In this scribe’s humble opinion, no other band epitomizes the pure, undistilled spirit of rock ‘n’ roll more than Motörhead. A saber-rattling golem formed from spilled whiskey, broken glass, and handfuls of amphetamines, Motörhead lurked forward from the shadows of the back alleyways of the United Kingdom to rock the world. Lemmy K’s musical leviathan toured constantly for nearly four decades until, literally, the band’s erstwhile frontman could no long stand upright on stage and sing.
Motörhead was equally influential (and well-liked) by punk rockers, metalheads, and your garden-variety punters, and although none of their 30 or so studio and live albums enjoyed overwhelming commercial success, they sold well enough to sustain the band’s lengthy tenure in the trenches. Why they haven’t been inducted into the joke that is the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is beyond my comprehension – perhaps their reputation for grime upsets the delicate sensitivities of Mr. Wenner and his HoF gatekeepers – but the band’s loyal fans recognize Motörhead as the rock ‘n’ roll pioneers that they were.
Martin Popoff’s Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers
Writer and heavy metal historian Martin Popoff is no newcomer to Motörhead. The founder and editor of Canada’s esteemed Brave Words and Bloody Knuckles music zine, Popoff has penned 55+ books on hard rock and heavy metal, including acclaimed tomes on Deep Purple, Yes, Thin Lizzy, Rainbow, and Dio, among many, many others (really – check out his website!). In the interest of full disclosure, Popoff is also a colleague and a buddy of mine, and I’ve enjoyed and positively reviewed a number of his books. In many cases, Popoff’s work stands as the last word on his subjects, and if his recent Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers: The Rise of Motörhead isn’t necessarily the final tale to be written about this influential gang of sonic terrorists, it is certain to be the cornerstone of any other author’s future effort.
With Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers, Popoff literally recounts only the “rise of Motörhead,” circa 1975 through 1982. Rather than attempt to chronicle the band’s entire 40 year history, Popoff instead chooses to cover the band’s early “classic era” line-up, the primal power-trio of bassist Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister, guitarist “Fast” Eddie Clarke,” and drummer Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor that recorded such enduring hard rock albums as Overkill, Bomber, Ace of Spades, and the bruising live set, No Sleep ‘til Hammersmith. As per his usual ‘modus operandi,’ Popoff assembles the story from numerous interviews with the principal artists as well as providing comments from conversations with other musicians.
The Rise of Motörhead
Popoff begins the Motörhead story with Lemmy’s initial ‘60s-era bands (The Rocking Vicars, cult rockers Sam Gopal), his stint as a roadie for Jimi Hendrix, and his short, tho’ ultimately important tenure with U.K. space-rock pioneers Hawkwind. Lemmy first appeared on Hawkwind’s third album, 1972’s Doremi Fasol Latido, subsequently recording 1974’s Hall of the Mountain Grill and the following year’s Warrior on the Edge of Time, as well as the classic 1973 double-live set Space Ritual. Lemmy also penned Hawkwind’s lone hit single in “Silver Machine” before he was booted from the band for his well-documented recreational excesses. One could say that, in many ways, Lemmy put together Motörhead in response to his sacking by Hawkwind, a move that may have affected Lemmy greatly but essentially set the stage for him to pursue his own unique musical muse with his own band. From this point, Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers follows Motörhead from its early stumbles in both the studio and on stage as the band eventually gelled with the aforementioned line-up of Lemmy, Clarke, and Taylor.
The author dives deep into the blood, sweat, and tears spent in the writing and recording of the band’s classic early albums; the interpersonal dynamics that helped create such speed-fueled, tension-filled music; and the eventual conflicts that broke this beloved line-up of the band apart. Musicians and fans of the band such as Dee Snider (Twisted Sister), Brian Robertson (Thin Lizzy, and a future Motörhead member), producer Sandy Pearlman (Blue Öyster Cult, The Clash), and Hawkwind’s Dave Brock and Nik Turner, among others, all provide their perspective, while interviews with Clarke and Taylor, as well as Lemmy’s bandmates in the band’s final incarnation, Phil Campbell and Mikkey Dee, help round out the story.
The Reverend’s Bottom Line
The Reverend has read better than 60% of Popoff’s books to date, and I can honestly say that Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers: The Rise of Motörhead stands proudly as one of his best efforts. Although he unfolds the band’s story chronologically, the author eschews his frequently-used timeline approach in creating a narrative in favor of following the band from album-to-album, using each recording as a milestone, and allowing the band members and other interviewees to color between the lines.
