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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN
THE HISTORY OF SUBCULTURES
AND POPULAR MUSIC
Nedim Hassan
Metal
PALGRAVE
on
STU
HISTORY O DIES IN THE
F SUBCULT Merseys
AND POPU URES
LAR MUSIC ide
Music S
cenes, C
ommunity an
d Localit
y
Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and
Popular Music
Series Editors
Keith Gildart
University of Wolverhampton
Wolverhampton, UK
Anna Gough-Yates
University of Roehampton
London, UK
Sian Lincoln
Liverpool John Moores University
Liverpool, UK
Bill Osgerby
London Metropolitan University
London, UK
Lucy Robinson
University of Sussex
Brighton, UK
John Street
University of East Anglia
Norwich, UK
Peter Webb
University of the West of England
Bristol, UK
Matthew Worley
University of Reading
Reading, UK
From 1940s zoot-suiters and hepcats through 1950s rock ‘n’ rollers, beat-
niks and Teddy boys; 1960s surfers, rude boys, mods, hippies and bikers;
1970s skinheads, soul boys, rastas, glam rockers, funksters and punks; on
to the heavy metal, hip-hop, casual, goth, rave and clubber styles of the
1980s, 90s, noughties and beyond, distinctive blends of fashion and music
have become a defining feature of the cultural landscape. The Subcultures
Network series is international in scope and designed to explore the social
and political implications of subcultural forms. Youth and subcultures will
be located in their historical, socio-economic and cultural context; the
motivations and meanings applied to the aesthetics, actions and manifesta-
tions of youth and subculture will be assessed. The objective is to facilitate
a genuinely cross-disciplinary and transnational outlet for a burgeoning
area of academic study.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14579
Nedim Hassan
Metal on Merseyside
Music Scenes, Community and Locality
Nedim Hassan
Liverpool John Moores University
Liverpool, UK
ISSN 2730-9517 ISSN 2730-9525 (electronic)

Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music
ISBN 978-3-030-77680-0 ISBN 978-3-030-77681-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77681-7
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To my mam and dad
Foreword
In order to truly understand something, you have to immerse yourself in

it. This is never more true than when applied to a musical movement, a
genre, and its scene.
Often misunderstood and much maligned, metal to the uninitiated can
seem a closed world with its own dress code, language, and
eccentricities.
I am the host of a podcast about metal and heavy music, The Spoken
Metal Show, devoted to supporting Merseyside metal. This remit has
allowed me to speak on behalf of, compere and work with many artists,
promoters, and venues within the scene.
Unsupported, underfunded, and very much underappreciated, the
Merseyside metal scene requires awareness of its existence and importance
both artistically and sociologically.
There is no better guide to this scene than Nedim Hassan, foremost
because he has a deep appreciation for rock and metal fostered from a life
with it as a consistent accompanying soundtrack, but also because of his
devotion to gaining an insider’s perspective on that scene.
Being able to absorb the Merseyside metal and rock scene in a “Hunter
and the Hell’s Angels” sense of total immersion, attending shows at all
levels, underground and mainstream, and engaging with figures within to
understand the minutiae and subtleties in a style of music mistakenly
painted with broad strokes is the key part of this work.
To then dissect it from a critical point of view is where this book shows
its true worth, applying insights and direction to where the scene may go
vii
viii Foreword
and how to help local artists, promoters, and fans discover, curate, and
ultimately support a scene rich in creativity, originality, and longevity.
Host of The Spoken Metal Show
Mark Cooper
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, this project would have never been completed if it
were not for the love and support of my family. Clare and Alex, you have
been incredibly patient and a constant source of strength during the last
few years, thank you. My parents have always been an inspiration to me,
and this book is dedicated to them. Thanks must also go to Ayshea (and
the kids), Adam and Linda for being there for me.
This book would not have been written without the support and help
of so many people associated with Merseyside rock and metal scenes. I am
very grateful to all those who kindly gave up their time to talk to me.
These include, in no particular order, Joe Mortimer; Andy Hughes; Sal
Turner; Tom Ghannad; Kabir D’Silva; Chris Furlong, Ste Moses and the
guys in Exhumation; Andrew Carr; Jay Lashbrooke; Charlie and Roger
McLean; Mike Hollows; Gordon Logan and David Cooke from
Robespierre; Jamie Hughes, Alistair Blackhall, Thomas Simm and the
guys in Deified; Jeff Walker and Bill Steer from Carcass; Jon Davis and
Chris Fielding from Conan; Malcolm Dome; Mike Brocken; Paul
Evangelista; Rick Owen and the guys in Video Nasties; Paul Armitstead
from Ninkharsag; and Daniel Moran from Reaper UK.
Thanks must also go to Mark Cooper from the Spoken Metal Show for
his interest in and support for this project. I am also very grateful to Peter
Guy and the editorial team at Getintothis for providing me with consistent
opportunities to attend events and write about Merseyside rock and metal.
Several colleagues and friends provided invaluable feedback on my writ-
ing for this book. I would like to thank Holly Tessler, Mike Brocken, Mike
ix
x Acknowledgements
Jones, Niall Scott, Siân Lincoln and Nelson Varas-Díaz for their thought-
ful comments, support and advice.
Over the years I have been fortunate to encounter inspirational col-
leagues who have been guides and mentors. Without them I would not
have been able to carry out this project. The late Nickianne Moody
believed in this research from day one, and I wish she were here to see it
come to fruition. Likewise, Gillian Howie gave me the confidence to
believe in my abilities as an academic. I am also indebted to Sara Cohen,
Marion Leonard, Rob Strachan, Haekyung Um and everyone at the
Institute of Popular Music at the University of Liverpool.
Finally, I would like to thank my colleagues at Liverpool John Moores
University (LJMU), especially my fellow team members in Media, Culture,
Communication. Steve Spittle, Jo Knowles, Rachel Broady, Anthony
Killick, Clare Horrocks and Bee Hughes have been tremendously sup-
portive, and I salute you all. Parts of this research were funded by LJMU
Faculty of Arts QR funding, and this aided my ability to complete the
project. I also should not forget my students at LJMU, who have had to
put up with me integrating examples from this research at every available
opportunity. I’ll try not to play too much Carcass during future induction
week lectures.
Contents
1 Introduction: In the Shadow of Beat City? Metal on

Merseyside 1
Metal in Liverpool 5
Liverpool in Metal 12
Approaching Metal on Merseyside: Reflections on Methodology 15
References 20
2 From Troggs to Headbangers: The Historical Development

of Metal on Merseyside 23
Early Years: 1969–1976 27
Liverpool and the Emergence of Heavy Rock: A Minority
Interest? 27
Heavy Rock and Subcultural Tensions 28
O’Connor’s Tavern 33
The Liverpool Stadium 34
The Moonstone and Liverpool’s Pub Rock Scene 36
Stable Foundations for a Live Heavy Rock and Metal Scene:
1977–Early 2000s 38
The Liverpool Empire 38
The Liverpool Royal Court 39
From the Moonstone to Milo’s 40
Sloanes/the Krazyhouse 41
The Swan, Wilsons and the Importance of Wood Street 42
The Gallery/Stairways 44
xi
xii Contents
Planet X 45
Shops and Spaces for “Hanging Out” 47
Conclusion: Community, Stability and the Nurturing of Scenes 48
References 50
3 Shaken Foundations? Venues and a Changing Live Music

Scene 55
An Ecological Perspective on Live Music 56
Metal on Merseyside in the Post-millennium Era: A Shifting Scene 58
Whiplash Promotions 2001–2013 60
The Post-Whiplash Era and the Rise of New DIY Venues 65
The Loss of Venues 81
Regeneration and Gentrification 83
The COVID-19 Pandemic and Its Impact on Live Music Venues 89
Placing Changes into a Broader Context: Changing Economics of
Live Music and the Success of Manchester’s Arenas 90
The Limits of Ecology 93
References 96
4 “Support your Scene”: Metal Scenes, Solidarity and the

Threat of Decline101
Subcultures and Scenes 103
Scene Beginnings: Beyond the Public 110
The Extreme Metal Scene in Liverpool: Community, Inclusivity
and Resilience 112
A Lack of Unity? Divisions and Separate Metal Scenes 115
Liverpool’s Rock Club Scene, Decline and the Loss of Identity 119
Not Feeling Part of a Liverpool Scene: The Limits of a Local
Emphasis 124
Conclusion 128
References 130
5 Promoting Metal on Merseyside135

