FILTER BOOKS
Denim And Leather: The Rise And Fall Of The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal
★★★★
Michael Hann
CONSTABLE. £20
Heavy metal’s early-’80s renaissance revisited.
Former Guardian music editor Michael Hann’s oral history gallops along like Iron Maiden’s early anthem Phantom Of The Opera. The story of the NWOBHM is told here by musicians, fans and critics. While the genre birthed Maiden and Def Leppard, and inspired a young Lars Ulrich to form Metallica, many acts failed miserably. It’s almost painful to read how Diamond Head plucked defeat from the jaws of victory by keeping the singer’s mum as their manager despite interest from AC/DC’s handler. Hann captures the humour (“There were a lot of women,” divulges Saxon’s Steve ‘Dobby’ Dawson. “That’s why I was a regular at the Department Of Urology in Sheffield”) and the pathos (“Plumstead, for a few months at least, was the centre of rock,” suggests one of Angel Witch), but never mocks. Instead, Denim And Leather celebrates the passion and joyful tribalism of the music and the times.