I've never been a fan of metal and probably only have half a dozen or so songs in my iTunes library that would really be considered metal... until I downloaded 'Deaf Forever' by Motorhead last year. Well, Motorhead were sort of punk-friendly (Lemmy's speed-freak approach to music), so that's ok. But I thought it would be interesting to see what the 'Britannia' music series made of heavy metal.
It kicked off with a short interview with Dave Davies about him creating the first metal riff with 'You Really Got Me', meandered through the '60s blues bands, progressive rock, hard rock and then stumbling onto heavy metal through a circuitous journey, the onset of the punk wars and then the rediscovery of metal in the early '80s with Iron Maiden. It was quite fun seeing clips of early Deep Purple and Black Sabbath, the bloke from Uriah Heep who couldn't stop smiling (possibly because he's finally on telly talking about the glory days) and all the rest. Two blokes from Judas Priest were interviewed throughout but didn't really fit into the programme properly except for a comment about the leather and stud homoerotic link. The stunning thing was that when Ian Gillan was first featured (as in now with short hair, not then with a mop) I thought 'what's Richard Burton doing on a heavy metal programme?' - the resemblance is uncanny.Would it be terrible if I said I enjoyed it? Loud guitar and drums, screaming vocals, pulling poses, o yeah! And all the old blokes on it that, in their heyday, were metal gods. It comes to an end one day for all of us and they were revelling in it - and good on 'em! But don't worry, I won't be downloading back catalogues like crazy or start wearing leather or spandex. I hope...
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