Passionate Work: Doing What You Love? 138
Promotion Work and Audiences 141
Promotion Work and Artists: Backstage at Maguire’s Pizza Bar 146
“They wanted a litre of pig’s blood”: Managing the Personal Risks 150
Contents xiii
“Go and get a proper job”: Coping with Financial Losses and
Justifying the Risks 154
Metal Music Promotion and Passionate Work 160
References 162
6 Mediating Metal on Merseyside165

The Role of the Music Press and the Continued Importance of
Metal Magazines 169
Promoters and Print Media 172
“A Death Metal T-Shirt?” Have a Flyer 173
Flyers as Paratexts 176
“It’s Not a Post Unless My Nan Posted It”: Facebook and the
Sharing of Events 179
Doing It Ourselves? Social Media Use, Entrepreneurship and
Co-creative Labour 182
Cultures of Collaboration and the Co-curation of Impression
Management 192
Conclusion 193
References 195
7 Conclusion: Standing in the Shadows of Beat City199

References 202
Index203
List of Figures
Fig. 1.1 Carcass in 2018. (Reproduced with the kind permission of

Nuclear Blast Records, photo credit: Gene Smirnov) 9
Fig. 2.1 Major venues for hard rock and heavy metal during the 1980s
and 1990s (map image by Milos Simpraga) 49
Fig. 3.1 Key music venues that have hosted rock and metal events in
Liverpool city centre since 2000. Venue names shaded white are
either closed or no longer hosting live metal music. (Map image
by Milos Simpraga) 59
Fig. 3.2 Neuroma at Maguire’s Pizza Bar in 2018. (Photo credit: Chris
Everett, website and Instagram @chrisevophoto) 68
Fig. 3.3 Iron Witch performing in Sound Basement in 2018. (Photo
credit: Chris Everett, website and Instagram @chrisevophoto) 71
Fig. 3.4 Video Nasties performing in Drop the Dumbulls. (Photo
credit: Lu Lowe) 73
Fig. 3.5 Exterior of Tank Bar, St Helens in 2018. (Photo: Nedim Hassan) 76
Fig. 3.6 Deified at Tank Bar, St Helens in 2018. (Photo: Nedim Hassan) 77
Fig. 6.1 Flyer for Neuroma’s final Liverpool gig in 2018. (Image
courtesy of Mutilated Poster Designs) 177
Fig. 6.2 Video Nasties promotional photo. (Photo credit: Lu Lowe) 185
Fig. 6.3 Video Nasties artwork for debut single “Transvoltum”. (Photo
credit: Lu Lowe, artwork by Rick Owen) 187
xv
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: In the Shadow of Beat City?

Metal on Merseyside
In December 2015 it was announced that Liverpool, a city in the north of

England, was awarded the status of UNESCO City of Music. The
announcement was the culmination of work that had started prior to
Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture in 2008. Notions of musi-
cal heritage were central to the re-branding of Liverpool as a city of cul-
ture at this time. Various writers have illustrated how this re-branding
portrayed Liverpool as a particular kind of music city (Krüger 2013;
Lashua et al. 2009; Lashua 2011; Brocken 2010). For instance, Lashua
et al. (2009) note that just as imagery of Liverpool Pier Head and its
iconic “Three Graces” (the Liver Building, the Cunard Building and the
Port of Liverpool Building) became a central signifier of “Liverpoolness”,
2008 served to entrench a similar kind of “three graces” in “Liverpool’s
popular music landscapes and heritages” (Lashua et al. 2009, 128). The
central focus was, unsurprisingly, on the Cavern Club from the Merseybeat
era, which Spencer Leigh has dubbed the “most famous club in the world”
due to its role in helping to foster the phenomenal success of the Beatles
and “the Merseybeat explosion” in the 1960s (Leigh 2008, 9). In addi-
tion, Eric’s, a club synonymous with 1970s’ and 1980s’ punk and post-
punk scenes, and Cream, a club that became internationally associated
with British dance music in the 1990s, all became “landmarks” that came
to “represent significant moments in Liverpool’s musical heritage” (Lashua
et al. 2009, 128).
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2021
N. Hassan, Metal on Merseyside, Palgrave Studies in the History of
Subcultures and Popular Music,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77681-7_1
2 N. HASSAN
During 2008 there were a host of events that showcased the diversity of
music in Liverpool, illustrating the branding of Liverpool as The World in
One City. However, the staging of global “mega-events” during the
Capital of Culture year, such as the opening concert and the Paul
McCartney/Liverpool Sound concert, reinforced the notion that the
city’s musical heritage revolved around these “three graces”, particularly
the Beatles and Merseybeat (Krüger 2013, 150). Thus, amidst the opti-
mism and the attempts to re-brand the area in this period, in relation to
rock music there was a striking contradiction. The promotion of Liverpool’s
new cultural identity in the build up to 2008 paradoxically involved the
privileging of a familiar rock music heritage for Liverpool and Merseyside.1
Once again it was primarily the Beatles and long-established “popular
music scenes and clubs that had commercial visibility and international
prestige and reputation” that were showcased in high-profile events
(Cohen 2013, 587).
Liverpool’s year as Capital of Culture reinforced familiar narratives
about the area’s rock music culture and heritage, with the Beatles’ history
especially constituting a powerful “dominant discourse” (Brocken 2010,
6). Lashua et al. argue that “a select set of stories dominate histories of
Liverpool’s popular music. These dominant stories create a kind of ‘master
narrative’ or ‘master map’ of popular music heritage in the city” (2009,
128). Such narratives have effectively excluded or marginalized other his-
tories of music in Liverpool. For instance, Lashua et al. (2009) and
Brocken (2010) identify the 1970s pub rock scene as a “hidden history—
hidden between Liverpool’s Merseybeat and post-punk scenes” (Lashua
et al. 2009, 133).
This book examines another largely hidden Liverpool music scene—the
hard rock and metal scene that has its roots in the late 1960s. This is a
scene that has thus far appeared largely invisible in historical and academic
writing on the city’s music. Indeed, in his historical account journalist Paul
1
Merseyside is the name given to the Metropolitan county that comprises the areas of
Liverpool, Wirral, Knowsley, Sefton and St Helens (Thorp 2020, para 11). Although the
“Liverpool City Region” is a phrase that has been more recently used to denote “an eco-
nomic and political conurbation that came into being in 2014, with the creation of a new
combined authority”, which also included the Halton area, this book will maintain references
to Merseyside (Thorp 2020, para 6). This is because this is a term that still has more familiar-
ity for people within the areas that my research has focused on. Indeed, Liverpool metal
band, The Ominous, even had a series of showcase gigs labelled under the banner of Metal
on Merseyside during 2017 and 2018.
1 INTRODUCTION: IN THE SHADOW OF BEAT CITY? METAL ON MERSEYSIDE 3
Du Noyer goes as far as to claim that “Liverpool has never produced a