The result is an entertaining and informative read that sheds no little light into the often-enigmatic Lemmy K. and his life’s work, Motörhead, documenting the early years of one of rock music’s most beloved and underrated outfits. The Rev highly recommends Beer Drinker and Hell Raisers for both hardcore Motörhead fans (duh) as well as anybody who lives and breathes rock ‘n’ roll. Grade: A+ (ECW Press, published May 9th, 2017)
Few bands in the history of rock & roll have exerted the kind of long-lasting musical influence that has been enjoyed by Black Sabbath. The Beatles, certainly, continue to influence rock music unlike any other band, as do the Rolling Stones (although their status has been diminished somewhat by the band’s refusal to just GO AWAY and be quiet for a long while). The Who has its champions, and one cannot discount Led Zeppelin’s remaining legion of loyal fanatics. But Sabbath…bloody Sabbath…reviled by critics, adored by teenage miscreants across both in the U.K. and the U.S.A…Black Sabbath continues to grow in stature, casting an undeniable shadow over subsequent generations of headbangers and metalheads of every stripe, style and flavor.
Hardcore Sabbath fans can be excused for their unflagging allegiance and devotion to the original, Ozzie-led band line-up (circa 1969-1978). Of the band’s first five albums – from 1970’s self-titled Black Sabbath through 1973’s Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, and including the seminal Paranoid – well, only the aforementioned musical legends, and maybe Bob Dylan, can brag of such time-tested, tried-and-true initial efforts. There’s a reason that the youngsters keep rediscovering these discs, and it’s not just because “Ozzie rules,” man! From Osbourne’s haunting vocals and disturbed, madness-tinged lyrics and Tony Iommi’s incredible, inflammatory (and still unsurpassed) fretwork to the larger-than-life, molten-sludge rhythms of bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward, these albums were ground-breaking in every way, providing a musical blueprint that other bands would later use to build their own sounds.
There was a second incarnation of Black Sabbath, however – sans Ozzie – that has also proven its mettle time and time again to become, if not as influential as the original line-up, at the very least, highly-regarded as an important era for the band. That era has been documented by The Dio Years. However, first I’ll have to provide a bit of history for the young ‘uns in the audience. When the struggle between Osbourne and his excesses proved to be too much for bandleader Iommi to tolerate, Ozzie was shown the door and the band performed gigs for a few months (1977-78) with former Savoy Brown vocalist David Walker. It never worked out, though, and by the time the band went into the studio to record Never Say Die (1978), Ozzie was back in the fold, singing on the album and subsequent tour.
The reunion proved to be short-lived, however, as the tensions between Osbourne and Iommi led to either Ozzie quitting the band, or being fired, depending on who’s telling the story. Former Rainbow vocalist Ronnie James Dio was recruited as Ozzie’s replacement sometime during early1979, and it was with this new frontman that Sabbath recorded Heaven And Hell (1980), an album that many who ought to know consider to be among Sabbath’s best. With Dio’s sword-and-sorcery, fantasy-oriented lyrics providing a thematic change of direction, the band supported the singer’s soaring vocals with the heaviest dinosaur-stomp soundtrack they’d ever recorded. Produced by respected boardman Martin Birch (Deep Purple, Rainbow), the album was a commercial success on both sides of the pond, yielding classic slabs o’ metal like “Neon Knights,” “Lady Evil” and the title track, “Heaven And Hell,” all fondly remembered by ‘80s-era, second-generation fans of the band.
Going into the studio to record Mob Rules (1981), again produced by Birch, Sabbath lost force-of-nature-drummer Bill Ward, who resigned from the band to address several personal problems, including his own growing depression. Vinnie Appice, younger brother of legendary skinman Carmine (Vanilla Fudge, Cactus), was enlisted to try and fill Ward’s chair. Although it was every bit as heavy, the resulting album lacked the fresh revelations of its predecessor. Songs like the driving “Turn Up The Night,” featuring Dio’s best high-flying vocals and Iommi’s taut six-string leads, or the riff-happy “Voodoo,” find the band absorbing “New Wave Of British Heavy Metal” influences, sounding more like Iron Maiden than the Sabbath of yore. The Dio Years includes five songs from Heaven And Hell and four from Mob Rules.
