April 2007
METAL MACHINE MUSINGS: GARY PIG GOLD’s ALL-TIME TOP TEN HEAVY PRIMAL HITTERS
Now before ya all call out the KISS Army or somethin’ on me, let’s just insist that there’s one terrifically fine line indeed between, say, “All Day And All Of The Night” and “You Shook Me All Night Long.” Why, even no less a veteran machinehead as Ozzy that Osbourne actually spent the majority of a recent Mojo Magazine interview enthusing over the childhood joys of “She Loves You,” to say nothing of the seventeen Count ‘em! -- copies of the Fabs’ “1” album he’s got strewn all round his abode.
So with fair warning then, I herein present a handily-constructed alphabetical list of patented Wrought Golden Oldies which come to at least my mind whenever I’m thinking, well, Roots of Metal:
THE ANIMALS: “Gemini, The Madman”
Of course we all love and respect that overfed, long-haired leaping gnome, which once and hopefully forever shall be the wonder that is Eric Burdon. Why? Well, for starters, he was growling up a sonic storm back when Lars and even Lemmy were but mere gleams in their A&R mens’ ears. Yet it was upon that very very last “real” Animals (double!) album of A.D. 1968, Love Is, that Eric & Co. aimed fangs at not only such war-horses as “River Deep Mountain High,” “To Love Somebody” and even “Ring Of Fire,” but confronted their main man’s, and in fact the whole band’s very own astro-logical quandary via the seventeen-minute-plus “Gemini, The Madman.” Besides featuring Policeman-to-be Andy Summers’ first tentative recorded strumblings, this epic track reduces such introspective sonic musings as “Tales Of Braves Ulysses” and most every Doors song one cares to mention into ever so much heavy pablum and that’s only but ONE reason whhy this song deserves so much more recognition than “In A Gadda Da Vida” in the LP-side-long Roots of Heavy Metal Hall Of Infamy.
BLUE CHEER: “Summertime Blues”
Eddie Cochran was certainly no slouch with a rabid twist of a riff himself, but it’s quite possible that incredibly powerful trio named after a laundry detergent (or was it a certain brand of lysergic acid?) concocted not only the definitive version of this ditty (sorry, Beach Boys and even Live At Leeds), but produced with its debut long-player, 1968’s Vincebus Eruptum, one of Thee most outstanding non-stop micro-grooved noise-fests EVER. Now, it was claimed at the time that Blue Cheer’s sonic assaults would and could turn the very air that you breathe into no less than cottage cheese. Well, let me hearby testify firsthand it does the same to your earbuds and even ears. Just cue this one song up, grab a fork, and see if I’m not just whistlin’ dinner then!
THE DAVE CLARK FIVE: “Anyway You Want It”
Of course that Five Live Yardbirds long-player was/is a monumental historical arty-fact, The Kinks’ BBC recordings are revelatory, and even those semi-fi Got Screams If You Want It tapes of the early Stones could pass as a (live) album circa 1966. But for what’s left of my money, there’s only one band that could marshall the Vox assault that was Maximum on-stage R&B within the sterile confines of the recording studio. And that band was, no, not Keith Moon and Co., but those Tottenham avengers themselves Rick, Lenny, Denny, Mike and good oll’ four-forever-to-the-floor Dave Clark. Yes, they may have sported milk-white dickies on their umpteen Ed Sullivision appearances and jumped onto trampolines far too much throughout “Having A Wild Weekend” (the movie). But whenever it came time to wax phonographically, the DC5 were capable, at the drop of a single kick-drum mallet, of producing ultra-compressed raw and ever-ready sounds the likes of which were seldom ever heard on Peter Noone or even Paul McCartney records. “Anyway You Want It,” but one of this quintessential quintet’s royal rave-ups, belatedly received the cover treatment from the almighty Ramones (and even KISS) you know, but the Five’s original naturally offers tons more thump for yer buck. “Metal”? Perhaps not, I’ll grant you. But HEAVY? Mister or Ms., this number still defines the very term!
DEEP PURPLE: “Hush”
Long before they began smoking on the water, these guys sported (in Rod Evans) a screamer who looked and dressed frighteningly just like Lux Interior a decade BEFORE The Cramps, I’ll have you all knoww! Deep P. also filled their first three utterly brilliant albums with Beatles and even Neil Diamond songs as well, I jest you knot, building yet another mostly unsung bridge between Heavy Metal and Heavy Melody. Six-strung Ritchie Blackmore’s teenaged apprenticeship beneath no less than Joe Meek should hardly be sneezed towards either. Yet it’s all across their debut single from 1968, a Hammond-soaked mauling of Joe South’s “Hush,” that these guys most definitely began developing the (harder) sounds of those soon-to-be souped-up Seventies and well beyond as well. PS: Also required listening (and especially viewing!) is the future Highway Stars’, how shall I put this, “duet” with Hugh Hefner on the latter’s Playboy After Dark television series. No, I’m NOT kidding.
KING CRIMSON: “21st Century Schizoid Man” (Earthbound album version!)