heavy metal band of any consequence” (2004, 191). In 2007 when Du
Noyer repeated this claim in a new edition of his book to coincide with
Liverpool’s imminent year as European Capital of Culture, Carcass, the
influential British metal band who are considered one of the pioneers of
the grindcore and death metal sub-genres were announcing their reforma-
tion after a ten-year absence. The band would go on to play major inter-
national metal music festivals and released their critically acclaimed
comeback album, Surgical Steel, in 2013. The fact that various members
of Carcass had grown up in Merseyside and started life playing gigs in
venues like Planet X in Liverpool city centre seemed to be entirely lost on
Du Noyer. Likewise, he did not appear to follow the career of Anathema,
a band who also started out playing in Planet X in the early 1990s and
were quickly signed to Peaceville records, where their acclaimed early
albums helped to develop the death-doom and gothic doom metal
sub-genres.
One of the aims of this book, therefore, is to reveal partially hidden
histories of hard rock and heavy metal music in Liverpool and Merseyside.
Consulting oral testimonies from artists, fans and promoters, together
with journalistic and academic accounts, the pages that follow will shed
light on places and people hitherto marginal or absent from many local
music history narratives. However, the main motivation behind this book
is not to somehow “rescue” metal and hard rock from its relative exclusion
within existing historiography of popular music in Liverpool. Nor is the
research for this book an attempt to fashion a place for hard rock and
metal within Liverpool’s “authorized” music heritage, which would be a
process akin to writing graffiti onto a static “wall of fame” (Roberts and
Cohen 2014). On the contrary, by moving beyond the “usual suspects” of
Liverpool’s music histories, the project seeks to examine the continuing
implications of metal’s hidden histories for different people involved with
its music and its cultures (Roberts and Cohen 2014, 256).
Consequently, the book recognizes in accordance with Roberts and
Cohen’s critical approach to popular music heritage that “music heritage
is less about the past than on the ways in which the past informs what is
happening now” (2014, 257). Therefore, interviews with Merseyside’s
metal musicians, promoters, fans and other scene members, in which they
were asked to share their individual and collective memories of their
involvement with metal scenes past and present, are central to the account
that follows. These oral and written testimonies partly reveal the legacy of
4 N. HASSAN
hard rock and metal’s historical marginalization within the region. Some
who are actively engaged with producing metal music culture within
Merseyside do so with an awareness that the individuals and sites associ-
ated with their “scene” (a term that we will see can have multiple mean-
ings) have been largely omitted from authorized heritage narratives,
whether these are “official” declarations of sites or individuals worth com-
memorating by organizations like the National Trust, or the “unofficial”
declarations of music journalists, historians and academics (Roberts and
Cohen 2014).
Yet metal and hard rock’s relatively marginal status within the city of
Liverpool and the Merseyside region is down to far more than absences
within heritage narratives. As will be illustrated, successive scenes have
been shaped by a range of factors including an increasingly shifting circuit
for live rock music, the impact of regeneration and gentrification and the
subsequent loss of key scenic infrastructure such as live music venues,
record shops and other places where fans and artists can congregate.
Struggles to contend with the effects of redevelopment are not, of course,
confined to those involved with hard rock and metal. “Culture-led” urban
regeneration within different parts of Liverpool has ironically often led to
the displacement (or threat of displacement) of specific music and creative
businesses (Cohen 2007; Killick 2019). In addition, on both a national
and international level, many popular music scenes within cities and
regions have had to relocate to more peripheral locations due to city cen-
tre redevelopment and gentrification (Riches and Lashua 2014; Straw
2015). Scenes, then, as Will Straw (2015) suggests, can be at the forefront
of struggles to arrest urban and cultural change. They may become cele-
brated for, as Straw puts it: “their decelerative properties, for their role as
repositories of practices, meanings and feelings threatened by the pro-
cesses of gentrification and commodification” (2015, 482).
However, the potential for certain scenes to become meaningful is
related to wider forces. The research for this book was conducted between
the years 2015 and 2021. The post-2008 global economic recession had
already severely affected Liverpool, with funding for some of the most
seriously deprived areas of the city being removed (Meegan et al. 2014).
Also, according to the Centre for Cities Outlook Report (2015), by 2015
the city continued to have some of the highest levels of unemployment in
the UK. Bearing in mind this stark socio-economic context, the continued
ability of Liverpool to generate music-led economic growth in this period
was a considerable achievement. As Culture Liverpool’s 2018 report
indicated, music became “increasingly economically important” to the

city, with an estimated turnover of £100.5 million for its core music econ-
omy at that time (BOP Consulting 2018, 16). Such success, though, pro-
vides a slightly misleading picture. As will be argued, it belies the way that
within a city like Liverpool some music scenes, such as those connected
with metal, are not as equal as others. Partly influenced by ecological per-
spectives on the study of live music industry, this book will reveal how to
some extent changes to the built environment in parts of Liverpool and
Merseyside have restricted opportunities for engagement with heavy rock
and metal music scenes.
Scenes, therefore, as Keith Kahn-Harris asserted in his early work on
extreme metal can limit or open “possibilities to follow particular trajecto-
ries” (Harris 2000, 18). Nonetheless, as he goes on to write: “These pos-
sibilities are not simply drawn on by individuals or groups, but are
continually being reformulated, negotiated and contested” (Harris 2000,
18). This book focuses on individuals and groups based in the Merseyside
area who are actively involved with hard rock and metal music scenes in
various ways. It reveals how their understandings of scenes were contested,
shifting and connected with translocal and global relationships (many of
which were increasingly virtual) (Bennett and Peterson 2004). Yet, it will
also make clear that, for many, notions of locality mattered. As will be
revealed, many of the people interviewed for this book were invested in
and passionate about the idea of sustaining a local scene, even if in some
cases they bemoaned its deterioration.
Metal in Liverpool
Prior to an examination of peoples’ perceptions of Merseyside metal and
hard rock scenes (both past and present), it is useful at this point to briefly
discuss the ways that participants in such scenes narrated the overall rela-
tionship between metal music and the city of Liverpool. This discussion
will serve to reveal how understandings of this relationship were informed
by Liverpool’s status as a “city of music”, a city that as has already been
suggested has been overdetermined by historical and heritage-related
grand narratives that have privileged other genres, locations and moments.
In a similar way to Andy Bennett’s research on the music scene in
Canterbury, UK, the city of Liverpool constituted a kind of “urban myth-
scape” for research participants (2002, 89). However, while to an extent
mediated information about the city of Liverpool was “recontextualized
6 N. HASSAN
[…] into new ways of thinking about and imagining places”, this was not
usually to celebrate the distinctiveness of a decontextualized “Liverpool
sound” as such (Bennett 2002, 89). Rather, because their understandings
were embedded in their lived experiences of dwelling in the city and
observing changes to the “popular musicscape”, Liverpool was sometimes
constructed in a far more critical manner (Lashua 2011, 148).
Firstly, there was acknowledgement that the Beatles constituted a dom-
inant feature of heritage narratives which in turn fed into discussions about
metal music in the city. For instance, extreme metal fan Andrew Carr
asserted in an interview that:
I suppose The Beatles would be very influential [on the metal scene], not in
a direct musical sense but in the way that they influenced Liverpool’s culture
in general. Liverpool is one of those cities which always has an us against the
world attitude. It’s always had the “we’re proud of our sons and daughters”
type thing. As much as metal heads tend to try and see ourselves as different
from the wider society and stuff like that, it rubs off on you. My dad loves
The Beatles, my mum loves The Beatles and … they were from Liverpool
and they made it. They were from a shit hole of a city and they made it big
and they changed music forever. That sort of attitude of being proud of
those people, stick behind them and have their back because they’re one of
us, they came from the local area. That sort of attitude seeped through.
(Carr 2016)
In this instance, although they are celebrated, the Beatles are con-
structed as significant because they overcame conditions in a city that was
characterized by deprivation (a “shit hole”) to become icons that people
in Liverpool could be proud of.
In other circumstances, the Beatles were considered as something that
artists from the hard rock and metal scene wanted to distinguish them-
selves from. Jay Lashbrooke, a bassist who played with several hard rock
bands, discussed how he and his bandmates felt the need to “break away
from the metaphorical shackles that the Beatles were to us” (Lashbrooke
2015). This did not mean that he did not feel influenced by existing
notions of Liverpool’s music heritage, as he explained:
In Crash rehearsal studios, there’s a plaque against the wall and it’s showcas-
ing every single band that have ever practiced there, as in every band that
made it. You’ve got the likes of, off the top of my head, Atomic Kitten, Lou
Reed practiced there, and using the rehearsal space from before, I think that
was a way that really did give that impression that we were, perhaps, contrib-
uting to what had previously been, whilst, at the same time, trying to break
away from that […] Except the Beatles, I think, the Beatles were always the
kind of, “No, no, we’re not part of that. But Echo and the Bunnymen
rehearsed here”. (Lashbrooke 2015)
Thus, when it came to the Beatles, Jay was unequivocal, he did not
want to be associated with them. This was perhaps partly because of their
enormous success and global significance that was perhaps perceived as
incomparable, but Jay also conveyed a sense that their substantial presence
in historical representations of Liverpool’s music had almost become a
“metanarrative” that rock artists did not want to engage with (Brocken
2010, 9).
Other artists were less troubled by the Beatles, at least in the sense that
they did not feel the need to express their desire to move away from them.
However, the powerful hierarchical status of the group and the notion
that they would always be emblematic of Liverpool’s overarching music
scene was still affirmed. For instance, death metal musician and promoter,
Joe Mortimer stated that: “when we have been interviewed and reviewed
and stuff … everybody always brings up the Beatles. It always happens and
that is obviously what Liverpool will probably always be famous for”
(Mortimer 2015). The inevitability of the Beatles’ continued dominance
within Liverpool’s music heritage was clearly articulated in this type of
testimony. Yet, interestingly, several interviewees sought to place Liverpool
metal bands within established canons. For instance, Joe went on to say
that: “If you spoke to any average Joe on the street, bands from Liverpool
are the Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers—bands who have reached a
pinnacle, kind of bands like Echo and the Bunnymen and stuff like that.
You can’t get away from stuff like that, but then as you go down the list,
you will eventually reach the likes of Anathema and Carcass and you start
digging up some other names and stuff” (Mortimer 2015).
Others portrayed Liverpool as having a rich extreme metal heritage and
went as far as asserting that one of the city’s characteristic sounds was cer-
tain sub-genres of metal. Andy Hughes, who owns metal music promo-
tions company, Deathwave Entertainment, described this most fully when
discussing the differences between the Liverpool and Manchester
metal scenes:
8 N. HASSAN
The bands from Liverpool and the bands from Manchester, historically
Liverpool is heavier. Liverpool is heavier in what it wants from bands, it’s
heavier in what’s expected. If you’re a death metal band in Liverpool, you
pretty much automatically do quite well […] You look at the history of
Liverpool in the ‘80s. We had all those problems, where Margaret Thatcher
has been recorded as actually saying, I think it was released last year or some-
thing, she’d love to wipe Liverpool off the map if she could. She was that
harsh. […] Then Napalm Death, even though they’re from Birmingham,
they’ve got links to Liverpool. Carcass, probably our biggest musical export
for metal, when did they start? Was it 84? I think the first album was 88 and
then 89, they started in either 84 or 86 […] Anathema being part of … who
are essentially responsible for a lot of the doom/death in the world, which
there are doom/death bands all over the world now. Carcass helped found
grindcore and, arguably more, death metal. So, there’s three genres there
[that] might not exist […] without the influence of Liverpool music. I per-
sonally think a lot of that stems from the plight and the hardship of the late
‘80s in this city. (Hughes 2017)
The impact of Liverpool’s adverse socio-economic conditions in the

