Japanese
interpreter and a room full of Japanese journalists. And so that was
it—Chrysalis had kind of had enough.
Plus we did another one, with Sky TV, and there’s also a famous
YouTube interview with Pete and I where he’s a bit wasted there. But
that pisses me off as well. Because he starts talking about drugs, and
it’s, “Oh Pete, not again, shut up.”

September 1984. Canada’s Attic Records signs a distribution deal with
Roadrunner Records, resulting in albums by Mad Max, Dark Heart, Jaguar
and Battleaxe enjoying imminent release in the Great White North. As well,
a couple of AOR hopefuls are on the move, Terraplane signing with CBS and
Robin George finishing up work on his debut LP. Perhaps further signaling
the end, Saxon issue a greatest hits album called Strong Arm Metal and
Paul Di’Anno’s got vocal nodes.
September 3, 1984. Iron Maiden

issues their fifth album Powerslave.
Widely viewed as “son of” Piece of
Mind, the album nonetheless was
well-received, vaulting Maiden onto
exalted metal par with Ozzy Osbourne,
Scorpions, Van Halen and Judas
Priest, i.e. playing the same type of
US hockey barn circuit, while
representing—and championing—a
new heavy metal generation.
September 7, 1984. A slapdash

Samson compilation emerges, on
Thunderbolt, called Last Rites. Paul
Samson quickly disavows the release.
Also at this time, Thunderbolt come
up with a multi-band compilation
called Bolt from the Black.
September 15, 1984. Motörhead

issue a double compilation album
(plus rarities and new tracks), called
No Remorse. A single is issued in
7” and 12” format for “Killed by
Death”/“Under the Knife.” It would be
two years before Motörhead return with
a new studio album.
October 1984
October 1984. Gary Moore issues

the double live We Want Moore, which
suggests Gary as some sort of new
guitar hero, similar to what Michael

Schenker Group’s One Night at Budokan did for the UFO great two years
previous. Gary also aligns with the NWOBHM through, as alluded to, his
recent heavy-ish albums along with the myriad permutations of 7” and 12”
singles that pollute his discography through the early ‘80s.
October 1984. Denmark’s Pretty Maids, arguably an honourary NWOBHM

band, issue their debut full-length, on CBS. Red Hot and Heavy is the follow-
up to the band’s well-regarded self-titled EP from ’83 which forms the basis
for the band’s quasi-NWOBHM credentials.
October 1984. Venom issue “Manitou,” backed with “Woman,” for the 7”;
the single is also available as an expanded 12” and picture disc.
Venom bassist and vocalist Cronos

on skirmishes with the religious
right:
I think they just fuckin’ stay away
from us because they know that it
would just be far too much for them
to deal with. I’ve heard some great
stories about Ozzy where all the
Christian people were outside his
gig and he went out in a fur coat and
stood beside them and went, “Yeah,
ban the gig, ban the gig!” and they
didn’t even know who he was. And
that’s cool for Ozzy, he has a funny
story to tell.
But I haven’t had any of those
fuckers at my gigs. I think the people
that come to my gigs would remove
them, or laugh at them. But we don’t
have any of that kind of shit. I think
people just accept that Venom are
going to come, Venom are going to
blow the town up tonight, but rest
assured, they’ll be gone tomorrow. I
think it’s a little bit like a hurricane,
you know? You can’t avoid it, so it’s
pointless putting up the breakers. It’s
pointless, like warning everybody and
letting off sirens. It’s like, “Duck!”
for an evening, and then it will all be
over with, honey (laughs).

But I’ve had some funny letters. I remember some fuckin’ girl
in New Jersey who wrote saying she’d been to a farm and she had
enough blood to fill a small swimming pool and she wanted us to go
around for some fuckin’ ritual bullshit, me and her, and I was like,
“Um, yeah, sure!” (laughs). But mostly we just get hardcore kids that
just want to shake my hand and get an autograph and they’re just so
happy to be with you, you know? “Yeah, you guys rule; I’ve been
listening to you since I was 15!” And it’s great to hear things like that.
“I’ve got all your fuckin’ records, man!” Yep, excellent, excellent.
October 1984. Marseille issue their third album, Touch the Night, which
finds the band on a new label (Mountain went bust) plus switching a couple
of members. Issued as a single is “Walking on a High Wire”/“Too Late.” The
band’s AOR sound has them in the camp of Def Leppard and Heavy Pettin’,
exactly where they had been all along.
October 1984. Stratus, featuring a couple of Praying Mantis guys plus ex-
Maiden drummer Clive Burr, complete tracking in Frankfurt for their Throwing
Shapes album, which will emerge in early 1985.
October 1984. Bluesy and late NWOBHMers from Humberside, Splitcrow,

issue their full-length Rock Storm album, on Guardian.

October 1984. Savage issue their “We Got the Edge” 12”, on Zebra Records.

“We Got the Edge” is quite powerful, and it wasn’t a go at hair metal;
it was more about having a go at British rock press. We’d done Loose
‘n Lethal and, according to Kerrang!, we were best thing since sliced
bread. And then all of a sudden, there was a decision made: they
wanted to knock us back down. So “We Got the Edge” was a sort
of reaction to that. At that time magazines like Kerrang! were very
fickle, and that’s why we don’t have much in the way of heavy metal
in the UK anymore. Even though it’s still got a large fan base, and lots
of bigger bands pull massive crowds, you won’t get to see those bands
on TV programs or hear them on the radio.
Savage guitarist Andy Dawson on fond tour memories:

The best time we had was when we played Aardshock. We were
green, and Metallica came to our dressing room and they were like,
“Is it okay if we have a beer with you?” We should have been so
chuffed but we were like, all right. A lot of the bands seemed to
converge on our room. But the other guitar player Wayne was so
smashed that he was in one of the toilet cubicles with diarrhea and
sickness at the same time. Nobody could find him and when we
finally did we had to sort of dress him and carry him to the hotel.
There were about 8000 people at Aardshock, and we had to carry him
through that. People were like, “Oh look, there’s Savage.” And he was
just bombed out of his face. But he was way gone even when he was
on stage. Probably doesn’t even remember the gig.
Metallica were just a really nice bunch of guys and they
approached us and talked about our material and they were just acting
like fans of ours. I have this photograph and I run a studio and meet
a lot of young bands, and it’s James and Lars and me in the dressing
room, and my head’s cut off in the photo so I can’t really show it to
anybody. I have to go, “That’s me!”
October 1984. Warfare issue their acclaimed 12” rendition of Frankie Goes
to Hollywood’s “Two Tribes.”

At the time, I was pissed-off with everybody walking around with
fucking “Frankie Says Go to War” written on all their t-shirts, and it
was a red hot summer and we were in the rehearsal studio, and every
time we went to get a beer or get something to eat, “Frankie Says Go
to War,” “Frankie Says Go to War.” And I thought, fuckin’ Frankie
wouldn’t know what war is if it hit him in the fucking bollocks. So I

just phoned Roadrunner up and said, “Look, it’s Evo, 3 o’clock, it’s
Wednesday, I want a studio tomorrow. And I want to obliterate “Two
Tribes.” And Cees Wessels from Roadrunner said, “Fuckin’, what
an amazing idea.” And within an hour, I think, we had the studio
booked, and it was down the next day. And it was a massive success,
that single. It was huge. Went straight to #1 in the heavy metal charts,
and in various other countries in Europe. It was just a giggle, really. It
was my sense of humour, if I have one (laughs).
Early October 1984. Lightweights Airrace issue Shaft of Light, on Atlantic.