For whatever reasons, Dio left Sabbath after the 1981/82 tour supporting Mob Rules, taking Appice with him to form his own self-named band. A live album was released from that tour, Live Evil (1983) providing fans with a mix of new material as well as Dio interpretations of vintage Sabbath like “Paranoid” and “War Pigs.” Sadly, The Dio Years only includes one song from Live Evil, the mesmerizing “Children Of The Sea.” After Dio’s departure, Sabbath soldiered on with a succession of vocalists, to varied success. Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan, Glenn Hughes, and Tony Martin all fronted the band at various times throughout the remainder of the ‘80s.
Fate being what it is, however, Dio rejoined the band in 1991, nearly a decade after leaving, to record and tour in support of Dehumanizer. By this point, Sabbath had been passed, commercially, by the previous decade’s nerf-metal bands, and artistically by a generation of thrash-and-black-and-Goth-metal bands that had been weaned on Dio-era Sabbath. The band desperately needed to reassert its domination in the metal world. Dehumanizer was the album that brought the band into the ‘90s and, strangely enough, subsequently set the stage for Ozzie to later perform with Sabbath again. Represented on The Dio Years by three songs – “After All (The Dead),” “TV Crimes” and “I” – Dehumanizer offered the heaviest Sabbath sound since Dio’s previous turn with the band. Iommi’s guitar screeches like a banshee across these tracks while Appice and Butler team up to redefine “doom-metal” with amazingly thick, bass-heavy rhythms.
Another fifteen years has passed, and Ronnie James has reunited with Tony and Geezer for yet another trip ‘round the world, dragging drummer Vinnie Appice behind him. The Dio Years includes three freshly-minted songs by the fab foursome, including the diabolical “The Devil Cried,” which features some of Iommi’s nastiest, most surgically-precise solos in years, and the ethereal “Shadow Of The Wind,” a riff-happy monster of a song that sounds as menacing as anything from the band’s earliest albums. The Dio-fronted line-up will tour under the name “Heaven And Hell” in support of The Dio Years, choosing not to go out on the road as Black Sabbath in respect of Ozzie’s (now permanent) place at the front of the band.
Whether you’re a fan of the original Ozzie-led Sabbath, a true-blue Dio devotee, or you sit somewhere in between, The Dio Years is a fine collection representing a typically overlooked era for this legendary band. Other than the three new “Heaven And Hell” tracks, there’s nothing else here that’s new – I, for one, would have liked to have seen the inclusion of one or two of the unreleased studio tracks that are known from the Dio era, or perhaps some rare live tracks from the vaults – but The Dio Years nevertheless stands tall as an essential document of this underrated period of Sabbath history, providing it the respect it has so richly deserved for over two-and-a-half decades. (Trademark of Quality blog, 2007)
In the annals of heavy metal, which counts among its ranks such notorious figures as Burzum and King Diamond, none are more infamous than the almighty Thor! Born Jon Mikl Thor in Vancouver, Canada in 1953, Thor is a professional bodybuilder, part-time actor and screenwriter, and rock ‘n’ roll legend. After winning the bodybuilding title of Mr. Junior Canada (one of many such honors he’s received in the U.S. and Canada), Thor decided to become a rock ‘n’ roll star. Proclaiming himself “The Legendary Rock Warrior” – basing his entire image on the Norse God of Thunder whose name he shares – Thor formed his first band in 1973.
His performances during the ‘70s were part hard rock/heavy metal and part performance art (he’d often perform acts of strength on stage as the band bashed away); Thor took Alice Cooper-inspired theatrics to a whole other level. Recording his debut LP in 1976-77, Thor subsequently licensed the album to RCA Records, which released Keep The Dogs Away in 1977. The album went Gold™ in Canada but failed to chart in the states, but Thor kept banging away at the gong, releasing albums and EPs throughout the 1980s, finding a new audience as heavy metal fandom blossomed during the decade. Thor temporarily retired from music in the late ‘80s to concentrate on film, but came roaring back in the late ‘90s and continues to record and perform sporadically until this day.
On May 13th, 2016 the good folks at Cleopatra Records will reissue Thor’s underground metal classic Keep The Dogs Away as both a three-disc deluxe edition and a triumphant vinyl version. Long out of print, Thor’s Keep The Dogs Away comes as a triple-disc CD set packaged in a six-panel digipak with alternative cover art and liner notes by longtime fan Brian Kehew (co-author of Recording The Beatles). The first disc reprises the original album, disc two features 22 rare and unreleased songs, while disc three is a bonus concert DVD offering a vintage 1980 performance by the metal legend. The black wax version of Keep The Dogs Away is a faithful recreation of the original vinyl album with a foldout poster and printed inner sleeve.