1980s, which were partly exacerbated by the Thatcher Government’s pol-
icy of managed decline, have become a central aspect of how Andy under-
stands the historical significance of the city’s metal bands. For him,
contrary to the historical account of Du Noyer (2004) mentioned earlier,
metal is not only part of Liverpool’s music history, it is characteristic of the
city. Extreme metal, in particular, is constructed as strongly tied to
Liverpool.
Such discourse, therefore, sets out an alternative heritage narrative for
Liverpool’s music. It reveals that, beyond the authorized versions of the
city’s music history, there are competing ideas about the canons of artists
that are worth celebrating and remembering. However, while such narra-
tives are interesting, they should not be taken at face value. Firstly, we
need to be careful when isolating musical styles to specific regions because
music scenes have porous boundaries and are difficult to confine to local
areas (Bennett and Peterson 2004). Secondly as Cope points out in his
work on pioneering British heavy metal band Black Sabbath and their
relationship to the UK city of Birmingham, it is difficult to empirically
“substantiate the relationship between music and environment” (Cope
2010, 27). Thus, although extreme metal bands like Carcass (see Fig. 1.1)
and Anathema emerged from the Merseyside area when it was enduring a
period of socio-economic decline, specifying the extent to which this had
Fig. 1.1 Carcass in 2018. (Reproduced with the kind permission of Nuclear
Blast Records, photo credit: Gene Smirnov)
any bearing on the music is a challenging task. Indeed, responding to the

notion that Liverpool was considered by some to have an extreme metal
heritage because of bands like Carcass, Jeff Walker the bassist and vocalist
for the band stated that: “it’s that Scouse pride, isn’t it? We never consid-
ered ourselves a local band, but I am happy if I get lumped in with bands
from Liverpool, I don’t have a problem with that even though I wasn’t
born here. I feel that we give the city something to be happy about in the
metal scene […] [guitarist and vocalist] Bill [Steer] was born in the North
East anyway and [original drummer] Ken [Owen] was born in Billinge
which is near Wigan” (Walker 2018).
Walker himself grew up in St Helens, a town that has its roots in
Lancashire. Even though it has been part of the county of Merseyside
since 1974, people in St Helens often downplay cultural connections to
Liverpool (Boland 2010, 9). Whereas people from parts of Liverpool are
identified (and often self-identify) as “Scousers” due to their distinctive
accent, this has not historically been the case for people from St Helens
(Boland 2010, 6). Instead, locals from Liverpool tend to refer to people
10 N. HASSAN
from St Helens as “woolybacks” to indicate the fact that they often do not
sound Scouse but have more Lancastrian or Mancunian vocal inflections
(Boland 2010, 9). Furthermore, many people from St Helens actively
resist being associated with Liverpool and resent being called Scousers.
This is evident to anyone who has ever been to a rugby league “derby”
match between St Helens and their fierce local neighbours Wigan. Wigan
fans use the term “Scousers” to mock and irritate St Helens fans. Such
nuances of local identity and difference, then, make the idea of Carcass
being part of a Liverpool music heritage problematic.
Reflecting upon the relationship between song-writing and place,
Walker also downplayed the notion that his writing was influenced by his
surroundings:
I don’t think that they have at all. […] We’re not The Kinks, name dropping
landmarks every two minutes or The Beatles. We were a product of our
environment but not in the way that we’re name dropping. It’s hard to
explain. We’re products of our upbringing but not necessarily the towns
we’re from. It’s hard to explain. I mean I guess St Helens was my little world
when I was a kid and it was the world. I mean it seemed like a massive place.
You go there now [and] it’s like a frigging ghost town. The whole industry
has gone, it’s derelict. But I guess, in a way, I suppose it’s that romantic idea
that we maybe wanted to break out from there. We didn’t really realise it.
(Walker 2018)
Such testimony, therefore, serves as a reminder that drawing compari-

sons between artists’ music or songs and their places of “origin” can be a
flawed exercise from a historical or empirical perspective. Nonetheless,
these challenges do not invalidate the narratives from Liverpool scene
members mentioned above. As Cohen found with her interviews with
rock musicians during the 1980s and 1990s, peoples’ narratives about the
relationship between a city and its “sound” do not merely operate at the
level of individual discourse. People who feel part of a scene and dwell
within a particular locality are: “embedded in webs of kinship and collec-
tive memory, located within a cognitive map defined by factors such as
ethnicity and religion, within a city marginalized and ostracised in terms of
power and resources on a national level” (Cohen 1994, 133). Although
she was writing in 1994, the point that music and peoples’ understanding
of it are inflected by these factors remains an important one. The collective
memory of difficult periods in the city’s history that affected many families
still resonates with many individuals when they are re-contextualizing

