In the Beginning...

“There must be something

There must be something

That remains

A fire of unknown origin

Took my baby away

A fire of unknown origin

Took my baby

Took my baby away”

--Blue Oyster Cult; “Fire of Unknown Origin” from the LP of the same name, 1982.

The four hour documentary Heavy: The Metal Years played on VH1 last evening until 2:00 AM. I, of course, watched it and started thinking back to my earliest days of liking Heavy Metal.

1980, I had my first job—a “worker” at Burger King for a mere $1.90 an hour. I remember after earning my first paycheck, I went to the local record shop, which also sold stereo equipment and bought The Rolling Stones Hot Rocks LP and The Who’s Meaty, Beaty, Big, and Bouncy LP. The next paycheck, I went in and bought Rush’s 2112, Ted Nugent’s Cat Scratch Fever, Alice Cooper’s Flush The Fashion, Nazareth’s Hair of the Dog, and some Jethro Tull albums. I was a junior in high school.

Rush was probably my favorite.

Throughout the months that followed, I bought the Rush Archives LP, which was a three record set of their first three albums (Caress of Steel my personal favorite there), Blue Oyster Cult’s Agent of Fortune, Black Sabbath’s Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Judas Priest’s British Steel, most of the Kiss albums, and other oddities of rock.

My tastes turned to more classic rock when I dated a girl named Abby and she was a Beatle freak. Then I hung around with friends who liked Billy Joel and Chicago. I went to the Punk side because it was different, and a friend named Ed made tapes for me of The Clash, The Ramones, 999, and a few others. When I saw Rock ‘N’ Roll High School through my folk’s subscription to Showtime, I was hooked on Punk—in fact at Ottawa High School in the lovely Mid-West of the great state of Illinois, I was considered a punk rock expert—probably because the “kids” were playing Journey, REO Speedwagon, and Foreigner.

Still, I played Classic Rock and Metal. My favorite bands of the Metal genre included Blue Oyster Cult, Deep Purple, some Sabbath (to be honest, Black Sabbath kind of scared me a bit—I believed the “Satanic” hype), Alice Cooper, Rush, U.F.O., and Judas Priest. My brother was attending college at Bradley and bought me LP’s for Christmas my Junior Year as he could snag cut-outs cheaply. The list included No Place To Run by U.F.O.; Nazareth’s Close Enough For Rock ‘N’ Roll; the four Kiss Solo albums; and some punk and new wave.

I then joined Columbia Records and tapes and pulled “the starter collection” of twelve albums for a penny, mail in the card, and pay up the backside for postage. My twelve included AC/DC’s Back In Black and Dirty Deeds, Blue Oyster Cult’s Spectres, and Weekend Warriors from Nugent.

After reading Rolling Stones magazine, I ordered some mail-order record catalogs from various companies and became entrenched in tons of various albums—most of which were cut-outs. I remember ordering the first three Blue Oyster Cult albums as well as Culterous Erectous to add to the collection.

Then Disc Jockey (an in-mall record shop) started receiving tons of cut-outs and import albums pressed on cheap vinyl from various countries. I went nuts buying all of the Sabbath stuff cheap, Rush’s Moving Pictures (still one of my favorite albums of all time), tons of Rolling Stones (I know, not Metal—but still), and various punk music.

I think I really converted when, during my senior year, my friend and later college roommate Keith and I went to see Heavy metal. I bought the soundtrack and loved it. Keith liked it as well and we were swapping albums and listening to each other’s stuff. Somewhere along the line I purchased more Judas Priest like Screaming for Vengeance, and AC/DC’s For Those About To Rock, and the like.

Keith and I went to a Junior College and the first show we saw, the first concert I ever saw, was Blue Oyster Cult with Aldo Nova as an opening act. It was the Fire of Unknown Origins tour. We both had that album and thought it was great. We also saw Rush on the Signals Tour and Ozzy Osbourne.

Then, when I went to ISU, I abandoned metal for a while—although I kept my albums, cassettes and even the old eight-tracks. I remember we went around ISU flinging an AC/DC Back In Black LP through the quad. This was the post-punk artsy-fartsy years. Whereas I like some of that music today; then it was more of a “Metal is Dead and Buried Concept”—and why not? I hardly considered Motley Crue, Poison, Quiet Riot, and the schlock on MTV as metal. I hated it all those 80’s glam and hair bands were lame.

I abandoned most of those LP’s and the like to sell at local record shops and work my way back into classic rock. I collected all I could of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Jethro Tull, Rockpile, Elvis Costello and the like. I considered metal a trifle interest of my youth.

Then I had to flash-forward nearly twenty years until I collected it again.

That story will appear on the next post.