The year was 1979, and a brash new breed of heavy metal-maker was busy shovelling dirt over the death of punk, while simultaneously mourning the waning energies — or outright demises — of hard rock’s earlier heroes, namely Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and Uriah Heep.
In Wheels of Steel: The Explosive Early Years of the NWOBHM, Martin Popoff charts the long ramp-up to this detonation of headbanging mania through the late `70s, arriving at the penultimate first years of this flash phenomenon — namely 1979 and 1980.
Utilising his celebrated oral history method — rich with detailed chronological entries to frame the story, Popoff blasts through all of the reasons the NWOBHM had to happen, and then drops down on all the singles, albums, live events and conceptual trends studding those remarkable two years, an era that essentially marks a coming-out party for heavy metal.
Come join Martin, along with dozens of his old school headbanging buddies, as they together tell the tale of this ersatz genre’s birth and mischievous, defiant adolescence — heavy metal would forever be transformed, and Wheels of Steel celebrates plainly and yet powerfully, all the reasons why.