The day after, on May 14th, there will be a four-hour multi-media event held at the Highline Ballroom in New York City in celebration of the album’s release. Sponsored by Thor, radio and TV personality Eddie Trunk, and Fabio Productions the event will include a first time ever full concert performance of Keep The Dogs Away as well as a theatrical screening of the I Am Thor documentary film, a special Thor museum display, and a second concert performance of Thor’s most popular songs with special guest performers.
Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles magazine co-founder and former editor, and the author of half a hundred books on bands like Black Sabbath, Thin Lizzy, and Deep Purple (among many others), Martin Popoff is, without a doubt, rock music’s most prolific scribe. Popoff’s knowledge of hard rock and heavy metal from the 1970s through the present day is unassailable, and his books are no mere commercial knock-offs designed to exploit current trends, but rather well thought out and researched tomes based on hundreds (thousands?) of artist interviews that Popoff has conducted over the nearly 25 years he’s spent in rock ‘n’ roll’s critical trenches.
Martin is also a friend of mine, and I’m happy to say that I have a bookshelf overflowing with his books, almost all of which I’ve parted with serious coin to purchase. A Popoff library is essential for hardcore music collectors, each book providing valuable insight into a band’s albums and career. A lot of Popoff’s work is strictly a labor of love, ‘cause you just don’t write books about obscure bands like Max Webster or Riot and expect to get rich…all of which makes my buddy Martin the perfect patsy, er…music historian to take on the Herculean task of putting the “New Wave of British Heavy Metal” into proper perspective. Popoff has recently penned a trilogy on the NWOBHM – Wheels of Steel, This Means War, and Smokin’ Valves – the first two of which are oral histories of the genre, the last being a buyer’s guide to NWOBHM records.
Martin Popoff’s Wheels of Steel
For those unfamiliar, the New Wave of British Heavy Metal was an influential, albeit short-lived musical phenomenon that exploded like a supernova in the United Kingdom during the late ‘70s, burning brightly until roughly the mid-1980s when nerf metal bands from L.A. began dominating hard rock. Just as punk rock emerged in the U.K. as a response to the self-indulgent state of mainstream music at the time, so too did the NWOBHM develop in parallel as an underground alternative to the pop charts for disaffected, working class white youth suffering from widespread unemployment and social inequality in the U.K. The term itself is credited to music journalist Geoff Barton, who first used the NWOBHM phrase in the British music magazine Sounds to describe the growing trend of homegrown heavy metal bands.
Popoff’s Wheels of Steel: The Explosive Early Years of the NWOBHM establishes the groundwork for the NWOBHM via timeline, interspersing quotes by artists, writers, critics, and DJs with important dates and occurrences to form a linear narrative, an intuitive manner of tackling such a heady chore. The early, informative years of the 1970s are tackled in the first chapter, and one could argue that the roots of the NWOBHM began in 1975 when the genre’s earliest bands – Motörhead and Iron Maiden – first formed, and DJ Neal Kay (an integral figure in the story) established a beachhead for hard rock at The Soundhouse, a club within a London pub where he would spin records by such NWOBHM musical influences as Thin Lizzy, Rush, Deep Purple, and Judas Priest. Popoff quotes liberally here from Kay and Iron Maiden’s Steve Harris, both of whom stood firmly in the eye of the developing NWOBHM hurricane and have plenty of memories to share.
From 1976 on, Wheels of Steel outlines the growth and development of the NWOBHM phenomena through the end of the decade, Popoff exploring the story with his usual keen eye for detail and respect for the music’s history. It’s a saga of hungry bands with a penchant for loud guitars that used heavy metal as a means to express themselves musically. Popoff fills the book with plenty of artistic insight, quoting from numerous interviews with members of NWOBHM bands like the aforementioned Iron Maiden and Motörhead, Tygers of Pan Tang, Saxon, Quartz, Diamond Head, Girlschool, Gillan, and others as well as music journalists, and even the odd punk rocker like the Damned’s Rat Scabies. Wheels of Steel does a great job in capturing the blood, sweat, and tears of the ‘70s decade as those artists who created the NWOBHM share memories of their hopes, dreams, and even some lingering bitterness over the era.
