Metal v. Indie in the 1980s: Introduction pt 2

Welcome to Track Chatter, an occasional blog where two long-time friends and music lovers geek out about songs. With each entry we choose one track to discuss in depth, from a variety of angles. This entry is part of an introduction to a new series looking at Heavy Metal and Indie songs from the 1980s.

In the first part of the Introduction, we spent some discussing our own thoughts about the '80s - both as we experienced the decade and also through the lenses of history and nostalgia. In this part, we'll talk (a bit) more specifically about the upcoming series and the types of songs we'll be chatting about.

We ended the previous post with Aaron posing three broad categories of pop music from the '80s as something of a loose framework for thinking about how the decade's songs have been treated by history. Lew takes it up from there . . .

Lew: I think your groupings capture what we’ve been discussing quite well. As you say, it might be that one could debate which songs and artists are included in each category, but I think the categories themselves are strong, and probably could be relevant when discussing any decade of music. I also agree with your suggestion that we keep these categories in mind as our discussion moves forward. So, with that in mind, I think we’re in a great place to introduce exactly what we’ve got planned for this project.

We’ve been discussing our experiences with music during the ‘80s (and of the ‘80s), and we’ve both been fairly vocal about what music speaks to us best from the decade, so I don’t think it will be a big surprise that we’re going to be talking metal and indie. They’re two genres that were relatively under the radar at the beginning of the decade (more so in the case of indie, I guess), and enjoyed quite a bit of success in one way or another by the end. It’s going to be interesting to track the evolution of each genre from an internal perspective, as well as the cultural significance that each of them developed throughout the ‘80s. Each of us will select five tracks for discussion, and we’ll roll them out, one at a time. It will be similar to The Beatles project in that sense, except that the artist we’re discussing will change for each entry. Aaron, do you want to say anything about the process that you’ll be using to select your tracks?


Aaron: Okay, well, first up just to point out that we’re both aware that “indie” wasn’t really a term that was used a lot in the ‘80s, at least not up Maine-way. My recollection was that most often the term “college music” was used, probably because in the ‘80s, if you wanted to hear it on the air, college radio was the only place you were likely to find it. I also seem to recall “art rock” being used as a label, but I have a feeling that might have been to describe something slightly different. By the end of the ‘90s, however, “indie” had stuck, so I think it’s fine if we go with that term for now, cognizant that it’s actually a bit anachronistic.

What is “indie music?” Well, it’s a hard question to answer definitively, and perhaps it’ll come up as part of our conversation. Obviously, there’s the music that was coming out on independent record labels, like IRS or Sub Pop a bit later in the decade, and the UK has a great tradition of indie labels, such as Rough Trade or Factory records, to name just a very few. Many bands that started on such labels eventually moved to major-label companies and the dreaded “sell-out” epithet has been thrown around about such bands for decades – again, perhaps something we can pick up as the series progresses.

Also, though, I think there’s a sense that “indie” offers something that simply differs from the mainstream – whether in terms of lyrical content, production values, experimentation, etc. And “indie” can also be an attitude. One of the biggest hits of all time to come out on an independent label is Joan Jett’s version of “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll,” which was number one in the US for seven weeks, sold millions of copies, and was pretty much ubiquitous in the early ‘80s. Is that an “indie” song, or is it just too popular? The attitude and the struggles Jett went through to get recorded make me think, yes, indie; the massive popularity, on the other hand, seems to say, well, um, not so much. The same question could be asked about REM’s “The One I Love” (while they were still on an indie label), and, for different reasons, of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” which was not on an indie label, but, perhaps, still displayed an indie attitude.

With all that in mind, however, I think for this project, on the indie-side of things, we’ll be sticking to independent releases by artists who were not being played on top-40 radio in the ‘80s. I’ll be picking songs from the US and the UK. And I’m going to mix songs I’ve come to love with some songs that I don’t know too well, so as to challenge my own thinking a bit. For example, it’s no secret that I’m a big REM fan, but I’ve never really found my way round to The Smiths, so I’ll likely choose something by them (because, can one speak of indie in the ‘80s without giving full credit to The Smiths?).

5-6 songs is quite a limitation considering how big this area of music is and how many changes it underwent as the decade progressed, but I’ve got a bit of a theory in mind about where this project might be going (which I’m going to keep a lid on for now), and basically, the songs I have in mind, I’ll be choosing either to support or undermine that theory. But I can say this: The Cure will be involved, and will likely come up very early.

How about you, Lew? How are you going to differentiate within a genre that grew so vast as to include Iron Maiden, Motley Crue, Poison, Krokus, Metallica, and Yngwie Malmsteen, to name just a very few of the highly divergent metal acts of the era?

Lew: That’s a great question, and one that I’ve gone around a bit. I think that the question of identifying metal, although seemingly more straightforward than indie, really has its own set of issues. First, as you indicated in your question, at the broadest possible definition, “heavy metal” in the ‘80s includes a very diverse set of sounds and attitudes. Secondly, with the addition of time, the genre has expanded even further to include death metal, black metal, prog metal, melodic death metal, metalcore, and so forth. I could go on, but as you might expect, it only gets more involved/ridiculous. Regardless, all that is just to say that confining metal to a particular set of identifiers has become increasingly difficult.

