Seb Hunter - Hell Bent for Leather - Confessions of a Heavy Metal Addict

Wigs are more common than the world of Heavy Metal would like to admit. It’s vital to maintain the pretence that your hair will never fall out. Famous wig-wearers include all of Kiss, David Lee Roth and Ritchie Blackmore; W Axl Rose is just a rumour. Spinal Tap caused controversy just by wearing wigs in their film. It was as if the Metal community was saying, If they’re going to make a film about Metal, at least use people with real long hair .

The Heavy Metal community has never been one hundred per cent comfortable with the film Spinal Tap , despite its earnest claims to the contrary. The film’s frightening accuracy horrified Metal bands and fans alike when it was released in 1984, and the Metal community, as one, complained that it just wasn’t funny. But director Rob Reiner’s fondness for the subject and his attention to detail eventually won us over, until eventually it became bad form to protest. That is until the buggers decided to come back in the late 80s, this time as a ‘real band’, with a new album and gigs and everything. Oh no, not again , said Metal, and all the rock mags handed Break Like the Wind terrible, thank you very much now go away, reviews. The ‘band’ thought Metal fans would love it, as they’d been claiming to love the movie, but they didn’t, they hated it, and the whole project died a messy death.

Ha ha ha, who’s laughing now? we gloated.

Keep it True. Death to the False.

It always troubled me that Alex got everything before me, if indeed I ever got it at all. It didn’t really matter because I was round at his place all the time anyway, but it still rankled, so I came up with a foolproof idea: I would invent my own AC/DC album, design a cover and a track listing for it, and try to convince Alex that it was the real thing. – a ‘lost’ DC album, never mentioned anywhere, found exclusively by me. It was a brilliant idea, except for one key element: I had no music to go with it. I would have to say that, unfortunately, I had mislaid the actual cassette along the way. Frustrating, yes, but these things happen. But it was brilliant, trust me. In fact Silver , the superb and legendary missing AC/DC album, was, in my humble opinion, The Greatest Record They Ever Made.

I constructed the cover out of black cardboard and wrote my much-practised AC/DC logo in silver pen in the middle. Underneath that I wrote Silver , all classy like, hardly smudging at all. Then I carefully listed ten made-up songs which I thought sounded like DC titles: ‘Stick it Further In’ and ‘Give it to me Heavy & Hot’ and ‘Let’s Rock Hard All Night’ and ‘AC/DC Forever’. I wrote those in silver pen on the inside, and the credits too – all tracks by Young, Young and Johnson, without a single mention of Hunter anywhere.

One afternoon as we walked downhill from home towards the water meadows, I showed Alex my cassette box with great pride and no hint of shame. I explained the extraordinary story behind the album, and the tragic tale of the lost cassette. Alex listened politely and toyed with the case. I described the songs, even sang him a few, then it went back in my pocket and we never mentioned it again.

It was around this time that I started my weekly charts in a green exercise book that I’d stolen from school. It was 1982 and I was sick of the charts on the TV and radio because there was no AC/DC in them. (There was that year, actually – ‘Nervous Shakedown’ sneaked in at the low 30s for one solitary week. I bought it, of course, and then pretended not to be disappointed when I realised it was exactly the same as it was on the album.) So to redress this imbalance I came up with the idea of compiling my own charts, based on my current favourite songs. Each week I solemnly transcribed my list of favourite songs by AC/DC into my exercise book. I would apply myself to this task with professorial fastidiousness, and pore over the slight drop of ‘High Voltage’, or the exciting new entry of ‘Let There Be Rock’. When I’d finally written out the placings, I’d spend half an hour reading down the chart in hysterical detail in the style of a Radio One DJ, comparing this week’s chart against last week’s. The track that spent the longest time at number one was the stunningly average ‘Up to my Neck in You’, which stayed up there for 13 weeks. It shrugged off all-comers, even ‘Bedlam in Belgium’, until, on a winter’s morning in 1983, two new songs from one new band gatecrashed the party.

The songs: ‘Flight of Icarus’ and ‘Run to the Hills’.

The band: Iron Maiden.

Alexander AC/DC is on the right – his rifle is real.

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