Martin Popoff’s This Means War
The second volume of Popoff’s trilogy is This Means War: The Sunset Years of the NWOBHM, which picks up the story in 1981, by which time the NWOBHM is in full bloom, creatively and commercially. Popoff uses 1984 as a cutting off point for the NWOBHM, appropriate enough for our purposes as the genre had largely run out of steam by then, the heavy metal flag captured by a greasy bunch of whiskey-swilling gutter rats from the City of Angels, U.S.A. Popoff uses the same narrative technique here as he did with Wheels of Steel, i.e. lots of artist interviews from musicians and others who had a bird’s-eye view from within the NWOBHM combined with a timeline of relevant dates and occurrences.
Where This Means War differs from Wheels of Steel is in the artists’ perspective. Whereas the early days of the NWOBHM provided a portrait of youthful enthusiasm, by 1981 the phenomenon had begun going mainstream and you had record labels, band managers, and other empty suits getting involved with, and often clashing with the young dreamers in the bands. As Hunter S. Thompson famously stated, “the music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.” In reality, the music biz is a like an industrial shredder, grinding and gnashing good musicians and ruining careers more often than nurturing creativity.
Some of the artists quoted in This Means War are justifiably (still) angry over what they see as mismanagement or malfeasance in the way their careers developed, while others have left their bitterness in the past. Popoff greatly expands the roster of artists he interviewed for This Means War, with holdovers from the first book like Jess Cox of Tygers of Pan Tang, noted NWOBHM producer Chris Tsangarides, Diamond Head’s Brian Tatler, John McCoy of Gillan, and Eddie Clarke of Motörhead, among others, joined by such articulate NWOBHM players as Algy Ward of Tank, John Gallagher of Raven, Bernie Shaw of Grand Prix, and Kevin Riddles of Angel Witch as well as members of bands like Venom, Grim Reaper, and Def Leppard. In doing so, Popoff also expands the narrative, and it seems like This Means War offers more in the way of oral history that its predecessor, documenting the artistic apex and subsequent decline of the NWOBHM as a creative force.
Martin Popoff’s Smokin’ Valves
The actual first book in Popoff’s NWOBHM trilogy is the last – but not least – that we’ll discuss here. Smokin’ Valves: A Headbanger’s Guide To 900 NWOBHM Records offers exactly what the title promises, roughly 230 pages of one- and two-paragraph reviews covering hundreds of NWOBHM records. Popoff had previously penned the long out-of-print The New Wave of British Heavy Metal Singles, and he expands upon that effort with Smokin’ Valves by including NWOBHM albums as part of the mix. Popoff also draws upon the hundreds of album reviews he wrote for the 1970s and ‘80s-era volumes of his exhaustive The Collector’s Guide to Heavy Metal series, updating and revamping all of the reviews for this new guide.
If Popoff defined the lifespan of the NWOBHM as 1980 through ’84, with Smokin’ Valves he colors outside the lines a bit by including early, proto-NWOBHM recordings from 1978 and ’79 as part of the discussion, laying it all out for the reader in alphabetical order, and bolding the text of album reviews to differentiate them from reviews of singles and EPs. Much like its kissing cousin – British punk circa 1976-79 – the NWOBHM was very much a singles-oriented art form and, as former Jersey Beat zine publisher Jim Testa once said (or something like this), “not every band can record a great album, but almost every band can record a couple of great songs.”
While not all of them got to record a full-length LP, many NWOBHM bands got their first bite of the apple via 7” vinyl, creating a dizzying discography of bands and records that Popoff puts into proper context with his reviews in Smokin’ Valves. Many, if not virtually all of the singles and EPs listed here are highly-collectible slabs o’ wax that fetch premium prices from fanatical collectors with deep pockets, but many are also easily found on YouTube for those who just want a taste of the music. Albums and singles alike are awarded a numerical grade of zero to ten, similar to Popoff’s previous guides, and he includes appendixes to Smokin’ Valves that list those esteemed albums and singles receiving grades of eight or higher for those fans who wish to begin their collection with the best.