The Beau Hill-produced record further points to creativity and resources
moving on and away from a NWOBHM sound.

October 22, 1984. Iron Maiden issue “Aces High” as the fast-paced second
single from Powerslave.
Fall 1984. Tysondog’s debut,

Beware of the Dog, is issued on
Neat Records, while Avenger issue
the first of their two albums, Blood
Sports, also on Neat—their last
would be 1985’s Killer Elite. While
the label valiantly tried to participate
in melodic metal or AOR, with both
Tysondog and Avenger, they had the
good sense to lean aggressive and
thrashy as well.
Fall 1984. Blade Runner issue their

Hunted LP, on Ebony, which generates
a single called “Back Street Lady.”
Ebony is doing a good job of flying the
flag for the NWOBHM, although it’s
becoming clear that they are too late
to the game.
Late 1984. Hellanbach issue their second and last album, The Big H.
Judging by sales, it seems that the world only needed one Van Halen.

Late 1984. Assorted and sundry singles late in the year include Mammath’s
“Rock Me,” Seventh Son’s “Metal to the Moon,” Karrier’s “I’m Back” and
Golgotha’s “Dangerous Games.”
Late 1984. Ebony act Touched

issues their debut album, Back
Alley Vices, following up with a
second and last, Death Row, in
1986.
Late 1984. Consummate

AOR guitarist and producer
Robin George issues his debut
album, Dangerous Music, on
Gerr y Bron’s Bronze Records.
Involved all over the NWOBHM,
George is nonetheless more
suited to what came after the
genre’s demise.
Vocalist and guitarist

Robin George:
I wasn’t making that
sort of music—I was
producing it. But for me,
I was more AOR, melodic
rock-oriented, so I was
sort of on the outskirts
of it, I would say. But
great, fantastic, it did a lot of bands a lot of good, obviously. I liked
the music that Journey and Foreigner etc. were making at that stage.
Because I kind of grew out of the Stones and the Beatles, and it was
very melodic and very accessible to me. But as a musician I don’t
really listen to that. If I listen to something, I kind of have to make
it (laughs). So yeah, I was ahead of the curve for about a minute, and
then I went under (laughs).
As for working with Gerry Bron, I like him. He paid me. Rare in
this business, I have to tell you; it’s bloody rare these days. But no,
Gerry, I thought he did his best. He broke some great bands, and he
was breaking my career, just as he went bust. You can’t plan that, you
know? But yeah, I’m still in contact with him—good guy.

November 1984
November 1984. Raven issue two-

LP Live at the Inferno.
Raven bassist and vocalist

John Gallagher on the
waning of the NWOBHM:
These things never last.
Because I mean, the record
companies will come in, and
they cherry-pick what they
want and they’ll either make
money with some or burn-
out a few of them and run
them into the ground and
move onto the next. And
then you’ve got your second
tier and your third tier and
your fourth tier, and by that
time it’s over.
I guess there’s an analogy to making wine; your first pressing’s
probably the best tasting. By the time you get down to the skin and
the pips there’s not much left, and it’s a case of all the bands trying to
copy the bands that have gone before and it’s never as original. And
you’ve got a large amount of people who are bandwagon-jumpers,
who probably had a whole bunch of punks who decided to either put
wigs on or grow their hair, and let’s be in a heavy band. We can make
money doing this.
November 1984. Demon issue their “Wonderland”/“Blackheath” single,

an advance from the band’s second record that shifts toward prog, 1985’s
British Standard Approved.
Demon vocalist Dave Hill:

I think what we like to do is offer the listener an album that isn’t
the same each time out. You know, we haven’t sold 20 million
albums, and maybe we would have done that if we had, but I can’t
say for sure. But that’s never been our motivation; our motivation
has been a musical one. So we try to offer something different,
whether that’s turned out good or bad. It’s nice to look back at a
catalog that is varied.

November 1984. Venom issue
an 11-track, 57 minute video
called The 7th Date of Hell –
Live at Hammersmith Odeon, to
commemorate their first London
gig, performed in June of the
same year. The following month,
the Kerrang! readers poll has
Venom voted worst band of the
year, while Metal Forces votes
both “Manitou” and “Warhead”
into the top five singles of the
year.
November 1984. Wildfire issue

their second and last album,
Summer Lightning, which yields
a single release for “Nothing
Lasts Forever”/“Blood Money,”
both album tracks.
Wildfire guitarist Jeff Summers:

There’s an element of the Wildfire sound we took forward to
Statetrooper, probably more so with the second one. Summer
Lightning, which we thought was a great album, lends a lot to the
sound of Statetrooper. In terms of a critique of the Wildfire albums,
they were recorded back in the early ‘80s, and written back in the
early ‘80s, and a lot of people said at the time that they were slightly
before their time. So I think they still sound good now. It’s so difficult
for us to say because we were so immersed in it. The interesting thing
about those two albums is that they’ve recently been re-released on
Mausoleum, which was the original record label and they’ve gotten
some reviews over here in Europe and surprisingly, absolutely
fantastic reviews. Some people have said that it’s a terrible waste the
band never went further than it did.
According to the record company, they both sold very well, but
as usual, with the musicians involved, we didn’t actually see any
money from them, and we never saw any statements either. So we’ll
probably never know how they sold. But the fact that they’ve now
been reissued once in the ‘90s, and now in 2002, would suggest that
they were healthy enough to reinvest on recording them on CD and
promoting them.

At the time it was a very healthy rock scene over here in Europe.
So we got to play a lot of big festivals, big-ish festivals. We didn’t
headline them, but we were close to the top of the bill. We got to do
a TV show over here called ECT, a rock show, probably the first time
ever there’s been entirely a hard rock show in the UK. It replaced a
program over here called The Tube, which was a big one, on Channel
4 here in the UK. And we got to play with Phil Lynott and Gary
Moore, some of our heroes, so that was a big one. And yes, with
Bruce and my previous band Weapon, we got to do a Motörhead tour.
We also toured throughout the UK with Hawkwind as well. But the
biggest thing was doing the TV show, and also The Friday Rock Show
with Tommy Vance.
November 1984. Saxon, Heavy Pettin’, Rock Goddess, Desolation Angels

and Mama’s Boys record tracks for their forthcoming albums slated for early
1985. Heavy Pettin’ would represent a rare UK act that had attempted to
escape the NWOBHM and follow the path to America much like their mentor
band Def Leppard had accomplished, only to be slapped back down.
Heavy Pettin’ guitarist Punky Mendoza:

We toured one major tour, in America, in the ‘80s. It was going
very well, very successful. Mötley Crüe wanted to keep us out on
the road up to the end of the tour. But unfortunately, Bon Jovi was
doing much better, and the record company decided that they would
cut us short and send us back home. And really, the effect of Bon