their experiences in the present.
Significantly, Andy Hughes’ narration of Liverpool’s historical “heavi-
ness” and extreme metal “sound” presaged a critical discussion of a con-
temporary theme that strongly emerged during the research for this book.
Namely, the closure, demolition or shifting of key live music venues in the
city. Like his earlier assertions about the connections between Liverpool
and metal music, his discourse in relation to this subject was grounded in
his understanding and experiences of the material conditions within the
locality. Commenting on the loss of smaller venues that had been promi-
nent in the hosting of metal gigs, Andy remarked: “What’s left of our
venues is slowly being handed over to larger corporate entities who, a bit
like Bumper [a student venue that hosted metal gigs but has since been
taken over and re-branded], it’s just a transaction, there’s no interest”.
Andy saw this situation as something completely at odds with the way in
which Liverpool has been marketed as a “city of music”, as he put it: “if
you go on the Liverpool tourism website, this, that and the other, you find
all sorts of stuff about the Beatles there. Liverpool has got a reputation …
Liverpool markets itself, it has a reputation as the city of music but does
absolutely fuck all to support that stance, other than advertising”
(Hughes 2017).
Andy’s discussion then continued into a more specific critique of regen-
eration strategies that moved beyond a consideration of metal venues:
“The authorities are dismantling our entertainment industry and poten-
tially dismantling part of our own heritage without even realising. Cream
is definitely part of Liverpool’s musical heritage. It’s one of the largest
dance promotions names in the world. Knocking down Cream was tanta-
mount to knocking down The Cavern, within that genre” (Hughes 2017).
This critique, therefore, indicates that even venues that were previously
celebrated as part of narratives about Liverpool’s music heritage were not
immune to regeneration. The Nation nightclub that had housed the inter-
nationally successful dance music club Cream was closed in 2015 to make
way for the redevelopment of the Wolstenholme Square area of the city
centre. Furthermore, it is important to note that the original Cavern club
had been allowed to be demolished in 1973 before being rebuilt in 1984.
Such examples illustrate the contradictions between heritage narratives
about Liverpool and the pressures of regeneration within the city. Hughes’
concerns as a metal music promoter about the vulnerability of venues he
had worked with was predicated on the knowledge that far more
12 N. HASSAN
legendary venues had still not been spared from such pressures. In Chap.
3 these issues will be examined more closely. For now, however, it is
important to note how Hughes’ experiences as a key intermediary on the
Liverpool metal scene (his promotions company had just celebrated its
tenth anniversary at the time of writing) were also shaped by his broader
sense of the city’s music heritage. Despite the difficulties with empirically
identifying the connections between music and place, notions of Liverpool
and its musical legacy still loomed large.
Liverpool in Metal
The above-mentioned characterization of the city of Liverpool in terms of
hardship is also interesting to consider in connection to some artists’ lyri-
cal content. Certain metal bands from Merseyside draw upon themes of
urban deprivation that explicitly refer to people, events and parts of
Liverpool and its surrounding area. For instance, Joe Mortimer, bassist for
the former brutal death metal band Neuroma, has described how their
“lyrical themes are a satirical, social commentary” influenced by growing
up in parts of Liverpool (Mortimer 2015). He went on to state that:
We are all from relatively working-class backgrounds and have all grown up
hanging out at Quiggins and just hanging out as mates and skateboarding
and doing stupid stuff, replicating Jackass and all that when we were teenag-
ers. We have all had relatively Liverpool-esque up-bringing styles with fami-
lies and that. Neuroma has started writing songs about stuff we see, but
almost Dire Straits in a way. Dire Straits always writes about what they see
and actually write a story about what they see, we do the same thing […] We
had a sense of humour, which I think is very unique to Liverpool. That cer-
tainly bled into our themes, the front cover of Northern Discomfort was like
an alleyway with somebody being stabbed and […] robbing stuff from them
and it was called Northern Discomfort, as opposed to Southern Comfort like
the drink. It was down an alleyway, it was all grotty and stuff like that.
Liverpool definitely bled into us; musically I wouldn’t say so but lyrically
and thematically, certainly. We have a story about “Purple Aki”, who is a
famous person from the Merseyside area, which in the early days became our
anthem for want of a better phrase, but we wrote about stuff which we see
and heard and knew about and joked about ourselves. (Mortimer 2015)2
2
“Purple Aki” is the nickname given to Akinwale Arobieke, a man who has become some-
thing of an urban legend in Liverpool due to the fact that he had completed several jail sen-
tences for harassing young men and “touching their muscles” (BBC News online April 2009).
Despite frontman Jeff Walker’s indication that his song-writing was not
directly influenced by his surroundings, one of the most striking allusions
to deprivation within Liverpool comes within a song by death metal band
Carcass. Their track “Child’s Play” from the 1995 album Swan Song re-
imagines the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever”, which has been consid-
ered as a song that evokes idyllic images from John Lennon’s childhood.
In place of the literary allusions and references to children’s literature that
are throughout the Beatles’ song, “Child’s Play” promises to take the lis-
tener “down”, not to the “Strawberry Fields” of John Lennon’s middle-
class childhood in Liverpool, but to an urban Liverpool that breeds
deprivation, decay and violence. Thus, in the Carcass song children are
raised amidst “corrosion” and nurtured within a “concrete crib”
(Carcass 1995).
In place of the nostalgic “pastoral sensibility” (Daniels 2006, 29) evi-
dent in “Strawberry Fields Forever”, “Child’s Play” alludes to the notion
that the urban settings of childhood in some parts of Liverpool in the
mid-1990s were characterized by hopelessness. As Walker confirmed in an
interview: “That’s possibly one of the only [Carcass] songs that really is
about Liverpool, to be honest. […] It’s about how shitty it was at the
time. I mean when I first started coming into Liverpool there were still
buildings in the city centre that had been bombed in the war or they were
derelict, y’ know. It’s just insane. If you look at Liverpool now it’s changed.
[In the past] It was like […] the docks before they did them up, it was just
derelict” (Walker 2018). Consequently, the Liverpool of this song is dis-
tinctly anti-pastoral and consistently emphasizes the role of urban condi-
tions in facilitating degeneration and degradation, as illustrated in
references to redevelopments lying “in ruins”, “squalor” and “derelic-
tion” (Carcass 1995).
As this Introduction has elucidated, the articulation of Liverpool with
heavy metal music can lay bare anxieties about urban change. It can also
foster critical reflections upon the “hidden” status of metal music within
the city’s heritage narratives as well as critical scrutiny of those narratives
in general. The chapters that follow build on and develop these themes.
Chapter 2 traces the historical development of hard rock and metal music
in Liverpool and Merseyside. Paying particular attention to the role of
music venues, it argues that for significant periods of the late twentieth
century such venues fostered emerging rock and metal scenes. It will also
demonstrate that these venues became important for enabling many
14 N. HASSAN
people involved with these scenes to feel safe and to develop a sense of
community and belonging.
In contrast with Chap. 2, Chap. 3 reveals how, especially since the turn
of the new millennium, there has been a more-or-less constant turnover of
music venues for rock and metal music within Liverpool. It argues that an
array of factors, including urban regeneration and gentrification, the loss
of key venues and gathering spaces, and the success of neighbouring
Manchester’s early investment in arenas, have precipitated a perception
that Liverpool’s metal scenes lack stability. Chapter 4 then focuses more
fully on the concept of a Liverpool metal scene or scenes. It critically scru-
tinizes peoples’ different perceptions of contemporary metal scenes in the
city and reveals that, despite often competing evaluations of such scenes,
the overall notion of the “scene” remains a powerful one that is often
conceived of in ideal terms.
Devotion to metal music was a significant part of the everyday lives of
several people interviewed for this book. Chapters 5 and 6 focus on the
ways in which promoters, musicians, DJs and fans had “scenic careers” in
that they balanced the demands of investment in metal scenes with the
demands of other areas of their daily lives (Kahn-Harris 2007, 60). Chapter
5 focuses especially on the work of promoters and demonstrates how
involvement with the cultural production of metal music events made
many demands on everyday personal relationships with families, friends
and partners. Such work will be revealed as involving types of “emotional
labour” in that the feelings connected with fandom, such as passion for
artists or sub-genres, became integral to working practice (Hochschild
2003, 7). Musicians, promoters and fans (sometimes individuals had iden-
tities as all three) often saw their labour as an extension of their fandom.
Yet, as with other areas of cultural production, working on something they
loved did not make the risks and demands involved with this labour any
less challenging (Sandoval 2018). As with much “creative labour” in neo-
liberal capitalist economies, the work that several of the people featured in
this book had undertaken for significant periods of their lives was charac-
terized by precariousness (McRobbie 2016; Baym 2018; Arditi 2020).
Financial losses, long, unsocial hours outside of a regular “day job” and
associated strains on personal relationships were commonplace. Equally as
commonplace was a strong sense of entrepreneurship, pride in a DIY atti-
tude and a sense of camaraderie and community. Chapter 6 illuminates
some of these points via a consideration of the ways in which those on the
Merseyside metal scene utilize a diversity of communications media. It
examines cultures of collaboration between musicians, promoters, fans

and a range of other intermediaries, as well as focuses on how the use of
social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter by these groups and
individuals is indicative of an increasingly entrepreneurial tendency
(Netherton 2017; Tessler and Flynn 2016).
Several chapters that follow, then, also take on McRobbie’s (often
unheeded) call to examine the “hidden economy” of subcultural produc-
tion (1993, 19). The latter part of this book in particular contributes to
existing research into cultural production and live music industries by
explicating how labour is experienced and how it involves a range of skills
and qualities. Teamwork, problem-solving, interpersonal skills and even
crisis management are often essential for this kind of work.
Approaching Metal on Merseyside: Reflections

on Methodology
To gain insight into the above-mentioned practices, this book makes

