Head was fifty per cent of what ended up being
Metallica. We got the whole thing about riffs and
structuring from them. The other fifty per cent
was Motörhead.”
This much was evident when Metallica played
their very first gig at Radio City in Anaheim,
California on March 14, 1982, with Ulrich on
drums, Dave Mustaine on guitar, Ron McGovney
on bass and James Hetfield, not yet confident
enough as a guitar player, on vocals only. In their
set that night, alongside the two original songs
Hit The Lights and Jump In The Fire, were covers of
obscure NWOBHM tracks, four of them from
Diamond Head’s Lightning To The Nations.
It was also in 1982 that Diamond Head signed
to major label MCA for their second album, Living
On Borrowed Time, which had a greater level of
sophistication in songs such as Call Me and In The
Heat Of The Night, plus a new version of Am I Evil?.
The album reached the UK Top 30, but the band
never toured in Europe or America as Maiden and
Leppard had. Unlike those bands, Diamond Head
had an inexperienced management team – Reg
Fellows, a Midlander who made his money from
a cardboard-box business, and Linda Harris, Sean’s
mum. According to Tatler, this set-up was part of
the band’s undoing, and he now says ruefully:
“I wasn’t a mini-manager like Lars was.”
Diamond Head’s third album, Canterbury,
was a leap of faith. “We weren’t just heavy
metal,” Tatler says. “We thought we were more
of a classic rock band, following on from
Zeppelin and Queen, who experimented
in such a fearless way. We thought we
could play anything, and with Canterbury,
we learned the hard way that’s a very
difficult route to take.”
The album was bold and inventive,
with echoes of Zeppelin in the
Eastern-themed Ishmael, and a great
MA rock anthem in Makin’ Music.
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“It hasn’t always been
easy being in Diamond
Head... But I still love
the creativity of it.”
Brian Tatler
CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 55