Jovi being as good as they were, being packaged perfectly, in a sense,
really stopped us from getting any headway in America. For whatever
reason, that’s really what I would say was the stumbling block.
Scorpions was talked about, and both Gene and Paul from Kiss
were interested in the band, to possibly part-time manage and to
produce, but nothing ever came of it. But yeah, at that point, Bon Jovi
and Bon Jovi’s management
company, and the record
company, were more interested
in promoting Bon Jovi, because
they obviously saw the whole
viable product in that band
rather than Heavy Pettin’.
And we were caught in-
between trying to compete in a
sense, business-wise, with Bon
Jovi on one hand, and on the
other hand, we sounded very
much like Def Leppard. So it
was difficult for us to find a
niche and to find our own way
through, in that scene. It was
hard at that point to try and
establish anything because we
were very much like those two bands, somewhere in the middle, and
both of those bands had very solid foundations and support from the
record company and management, which we didn’t have at all.
November 1984. Witchfynde issue their spooky and evil fourth album, Lords
of Sin, with the band calling it quits the following year. The first 10,000
copies of the album include a four-track live EP.
Witchfynde vocalist Luther Beltz:

We only had two weeks to record Cloak and Dagger and so Lords
of Sin was more polished because we had months recording time
on this one; there are some great songs on that album including
“Conspiracy,” which is around how people can conspire in all walks
of life on each other. For that album cover, we said let’s make it scary
and put Luther’s face on it, with a couple of naked models. And with
those mausoleum shots, we were like the lords of the manor.
Witchfynde guitarist Montalo:

We had a long time to do Lords of Sin. We actually lived at the
studio for a year. Yeah, we lived in this place in London, which was

actually owned by Phil Chilton, the producer. He built a studio with
the intention of doing the album, and in fact, the first job when we
got to do the album, along with various preproduction things and
rehearsals and meetings, so Phil knew all the songs we wanted to put
down... but the very first day we went to actually start recording, we
had to build the beds—that was our first job. Before we unloaded the
gear, we had to build the bedroom (laughs).
And so, yeah, we just lived in that studio for a year. It just kept
going on and on. But Phil said, well, we’re going to be able to get
a great album here if we just put a bit more time into it. Now the
desperate thing about that was, of course, that Phil, and the studio,
had done what’s called a points deal, with Mausoleum. Basically,
they weren’t technically going to get paid, but they would get a
percentage of the sales. Well, you think how much a year-plus of
studio time would’ve cost. And then of course, the album was put
out and Mausoleum went bankrupt. And so Phil went bankrupt
at the same time, the studio went bankrupt, and everything went.
Which is quite sad.
But no, there are some classic songs on there, and it was also the
first time that I got a guitar sound that I was happy with in the studio.
“Stab in the Back,” great song, and also “Conspiracy” is still a very
favourite song of mine.
We did actually do a few gigs after that album, mainly down in
London. But virtually as soon as we released it, Mausoleum went
bankrupt, which was a difficult situation, really. And so we were
very disappointed. To think you’d spent a year putting some songs
together, for that to happen... and of course, everybody says, well,
you have to get another deal and another album out. And you think,
well, fine, but you just sort of drained yourself for a year, and then to
think you have to do the same again. We came back into Derbyshire,
and we hired a little rehearsal place over the top of an undertaker’s.
You know what an undertaker is? Where they laid the bodies out.
Well, we hired this room over the undertaker in the middle of
nowhere, and we were writing a few songs but basically, we all got
very disillusioned with the whole business of it all.
But having said that, there was a few good songs on that. But we
were very disappointed with the whole situation. This would’ve
been the fourth album, and we’d had four lots of bankruptcies, from
the record companies. Whether it was not intentional or whether it
was just so they wouldn’t have to pay us money... and same with the
management side: we had four lots of useless management deals. And
you think, well, I’ve had it.

November 1984. Phil Lewis, ex-Girl, is now ex-New Torpedoes, moving on
to guest at a couple of Tormé gigs. Soon would be the unusual move for
a gad about the NWOBHM, namely a move to LA, where Phil would find
considerable success fronting LA Guns.
November 1984. A bunch of NWOBHM refugees coalesce to form the

insipidly commercial FM, helping to signal the end of metal’s fine UK run.
DJ Neal Kay on why the NWOBHM had to fade away:

I’ve got my own reasons for this. It’s something that started
happening in the very early ‘80s. By September, October 1980, the
‘wagon was shut. I got thrown out of there, actually. The manager
was so afraid by now. We had film crews in there, we made some stuff
for The Who, we did stuff for their Mods film, Quadrophenia; there
was a whole manner of shit going on at the Soundhouse every night.
There were people all over the place. Film companies came down. For
Quadrophenia, the Who thing, we loaned our bikers to them for the
fight scene on the beach.
Frankly the manager of the Soundhouse was an absolute imbecile.
He came from Scotland, and all he wanted was a little quiet bar
where him and his cronies could smoke a cigar at night and think
about salmon fishing. And he didn’t get that—he got me and the
Soundhouse instead. And unfortunately for him I won most of the
time. Nearly all the time. But the thing is that he got fed up with it all.
He’d been embezzling the takings or something, I don’t know, and he
got the brewery to agree to throw us out.
But that wasn’t the reason. The thing was that music in our
field suddenly started to diversify. Instead of all the audience, the
brotherhood being together, where one man or one girl would listen
one minute to UFO, the next minute to Rainbow, to Led Zeppelin,
to Iron Maiden, to Def Leppard, without any trouble at all, the next
thing we started having was all this weird shit coming in. Death metal,
thrash metal, trash metal, gloom, doom and other weird shit. What is
this? And, I mean, what it did was basically split the solid audience
that you had.
And with glam, we were still operating while that was happening.
We had all that. I played Ratt, I love Mötley Crüe; Cinderella, another
great band. We went through those years, but not at the Soundhouse.
I put the Soundhouse on the road. I bought a seven-and-a-half ton
lorry, which I alone could drive on my crew because I was only
one that could get the license for the damn thing. I bought an even
bigger PA, and then I bought a bigger light show, and then we started
putting it on the road and we had regular venues.

But with glam, yeah, I mean there’s always this kind of lagging-
behind thing over here, and you know, this pizzazz and razzmatazz
showmanship from the States is not always looked upon initially
favourably here. The shock tactic works sometimes. Dee Snider, I
mean Christ, what a geezer. When he moved to England, he actually
lived in my then hometown, and I can remember going into a store
one day, like a Tesco’s or something, and there was this goddamn
thing strolling around the place, and I thought fucking hell, the
circus is in town, man. What is that? It’s a transvestite fucking clown
or something; I don’t know what the hell it is. God, I don’t know,
they’re going to arrest it in a minute. Is it a granny-grabber? What
does it do like?
And then I found out it was with a band called Twisted Sister who
made the most immaculate videos, the funniest videos, the greatest
videos I’d ever seen. And I had a venue then in my hands in east
London, and the governor there had given me all this new gear, and I
could link it up with my equipment, and I had a fucking great screen
behind me, like about 25 foot wide. And I could show all these videos
and pump the sound through my system. And one of the first I ever
did was one of theirs, “We’re Not Gonna Take it.” I thought great,
the video age has arrived. But that still did nothing to stop the rot of
the split within the mainstream rock audience. The more subgenres
of the culture you have, the less strength at the cutting head you have.
And also it sets them against each other.
And glam was perfect for MTV—‘course it was. It was over-
the-top, it was crazy, and I mean we needed MTV. We needed to
move into the next stage of visual and audio. We had a very good
run for our money. The Bandwagon, the Soundhouse, the fans, the
brotherhood of the Soundhouse, they’d actually achieved a huge
amount in a very short space of time. They were honoured time and
again by different media, they lent themselves to films, to all sorts of
crazy things, and they were without a shadow of a doubt the greatest
audience I’ve ever entertained. But they couldn’t hold it together.
The ‘wagon was no more, I was out on the road working, I didn’t
have one particular club, the music was changing, and that, more than
anything, diversified the fans even more. There were those that loved
this American kind of feel and there were those who absolutely hated
it. And those that hated it are traditionalists.
November 2, 1984. Official release date for Deep Purple Mk. II’s reunion
album, Per fect Strangers, although copies begin showing up on record
store shelves as early as October 29. The album reaches #5 in the UK and
#17 in the states. The band’s US tour for the album would be the year’s
biggest, after Bruce Springsteen. Four solid years for the prospects of

