When Alphonse de Lamartine said “music is the literature of the heart,” I’m pretty sure he wasn’t envisaging the heavy metal scene. Saying that, I’d still argue the relevance. 

Now, I get that heavy metal is pretty ‘marmite’ and I may even be alone in my particular musical tastes on Litopia but I thought I’d share my love for it and where my taste in music came from. Don’t worry though, I’m not going to make you listen to any, although I would urge you to give it a go.

I could tell you it was all my husband’s fault (most things usually are) but that’s only partially true, as of course, no one can make you like a genre of music. It did all start with me chasing him though, all those years ago. He and his gang of mates were all heavy rock and metal fans and all a little older than us. However, me and my mate, both barely seventeen at the time, managed to wheedle our way in, by means of her older sister being on the periphery of the gang. With us all living in the same village, I then had an excuse to pop round to borrow records and blag lifts to the pub, to drink strictly orange juice of course. Eventually, after several months of this, the penny did drop with him, although he was definitely slow on the uptake. But enough about my teenage love life. 

Never having had access to anything heavier than Jim Reeves or Buddy Holly in our house and not even owning a radio till I got my first hi-fi at around the age of fifteen, the borrowed records were an absolute revelation. We’re talking the classics here – Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Motörhead, Slayer. My mind was quickly blown and the germination of two love affairs would begin – with him indoors and music. The moment that changed everything though – an epiphany of sorts, came before my husband and I were officially an item. 

So me and the aforementioned mate managed to wangle a lift with the gang in their transit van to The Monsters of Rock festival at Donington racetrack. The year was 1992 and the line-up was nothing short of fantastic: The Almighty, Wasp, Thunder, Slayer, Skid Row and Iron Maiden headlining. Like I said, the music was all still pretty new to me and it was my first outdoor gig, first festival, first big crowd. And what a crowd, with eighty thousand or so like minded music fans in one place. 

My friend and I had clubbed together the proceeds of several weeks part time wages, as we were both still at sixth form. Around fifty quid, after buying tickets, if I remember rightly. Being sensible girls, we then budgeted carefully, buying as much vodka (we were practically eighteen) as we could afford, as many cigarettes as we could afford with what was left and a tin of corned beef and six bread buns with the remainder to see us both through the weekend. 

Everybody would arrive at the festival site on the Friday night and even though the ticket said ‘No camping allowed’, everybody camped. Imagine a scene from Mad Max, with pickups and vans of all shapes and sizes, half a dozen incredibly drunk people hanging out of the back of each and Hells Angels on motorbikes, all racing each other around ramshackle camps with enormous bonfires to a cacophony of heavy rock tracks. This, whilst police patrolled on foot, duly ignoring offers of a shared tinny or a drag on a spliff, just to make sure no one died. 

On the day of the festival itself, we managed to push our way through the crowd for the first band of the day, The Almighty, until we were fairly near the front. As they started to play and my ears were assaulted by one hundred and fifteen decibels of electric guitar, I could feel my heart match the rhythm of the drums as they reverberated through my chest. But it was halfway through the set, when the lead singer, Ricky Warwick launched into a sweary anti-establishment diatribe about freedom of speech then into the classic British rock anthem Free and Easy, that I knew I belonged. A cliche certainly, but it was then I knew these were my people, this was my music, and it would become an enduring love that is still as strong. My people would be some of the scariest, hairiest, weirdest looking non-conformists in society but never have I felt safer than in a crowd of metalheads.

I’m happy to say, even in our middle age, we’re still regular gig goers, as close to the front as we can get, huge grins on our faces. You’ll imagine my recent joy when it was announced that Ricky Warwick would play Carlisle (nobody ever plays Carlisle!) and it coincided with a rare day off. A tiny venue this time around, with matt black walls that ran with sweat. But there, again, the sense of belonging, even if it’s more bald heads and beer bellies than long hair now. Nevertheless, from the first note of Free and Easy, I was seventeen again. A full circle moment. Plus I got the chance to meet Ricky afterwards and thank him.