1980's 5 Best Heavy Metal Albums

On the weekend of August 16, 1980, Castle Donington Raceway in Leicestershire hosted the first annual Monsters Of Rock festival. Rainbow, Judas Priest, Scorpions and Saxon topped the bill with Canadians April Wine among the supporting acts. 35,000 fans witnessed Rob Halford ride on stage on a Harley for the Judas Priest show. They were followed by a historic performance by Rainbow. It would be drummer Cozy Powell's last Rainbow gig. Singer Graham Bonnet  welcomed in the 80's with an outfit that would later be adopted by the stars of Miami Vice. No doubt the hard stuff was here to stay!

1980's 5 Best Hard Rock Albums

1. Iron Maiden: Iron Maiden

A UK#4 hit, the Iron Maiden debut was hailed by Geoff Barton, in Sounds, as "Heavy metal for the '80s, its blinding speed and rampant ferocity making most plastic heavy rock tracks from the '60s and '70s sound sloth-like and funeral-dirgey by comparison" . The muddy production has done nothing to prevent his becoming from a classic

2. Black Sabbath : Heaven And Hell

Ozzy who? The album that introduced Black Sabbath fans to new frontman, Ronnie James Dio,  formerly of Rainbow, sold a million copies in the United States. No plodding here !“Everyone had that record,” Metallica's James Hetfield told Rolling Stone. “Everyone was playing the cover songs in garage bands, including me. ‘Neon Knights’ was like the school anthem.”  

3. Motorhead : Ace of Spades

Peaking at UK#4, Motorhead's Ace of Spades has been described as "unrepentant and full of hell, there’s not one note out of place " by Sid Smith of BBC Music. Its jackhammer guitars were the curtains opening to a new kind of hard rock.  And in walked Anthrax and Metallica.

4. AC/DC: Back in Black

Selling 10 million copies in the United States alone Back in Black  was hailed by David Fricke as  "not only the best of AC/DC’s six American albums, it’s the apex of heavy-metal art: the first LP since Led Zeppelin II that captures all the blood, sweat and arrogance of the genre. In other words, Back in Black kicks like a mutha."

5. Judas Priest : British Steel

With British Steel, Judas Priest discovered the sound that would sell millions.“When we first entered, our albums were very involved, our songs were very pre-arranged, a bit self-indulgent with the lead breaks,” guitarist Glenn Tipton told Musician. “But we shortened the length of the songs, we increased the excitement and the tempo in the songs, and we did something that everybody thought you couldn’t do, that was never acceptable as heavy metal: We introduced melody to it.”   

Hon Mention: Ozzy Osborne: Blizzard of Ozz

Released in the UK in September of 1980, and six months later in the US, Blizzard of Ozz proved Ozzy Osborne has something to say without his Black Sabbath bandmates backing him up. Much of the credit goes to guitar sensation Randy Rhoads.“The first album, none of us had played together,” he said in 1981. “We were putting the band together, writing the songs and being in the studio at the same time … the first album was, ‘Turn it up to 10 and if it feels good, just play it.'” 

40 Year Itch: A Big, Groovy Holiday Picnic

    On April 6, 1974 nearly 250,000 fans, paying between $10 band $15, jammed the Ontario Motor Speedway to see Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Black Oak Arkansas, Seals and Crofts,  The Eagles, Earth Wind and Fire and Rare Earth. Don Imus emcee'd the show which actually began 15 minutes early and stayed on schedule.

ABC Television co-sponsored the event while LA radio stations simulcast the concerts. 

Cal Jam grossed $2 million and, despite massive traffic tie-ups ( 700 cars were towed away after all 42,000 parking spaces had been filled), it was heralded as a huge success. 

  There were only 25 arrests.The smell of marijuana hung in the air, but that seemed to add to the peaceful vibe. Said one concertgoer who hiked 4 miles to find his spot: "It's like a big, groovy holiday picnic." 

  50 foot speakers helped provide the most powerful concert sound system ever assembled. Good news especially for Deep Purple, then the loudest band in the world. 

     This is the show that introduced Deep Purple's new members to the world: the still chubby vocalist David Coverdale and bassist and screaming vocalist Glenn Hughes. Richie Blackmore, apparently not used to having a camera in his face when he solo'd, attacked a cameraman and then set his amp on fire.

Emerson Lake and Palmer finished the night with Keith Emerson spinning end over end 50 feet above the ground in his piano contraption.