heavy metal, not to mention the modestly thriving status of Deep Purple
offshoot bands in this environment, has made a Mk II reunion a tantalizing
prospect. The idea pays off famously. With metal having had a four-year
resurgence in the UK—and looking good in America now as well—the
timing is most definitely right. The album sells platinum in the US and sets
the band up with the momentum to make a second classic lineup album in
The House of Blue Light.

December 1984
December 1984. Tank issue their fourth album Honour & Blood, a
disappointment after three well received albums. Algy Ward is the last
remaining original member of the band.
Tank guitarist Cliff Evans:

I came in towards the end of that album and did some stuff on
there and then just a couple weeks after doing the album we were out
on tour with Metallica, for Ride the Lightning (laughs). We were the
support band on that throughout Europe. Which was good for us,
and that’s just when Metallica was starting to get really big as well.
They were playing large clubs and arenas around Europe. Which is
good, and they were pretty much selling out every night. They were
awesome. I’ve never heard anything like them. I dug up some old
photographs as well, with us all standing together getting drunk.
Honour & Blood, I thought, was a great album. The songs are
good. I like the production on the album and “The War Drags Ever
on” is just a classic and “Waste My Life Away” I like a lot. On
Honour & Blood I did a couple little solos, but most of the solo work
on there is Mick Tucker, because I joined toward the end. It’s all
written by Algy though. But I still listen to the album and the fans
loved it. It’s a slightly different sound to the earlier stuff; Tank has
kind of progressed through the different lineups. Obviously there is
the original Filth Hounds of Hades and Power of the Hunter, which
have a real Motörhead vibe, and also kind of punk.
December 1984. Warfare issue their debut album, Pure Filth, in three
distinct configurations for the UK, Canada and The Netherlands.

I wasn’t really involved in the NWOBHM. When all that was
happening, I was playing with punk rock bands like Major Accident
and The Blood and The Angelic Upstarts. So I don’t really know a
great deal about it—I know it was Iron Maiden and that’s about it
(laughs). I was fuelled on the punk rock scene. I was touring heavy
with The Angelic Upstarts and bands like that at that time.
As for Warfare, no one had actually done what I was doing. I
was getting very, very tired of the punk scene, to be truthful with
you. And I did like hard rock, but I liked not the New Wave of
British Heavy Metal hard rock, but I liked the predecessor to
that. I liked the underground, like Pink Fairies, MC5 and the
Ramones, who I thought were quite metal, actually, even though
they were dubbed punk. And I wanted to fuse the two together.

I wanted to do something more Hawkwind/Fairies, of that ilk,
only extremely loudly.
And I got the idea before the journalistic word thrash was even
invented, to be honest with you. And that was basically what I
wanted to do. I just wanted to be fucking loud, and I quite amazingly
succeeded with the loud bit, certainly. It’s quite tame by today’s
standards, but back then it was fucking absolutely mayhem. No one
had heard anything like it. And I think we influenced a hell of a lot of
people that are doing it now, you know?
Working with Algy on that album was crazy. Just like working
with me. We were fuckin’ lunatics. We were best of friends. Absolute
fuckin’ nutcases, but that’s rock ‘n’ roll, isn’t it? But we were
very professional when we were given our job to do. Extremely
professional. But then just party time at the end of it, you know?
And we never let the insanity take over what we were paid to do, but
it was good. It was good. And it’s still good fun working with Algy
now. We’ve been best of friends now for 30 odd years, so great fun.
But back then, it was, if you had long hair, you were a fucking
hippie, basically. If you had short hair, you were a punk rocker.
There was nobody gelling the two. And at that particular time that I
was doing it, it was very controversial. I think Warfare were the first
band to actually admit that we were punk metal. That’s the word.
You could attribute Motörhead to being punk-friendly, but they still
weren’t accepted by punk rockers. They still had long hair, and they
were still a heavy metal band, weren’t they? They were still a heavy
rock band in them days. We were the first people to actually talk
about GBH and we were the first to do punk with metal. Punk lyrics,
certainly—all my lyrics were very, very street, and to heavy metal
riffs, basically.
But punk and the NWOBHM... like all rock ‘n’ roll, it was
rebellion. Everyone was totally pissed-off with Emerson, Lake and
Palmer and Yes and Genesis and bullshit like that. And subsequently
you got the Pistols. And I suppose the New Wave Of British Heavy
Metal was the metallers revving it up a bit. Like, they took a leaf
out of Deep Purple and just made it heavier and more obnoxious,
although I don’t know if obnoxious is the correct terminology, really.
It was more just heavy. They just took it a little bit extreme, didn’t
they? Like the black metal bands now. Venom were the first to do
the black metal thing, and these Norwegian bands just took it to the
extreme. It all just evolves, doesn’t it?
December 7, 1984. Coventry’s Chainsaw issue, on Thunderbolt, the four-

track Massacre EP.

December 10, 1984. Pet Hate issue their second record, Bad Publicity. The
band concept marries punk, Hanoi Rocks and what’s beginning to snowball
over in California.
December 10, 1984. Heavy Metal issue Heavy Metal Records, a compilation
of their acts from the UK and elsewhere which demonstrates nothing but
confusion at where metal would be going in 1985.
December 10, 1984. Demon guitarist Mal Spooner dies from pneumonia.
December 17, 1984. Lone Wolf issues “Nobody’s Move”/“Town to

Town”/“Leave Me Behind,” on Neat. Brian Ross has a snake. Creepy.
December 20, 1984. As we draw our journey to a close, a changing of the

guard is symbolized by Metallica storming the UK for a one-off show at
The Lyceum. Support on the night is Tank and Bernie Tormé’s new band
Tormé, both who sound dated, arguably, to the point of irrelevant, next to
the American bounders. It is an ultimate irony that Metallica’s drummer,
Lars Ulrich, turned out to be so much of a NWOBHM fan, that he was one of
the few American musicians to go through the trouble to travel to the UK to
witness the movement close up. The lessons he—along with his buddy Brian
Slagel—took away from the experience would change rock history forever.
Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich on the magic of the NWOBHM:

