Metal: A Headbanger's Journey

Blasphemer:
Can you repeat the question?

Sam Dunn:
A lot of people we've talked to have said that...

Blasphemer:
[Cuts Sam off] What?

Sam Dunn:
...have said that black metal is starting to lose touch with its roots...

Necrobutcher (Mayhem):
[Cuts Sam off] Who are they? Which ones? Who the f*** are you talking to? F*** THEM! Ya know...

Sam Dunn:
...Do you have a comment on that?

Necrobutcher (Mayhem):
Yeah, I have a comment... F*** YOU!... Ya know?

Lemmy:
I love women, I think they should be naked backstage all the time. I love looking at them.

Sam Dunn:
Ever since I was 12 years old I had to defend my love for heavy metal against those who say it's a less valid form of music. My answer now is that you either feel it or you don't. If metal doesn't give that overwhelming surge of power that make the hair stand up at the back of your neck, you might never get it, and you know what? That's okay, because judging by the 40,000 metalheads around me we're doing just fine without you.

Sam Dunn:
What is the primary ideologies or primary ideas that fuel Gorgoroth's music?

Gaahl:
[long dramatic pause] SATAN... [drinks from wine glass]

Dee Snider:
[On being asked to testify before the Senate about music censorship] They wanted me to carry the flag into battle. Hell yeah! Braveheart baby! Braveheart wasn't even out. But that sort of mentality. Gimme the f***in' flag man! Let's go! I knew that they were, like everybody else, grossly underestimating me, I knew that they viewed me as just another dunderheaded rocker, and they would bring me in, make me look like a fool, and that I would help their cause. They didn't know that I could construct a sentence, and speak English fluently. And I'm there in my cutoff denim, my skin-tight jeans, my snakeskin boots, and a little bit of eye makeup left on underneath, and my big hair, and I ain't gettin' dressed up for nobody, I'm a dirtbag and I'm proud. And I'm playing these people. Like you know mentally I am setting these guys up for the kill. I've got my speech in my back pocket, which I have worked on for a few weeks, and honed and refined until it's a frickin' nuclear weapon, folded up like a gazillion times like a bad kid bringing his homework to school, and you know I'm opening it up and flattening it out on the table, really delivering, and these guys are going "Oh man this is a lamb being brought to the slaughter." And I started reading.

Malcolm Dome:
I still believe if Richard Wagner had actually been around today he'd probably be in Deep Purple. Beethoven probably would've been happy to have been in Led Zeppelin.

Robert Walser:
Classical music is associated with university; with learning. Bach didn't go to college. Mozart didn't go to college. The virtuosic performers who were known as improvisers; that describes Bach as well as it describes Eddie Van Halen.

Sam Dunn:
This music has millions of passionate fans worldwide, yet for 35 years, it's been consistently stereotyped, dismissed and condemned.

Sam Dunn:
Metal confronts what we'd rather ignore. It celebrates what we often deny. It indulges in what we fear most. And that's why metal will always be a culture of outsiders.

Bruce Dickinson:
My intention as a frontman is to try and find the guy who's right at the back of the 30 000 capacity festival and go, "You. Yeah, you!" And the guy goes "Me?" And you can do that! You can actually do that.

Bruce Dickinson:
It gives them an alternative universe. It gives them a life of imagination through which they can view music and it usually inspires a lot of them to pick up a guitar and start playing.

James 'Munky' Shaffer:
Kids are bored, agitated, especially if they have problems at home - parents, drug addiction, alcoholism - it all contributes to the product of a young, angry musician.

Tom Morello:
It's a negation of the world as it's handed to you. It says, this daily existence of this boring-ass high school and this dead-end Dairy Queen job, just no. This is something that's mine and that I own, and f*** you; I won't do what you tell me.

Rob Zombie:
It's like a lifestyle. Everything else seems like I like it for a week, I lose interest. But metal, metal fans love it forever.

Rob Zombie:
It's outsider music and outsider subjects, and as a kid I was an outsider and the loner and I think that that's where it begins.

Rob Zombie:
Nobody wants to be the weird kid; you just somehow end up being the weird kid and can't figure out how you got there. And metal is like that, except it's all the weird kids in one place.

Corey Taylor:
Metal is probably the last bastion of real rebellion.

Dee Snider:
I don't know how to explain it. I never questioned my sexuality at any point and I was up there in lingerie.

Ronnie James Dio:
In my mind, we live in Heaven and we live in Hell. God and the Devil are inherent in each of us, and it's our choice to make. You can take the road to good, or you can take the road to bad.

Tom Araya:
I consider what we do art, and art can be a reflection of society. I guess, uh, we're picking up the dark reflections.

