When Heavy Metal Magazine Made Playlists
A goodie bag of far-out tunes from Heavy Metal's heyday in the 80s — now compiled on Spotify! Plus a retrospective on the magazine's musical legacy.
First, a Happy New Year to you all! I’ve been extremely happy here on Substack, and am thankful for everyone’s support. Something I’ve found fascinating is that I know fewer than half of you from personal life. The rest of you have simply been brought here by sheer force of vibes. I am immensely grateful, and hope we don’t stay strangers for long.
Some highlights of the year:
New title: this Substack has been rechristened (“News from the Orb”)!
A shoutout to
of A Perennial Digression, who kindly recommended this Substack and is the reason many of you are here. I highly recommend APD for its nuanced discussions of theology and ancient religion.A feature: Last month’s post about Fourth Wing / Starship Troopers was featured on File 770, where it generated thought-provoking commentary on Heinlein, romantasy, and gendered criticism. Many thanks!
Anyway, on to Heavy Metal and the playlists. Subscribe for more HM throwbacks; I’ll be doing more as inspiration strikes me.
-Maya
When I worked at Heavy Metal magazine, people in my life inevitably assumed it was a publication about heavy metal music. My usual response was “not really,” and I’d describe how Heavy Metal was a comics magazine focused on experimental, adult-rated sci-fi/fantasy. I’ve since realized that a better response would have been “fuck it, probably” — since Heavy Metal, like cosmic background radiation, seemed to presuppose and pervade everything, including music. Name a thing, and Heavy Metal had it: yellow, cyan, black, magenta, rectangles, circles, pterodactyls, Homer, Shakespeare, love, death, superheroes, hamburgers, Jane Fonda, H. P. Lovecraft, boobs, dicks, God, jazz, rockabilly, and (inevitably) heavy metal music, lower case.
At its core, Heavy Metal was deeply, fundamentally inspirited with rock-and-roll, including the nascent genre of hard, loud, jagged rock from which it took its name. By the 70s, fantasy and science fiction had pretty much become — through mutual fandom, artistic cross-pollination, and a shared ambition to reshape the world — inseparable from rock music. “[Rock] music has grown, fissioned, recombined, and branched off in a dozen different directions. Science fiction has paralleled this cultural explosion,” wrote Steve Brown in HM’s January 1980 editorials. Over in Europe, the Humanoids and avant-garde cartoonists who supplied the bulk of Heavy Metal’s content had been deeply influenced by rock’s iconography and mythic figures; Elvis, Hendrix, Dylan, and the Beatles regularly surfaced as characters; artists adapted songs (“Sympathy for the Devil,” “Voodoo Child”) into comics form.
In America, if you read Heavy Metal, there was some chance that you also read the likes of Creem, or Rock Scene, or Rolling Stone. If you were a younger reader, you might hotbox in your mom’s garage to the Cars and Edgar Winter; if you were older — say, the Dhalgren-reading, Village Voice intelligentsia type — you might be looking for the next cool jazz artist or Euro-rock project… and also the Cars and Edgar Winter. Either way, the publishers of Heavy Metal had you covered: ads for radios, speakers, amps, cassette players, band tours, world music, jazz, synth, Styx, Journey, and more Ted Nugent than makes sense to us in 2024. Musicians dropped in to praise their artist/writer collaborators (Jim Steinman writing on Richard Corben, Debbie Harry on H.R. Giger, Johnny Ramone on Stephen King, etc). And when the time came for the Heavy Metal movie (1981), bands like Blue Öyster Cult, Devo, and Black Sabbath were happy to contribute to the soundtrack (Spotify link to the soundtrack).
In 1980, as it reached the height of its influence and circulation, Heavy Metal introduced music criticism by SFF editor/music nerd Lou Stathis and others, in the “Dossier” section. The contrarian Stathis was a fearless advocate for the experimental over the conventional (he hated the fucking Eagles, man, and Bruce Springsteen’s normie-ism was a running joke). Alternative icons like Brian Eno, Genesis, the Cure, Grace Jones, Gary Numan, Laurie Anderson, and Tangerine Dream got their recognition in Heavy Metal, plus uncountable niche bands.
Anyway, the HM squad would occasionally throw together a DJ set, album recs, or mixtape. I’ve consolidated them into playlists on Spotify, linked below.
As the Aliens Bop
August 1981: David Azarc (not to be confused with Moebius’ Arzach!) was a NYC deejay. I couldn’t find out much about him, but he worked at the Mudd Club, a famous punk/new wave spot. Many of the artists featured — Bowie, Iggy Pop, etc. — were regulars at Mudd.
The Metal Box: Lou Stathis’ 1983 Singles Picks
Stathis sometimes compiled lists of his “heavy rotation” singles and albums. In April 1984, he listed his top picks for the previous year. Some, like Michael Jackson and Eurythmics, are recognizable. Others are supremely obscure.
Classical Music for Heavy Metal Readers
Gregory Sandow, classical music critic for The Village Voice, lent his expertise to a January 1983 editorial on classical music’s “image problem.” He reasons that HM’s readership — at least the high-minded ones who read Michael Moorcock and Philip K. Dick — are sophisticated enough to appreciate classical music despite its stodgy reputation, and compiles the following list for them.
Classical Music for Heavy Metal: Sandow’s Picks on Spotify. Note: selections taken from each longer work.
Possible Musics
March 1982. In the article “Artificial Boundaries, Expanding Horizons, Possible Musics,” trumpeter/composer/Eno collaborator John Hassell contends that international perspectives are a necessary part of battling the “corporate musical imperialism which irons out regionalisms in its drive towards worldwide musical hits in a Western pop style.”
Possible Musics: John Hassell’s Recs on Spotify. Note: some albums unavailable on Spotify. A few songs taken from each album.
Rap-Up
May 1983: HM recommends tracks with which unfamiliar readers can catch up on rap classics. Rock critic Stuart Cohn’s recommended list consists of golden-age classics, including sci-fi influenced ones like “Planet Rock” and “Space is the Place.”
Rap-Up: Stuart Cohn’s Picks on Spotify
1984 Clip Awards
In fall 1984, HM introduced The Clips, an awards for music videos/related performances. More pop-leaning than HM’s usual recommended content, the Clip Awards were voted on by readers. This is HM at its most basic: even a Bryan Adams video was nominated. Vibes: mega-charting, danceable tunes, with some indie gems.
Heavy Metal 1984 Clips Awards on Spotify
Beat Box
May 1985: Lou Stathis returns with a list of vinyl that made the “past few months just a bit more bearable.” Warning: some of this is extremely non-melodic, if you couldn’t tell from band names like Foetus Art Terrorism. Stathis chose violence here.