It was the energy. First and foremost there was a different energy.
If you do a quick lineage thing here, the NWOBHM was basically
hard rock metal’s answer to the punk movement, which got off the
ground in England ‘76, ‘77 type of thing. And the punk movement
was basically a direct contradictory element to the kind of bloated
dinosaur rock of the ‘70s. There was just a whole group of people
in England who felt disenfranchised and could not relate to the
Zeppelins and the Genesises and the Deep Purples and the Pink
Floyds and the Emerson, Lake and Palmers and the 20-minute
keyboard solos, and that bloated, let’s all take a big pile of drugs and
just watch these people do their thing.
So punk, three minute songs, it became all about the idea that the
audience could do what the people on stage were doing and it became
kind of a bond and all of us as one and that type of stuff. But with
punk, it was mostly about energy and about kind of doing it yourself.
And there were a bunch of the metal dudes that then took the energy
and the spirit of punk but made the riffs heavier, made the riffs a little
more blues-based, made the riffs a little more intricate, and there was
just a slightly different level of musical weight to it. The NWOBHM,
spearheaded by Iron Maiden, Saxon, Diamond Head and some of

these bands, it was just metal played with the energy and the spirit of
punk and the accessibility of punk and how the musicians were sort
of on the same level as the audience and everybody felt they could
relate to each other. There was a big kind of love-fest between the
audience and the musicians, you know?
Iron Maiden bassist Steve Harris on the legacy left by the

NWOBHM:
I think it was a big change, because a lot of bands had a different
attitude and wanted to prove themselves and wanted to do something
a little different to what had gone on before. I think it was still a lot
of influence. You could still hear all your influences coming from the
early stuff, but it was just a different edge to it, that’s all. And the new
young fans out there, it was their music as well. It became a thing that
they got behind because they felt that it was theirs.
Diamond Head guitarist Brian Tatler on the decline of the

NWOBHM:
Obviously you can’t just keep going, can you? And the press
always wanted something that was new. And at that point, a couple of
bands had shown themselves as the forerunners, and they just focused
on those bands, and everyone else would just drift away. And that’s
just the nature of the beast, isn’t it? How many punk rock bands
survived the punk explosion? There were hundreds of punk rock
bands, and there’s only a couple survived, didn’t they? You know, The
Clash and The Damned went on; the Sex Pistols didn’t last for long,
but everybody remembers them. But the same thing happened with
New Wave of British Heavy Metal. There were apparently about 400
bands that claim to be New Wave of British Heavy Metal, and there
was only a couple of handfuls that made a good living at it and are
around to this day making records.
As for us, I mean, there was a time when we all got on famously.
It was a nice unit around the end of the ‘70s, beginning of the ‘80s.
But it just seemed to get more and more pressure, just got harder
and harder, and Sean and I felt this strain to write the songs, and
it ended up with us splitting, after Canterbury. And then it split
altogether, didn’t it? At the beginning of 1985. Everybody just went
off to their own thing. But by that time, we were pretty burnt-out.
We hadn’t had a lot of success, and everybody was pretty worn-out
and just wanted a break, really.
At the time, generally, a lot of fans could continued to follow Iron
Maiden, and then you had Saxon, Van Halen, Scorpions, AC/DC,
Judas Priest, all those bands who pretty consistently were releasing
albums. Dio came along. They probably just swallowed up anybody

they could get their hands on. I can remember when the Canterbury album
came out, it was a faulty pressing. The first 20,000 copies jumped, and
people would take it back to the shop
and get another copy. And then that
jumped, and I remember this chap said,
“I took your album back,” you know,
ten times or whatever, and then he
eventually bought Holy Diver (laughs).
Jess Cox on the demise of the

NWOBHM:
In every genre there’s two or three
bands, and that was Iron Maiden
and to a point, Saxon, but really it
was Def Leppard and Iron Maiden.
I just think England is very fashion-
led and they were ready for the next thing. They went onto a thing
called New Romantics, which was kind of Spandau Ballet and
whatever else; they just went that way. On the metal side, I think it
was kind of the Mötley Crües of the world and whatever else started
to take up the flame.
Angel Witch and Tytan bassist Kevin Riddles on the decline

of the NWOBHM:
I think it was probably because it was such a pigeonhole to put
bands into. To call us the New Wave of British Heavy Metal suited
at the time, but you couldn’t be sort of post-New Wave of British
Heavy Metal. You can’t be one of those bands... if you weren’t there
at the time, you were not New Wave of British Heavy Metal. And a
couple years down the line, of course, it wasn’t new anymore. It was
sort of the old New Wave of British Heavy Metal, if that makes the
slight bit of sense.
And of course, the whole sort of anti-epic rock ‘n’ roll movement
was in full swing. You were starting to get the New Romantics and
those sort of people, post-punk, the sort of punks all grown up,
wearing face paint and stuff. You saw Adam Ant and Siouxsie and the
Banshees, fantastic people and brilliant material, but obviously they
were filling the space that punk and rock had been occupying.
And also this was combined with, especially in the UK, a lot of
clubs closing down, that were putting on live gigs. Because disco
was king. You could literally open up a club for like 20 bucks,
because all you needed was a sound system. You didn’t need to put
in stage lights and PA and God knows what else. You just needed to
have someone come and spin the records, and you would pack the

place every night. That’s where, in inverted commas, “music” went,
in the mid to late ‘80s.
So the Soundhouse was one that shut down, for a start, that Neal
Kay had in Kingsway. Places like the Music Machine suddenly
became... what the hell was it? It was bought by Steve Strange from
Visage; he bought the club and turned it into a nightclub. And
you had to be the right sort of person to get in there, that sort of
thing. Places like the Bouncing Ball in Peckham was great, the Cat’s
Whiskers in Wardour Street, and even the Marquee club, also in
Wardour Street, closed down.
And so what had been a good circuit where you could go three or
four nights a week and play to 300, 400, 500 people, now you were
down to maybe one place you could play once a week to 100 people.
Or, if you were in the position that we sometimes fortunately were
with Tytan, you could get onto a tour with someone like Motörhead
or Girlschool or whoever, and go and do the Hammersmith Odeon in
Birmingham and the Newcastle City Hall and Manchester Apollo and
places like that.
That sort of circuit was still around, but that mid-range circuit
almost disappeared overnight. Even places in sort of Wolverhampton
and Birmingham that used to have fantastic clubs—JB’s in Dudley,
Jilly’s in Manchester, St. George’s Hall in Bradford—they all just
stopped doing rock nights. Which is strange, when you think that
there was almost nobody that was getting radio play at the time. So
it was all based on fashion and trend—and it went out of fashion.
Better-looking and slightly less sweaty people came along and were
wearing nice uniforms and makeup. It was as simple as that.
Saxon bassist Steve Dawson on the death of the NWOBHM:

You got what I would call the hairspray boys, like Mötley Crüe,
and all those bands that look like women. They became popular in
England, and that sort of killed off the leather jacket brigade, which
was the NWOBHM. But you see, England is a poor place for stuff
like that. Because we really have fads. We have different people who
get bored quickly. So it’s like, now when we go to play in Europe,
Germany, Finland, anywhere really, Italy, the main most popular
music is rock music, and they don’t go out of favour—they remember.
I mean, bands like Uriah Heep, they’re still doing big concerts in
Germany. And how many years ago since they had a record that was a
hit? But they couldn’t fill my front room in England.
Tank guitarist Mick Tucker:

I think it just ran out of steam, really. Especially in England.
They’re a very fickle sort of audience, especially to see five or

six bands passing through, and the thing just goes out of fashion.
You’ve seen everything; they’ve got that type of attitude. It just
ran out of steam, really.
Bruce Dickinson, summing up the NWOBHM:

It was a journalistic conceit—there you go. That’s what it was.
Quite a bad one, as well, because who else would have thought up
such an unwieldy and absurd title? They must’ve been rumbling
around in their beer when they drafted it up. And they did dream
it up. It was dreamt up at a drinking session at, you know, Sounds
magazine, I believe. And so now having served up this movement,
they now went out in search of it.
But I think to an extent, they were just looking at the success that
punk had had, and they sort of go, “Well, we are kind of caught with
our trousers down here.” You know, “Why didn’t we get a bullshit
movement? Why don’t we invent our own bullshit movement and
call it the New Wave of British Heavy Metal?” Because punk was a
bullshit movement. Nobody knew they were supposed to be punk,
and all of a sudden everybody was putting their safety pins through
their nose or trousers or whatever; it was a fashion thing. And so I
think it was their revenge on being caught unawares.
There was no explosion of bands. These bands didn’t explode.
They’d been around for years. I hate to say it, because it’s not very
romantic or anything like that, but if you look back on it, it’s a
question of some clever guys doing some great marketing, and some
guys who wanted to sell newspapers. And it worked. It could sell
newspapers. People went, “Hmm, well, a new movement; yes, I can
get into that.”
And all of a sudden they went to see all these bands. Some of them
were terrible, some of them were quite good, some of them should
have done better than they did, and some of them were thoroughly
excellent. You know, some of them didn’t deserve the success
that they subsequently attained. By hook or by crook, they were
manufactured, they were molded, they were picked up, other people
sang their parts. Session musicians came in and played on their stuff,
and in that respect, the music industry has not changed in 200 years.
Because Tin Pan Alley and all that stuff, in which songwriters came
in and a guy sang a song then he was paid to sing and dressed up in a
silly suit and had a hit, that was all going on at the turn of the century.
So nothing really has changed. But in the end, the bands that have the
longest longevity have got something about them that is special. And
actually, most of them are special, way outside whatever genre gave
them the little catalyst, whatever gave them the little nudge onto the
first step, so that people noticed them. What people noticed about

them was that they were different. And when they went to see them
live, they were extraordinary. And that’s why those bands happened
and are still around.
Tygers of Pan Tang producer Chris Tsangarides on the legacy left

behind by the NWOBHM:
It’s given us a platform for whatever rock and metal that we have
now, for it to work on. And it’s interesting to know, especially in
Europe, the love of this particular style. German festivals are full
of ex-New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands that haven’t played
for 80 years, and had been reformed specifically to play over there.
Because they like it.
In fact, I mixed a band, Roxcaliber from Germany, last year—
they are a tribute to the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, but they
play tunes that are so obscure that everyone thinks they’re originals!
(laughs). But, they’re a signed band! Now who would have thought
you’re going to sign a band that does cover versions of a type of
music that was popular 30 years ago? It just goes to show there’s a
market for this; people want to hear it because it was a good time,
it was a good attitude and it was an innocent form of music that
people loved. There was nothing behind it. There was no politics;
this is it, you know, have a drink and get your head knocking and
you’re gonna have a good time. Straight-up metal, and that’s what
it’s about. It’s honest.
DJ Neal Kay on the enduring value of the NWOBHM:

Well, for me it was like a second coming. That’s the only way I can
put it to you. It was these young bands that had come through the
years. Their heroes, the first generation of rock bands—and I won’t
say heavy metal bands; they’re just rock bands—Zeppelin, Purple,
that generation had inspired them. It was their turn to step up and bat.
Step up to the plate, I think they say in North America. You know,
and all they wanted was to be given a chance.
A lot of them probably knew that they weren’t going to go there
for a million different reasons. But the thing is all they wanted was
that chance to be a hero for 15 minutes, to be somebody for 15
minutes, to have somebody listen to their music, and until all this
happened, no one was. And I personally thought that was utter shit,
you know?
And it awakened a kind of a passion in me, something, I don’t
know. It was like a war thing—I just had to go. I had to do it.
Something made me do it. It may have been God-directed or
spiritually pointed, or something, but I had to do it. I couldn’t not
do it.

I’ve always felt that I’ve been proud to have anything to do with it,
actually. I mean, basically I was a furniture trucker at the time, and I
got given the opportunity, the chance, the one-in-a-million to make a
difference.
I didn’t realize it at the time, and I am utterly convinced that no
matter who you interview, at the time that it happened, none of us
did. We just followed our heart and our soul and our spirit and our
drive. We didn’t do it to be remembered, we didn’t do it for the
media, we did it for rock ‘n’ roll. And if you’re a real rock ‘n’ roller,
that’s all you can ask of anybody. I mean how they speak of you
afterwards, how they label you, what they say about you is all in
retrospect because most of them weren’t bloody well there anyway.
It’s the same as any great band of brothers that find themselves
together in a moment in time with a huge objective that they must
win. The guys that spend time fighting the war, the Second World
War, the real band of brothers, if you want, their lives were changed
forever by the experiences that they underwent. There always is
going to be a band of brothers, where the winning requires extreme
action of one kind or another. And when you’re together there’s an
incredible sense of being together. That is the brotherhood. And if
the Soundhouse started that, then I’m more proud than ever because
it’s nice to know that as we all get older, that spirit, that thing, that
indefinable thing, it matters to people so much that they still have that
spirit in them today—it’s the only way to live.
Recap
Well, fact of the matter is, there’s still some semblance of a movement
left as we arc toward the end of our tale—and it’s been a fun trip down
memory lane, hasn’t it? But really, how much excitement did anyone conjure
for the not-so-new-NWOBHM baby bands of 1984? Samurai, Hellanbach,
Avenger, Tysondog, Blade Runner, Spartan Warrior, Wrathchild, Tokyo Blade,
Touched, Black Rose, Dark Heart, Saracen, Pet Hate, Cloven Hoof, Holland,
Maineeaxe and last and certainly least by a country mile Di’Anno... it was
all a bit sad, watching this mix of poverty metal merchants and hair metal
aspirants duke it out completely ignored as rock went insane in Los Angeles,
about as far as you can get away from London in the western world ‘cept for
Australia.
Mature phase NWOBHMers weren’t doing much better. Outside of Iron
Maiden, who continued their ascension with Powerslave (an album however
that frankly marked a creative stall after the apex achievement of Piece of
Mind, a type of stagnation that would never, ever be righted again), well,
Saxon pooched it with Crusader, Fastway did the same with All Fired Up,