[laughs]

Tom Araya:
Evil is everywhere. Everybody's got it. It sits really deep in everybody. Some people can't control it as much as others.

Tom Araya:
Regardless of whatever f***ing religion you believe in, whatever it is you feel is right, everybody knows what's wrong.

Rob Zombie:
That's what I love about it is, it's so f***ing huge, and yet certain people don't even know it exists.

Dee Snider:
Songs allow a person to put their own imaginations, experiences and dreams into the lyrics. Uhh, people can interpret it many ways. Mrs Gore was looking for sadomasochism and bondage and she found it. Someone looking for surgical references would have found it as well.

Dee Snider:
I said like you know, "I can't help it if Tipper Gore's got a dirty mind." And Al Gore, just, oh my God, he nearly jumped over the table.

[On the subject of who is the first heavy metal band]

Geddy Lee:
If you really wanna go back to the early metal bands, you have to look at Blue Cheer. Nobody talks about them very often because they were kind of a bloop on a screen. But they were, at one point, the loudest most metallic trio going.

John Kay:
Heavy metal lies of course in the lyrics of 'Born to be Wild', which was written by a Canadian; Dennis Edmonton / Mars Bonfire. He was really talking about that whole experience of, you know, big bikes and roaring down the highway.

Robert Ezrin:
For me, my awareness of it came with Led Zeppelin, it really did. As soon as those guys launched people started using the term 'heavy metal'. And I knew instantly that that sound was 'heavy something'.

Lemmy:
As it is today, probably Deep Purple. You know, 'cause they were the first to have this great big f***-off PA... And, uhm... the first to have a lot of pyrotechnics really.

Alice Cooper:
Actually, the first time 'heavy metal' was ever used was used about Alice Cooper in Rolling Stone magazine. Rolling Stone magazine was doing an interview with us. I think it was in '71, '72, '73, something like that. And there was this picture of this giant guy holding me up and it said; "Da-da-da-da-da-da... It's heavy metal", in quotes.

Alex Webster:
Every metal band owes a debt, musically, to Black Sabbath. They were the original.

Randy Blythe:
Indeed, first metal band ever; Black Sabbath.

Rob Zombie:
Every cool riff has already been written by Black Sabbath. Anything everyone else does is just basically ripping it off. Either you're playing it slightly different or fast or slow, but... They did everything already.

Sam Dunn:
For my money, Black Sabbath reigns as the first heavy metal band.

Malcolm Dome:
If you look at the history of Black Sabbath, and even of Deep Purple, and certainly Led Zeppelin - these people didn't come from affluent backgrounds, and therefore they grew up and knew exactly how to present the music to people who came from a like-minded situation.

Alice Cooper:
Well, I mean, I was the poster boy for controversy. In some ways I think I invented it. Because, I mean, we were the first band to get banned in England. We got banned and nobody could figure out why they were banning us. We asked them in London; "What are we banned for?". And they couldn't name anything... "Is there any nudity in our show?". "No". "Is there any bad language in our show?". "No". "So what are we being banned for?". "Well, there's blood in your show". Has anybody here ever seen 'Macbeth'? There's more blood in 'Macbeth' than in my show, and that's required reading in school. There was no real definitive rock vampire that was really the creature of the night and that's what Alice was supposed to be. If you say "Welcome to my nightmare", you don't just say it - you do it. Give them the nightmare. Show them the nightmare.

Sam Dunn:
I mean, whether we like it or not, black metal in Norway is known for, uh, a string of events that happened in the early 1990's, around a series of arsons. I'd just want to know your thoughts on the action of those events, the motivations behind those events - whther you'd agree with them or whether you'd disagree?

Gaahl:
Church burnings and all these things are, of course, a thing that I support a hundred percent. And it should've been done much more and will be done much more in the future. We have to remove every trace from what christianity and uh... the semitic roots have to offer this world. Satanism is freedom for the individual to grow and become the superman. Every man who's born to be king becomes king. Every man who's born to be a slave doesn't know Satan.

Alice Cooper:
I love going to Norway and Denmark, because I love picking up the black metal magazines. It's so 'Spinal Tap', [laughs] 'cause each band is trying to be more wicked and evil than any other band, you know. And I can't turn the page without going; "Look at this one, here are these guys and they're..." [mimicking the pose and look of black metal photoshoots] You know, and they're... And you know these guys, when you meet them in the mall they are; [lightens his voice] "Hello, Mr. Cooper. How are you? Nice to meet you. My mother is right over there, could she have your autograph?". And I say; "I thought you guys were like satanists or something?". You know, it's like; "Well yeah, we are, but...". [laughs] Very rarely do you meet anybody that's truly scary.