The Reverend’s Bottom Line
Of the hundreds of NWOBHM bands that littered the landscape circa 1980-84, only three found a significant amount of commercial success and/or notoriety – Def Leppard, who would shed their NWOBHM roots with a series of multi-Platinum™ glam-metal albums through the ‘80s; Iron Maiden, which has steadfastly retained its unique musical identity throughout the decades; and Motörhead, the stubborn-as-hell hard rock outlier driven by the vision of the late, beloved Lemmy K. The relative lack of world-beating chart-toppers in NWOBHM does nothing to diminish the music’s influence and importance, however, as bands like Metallica, King’s X, and Pantera, among many others, would find inspiration in the NWOBHM.
As for NWOBHM “also rans,” bands like Angel Witch, Demon, Grim Reaper, Diamond Head, Quartz, Samson, Tank, Witchfinder General, and Raven, among all the other dreamers and schemers of the NWOBHM, their music lives on as part of the evolution of heavy metal, the records they made 35+ years again still impacting rock ‘n’ roll music to this day. As a chronicler of hard rock and heavy metal, Martin Popoff has done an excellent and thankless job in documenting the history of NWOBHM with these three volumes, providing a voice for these (mostly) obscure artists who brought energy and vitality back to rock music at a time when it was sorely needed.
If pressed, I’d give the edge to Wheels of Steel (Grade: A+) if only for the hope displayed in its pages, but one can’t experience the true breadth of the NWOBHM without also reading This Means War (Grade: A), with Smokin’ Valves (Grade: A-) complimenting both titles by focusing on the recordings of the bands featured in the other books. All three volumes are profusely illustrated – the oral histories by scores of rare and obscure label ads for albums, live show adverts, and other graphics while the “headbanger’s guide” offers dozens of photos of album covers and rarer-than-rare picture sleeves. If you’re a fan/collector of hard rock and/or heavy metal, Popoff’s trilogy is a “must have” for your music library. With these three deeply-researched and well-written books, Popoff has provided as complete and comprehensive a history of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal as anybody is likely to ever write. (Power Chord Press, 2015)
The reputation of American heavy metal pioneers Riot, the high esteem in which they’ve long been held by metal fans, far outpaces the band’s meager album sales over the decades. Formed in 1975 by the late guitarist Mark Reale and drummer Phil Bitelli, the pair added bassist Phil Feit and frontman Guy Speranza and Riot was born. There were changes in the line-up in the years before the band recorded its well-received 1977 debut, Rock City, and the story of Riot itself is one of tumultuous relationships, an ever-revolving roster of musicians, and an ‘underdog’ status, with band founder Reale remaining the one constant.
Rock critic and heavy metal historian Martin Popoff counts himself among the band’s loyal fans, and his latest literary project is Swords & Tequila, an album-by-album Riot biography that, provided its limited sales potential, is surely a labor of love on the behalf of the writer. Martin’s a buddy of mine – we’ve broken bread and drank more than a few beers together – and I have a lot of respect for his immense body of work, which includes better than four-dozen informative, insightful, and entertaining books on classic rock bands like Deep Purple, Thin Lizzy, and Black Sabbath, among many others (really, just check out the list on his website).
Martin Popoff’s Swords & Tequila
The founding editor of Brave Words, & Bloody Knuckles magazine, Popoff has forgotten more about hard rock and heavy metal than the Reverend will ever know, so I tend to follow his lead on bands like Riot that I’m unfamiliar with. Martin has chosen to focus the narrative of Swords & Tequila on “Riot’s classic first decade,” which covers the band’s first five studio albums and its short-lived major label tenure...their glory years, really. He constructs the book via interviews with band members and Riot’s longtime manager/producer/Svengali Steve Loeb as well as using archived materials, crafting the sympathetic story of a talented band that, for a myriad of reasons, never quite made it to the top.
The band’s story begins with the lead up to, and the making of Rock City, the 1977 album released by the band’s manager on his independent Fire Sign label. With the skilled, but lacking-in-confidence Speranza on the microphone, and featuring the underrated Reale’s explosive six-string talents, Riot was building a solid reputation in the mid-1970s by playing metallic hard rock in clubs around its NYC hometown. They would be signed to a dubious deal by Loeb and his partner Billy Arnell. As the story eventually unfolds, we’ll find that this was Riot’s first mistake, and rhythm guitarist Lou Kouvaris warned the band against signing the all-encompassing management/production deal with Loeb.