I also should say that the ongoing interest in making metal more abrasive or extreme brings its own set of anachronistic issues. For example, it’s hard to see Van Halen as metal in the context of contemporary bands who seem to have abandoned melody in favor of expressing feelings of anger or alienation more directly. There’s no aesthetic commonality to speak of, which makes it hard to bear in mind that, in the early ‘80s, Van Halen was generally considered a metal band. In point of fact, there’s a sort of revisionist attitude that seems to want to say that the definition of what’s metal can change over time – a tendency that’s carried out by extreme metal fans who will tell you that Black Sabbath isn’t metal. (In case there’s any confusion, I’ll just say that to my mind, that’s absurd. If Sabbath isn’t metal, no one’s metal.) For the purposes of these discussions, my plan is to use the broader definition of metal that existed during the ‘80s, and we’ll have to endure the pain of knowing that Cinderella and Manowar aren’t really the same thing (not that I plan to talk about either of them).

In terms of selecting the metal songs we look at, it’s going to be tricky! I have some ideas, based on my own preferences, but I also feel a certain responsibility to represent the bands that were most influential. I guess I’ll be looking for compromises between those two impulses, and obviously taking advantage of places where they intersect. I’d like to avoid some of the more obvious choices, so steering clear of songs that would wind up on “I Love the ‘80s” lists and that sort of thing will be important. I think the categories that you suggested a few paragraphs up will come in handy, since I’ll be trying to find songs that aren’t in the first category (so rooted in the era that they can’t be taken on their own merits). It will be interesting to see if we disagree about any of that.

No Poison, Danger Danger, Trixter, Bulletboys, Bang Tango, Steelheart, Winger, Slaughter, Keel, Black ‘n Blue, Faster Pussycat, Britny Fox, Vinnie Vincent Invasion, etc. – I promise.

Aaron: Okay, then, I guess we should wrap this up and get to the songs. But I thought I’d pose one more question before we do. Do you see any connections between these two big genres – styles, fan-base, influences, etc. – that might link them together a little bit more closely than one might notice from a surface-level perusal? For example, it seems to me that both groups were generally musical subcultures in the ‘80s that became much bigger and more mainstream in the ‘90s and beyond. Of course there were exceptions: the brief flourishing of L.A. hair metal, or the huge explosion of popularity in the late ‘80s of bands like REM or U2 (yes, they were indie once), but for the most part these genres were off of mainstream radio in the ‘80s and, aside from the exceptions mentioned, generally off MTV outside of specialty shows like Headbangers Ball or 120 Minutes. As a result, fans tended to gravitate to subcultures that were at once outside the mainstream, but also highly visible due to their fan-based fashion sense and attitude.

But do you see anything musical tying them together? Is such a question a stretch, or should we wait and see what we tease out of our conversations as we get into discussing the songs themselves?

Lew: That’s an interesting question. I think the social parallels that you’ve drawn are definitely worth noting, but are there musical similarities as well? I guess we can break the question down a couple of ways. In terms of musical vernacular, I don’t think that there are a lot of immediate similarities. Without meaning to belabor the obvious, the two genres were taking their inspiration from very different places. So, for example, where you find Iron Maiden owing a fairly obvious debt to Deep Purple and other early rock groups that were edging toward metal, The Smiths are coming from a place influenced by punk and glam. While there are some commonalities in that list of influences, the influences chosen – that is, the qualities that The Smiths are pulling from their influences vs. what Maiden takes from theirs – don't seem to be those most closely related. (You do find anomalies here and there – like the harmonized guitar break in “Shoplifters of the World,” which is kind of Maiden-ish, and suggests that both bands probably liked Thin Lizzy.)

One parallel that occurred to me is that a substantial number of groups from each circle (with several notable exceptions in each genre), were increasingly divorced from the early sound of rock music. Where Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, The Ramones and T. Rex all made overt allusions to blues and rockabilly; Iron Maiden, Mercyful Fate, The Cure, and New Order had almost abandoned any direct callbacks to those forms, referencing them by default, if at all. The aesthetic purpose of being a rock band seems to have changed, or expanded, a good deal by the ‘80s. The idea of reconnecting to those roots seemed to gain popularity as the decade progressed, but initially, it seems that bands using “rock” instrumentation, were avoiding a connection to rootsier rock where they could.

Of course, there were other bands that were always participating in the rock tradition, and I’m sure that we’ll talk about some of them.

Aaron: Ha, I love the idea of Johnny Marr and Adrian Smith happening to have been trolling through vinyl in the same used record shop one day in the late ‘70s and both reaching for the last copy of Jailbreak, each looking the other up and down and thinking, you? . . . probably never happened, but still.

I guess as we bring up each new artist and track we can get more into their influences and what shaped them, as well as the question of how they saw the “role” of the rock band changing, which is a pretty fascinating question in relation to both of these musical cultures. Particularly interesting, I think, is the role that punk (and, as you point out, glam) played for different groups that were forming in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s (and, for a band like The Replacements, that seems to have seen itself, at least in its early incarnation, as continuing on in the punk tradition). I also guess the question of rock’s roots might be interesting as well. Most of the bands you mention as having been a bit disconnected from those roots are British, which, considering what the first British Wave did for early American rock, is fairly remarkable. But I also think that the American indie bands of the ‘80s might have had a slightly closer connection with that early music, even as they tried to filter it through a more modern, post-punk aesthetic.

These are all great questions, and now that we’ve lain so many of them out for the series, it looks like we’ve set ourselves quite a bit to talk about as we make our way from song to song, back and forth between these two vital strains of 1980s music.

Coming up: For our first entry in the series, we take up an early track by The Cure.