and Raven sat the year out with a live album before beginning their own
horrible career decent with 1986’s The Pack is Back. Elsewhere, Tank was
in shambles, with the woeful situation manifesting through the uninspired
Honour and Blood. Holocaust returned with the unfathomable No Mans
Land and Marseille misused technology to create a hair metal Frankenstein.
There’d be no album from the hopeful Grim Reaper in 1984, nor would label
mates Savage follow up the drunk-with-power Loose ‘n Lethal within these
nail-in-the-coffin 12 months for Union Jack rock.
So, alas, high points were few and far between, but if we wanted to
paint a few happy faces, well, Venom issued the maintaining At War with
Satan, Priest maintained with Defenders of the Faith, and Don’t Get Mad,
Get Even maintained Samson’s admirable track record in the Nicky Moore
era. Warfare, Wildfire, Witchfynde... each offered cogent arguments for its
right to exist with three very different types of metal, namely punk, pomp
and concerning the latter, a type of accessible and old school Satanic rock
that somewhat manifests today through the fine work of Ghost.
Oh, to be sure, there were powerful, forward-thinking heavy metal
records being made in the UK, but it was American metal keeping the
pressing plants busy for Music for Nations. Metallica’s two records by this
point, Anthrax’s Fistful of Metal, and lesser creative triumphs from the likes
of Manowar, The Rods and Exciter were the albums that people were talking
about, slingin’ around terms like speed metal, OTT and thrash to describe
these potent forces from across the pond (well, not so much Manowar or
The Rods).
And so Music for Nations represents a transitional narrative, doesn’t
it? But the point needs to be fleshed out concerning where metal would
go next after its midnight move from the UK. Indeed, inside of that
label name, are we not seeing the message or implication (through the
demonstrative signings) that American metal is the music of—and for—
nations, including the UK?
For that is sort of what happened. Sort of. This is not the place to
debate the shrinking of the fan base for metal in the UK, and whether the
UK metal fans that hung on were adapting, by necessity, to a steady diet of
American metal. It is also not the place to discuss what types of rock the UK
was producing in the late ‘80s for local consumption.
No, the point we want to emphasize, from the many suggestion
reasons stated above in our closing ensemble of quotes, is that the
locus of intense, unit-shifting, press-hoovering heavy metal activity simply
relocated to America.
Simply put, all the old bands would make their fortune there in the
mid-‘80s, and the best new baby bands would be the nascent thrashers—
those mentioned, plus Megadeth, Slayer, Metal Church, Exodus and later
Testament, Overkill and Death Angel—or the nascent hair metallers, such
as Mötley Crüe, Dokken, Ratt, Bon Jovi, Quiet Riot and special case Twisted

Sister. Slathered in-between like so much mortar would be all those meat-
and-potatoes rockers the likes of which Metal Blade and Shrapnel would
be signing up feverishly, Brian Slagel and Mike Varney creating their own
American approximation of the NWOBHM, minus all them 45s. And so in
tandem, it must be said, the making of heavy metal all but evaporated in the
UK, which wouldn’t create any new metal movements until the somewhat
parallel grindcore and doom scenes of the early ‘90s.
But, hey, let’s not lament what’s been lost. Let’s celebrate what we
had, and that’s a good five years worth of metal bands all up and down the
UK cranking out adorable little 7” singles, indie albums and the occasional
document sanctioned by a previously dismissive major label, each extolling
with a thump to the chest (or a sharp finger-point at a poser) a power
and a pride in heavy metal so resonant that it would inspire the world to
demonstrate similar pride. At its essence, the New Wave of British Heavy
Metal is no less than the birthplace of heavy metal as the brotherhood and
subculture we love, and it is for that reason we give thanks to those who
dared defy the punks, the proggers, the powers-that-be, and yes, the posers.

Text Credits
Most of the quotations in this book are from the author’s archive, with
additional material by kind permission of Sam Dunn, Dmitr y Epstein and
Jeb Wright.
Design and Photography Credits
This book was skillfully and artfully designed by Eduardo Rodriguez, who
can be reached at eduardobwbk@gmail.com. Cover photography and inside
pages scans are from the author’s archive.

About The Author
At approximately 7900 (with over 7000 appearing in his books), Martin has
unofficially written more record reviews than anybody in the history of music
writing across all genres. Additionally, Martin has penned 52 books on hard
rock, heavy metal, classic rock and record collecting. He was Editor In Chief
of the now retired Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles, Canada’s foremost metal
publication for 14 years, and has also contributed to Revolver, Guitar World,
Goldmine, Record Collector, bravewords.com, lollipop.com and hardradio.
com, with many record label band bios and liner notes to his credit as well.
Additionally, Martin has been a regular contractor to Banger Films, having
worked for two years as researcher on the award-wining documentary
Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage, on the writing and research team for the
11-episode Metal Evolution and on the 10-episode Rock Icons, both for VH1
Classic. Additionally, Martin is the writer of the original metal genre chart
used in Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey and throughout the Metal Evolution
episodes. Martin currently resides in Toronto and can be reached through
martinp@inforamp.net or www.martinpopoff.com.

Martin Popoff A Complete Bibliography
This Means War: The Sunset Years of the NWOBHM (2015)

Wheels of Steel: The Explosive Early Years of the NWOBHM (2015)
Swords And Tequila: Riot’s Classic First Decade (2015)
Who Invented Heavy Metal? (2015)
Sail Away: Whitesnake’s Fantastic Voyage (2015)
Live Magnetic Air: The Unlikely Saga Of The Superlative Max Webster (2014)
Steal Away The Night: An Ozzy Osbourne Day-By-Day (2014)
The Big Book Of Hair Metal (2014)
Sweating Bullets: The Deth And Rebirth Of Megadeth (2014)
Smokin’ Valves: A Headbanger’s Guiide to 900 NWOBHM Records (2014)
The Art Of Metal (co-edit with Malcolm Dome; 2013)
2 Minutes To Midnight: An Iron Maiden Day-By-Day (2013)
Metallica: The Complete Illustrated History (2013)
Rush: The Illustrated History (2013)
Ye Olde Metal: 1979 (2013)
Scorpions: Top Of The Bill (2013)
Epic Ted Nugent (2012)
Fade To Black: Hard Rock Cover Art Of The Vinyl Age (2012)
It’s Getting Dangerous: Thin Lizzy 81-12 (2012)
We Will Be Strong: Thin Lizzy 76-81 (2012)
Fighting My Way Back: Thin Lizzy 69-76 (2011)
The Deep Purple Royal Family: Chain Of Events ‘80 – ‘11 (2011)
The Deep Purple Royal Family: Chain Of Events Through ‘79 (2011)
Black Sabbath FAQ (2011)
The Collector’s Guide To Heavy Metal: Volume 4: The ‘00s (2011; co-
authored with David Perri)
Goldmine Standard Catalog Of American Records 1948 – 1991, 7th Edition (2010)
Goldmine Record Album Price Guide, 6th Edition (2009)
Goldmine 45 RPM Price Guide, 7th Edition (2009)
A Castle Full Of Rascals: Deep Purple ‘83 – ‘09 (2009)
Worlds Away: Voivod And The Art Of Michel Langevin (2009)
Gettin’ Tighter: Deep Purple ‘68 – ‘76 (2008)

All Access: The Art Of The Backstage Pass (2008)
Judas Priest: Heavy Metal Painkillers (2007)
Ye Olde Metal: 1973 To 1975 (2007)
The Collector’s Guide To Heavy Metal: Volume 3: The Nineties (2007)
Ye Olde Metal: 1968 To 1972 (2007)
Run For Cover: The Art Of Derek Riggs (2006)
Black Sabbath: Doom Let Loose (2006)
Dio: Light Beyond The Black (2006)
The Collector’s Guide To Heavy Metal: Volume 2: The Eighties (2005)
Rainbow: English Castle Magic (2005)
UFO: Shoot Out The Lights (2005)
The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal Singles (2005)
Blue Öyster Cult: Secrets Revealed! (2004)
Contents Under Pressure: 30 Years Of Rush At Home & Away (2004)
The Top 500 Heavy Metal Albums Of All Time (2004)
The Collector’s Guide To Heavy Metal: Volume 1: The Seventies (2003)
The Top 500 Heavy Metal Songs Of All Time (2003)
Southern Rock Review (2001)
Heavy Metal: 20th Century Rock And Roll (2000)
The Goldmine Price Guide To Heavy Metal Records (2000)
The Collector’s Guide To Heavy Metal (1997)
Riff Kills Man! 25 Years Of Recorded Hard Rock & Heavy Metal (1993)
See martinpopoff.com for complete details and ordering information.