Rock City earned Riot a modicum of much-needed attention outside of Brooklyn, and opening slots playing in front of bands like Journey and Mahogany Rush expanded their fan-base outside of the five boroughs. In a lot of ways, however, Riot was swimming upstream against the current. In 1977-79, punk-rock ruled the roost and across town, CBGBs – with its regular fare of bands like the Ramones and the Dead Boys – was the Mecca of loud ‘n’ fast music. The band’s fortunes would lay overseas, with the fledgling “New Wave of British Heavy Metal” scene created by bands like Iron Maiden and Saxon, and their fans would embrace Riot as one of their own.
Riot’s Fire Down Under
Popoff delves into the major label politics behind the band’s two classic recordings – 1979’s Narita and 1981’s Fire Down Under – the former of which was (begrudgingly) released by Capitol Records, the latter by Elektra Records, both of which have subsequently grown in esteem since their release. Narita also sealed up the Japanese market for the hard-rocking quintet. Guitarist Rick Ventura had replaced Kouvaris (axed by management for insolence) for the recording of the album, which represented a major step in the evolution of the band’s proto-metal sound. Speranza’s vocals on the album are more confident, Reale’s fretwork more fluid and inventive. The band’s songwriting was solid, its performances heavier (staying apace of metal trends at the time), and Narita earned Riot important opening slots on a couple of major U.K. festivals.
It would be with Fire Down Under that Riot would finally hit on (almost) all cylinders. Featuring a new rhythm section, but still fronted by the one-two punch that was Speranza and Reale, Riot created a minor heavy metal masterpiece that, although taking its cue from the NWOBHM, nevertheless spoke with an American accent, influencing a generation of bands to follow. Popoff explores the difficult birthing of the album, the band’s fractured relationship with its manager/producer, and the internal dynamics of the band that helped create Riot’s best-selling album. Riot’s modest fame, moderate LP sales, and several tours opening for headliners like Black Sabbath did little to improve their fortunes and, broke and dissatisfied, Speranza left the band in the wake of Fire Down Under.
Riot thought that they’d found the perfect replacement in singer Rhett Forrester. Whereas Speranza always seemed hesitant and sometimes timid on stage, the golden-maned Forrester was seemingly built in a lab to become a rock star. The band followed its acclaimed Fire Down Under with 1982’s Restless Breed, their first album with Forrester and its last for Elektra Records. The band’s sound changed somewhat with the addition of Forrester’s bluesy swagger and a lack of promotional support by the label and an inability to tour beyond a limited region would severely impact the band’s forward momentum. One more album with Forrester would follow – 1983’s Born In America – again produced by Loeb and licensed to a dance-music oriented Canadian label for North American release.
Epilogue – Riot’s Second Decade
Riot basically imploded by 1985, with Forrester going on to an ill-fated solo career, and Reale moving to San Antonio, Texas, a town that had been very hospitable to the band during its career. This is the end of the band’s first decade, but Popoff doesn’t end the story here – as outlined in an Epilogue chapter, Reale re-created Riot with new musicians and, for a while, it seemed as if the band would rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes of its former incarnation. Riot’s 1988 major label album Thundersteel would re-establish the band as a significant force in American metal, in spite of Loeb’s smell all over the thing, and although a number of albums featuring different versions of Riot would be released well into the 2000s, it was all mostly downhill from Thundersteel.
So why did a talented, innovative band like Riot run off the rails, ending up so far from its goals? Popoff doesn’t offer any judgments, content to merely outline the story and allowing the various parties, including Steve Loeb, to have their (sometimes conflicting) say on the band’s history. In my mind, Riot’s biggest problem was Loeb, whose protestations of sacrifice on behalf of the band ring hollow and read as self-serving revisionism. It’s always a bad idea for a band to hook up with a single person for management and production, and Loeb’s lack of imagination in the studio definitely held the band back creatively. Loeb’s inability to provide the band members a living wage is, sadly, a recurring issue, one that undoubtedly caused more turmoil in the ranks than was necessary.
Mark Reale’s continued devotion to Loeb, even after the band broke-up and re-formed three years later, was self-sabotaging. Loeb seems to have alienated nearly every powerful music biz mover ‘n’ shaker with his antics through the years, and his production deal with the band created a bad situation where he leased their recordings to whoever would have them instead getting them signed to an established label. And what’s up with those horrible Riot album covers? I understand that Loeb was going for a marketable theme with the band’s recognizable, seal-headed mascot (which Martin lets us know is named ‘Mighty Tior’). But all the LP covers accomplished was to make the albums look cut-rate and amateurish…and how in the hell did the suits at Elektra ever sign off on such god-awful LP jackets as those that adorned Fire Down Under and Restless Breed?