extensive use of ethnographic data. Discussing the use of ethnography by
anthropologists, Sara Cohen writes that: “The anthropologist aims to
learn the culture or subculture they are studying and come to interpret or
experience it in the same way that those involved in that culture do, that
is, to discover the way in which their social world or reality is constructed,
and how particular events acquire meaning for them in particular situa-
tions” (Cohen 1993, 124). Thus, ethnographers generally aim to achieve
what might be simplistically termed an insider’s perspective. Through
methods such as participant observation and in-depth ethnographic inter-
views, ethnographers aim to become intimately familiar with their field.
Between 2015 and 2021, this is the methodological approach that I
utilized. I drew on contacts with existing participants who were already
known to me and through these key informants I was then able to engage
in “snowball sampling”, whereby they introduced me to other potential
interviewees (Hansen and Machin 2019, 211). The research for this book
sought to be people-centred, in that it located scene members as impor-
tant “sites of knowledge” (Maxwell 2002, 111). Thus, the ethnographic
interviews that form the primary foundation of this account pay explicit
attention to discourse within the Merseyside metal scene. In other words,
I attempted to scrutinize the ways people socially demonstrate their
knowledge of the Liverpool and Merseyside metal scenes and how they
16 N. HASSAN
conceptualize that scene (or indeed scenes). I also attended 35 metal con-
certs and festivals in the Merseyside area during this period, most of which
took place in Liverpool city centre. At these events I conducted participant
observation, which in this context means that I engaged in similar prac-
tices to other metal fans in order to try and become “actively involved in
the scene” (Riches et al. 2013, 92). While not attempting to replicate
what Riches et al. call “moshography” and fully immerse myself within the
moshpit culture at these gigs, I was nonetheless engaging in other com-
mon forms of fan practice such as “headbanging” in time to the music
(2013, 91). I also chatted with other fans, bought merchandise from the
bands and talked to them in the process, as well as getting to know the
promoters of the events. This fieldwork also involved the collection of
relevant scenic niche media, such as flyers advertising events, and follow-
ing bands and promoters across social media platforms.
Furthermore, sections of this book are based on a more autoethno-
graphic approach. This was necessitated by the fact that during the process
of research for this book I became increasingly close to the field of study.
Specifically, the Chief Editor of a Merseyside-based webzine, Getintothis,
asked if I would be interested in writing a regular monthly column on
metal music. This voluntary role involved writing about metal music in a
journalistic style that fits the parameters of website writing. The monthly
column focused on a range of topics—from the importance of the
Bloodstock Open Air festival for nurturing new artists, to the representa-
tion of gender in brutal death metal. Additionally, the format that I was
asked to follow required short reviews of new albums and updates on
events happening both locally in Merseyside but also on a national and
international level. While a regular columnist for the webzine (March
2018 to June 2020), I wrote several gig previews, feature articles, reviews
and news items.
Initially, my motivation for accepting a role as a writer for the webzine
connected with a desire to maintain and develop contacts within the
Merseyside metal scene. Given that I was making connections with metal
musicians, many of whom were balancing day jobs or studies with their
commitments to bands; it seemed that if I could present myself as both a
metal journalist and academic then that would be more appealing to them.
Thus, in return for their time spent during interviews, I could also write
about their music for the webzine. Indeed, during some research inter-
views it was necessary to switch between different personae. I would state
that I was “putting my journalistic head on now” before asking questions
that were more in line with what the webzine were interested in such as
the details of forthcoming events and albums.
Additional motivation for continuing the writing for the webzine
stemmed from the fact that it compelled me to maintain regular fieldwork.
Even during busy periods on the academic calendar when my job as a
Senior Lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University required a substan-
tial amount of teaching, marking and administration, the fact that I had a
monthly column to write forced me to find time to think about the
Merseyside metal scene. Furthermore, having committed to reviewing
specific gigs, the imperatives of review deadlines compelled me to reflect
upon my experiences at such gigs in a timely manner.
However, as my commitments to the role of writer and columnist for
the webzine grew, my experiences prompted me to reflect further upon
my approach to ethnographic fieldwork and my status as a researcher. In
particular, these reflections focused on two aspects—my fandom and my
evolving role as an “insider” within the Merseyside metal scene.
Despite having been a fan of hard rock and metal music for over 30
years when I embarked on ethnographic research within the Merseyside
metal scene, I had no strong affiliation to that scene. Aside from attending
a few high-profile rock and metal gigs in Liverpool city centre and occa-
sionally going for a drink in the well-known rock/biker pub, The Swan
Inn, I knew little about Merseyside-based musicians and any scenes that
they were connected to. However, this began to change once I started to
immerse myself in the scene through participant observation at events like
small gigs featuring local bands or events organized by locally based
promoters.
Kirsten Hastrup usefully describes the kind of activity involved with
participant observation as a process of becoming. She writes, “The kind of
participation needed to identify events and write real cultures cannot be
glossed as mere ‘being’ in the field. It implies a process of ‘becoming”
(Hastrup 1995, 19). Hastrup goes on to write that “One is not com-
pletely absorbed in the other world, but one is also no longer the same.
The change often is so fundamental that it is difficult to see how the field-
worker has any identity with her former self” (Hastrup 1995, 19). Dwelling
in different music venues, interacting with scene members either in person
or on social media had a profound impact on my sense of identity, both as
a researcher and as a metal music fan. My participation in the field precipi-
tated a process of becoming and my sense of identity shifted in several ways.
18 N. HASSAN
Firstly, given the changes with live music venues that will be outlined in
the chapters that follow and the challenges that promoters face when
organizing gigs, as I frequented more concerts I began to feel a sense of
loyalty to the scene. Therefore, I began to feel guilty if I could not go to
certain events due to other work or family commitments. Moreover, as I
began to write more for the webzine my affective attachment and a feeling
that I was advocating for the Merseyside metal scene increased. This was
because my writing about forthcoming events and news about bands was
being read and shared among different groups and communities on
social media.
Secondly, while my initial intentions were to use the writing for the
webzine as a means of enhancing my research, it soon became apparent
that this journalistic writing was a source of personal pleasure. The free-
dom to write in a non-academic style for the entertainment of others was
rather liberating. In a similar way to Catherine M. Roach’s (2014)
approach to participant observation in popular romance studies, I began
to embrace the production of this writing on its own terms. I had shifted
from primarily being a participant-observer of the metal scene, to some-
body involved in its active construction and I became invested in this role.
Finally, this increased affective investment was coupled with a greater
awareness of my own fandom. I was writing for other fans about how it
felt at gigs or how news of forthcoming events made me feel. At the same
time, I was making time to listen to more music by metal artists than I had
previously done, including music by local artists. Consequently, I devel-
oped a stronger appreciation for that music and this fed into my enthusi-
asm for the overall genre and for the Merseyside scene.
Although she uses the term to refer to the writing of romance fiction,
in many senses I was becoming what Roach terms the “aca-fan-writer”
(Roach 2014, 39, emphasis in original). She uses this “triple hybrid term”
in order to “capture the multiplicity of identity” that this position entails
(Roach 2014, 39). I was simultaneously occupying the position of an aca-
demic studying the Merseyside scene; a fan who was listening to the music
on a regular basis; and an “inside practitioner” writing about the scene
from a journalistic perspective and keeping others informed about it
(Roach 2014, 39).
The importance of reflecting on the types of role an ethnographic
researcher adopts during participant observation and the merits of writing
in a manner that acknowledges the researcher’s personal experiences have
been well documented (see for instance, Burgess 1984; Clifford 1986;
Van Maanen 1995). Yet, despite the risks involved with adopting the
“insider emic perspective of emotional and subjective investment in the
culture” in too full a manner, Roach makes clear that the aca-fan can
engage in what she terms “observant participation” (Roach 2014, 40,
emphasis in original). This concept is used to signify the shift that takes
place when the researcher as an “outsider” comes to “participate more
deeply and more fully as insiders and then reflexively observe themselves
as participants, as well as their own process of observation, along with the
native cultural participants” (Roach 2014, 41).
The value of this approach is that this fuller participation provides the
researcher with stronger insights into the affective dimensions of the cul-
tures under scrutiny—it facilitates an understanding of how it feels to be
involved with the types of labour involved with making metal music on
Merseyside. This is something that the anthropologist Victor Turner
advocated in his work on performance ethnography. Turner has argued
that the processes involved with ethnographic research on cultural prac-
tices are often predominantly cognitive—that is, they involve mental pro-
cesses of perceiving and reasoning on the part of the ethnographer. Such
ethnographies may then prioritize what research subjects think about cer-
tain activities, and so on, rather than what they feel or experience. However,
as Turner asserts: “feeling and will, as well as thought, constitute the
structures of culture” (Turner 1987, 139–140). Consequently, during his
teaching on the anthropology of performance Turner (1987) encouraged
students to enact the actions and interactions they had described in their
ethnographic field notes. This, he proposed, would help to expose the
gaps in field notes and monographs because social actions may feel differ-
ent to how they are thought about, observed and described. Thus, as my
research on the Merseyside metal scene was informed by my perspective as
an “aca-fan-writer” actively mediating aspects of the scene, it facilitated an
appreciation of the affective elements involved with producing this
music scene.
Ultimately, however, the pages that follow are heavily reliant on oral
testimony. Scene members’ accounts of their experiences are vital if we are
to move beyond dominant discourses and appreciate histories and prac-
tices that have been largely hidden. From the travails of promoters balanc-
ing the preparation for extreme metal gigs with the demands of their
family lives, to musicians drawing on social media to publicize their music,
20 N. HASSAN
this book explores the minutiae of scenic activity. The examination of this
activity also lays bare several contradictions at the heart of one of the
world’s most mythologized music cities.
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CHAPTER 2
From Troggs to Headbangers: The Historical