Speaking of turning air into cheese, these particular prog-rockin’ pogo-styx briefly snuck out a contractual obligation quickie in 1972 consisting of two vinyl sides worth of crappily-recorded (on cassette, legend recalls!) board tapes from some best-forgotten American tour. The result? Not only an album heavier sounding, metallically-speaking, than most any other item I can ever think of, but truly a presager of no less than Raw Power, Never Mind Them Bullocks and don’t even get me started on the Great Kat. Suffice to say, this entire Earthbound album deserves to be heard and cherished immediately by ANY misguided soul who still believes grunge began under some Seattle step-bridge, with the utterly ham-fisted rendering of “21th Century Schizoid Man” herein taking the musical cake and then some. Of course this record is so vitally important and downright historical (not to mention hysterical) a document that the King of Crimson himself, Rob Fripp, refused for over three decades to allow it back into print, digitally or otherwise. Not since Paul Simon claimed “Red Rubber Ball” to be the worst song he ever wrote has a musician seemed so gawd-awfully skewered in evaluating his recorded legacy.
PAUL REVERE AND THE RAIDERS: “Just Seventeen”
Awright then, nobody but nobody out there with a functioning set needs to be reminded that these guys were just about the greatest buncha hard pop-rockers the U.S. of A. has EVER produced. Yet how many amongst yez would also firmly place these very same Raiders within the legions of bona fide Metal Pioneers? Well, I would, simply citing by way of ear-refutable evidence their debut release of the Seventies, “Just Seventeen.” A churning, swirling, deliciously brooding ode to, uh, young love that would sound much more at home opening Led Zeppelin II, this track was one hot, heavy follow-up indeed to the Raiders’ other steaming slice of raw ore of the era, “Let Me.” Initially issued under the nom-de-group Pink Puzz, it had even Rolling Stain magazine frothily hailing the birth of Columbia Records’ answer to Grand Funk! Suffice to say though, Pink Puzz was actually PR & TRs in spandexed disguise, nyuk nyuk. Tragically, “Just Seventeen” crept only to # 82 on the Billboard Hot Hundred, and vocal Raider Mark Lindsay soon afterwards donned his Bobby Sherman pipes to soar all the way towards Number Nine with a defiantly non-metal “Arizona.” “We’d jigged and jagged, but we’d been bagged and tagged,” Mark has since admitted of his audience and record company’s thorough non-acceptance of anything oother than tried, tested and tri-colored Raider goodtime music. But let us not forget that these guys could always raunch with the most down, dirty and distorted of ‘em all whenever push came to Puzz.
SCREAMING LORD SUTCH: “Gutty Guitar”
Alongside sutch name-checked heavy-handed friends as Jeff Beck, Mitch Mitchell, the afore-mentioned R. Blackmore and even one full half of L. Zeppelin, the late very great David Sutch indeed constructed one colo(u)rful life, both musical and otherwise. “Eccentric even for England,” began his obituary in the New York Times. But the sessions for his 1970 Lord Sutch And Heavy Friends album, besides doing more than even Altamont to close the coffin on the Sixties, can be said to have helped truly melt rock once and for all into metal. Why? Its song titles alone (ie: “Wailing Sounds,” “Flashing Lights,” “Thumping Beat,” “Smoking Fire”) helped describe and preemptively define the very genre of which we speak of, despite hard-eared critics in the many years since laughingly dismissing it as “the Plan Nine From Outer Space of rock records.” Harrumph! One listen to “Gutty Guitar” and you’re far more likely to find yourself deep within a 2001-type Sutch Odyssey, to create an even sillier analogy.
STEPPENWOLF: “The Pusher” (especially the ORIGINAL live version!)
Sure, it gained widest recognition and acceptance within some of Easy Rider’s most two-wheeled sequences (alongside, need I remind, the Electric Prunes’ quasi-chorale early metal mutterings). But this Hoyt Axton-penned drug dirge, interpreted best by honorary heavy Canadian John Kay’s fine Steppenwolf combo, wrote several sonic books on not only the sort of musical, but also lyrical mudness which came to be used, and just as often abused, throughout the idiom and decades to follow. That said, check out especially the twenty-one minute (!!) mega-rendition of “The Pusher” which comprises a full-on half of the Early Steppenwolf collection. Which, truth be told, is actually 1967 live recordings of the band in their tres-cool Sparrow incarnation. Too bad many more listeners, both then and now, weren’t paying much closer attention to the words, however.
THE WHO: “The Ox” (R.I.P., John Alec)
So very hard indeed it is to choose but one example of infant metal from those four mods with the big sound and attitude (not to mention noses) to match. But in charting the long-ago Birth of Heaviness, this four-minute cacophony from the band’s 1965 twelve-inch debut features all the characteristics (buzzsaw guitar, windmill drums, subterranean bass zoops) which practically defined the most heaviest of metalocity, whilst simultaneously never backing away from the band’s secret weapon: a little thing called F-U-N. Yessir and yes ma’am, it IS possible to wear black, spout satanic references, pose around in graveyards and do things best done in the dark, you see but while still having a greaat big hail and hearty larf in the process. I mean, metally speaking, it can’t only be me, David Lee Roth, and The Who’s dearly expired drummist who realizes as much! Roll over then, Axl, and tell Tommy the news.
FRANK ZAPPA AND THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION: “Weasels Ripped My Flesh”
This is indeed the last word (at least from ME) on the name, the sound, the attack and even the cover art of all things Heavy Metal and Otherwise. To sum up then? Well, of course, I can only add this: THE PRESENT DAY B-BUSTER REFUSES TO DIE!