Smokin’ Valves: A Headbanger’s Guide To
900 NWOBHM Records
If you like This Means War: The Sunset Years of the NWOBHM, you might
also dig this one.
Taking cue from the do-it-yourself attitude of their country’s punk movement,
Britain’s up-and-coming heavy metal bands that comprised the New Wave
of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) were not content to wait for record labels
to come knocking. Instead, they took to issuing their own music, typically in
the form of 7 inch singles but also 12s and full length albums, many indie,
some on small labels, and some on the major labels smart enough to get on
board (essentially EMI and MCA).
Martin Popoff, author of 52 books on heavy metal (and at 7900, writer

of more record reviews than anybody in history across all genres), has
undertaken the task of documenting virtually every record large and wee from
heavy metal’s most fabled period (beginning essentially in ‘79 with a hard
stop at 1983) providing catalogue information, mini reviews as only he can do,
plus a gob of thumbnails of those wonderful 7” picture sleeves and LP covers.
Note: the lion’s share of the material in Smokin’ Valves: A Headbanger’s

Guide To 900 NWOBHM Records combines rewritten and expanded text from
Martin’s long out-of-print The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal Singles plus
the relevant reviews of full-length albums from his Collector’s Guide series,
specifically the ‘70s and ‘80s book. These reviews have also experienced
judicious editing and rewrites.

Additional features:
- includes a few hundred rare 45 picture sleeve and album cover images
- every record rated out of 10
- layout designed so that albums are distinguished from 7”, 10” and 12”
singles/EPs by larger, bolder typestyle
- label, year of release and catalogue number for almost every entry
- two appendices, displaying all 9’s and 10’s for singles as opposed to LPs
Final note, one thing I like about an experience like this book in the internet
age, hopefully the idea is that you will read some of these glowing 8 to 10
rated reviews of hopelessly obscure singles you ain’t never going to get
alerted to otherwise, and then check out if they can be heard and enjoyed
on youtube (many of them can!), so you can decide for yourself, or begin
some sort of whacky digital collection of this stuff to park in yer metal
library. In that respect, I’m just being a DJ that instead of talking, types.
Price including shipping:

US orders: $35.00 US funds
Int’l orders (air mail): $44.00 US funds
Canadian orders: $37.00 Cdn. funds
PayPal happily accepted! Direct funds to martinp@inforamp.net or just ask

if you want a proper PayPal invoice. Book will be signed by the author to you
unless otherwise request. Gals, take note (long story).
Or… send payment to (personal check in US funds, cash, or INTERNATIONAL

money order):
Martin Popoff
P.O. Box 65208, 358 Danforth Ave.
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4K 2Z2
Email martinp@inforamp.net with any further questions, and see

www.martinpopoff.com for descriptions, covers and ordering info for the
author’s other available 30 or so books. Appreciable savings on shipping
can be had with multiple orders—enquire for a custom quote.


History of The New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) - Martin Popoff - This Means War - The Sunset Years of The NWOBHM-Power Chords Press (2015)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

History of The New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) - Martin Popoff - This Means War - The Sunset Years of The NWOBHM-Power Chords Press (2015)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Martin Popoff

First Power Chord Press paperback printing: December 2015.

1982 – “We are black metal!” 86

1983 – “They had become kind of Americanized.” 137

Text Credits 262

Design and Photography Credits 262

About the Author 263

Martin Popoff – A Complete Bibliography 264

Smokin’ Valves: A Headbanger’s Guide To 900 NWOBHM Records 266

Martin Popoff This Means War 5

Plus we’re looking at much more of a compressed period—six years,

6 This Means War Martin Popoff

Martin Popoff This Means War 7

Tygers of Pan Tang vocalist Jess Cox:

Tygers of Pan Tang producer Chris Tsangarides on whether there’s a

Martin Popoff This Means War 9

1981. Amazon issue, on Megamusic, double a-side single “Fallen

1981. Suspect Records issues their legendary Scene of the Crime

1981. Ebony Records flagship band Chateaux begin life, as Stealer.

10 This Means War Martin Popoff

UK journalist Garry Bushell:

1981. Ireland’s Sweet Savage issue their debut single “Take No

Martin Popoff This Means War 11

1981. Wolverhampton’s Twisted Ace issue their well regarded “Firebird”/“I

1981. Northern Ireland’s Mama’s Boys—huge Horslips fans—featuring

January 1981. Quartz issue “Stand Up and Fight”/“Charlie Snow” as a

Quartz drummer Malcolm Cope on the age divide between Quartz

January 1981. Fist issue “Collision Course”/“Law of the Jungle,” as their

Tygers of Pan Tang vocalist Jess Cox on ceding mic duties to

Tygers of Pan Tang guitarist Robb Weir on his band mates:

Martin Popoff This Means War 13

Raven bassist and vocalist John Gallagher:

14 This Means War Martin Popoff

Grim Reaper guitarist Nick Bowcott:

January 1981. Dedringer issue “Direct Line”/“She’s Not Ready.”

Praying Mantis guitarist Tino Troy:

Grand Prix vocalist Bernie Shaw:

Martin Popoff This Means War 15

Early 1981. Gillan issue “Mutually Assured Destruction”/“The Maelstrom.”

Early 1981. Coventry’s Chainsaw issue “Police and Politicians.” Meanwhile

16 This Means War Martin Popoff

February 1981. AIIZ issue “No Fun After Midnight” in

February 1981. Aragorn issue their “Black Ice”

Martin Popoff This Means War 17

February 1981. Dedringer issue their Direct

February 1981. Vardis issues

February 1, 1981. Motörhead

Motörhead guitarist fast Eddie Clarke:

18 This Means War Martin Popoff

Iron Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith on another characteristic of

Martin Popoff This Means War 19

You listen to bands now and you

20 This Means War Martin Popoff

Diamond Head guitarist Brian Tatler:

Mid-February 1981. Motörhead’s Philthy Animal Taylor, along with the

Martin Popoff This Means War 21

22 This Means War Martin Popoff

SPV Records executive Olly Hahn:

Praying Mantis guitarist Tino Troy:

Martin Popoff This Means War 23

March 1981. The Handsome Beasts issue a single consisting of

Heavy Metal Records’ Paul Birch on his major label competitors:

Diamond Head guitarist Brian Tatler