Development of Metal on Merseyside
The very first concert I saw was Iron Maiden on the Killers tour
with Paul DiAnno that was at the Liverpool Royal Court Theatre,
which, I have no idea what that venue is like now, but at the time it
was brilliant. It was tatty, but it had such a vibe. The main thing I
remember is the smell of the place actually, it was really unique, it
was kind of this mixture of patchouli oil, stale beer and vomit.
—Bill Steer from Carcass (2018)
Recollections of concerts, such the one above from Bill Steer, can power-
fully evoke how heavy rock and metal music events were experienced
within Liverpool at certain points in time. As historical testimony, these
recollections also serve to reveal what have been until recently partially
hidden histories. For example, the work of Sarah O’Hara (2022 forthcom-
ing, 3) for the Liverpool Royal Court trust to bring to light information
about what she calls the Royal Court theatre’s “music years” is hugely
reliant upon the personal recollections and memorabilia of gig-goers dur-
ing the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. These serve to fill in the gaps in
what she admits is still a highly incomplete picture. However, as both this
chapter and the one that follows will indicate, peoples’ accounts of gigs
can also unveil important information about the material conditions in
which concerts were experienced at a given time. Such accounts can also
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 23

Switzerland AG 2021
N. Hassan, Metal on Merseyside, Palgrave Studies in the History of
Subcultures and Popular Music,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77681-7_2
24 N. HASSAN
alert us to what Behr et al. refer to as the “complexities of relationships

across time”, as well as help to raise our awareness of peoples’ relationships
with buildings (Behr et al. 2016, 20).
As we will see, cultural practices at heavy rock and metal concerts and
their venues in Merseyside are shaped by the constraints of infrastructure
and prejudice, but they are also influenced by the legacy of the past. This
does not just refer to the dominant historical narratives that have inflected
scene members’ understandings of Liverpool’s relationship with metal
that were explored in the Introduction. Rather, of more significance here
are the histories of the material circumstances that afford concerts and
music making: the availability and types of venues; the presence of people
willing and able to make events happen at given moments in time; circuits
of live performance that were understood as able to foster scenes. Historical
changes effecting the environment for live music (including broader fac-
tors that have little directly to do with live music industries in Liverpool)
will be later revealed as having continuing repercussions for contemporary
hard rock and metal music scenes.
This chapter, then, is informed by a sensitivity to an ecological perspec-
tive on live music. In other words, it is influenced by scholarly work from
the likes of Behr et al. (2016) and Webster et al. (2018), which pays atten-
tion to how the sustainability of live music cultures in a particular place is
contingent upon a range of relationships, including those between physi-
cal spaces, key individuals, the stakeholders using such spaces, wider social
networks and external constraints. The importance of examining the con-
temporary shifting live music environment in Liverpool and Merseyside is
underlined more forcefully in the next chapter. However, the concern of
this chapter is to presage a fuller consideration of these issues by examin-
ing the ways in which historical changes have played a role in its
development.
The consideration of historical circumstances and moments that follow
will also serve to further make problematic the characterizations of a so-
called Liverpool sound that were based on dominant historical narratives
about the city region’s music. These heritage narratives we saw in the first
chapter had largely worked to exclude a consideration of Liverpool as a
city that has also featured hard rock and metal scenes as well as what
Roberts and Cohen term the “usual suspects” (2014, 256). Romantic
characterizations of the “sound” of the city persist within popular histories
of Liverpool’s music. For instance, within Du Noyer’s essay on “Liverpool’s
Radical Music”, familiar artists such as the Beatles, Deaf School, Echo and
2 FROM TROGGS TO HEADBANGERS: THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT… 25
the Bunnymen and (albeit briefly) even non-white acts such as the Real
Thing all play supporting roles in a narrative which contends that gener-
ally: “Liverpool’s popular music is most of all melodic [and] […] tends to
dreaminess more often than to anger” (2011, 97). Such celebratory writ-
ing, which also makes use of “riverine” (Cohen 2007, 58) metaphors to
articulate a sense of Liverpool’s exceptionalism—Liverpool’s radical musi-
cians for Du Noyer are compared to the River Mersey in that they “reflect
the heavens while they churn the dirt below” (2011, 97)—is powerful and
evocative. It is perhaps best understood as indicative of a kind of post-2008
“structure of feeling” (Williams 1961, 63); Du Noyer’s way of under-
standing Liverpool’s music after its year as European Capital of Culture
can be read now as a poignant synthesis of how people were almost “bask-
ing” in the afterglow of new narratives about their city’s fortunes in
this period.
Yet, while these accounts provide important contrasts to the way that
Liverpool was demonized by British media during the 1980s and 1990s,
as historiography they can be unhelpful. Leaving aside criticisms from the
likes of Brocken (2010) about the way that its year as Capital of Culture
did little to erode the city’s social inequalities, such historical documents
present too homogeneous a picture of Liverpool’s music. They underplay
the value of carefully attending to what Stuart Hall calls “chains of causa-
tion and conditions of existence” and “questions of periodization and
conjuncture” (Hall 2006, 23). Furthermore, they obscure the fact that
even apparent moments of conjuncture have “no simple unity” and can be
the result of contradictory forces (Hall 2006, 3). For instance, as will be
expanded upon in the next chapter, the “regenerative” measures adopted
in preparation for Capital of Culture 2008 ironically involved the limiting
of Liverpool’s so-called alternative cultures (including metal music cul-
ture) (Jones and Wilks-Heeg 2004). Thus, as we saw in Chap. 1, while
one dominant version of Liverpool music culture was being revitalized,
others were being confined to the margins.
The main purpose of the sections that follow is to provide a historical
account of the development of heavy rock and metal music scenes on
Merseyside, paying particular attention to the role of live music venues.
Consulting existing historiography, journalistic writing and oral testimony,
these sections constitute a modest attempt to enrich historical knowledge
in this area. The largely diachronic perspective adopted facilitates an
attempt to establish some historical context for the significant changes to
the live music circuit for heavy rock and metal music that will be
26 N. HASSAN
considered in the next chapter. As Sewell Jr. suggests, a diachronic

approach sees “history as transformation” in that it focuses on “changes
over time” (1997, 41). However, while an emphasis on change is neces-
sary when considering aspects such as the establishment of major venues
for live rock and metal music, such diachronic elements cannot be sepa-
rated from synchronic ones. In other words, when assessing the historical
conditions that afforded the emergence and development of metal music
events, it is instructive to consider the significance of particular moments,
not just their antecedents.
Taking inspiration from Carter’s synchronic approach to the history of
dance music in early twentieth century London, this chapter examines
events across time “in order to see the connections which comprise our
knowledge of a particular culture in a particular period” (Carter 2005,
36). This is because, as will be seen shortly, specific venues and periods of
time have been constructed as crucial for the formation and sustenance of
rock and metal music scenes and communities. Consequently, they war-
rant closer inspection within the narrative that follows.
However, at this juncture it is pertinent to point out the limitations
with this historical narrative. As numerous writers have established, all
historiography is inevitably partial and incomplete (Dale 2018; Negus
1996; Jenkins 1991). It is also necessary to acknowledge that the identifi-
cation of specific periods in the passages below is a device for analysis.
Their inclusion should not imply that the “history” of hard rock and metal
in Merseyside is, as Foucault puts it, “a closed development” (1984, 87).
On the contrary, as this is a subject that has been somewhat neglected in
existing historical accounts, it is anticipated that there will be future revi-
sions that will enhance our understanding of these periods, places, music-
related practices and the individuals involved.1 Furthermore, although this
chapter (and the one that follows it) examines connections between public
venues for live (and recorded) music and metal and heavy rock scenes, that
is not to imply that scene-related activity is only confined to such places.
Indeed, several interviewees indicated that their first experiences of
befriending other rock fans were in secondary school. Activity such as
1
Indeed, it should be stressed that this chapter is not an attempt to provide a “complete”
historical account. There were several city centre venues from the 1970s and 1980s that were
not able to be covered here, including Nightriders (which became Freewheelers) and the
Warehouse, which hosted rock and metal artists. Furthermore, venues outside of the city
such as Bootle Fire Station also hosted rock and metal acts during the 1980s.
borrowing records from friends, which can take place as much in domestic
spaces as in public ones, remains an under-researched aspect of music cul-
tures. Thus, the sections below constitute a historical narrative that
emphasizes the role of public venues at the expense of other more pri-
vate spaces.
Early Years: 1969–1976
Liverpool and the Emergence of Heavy Rock: A Minority Interest?

