A Real Rock Archive

This was a project commissioned by The Public in West Bromwich as part of a series collectively called ‘Wonders (of the West Midlands)’ in 2005. A wonder of the West Midlands, to me, was that it gave birth to what became known as heavy metal - arguably one of the most influential forms of music to have emerged in the 20th Century.

The project I proposed, and delivered, was to research an on-line archive of fan stories and memorabilia pertaining to the birth of heavy metal in the region. In terms of the kinds of things I was looking for, and this is really key to the project, they were the kinds of stories and artefacts that would never be deemed important enough to make it in to an official biography of a band, but are shared amongst fans like precious jewels. Not so much, “I met Hendrix at Woodstock”, more, “Ozzy trod on my toes in Tesco”.

As a fan myself, I understand how valuable these tiny and, seemingly unimportant, exchanges can be. I set about gathering these things by setting up stalls in local libraries and reaching out to local papers and DJs to spread the word and encourage people to come forward. A trickle of contacts led to further recommendations and, slowly, an interesting collection of stories and objects began to emerge. All I was ever interested in doing was recording the stories and photographing the objects to put online, it was never designed to be a physical archive or collection. The website looked, and functioned, like a scrapbook.

The generosity of people was extremely heartening and, as well as reconnecting some friends who hadn’t seen each other for decades, I personally made some friends for life (one such friendship leading me to find myself backstage with Black Sabbath following their Dec 20th, 2013, gig at Birmingham’s NIA. But that’s another story…)

Despite the online nature of the project, it struck me that the conversations I was having in real life would be of interest to hear, first person, for other fans and so in the latter stages of the of the project I staged an event, programmed as part of the Sideshow festival alongside the British Art Show 6, in Nottingham. This sell-out event was held at The Nottingham Boat Club, a venue with an amazing rock history of its own having staged gigs in the 60’s and 70’s with the likes of Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Cream, Deep Purple etc. The event took the form of an on-stage interview between myself and two gentleman I had met through my wider research on the project - Geoff Lucas (Black Sabbath’s original roadie and tour manager) and Phil Myatt (owner of ‘Mothers’ club in Erdington, Birmingham, 1969-72). Following this interview was a performance by Black Sabbath tribute band, Sack Sabbath.

People often ask me if this project is, or was, anything to do with the considerably better known ‘Home of Metal’ project, to which I will offer a simple analogy (if you get it, you’ll get it). ‘A Real Rock Archive’ can probably be seen as the ‘Bad News’ to Home of Metal’s ‘Spinal Tap’.