The Reverend’s Bottom Line
Popoff’s Swords & Tequila accomplishes what the author set out to do – it tells the very human tale of a rock ‘n’ roll band that tried and failed. Riot failed not because of its own missteps, or because of any lack of talent, but rather because the music business is a brutal, savage undertaking that often eats artists alive, grinds them up, and spits them out into the gutter if they don’t live up to (sales) expectations. By capturing the oral history of Riot as told by the people who were there, Popoff gets as close to the heart of the matter as is journalistically possible, and the format of Swords & Tequila – with the band’s story framed album by album – provides a lot of meat for Riot fans to chew on.
As mentioned above, Swords & Tequila is a labor of love on the part of Martin Popoff, and he writes about these relatively obscure, albeit important bands like Riot because few other music historians of his stature deem them worthy of an investment of time and effort. Riot was an ill-fated outfit (three of its core members – Speranza, Reale, and Forrester – have all passed away too young), but Reale’s vision of for Riot lives on with his most recent band members continuing under the name Riot V after the guitarist’s 2012 death. Riot’s legacy, as it exists, will only be enhanced by Popoff’s biographical effort; the band’s still-growing reputation built one hard-fought album at a time. Grade: A (Power Chord Books, November 2015)
Writer Martin Popoff is a buddy of mine, a respected colleague in the dark art of rock criticism, and a rabid music fan who has forgotten more about heavy metal music than most of us will ever know. Popoff is the former editor of Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles magazine, and the author of almost four-dozen books on hard rock and heavy metal (including seminal texts on classic bands like Rainbow, Thin Lizzy, Deep Purple, and UFO). He’s also worked as a consultant on the VH1 Classic documentary series Rock Icons and Metal Evolution.
Popoff’s latest tome is Who Invented Heavy Metal?, an erudite discussion of the roots of metal music that begins with rock ‘n’ roll’s origins in the 1950s and ends in 1971 after the release of influential and classic albums by Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and Uriah Heep. A thought-provoking effort, the book was written to appeal to more than the obvious metalhead audience, and Who Invented Heavy Metal? promises to be an entertaining and informative read for any rock music fan.
In a press release for the book, Popoff says, “folks, this was a monster undertaking, comprising quotes from 126 different speakers (mostly the metal-makers themselves), many of them interviewed multiple times, blasted at you with much of my own contextualizing over 120,000 words of oral history, strict and detailed timeline, obsessive philosophizing, punctuated by more than 250 graphics. This book arose from years of debating this question with people, as well as talks I’ve given on the topic at university conferences. I’ve endeavored to include everything related to the story, the result being a massive arrangement of all the salient arguments, in a weighty tome that ends in 1971!”
Who Invented Heavy Metal? can be ordered directly from Popoff through his website, where you can also find information on his many other books. I’d personally recommend Martin’s three-part series on Thin Lizzy or any of his Ye Olde Metal books, but as Popoff is a knowledgeable and passionate writer, you can’t go wrong with any of his books (and I own a bunch of ‘em!).
Since this is pretty damn cool, I'm just going let the press release do the talking:
Kirk Von Hammett Toys is proud to present the Famous Zombies Jr. limited edition toy at the year's San Diego Comic Con. The very limited edition green Hammett figure will be available exclusively at San Diego Comic Con, and Kirk will be signing the toy itself at the Nuclear Blast Records/Stern Pinball/JSR merch SDCC booth 503 on Friday July 25th from 1pm to 2pm, and on Saturday July 26th from 2pm to 3pm.
Fans will be able to purchase tickets starting on Wednesday July 23rd for the Friday appearance. Once Friday's tickets are sold-out, Saturday tickets will be released. Tickets are available at the Nuclear Blast Records/Stern Pinball/JSR merch booth (503).
"I'm stoked to be bringing more exclusive wares to the San Diego Comic Con," says Kirk Von Hammett himself, "Nuclear Blast have been friends for quite some time, so I'm happy to be able to bring one of my exclusives to their booth. Being a fan of comics and movies since I was a kid, it's just a huge honor to be at Comic Con on both sides, selling and buying!"
Be warned, only a strict 300 of these Nuclear Blast Green collectible classics will be available, so act fast to make sure you're in line for yours!
Find out more about Hammett's horrible predilections at Fear Festival.com
