The leather, the spikes, the outrageous hair, the over-the-top stage sets and all the other trappings of heavy metal and rock 'n' roll were decried back then, too, and the message was equally ignored.
The death of Ronnie James Dio has inspired me to finally write this diary. It's something I've been thinking about for a long time: heavy metal has a high moral ground.
Heavy metal is anti-war. Obvious songs such as Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" come to mind, but it really is just a harder-edged voice for protest songs that were sung by long-haired hippies years before. Instead of tie-dyed t-shirts, the message now wore black make-up and leather pants. The hippies were loathed, the metalheads were feared.
But some songs were a little more subtle about it. Songs such as Blue Oyster Cult's "Veteran of the Psychic Wars" spring to mind. Though the lyrics are, admittedly, up for interpretation, the post-war depression, fear and mental anguish come through clearly, even if it may only have been meant as a metaphor.
Even the "good wars" such as World War II have melancholy songs written about them. Hearing Pink Floyd's "When the Tigers Broke Free" and "Goodbye Blue Skies" reminds us that people in Britain suffered in ways that only one family in Oregon, of all people in the United States, can truly relate to. These songs also remind us of those left behind: "The flames are all long gone but the pain lingers on."
Heavy metal looks to the past to see wrongs that we might avoid them again. Iron Maiden's "Run to the Hills" gives a graphic and accurate description of the genocide committed against Native Americans. We are more than a century separated from it, but the suffering continues.
Heavy metal wants "...And Justice For All." (Flame away. It's an awesome Metallica album, albeit the last.) No matter what you might think of the album itself, the whole album touches on issues that were, and continue to be, relevant. Issues such as justice, the environment, corporate control and war are addressed at a volume that clearly indicates that the status quo must be rejected.
Heavy metal is, arguably, religious, though in a way that I can't really grasp. It's followers (minus myself) seem to revel in imagery born of, presumably, the Morningstar, thus implying belief in God. Metallica even told the story of Moses in "Creeping Death."
In this I will admit a strange dichotomy. While preferring the dark imagery of an underworld resembling that of Hades and Dante, the followers seem to adhere closer to a philosophy of Christ, that of acceptance and tolerance and peace. After all, Rob Halford came out of the closet and we didn't even blink. Though I will admit that I slapped my forehead and asked myself how I missed the fact that a guy that dressed in leather from head to toe was gay.
And throughout, we were reviled, hated, cursed, misunderstood. Just as we are today. Those who have received the message of heavy metal have grown up, cut their hair, relegated the sleeveless t-shirts to the back of the closet, and left the pseudo-bondage gear stashed away.
We have jobs and careers, children and mortgages. Most of us don't look like we did back then, many of us smart enough to get the tattoos in places that regular clothes would hide.
But they still hate us. Funny how it was never about the music, hair, or clothes at all, isn't it?
(Note: this was written more or less off the cuff, and I reserve the right to write a much more in-depth article someday...unless you beat me to it.)