506 PART 4 | SINCE WORLD WAR II
constant presence on telev ision as well as radio. Both Jackson and Madonna were
talented dancers as well as singers; they both also made f ull use of the medium of
television through their use of costumes and hairstyles.THE POP MAINSTREAM AND ITS ALTERNATIVES
As the early careers of Michael Jackson and Madonna indicate, heav y rotation
on MT V was one marker of inclusion in the mainstream of popular music in the
1980s. One genre that fi gured prominently in the early years of MT V was New
Wave. The success of videos by bands like the imaginatively geeky Devo indicated
how easily New Wave, an outgrowth of the punk rebellion, had accommodated
itself to the mainstream. But popular music in the 1980s encompassed more
than the coolly ironic New Wave bands and dance-oriented musicians featured
on MT V; also part of the mainstream (or at least perceived to be so) was heav y
metal, which preserved rock’s anarchic energy. Meanwhile, on the fringes of the
pop scene were a variety of bands that also kept alive rock’s antiauthoritarian
fl ame, playing a variety of styles such as hardcore punk and other genres loosely
collected under the general terms “college rock,” “indie rock,” and—the name
that eventually stuck—alternative rock.
Heav y metal, perceived by its fans as the “true” mainstream of rock, is
rooted in the aggressive styles of such late 1960s–early 1970s rock bands as Iron
Butterfl y and Steppenwolf (whose 1968 song “Born to Be Wild” contains the
phrase “heav y metal thunder,” possibly the origin of the name). Heav y metal
is characterized by extremely loud volume levels, a thundering beat, and long,
virtuosic guitar solos that show the infl uence of guitar heroes like Jimi Hen-
drix and Carlos Santana. The lyrics tend to focus on dark imagery—death,
the occult, and the gothic—linking heav y metal with 1970s progressive rock.
Although some heav y metal bands self-consciously dressed down to resemble
the white working-class males who made up the large majority of their fans,
others affected the outrageous costumes and stage effects of 1970s British glam
rockers like David Bowie and arena rockers like Alice Cooper and Kiss. By the
late 1980s such over-the-top fashions had earned some groups the nickname
hair bands.
The earliest phases of heav y metal can be traced to a number of British and
American bands. By 1980, however, the geographic center of heav y metal inno-
vation was defi nitely Los Angeles, where the concentration of recording stu-
dios had attracted a large number of rock instrumentalists. Chief among the
early L.A. metal bands were Van Halen and Mötley Crüe. Their commercial
success paved the way for the enormously popular Guns N’ Roses. Among the
more inventive heav y metal bands to emerge in 1980s Los Angeles are Metal-
lica and Megadeth, bands whose early focus on very fast tempos earned their
music the nickname “speed metal,” but whose more varied later music is more
often called “thrash metal.” Both bands have produced songs longer than the
usual three minutes, with changing tempos and textures, which, along with lyr-
ics exploring political and ethical issues, represent an updating of progressive
rock. At the same time, though, thrash metal’s fast tempos, aggressive volume,
and snarling vocal delivery tie the music to punk. In fact, the coining by fans
and critics of ever narrower categories—black metal, death metal, doom metal,heavy metal172028_20_495-513_r3_sd.indd 506 23/01/13 11:15 AM