I admit it, I was. It was inevitable really. I always loved music from a very young age, and I had older cousins who introduced me to bands like Led Zeppelin, Rush and Deep Purple. Then a school friend came by with a couple of Kiss albums, including a borrowed copy of Alive! That was it; Kiss’ over-the-top bombast and sheer sense of fun hooked me and I became a lifelong fan.
After all, what’s not to like about heavy metal music? With its driving beat, crunchy guitar riffs, squealing solos, singalong choruses and innuendo-laden lyrics, it’s great fun for your average teenager. Cue parents saying “Turn that bloody noise down!”
In the 1980s, getting to see any kind of hard rock music performances on the television was a challenge. MTV did not launch in the UK until 1987, VH-1 even later in 1994. The occasional metal song would get into the charts, e.g. “Run to the Hills” and “Number of the Beast” by Iron Maiden, and be played on Top of the Pops and / or there might have been an occasional spot on The Old Grey Whistle Test but that was it.
We did a little better on the radio, because we had The Friday Rock Show with Tommy Vance on Friday evenings. As well as playing singles and album tracks, the show also featured recorded live performances and in-studio sessions by bands, so was a popular show for home taping as this material wasn’t available anywhere else. The Friday Rock Show was a big promoter of the then-current New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM), and introduced audiences to lots of new British bands such as Saxon, Def Leppard and Iron Maiden.
For those of us lucky enough to live on Tyneside, our local station Metro Radio hosted The Hot ‘n’ Heavy Express on Saturday nights. Originally hosted by Mal Hurdman, the best-known era of the show is when it was hosted by Alan Robson (also of Night Owls fame).
Robson cut a distinctive figure around early 1980s Newcastle with his long red hair and moustache, and his show was enormously popular with local rockers. When he did a personal appearance at Top Shop in Eldon Square one Saturday afternoon the place was absolutely packed with shaggy-haired fans wearing denim and leather jackets, which must have unnerved the staff somewhat!
The Hot ‘n’ Heavy Express gave us a few hours every week of the music we loved. People would write in to the show with their requests and comments, and it was always an entertaining listen. Also, though the show was nominally a heavy metal show, in reality it played rock music of all kinds from the 1960s to the present, even dipping into the 1950s from time to time for a bit of Chuck Berry and the like. You could get quite the musical education just by listening. I can remember discovering bands like Focus and Mountain from the 1970s, and psychedelic bands like Love from the 1960s.
We also had several notable NWOBHM bands come out of the North East of England, such as the Tygers of Pan Tang, Fist and the notorious thrash metal pioneers and noisemakers-in-chief Venom. Robson would often interview up-and-coming local bands in the studio and play their demo tapes.
If you wanted to see your favourite bands in concert during the 80s, Newcastle City Hall was the place to go. The City Hall holds 2,500 people, and a lot of the big names stopped there on their tours at the time. Kiss even brought a scaled-down version of their stage show (complete with tank-shaped drum kit!) to the City Hall on their first tour sans-makeup in 1983. A lot of rock bands also played at the 1,500-capacity Mayfair Ballroom on Newgate Street, sadly long since demolished to make way for The Gate. The Mayfair also hosted a rock disco on the weekends, though I only ever went a handful of times.
Handyside Arcade was another must-visit location for the young rocker during this time. A Victorian shopping arcade on Percy Street, it was also known locally as the “Hippie Arcade”, due to the shops like Fynd, which sold Indian clothes, jewellery and patchouli oil, and Kard Bar, which had arcade machines in the back and sold badges and patches with which you could decorate your denim jacket (I never got too deeply into the fashion side of things but some of my friends did). There was also, I believe, a used book shop, a hi-fi shop and a pet shop in the downstairs part of the arcade. I remember the upper floor of the Handyside Arcade as being closed, or possibly containing offices, but it was the former site of Club A’GoGo, where a certain Mr. Hendrix played with his band in March of 1967.
On any given Saturday afternoon during the 1980s, Handyside Arcade would be full of long-haired types looking in the shops, playing the arcade games or just hanging around chatting and possibly altering their consciousness with various intoxicants. I don’t remember there ever being any trouble, though, unless the skinheads came through looking for “bovver”, which would unfortunately happen on occasion. It was generally, as they say, a mellow vibe.
Today’s music fans, with access to the internet, have an embarrassment of riches at their fingertips when it comes to information about their favourite bands. Back in the 1980s we just had music magazines like Sounds, Melody Maker and NME. However, metal fans also had Kerrang! This was originally published as a one-off Sounds special in 1981 but proved so popular that it became a monthly, then fortnightly and eventually weekly magazine as its popularity grew.
Kerrang! was your go-to source for all things rock and metal, whether it was upcoming single and album releases, reviews, bands going on tour or just news and snippets of information in general. There was a Krossword puzzle every issue, Kontests where you could win prizes and I’m sure that more than one band found its members via the Klassifieds section. (Yes, they really did spell everything with a “K”!) My Kousin bought it regularly, so I often got to read it at no Kost.
If you really want to read about about what it was like to be a teenage heavy metal fan in that era, you could do no better than Hell Bent for Leather by Seb Hunter. Published in 2004, it’s a wonderful memoir combining a personal narrative of how he fell hopelessly in love with heavy metal music with a comprehensive history and explanation of the genre and its many, many sub-genres.
As Maxim magazine said in their review of the book, if you were ever a fan, you will read it and cringe, not in embarrassment but in recognition. I know I did. Hunter is right on target with some of his observations about the nature of metal fandom. For example, the fact that metal has never been particularly cool and that its fans will never admit to being fans. Rather, they will say that they are into hard rock, heavy electric blues or some other euphemism for the music they enjoy. Yep, that was me…
I mentioned earlier some of the North East bands that appeared during the NWOBHM. Neat Records was also a local independent label that did a lot to promote these and other emerging bands in the 1980s. North East Museums have produced an excellent six-part audio documentary about Neat Records and the Tyneside music scene. It is titled Heavier! Faster! Louder! and is narrated by Alan Robson; you can hear it by following this link or searching on the major podcasting platforms.
I went on to develop a very eclectic taste in music; I think a lot of this came from my exposure to so many rock bands in my teens, and perusing the racks of used records in shops like Pet Sounds in Newcastle and at South Shields market, finding the bands that influenced the bands that I was currently listening to, or that were formed by former members of these groups. By the time I left for college in 1986, I was also heavily into Bob Dylan, but that’s a story for another time.
The last heavy metal concert I can remember attending was Kiss at Wembley Arena in 1996. By this time I was living in London, and one day received an excited phone call from the friend who introduced me to the band years earlier. The original line-up of Kiss was touring! With full make-up and stage show! How could I resist? My friend came down to London with his wife and daughters and we headed off to Wembley. We finally got to see the full-on Kiss show we had dreamed about seeing back in the early 80s, which seems a particularly fitting conclusion to this story!
What kind of music were you a fan of when you were a teenager? Which bands did you see play live? I would love to hear your memories! Please leave me a comment, or if you would prefer to send a private message, please visit the Contact Me page.
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