40 Year Itch : Bog Blast All Of You

[Purchase]

Even today, I find that the music, compared to the previous records, has more class about it, more arrangements, more shine if you like and it's more adventurous. It was a leap forward. We used strings, and God knows what else; we really expanded. That's why, for me, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath was the pinnacle.

-Tony Iommi, Iron Man: My Journey Through Heaven and Hell With Black Sabbath

On December 1st, 1973, Black Sabbath released , Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, their most ambitious and intricate album --a far cry from the plodding sludge of their earliest works. The band originally planned to record the follow-up to the coke fest, Vol. 4, in the same LA studio but, thanks to drugs and alcohol,  motivation was lacking. On the verge of breaking up, Sabbath rented haunted Clearwell Castle in Gloucestershire. It wasn't long before the band saw its first ghost. As Brian Aberbeck writes in Black Sabbath: Pioneers of Heavy Metal

Whatever the explanation, Black Sabbath, the scariest band in the world, was too scared to stay overnight in Clearwell Castle.

In those creepy surroundings, Iommi came up with the "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" riff and the band was off to the races. 

   Rick Wakeman came in to play keyboards on "Sabbra Cadabra" .With its acoustic guitars, strings and prog rock arrangements, Sabbath suddenly found itself celebrated by critics. Gordon Fletcher of Rolling Stone wrote 

The use of tempo changes and electronic keyboards to cast liquid emotions makes Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath an extraordinarily gripping affair. Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath is nothing less than a complete success.

Ozzy himself considers Sabbath Bloody Sabbath the band's last truly great album:

Even the artwork was spot on: it showed a bloke lying on his bed being attacked by demons in his sleep, with a skull and the number 666 above his head. I fucking loved that cover. And with the music we'd managed to strike just the right balance between our old heaviness and our new "experimental" side. On the one hand, you had tracks like "Spiral Architect"  which featured a full orchestra and "Fluff", which sounded almost like The Shadows...On the other hand , there was "A National Acrobat", which was so heavy it was like being hit over the head with a lump of concrete.

   Sabbath Bloody Sabbath reached number 4 on the UK charts and number 11 on the US charts and eventually went platinum when the album sold more than a million copies

40 Year Itch : Snowblind

[Buy Vol 4 for $4.99]

"Yeah, the cocaine had set in. We went out to L.A. and got into a totally different lifestyle. Half the budget went on the coke and the other half went to seeing how long we could stay in the studio... We rented a house in Bel-Air and the debauchery up there was just unbelievable." -Geezer Butler, bassist, Guitar World, 2001

      After three years on the road, the members of Black Sabbath needed a break so they rented a mansion in Bel-Air and set about snorting mounds and mounds of cocaine. Cocaine has become such a central part of their lives, they decided to name their fourth album Snowblind. That is, until their US label Warner Brothers said no. Still, if you listen to the album Ozzy Osbourne promises you will hear all kinds of references to cocaine.

"The album cost around $65,000 to make and we'd spent $75,000 on coke" -Geezer Butler

 "If you listen to the track 'Snowblind' itself you can hear the word 'cocaine' being whispered in those quite bits." Ozzy told Mojo Magazine. " don't know why they didn't object to that. Maybe they didn't bother listening to it."

 


Maybe not. But Vol 4 was Sabbath's fourth straight album to sell a million copies in the US. It was also another nail in the coffin for the band...as excess drove a wedge between band members.In another seven years, Black Sabbath would be history.

40 Year Itch : The Erie Canal Soda Pop Festival

Is this the rock fest that killed the Woodstock nation?

 The Erie Canal Soda Pop fest on Indiana's Bull Island certainly drew a huge crowd -- an estimated 200,00 hippies who came from all over the country Labor Day Weekend of 1972 to see Santana, Foghat, Canned Heat , Black Sabbath, the Allman Brothers, Fleetwood Mac, Joe Cocker and Nazareth.

 That's not who showed up though.

 Black Sabbath was a no show. So were the Allman Brothers. Nobody saw Fleetwood Mac. When Joe Cocker saw the crowd he reportedly asked for more money and left when organizers turned him down.

 The traffic was a nightmare.

So were the drugs. Somebody was selling bleach. Two people died. And it rained.

 One very entertaining blogger who claims to have been there writes:

 If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would swear that the festival was a set-up, a sort of psyops to put an end to the ideal of the Woodstock nation. If it wasn't, then it was the biggest f**k up in the history of rock festival promotions.