The nascent heavy rock scene in the UK emerged via British Rhythm &
Blues (R&B) performers who had become fascinated with the electric gui-
tar styles of US blues performers (Walser 1993). Jeff Beck Group, The
Yardbirds, The Animals and the Rolling Stones were by the mid-1960s
paying homage to American blues and rock ‘n’ roll songs but incorporat-
ing a more guitar dominated and electrified style. This style was popular-
ized through songs that featured central guitar hooks or riffs, which were
thematic guitar phrases that were prominent throughout the songs.
However, this emerging rock aesthetic was largely being constructed by
London-based acts. In Liverpool, Du Noyer (2004) suggests that there
were not any bands contributing to this national scene because there was
a lack of serious interest in the blues guitar styles favoured by Eric Clapton
and others. Although it should be noted that he provides little evidence to
substantiate his comment, Du Noyer also suggests that: “The Liverpool
guitarists favoured rhythm and picking (learned from Eddie Cochran and
Chet Atkins respectively) over the blues styles studied down South”
(2004, 98).
Yet, although they did not have much impact outside of the city,
Brocken (2010) notes that there were post-Beatles R&B acts that were
more blues oriented. These included the Cordes and the Hideaways. Also,
while they were contemporaries of the Beatles, the Roadrunners were
blues enthusiasts and they were “popular with the art school and univer-
sity student audience” during the mid-1960s (Brocken 2010, 27).
However, echoing Du Noyer (2004), Les Johnson of another Liverpool
R&B group of this era recalled in an interview with Brocken that the “the
blues never really made it in Liverpool as it did elsewhere” (Johnson cited
in Brocken 2010, 27). This was attributed by Johnson to class issues; it
seemed that the emerging electrified, blues-based sound that was to
become heavy rock was perceived by some in Liverpool as too middle class.
28 N. HASSAN
By the late 1960s, the Liverpool club scene largely catered for this
interest in pop music and, as Brocken (2010) contends, the dominant
sound shaping club goers’ expectations of what soul music should sound
like was that of Motown. This conformity to certain pop sounds within
the area facilitated the development of taste cultures that were, as Brocken
puts it: “highly demarcated, even somewhat conventional, with distinct
controlling principles of sound, dress, behaviour, length of hair and musi-
cal tastes” (2010, 32). Growing up in the 1960s, Brocken gained a sense
of these dominant taste cultures first-hand and during an interview he
characterized the city as follows: “Liverpool is a very conservative city,
musically, in the 1960s if you didn’t like Motown, you were regarded as a
dickhead” (Brocken 2019).
This socio-cultural context proved problematic for young people in
Merseyside interested in rock music as it necessitated defining their musi-
cal tastes in opposition to a perceived set of norms. Various oral and writ-
ten accounts, including those from band members I have interviewed and
Brocken’s interviewees, provide testimony indicating that an interest in
rock music during the late 1960s and early 1970s had to be managed with
care. Consequently, the next section considers how early rock scene mem-
bers managed this somewhat challenging context. As part of this, it is
pertinent to examine the role of subcultural conflict within this crucial
period in the formation of what began to be referred to at this time as a
“heavy” rock scene within Liverpool.
Heavy Rock and Subcultural Tensions

Accounts of the formative heavy rock scene in Liverpool during the late
1960s and early 1970s provide us with interesting discussions of subcul-
tural tensions. Less high profile than their London equivalents, mods in
Liverpool were by this period frequenting the Mardi Gras Club, the Top
Rank and the Cavern Club and listening to Motown’s version of soul.
Recounting his experiences during this period, a previous Mardi Gras reg-
ular, Jack Smith, recalled to author Phil Thompson that in 1969 he wanted
to get away from the Mardi Gras soul scene as it had become “rather
‘thuggish’” (cited in Adams, 2003, 22). He, therefore, obtained a mem-
bership to the Cavern Club and ventured inside. He described the situa-
tion he was faced with in the Cavern as follows:
As I walked into the club I was distraught when I saw that the place was full
of Mods—the very people that had driven me out of the Mardi Gras!
However, it was soon pointed out to me that the place to be was across the
floor and down the stairs that led to the basement. Across the floor I stum-
bled, to glares from the Mods and descended into a Bohemian basement of
wonderful strangeness. The D.J., Billy Butler was playing the terrific sounds
of the Doors, the Stones, Procol Harem and the Velvet Underground.
There were also incredibly sensual women and two live bands, from
London—no less! One look around and I was hooked. (Smith cited in
Adams 2003, 22)2
This type of evocative oral testimony illustrates Thompson’s (cited in

Adams, 2003) contention that by the late 1960s, even though the
Merseybeat years had only recently passed, the Cavern had a new audi-
ence. It had partly become an important venue for fostering the emerging
rock scene in Liverpool, but its accommodation of opposing subcultural
groups was fraught with tension.
Although the Cavern was only licensed for 400 people, former owner
Roy Adams indicated in his autobiography that, when he took over in
1969, they would regularly get 1600 people in. To accommodate this
demand Adams employed 12 doormen and “kept a row of chairs in the
entrance to sit girls on when they passed out” (Adams 2003, 7). However,
this crowded venue clearly housed two different subcultures with oppos-
ing tastes and values. Several accounts from this period indicate that there
were marked oppositions between the youths listening to pop music on
the upper floor and “the troggs—the longhaired brigade” who Adams
recalls “danced to heavy rock almost exclusively” in the Cavern’s base-
ment (Adams 2003, 7). As will be illustrated below, such oppositions had
the potential to culminate in violence.
Tensions between Motown-loving mods and young people interested
in album-oriented rock (AOR) in the late 1960s had, by the early 1970s,
been succeeded by altercations between skinheads and young people
interested in the first wave of heavy rock acts from the late 1960s. The
Cavern club was home to such conflicts. In an interview with Rolling Stone
magazine in 1972, the manager of the Cavern, Freda Adams, the sister of
owner Roy Adams, explained the cultural climate as follows:
2
Smith’s testimony may have been slightly confused because, as Brocken notes below, Billy
Butler was a DJ more associated with the upper floor of the Cavern club, rather than its
basement.
30 N. HASSAN
Upstairs is a discotheque for the older crowd, the skinhead type who like the
bluebeat and reggae. They’re a tougher crowd and do a lot of fighting, and
sometimes we have trouble between them and the younger, ‘heavy’ crowd
down here, kids we call troggs. They don’t mix, which is why we serve up
all our drinks in paper cups. Down here we always have live music, and the
kids seem to like this ‘heavy’ music these days. (cited in Adams 2003, 14)
Adams’ description of skinheads in this period coheres with Hebdige’s

(1979) account of the subculture. Tellingly, Hebdige notes that skinheads
evolved from “hard mods” who had turned away from R&B and acid rock
“to champion ska, rocksteady and reggae” (Hebdige 1979, 55). According
to Hebdige, skinheads were “Aggressively proletarian, puritanical and
chauvinist”, their style largely mimicked the working-class factory worker:
“cropped hair, braces, short, wide levi jeans or functional sta-prest trou-
sers, plain or striped button-down Ben Sherman shirts and highly polished
Doctor Marten boots” (Hebdige 1979, 55). While their “clean-cut, neatly
pressed delinquent look” owed as much to Jamaican rude boys as it did to
stereotypes of working-class hard masculinity (Hebdige 1979, 56), in the
summer of 1972 the skinheads’ affinity with certain black communities
did not prevent them from joining other white residents to attack second-
generation immigrants in the Toxteth area of Liverpool (Hebdige
1979, 59).
Thus, it becomes apparent that the Cavern was a venue that likely
endured a transition from mod to skinhead in its main upper floor dwell-
ing clientele. What these two subcultures had in common was a disdain for
the troggs or greasers frequenting the basement underneath them during
this period. For the mods in the city, this disdain may have been partly a
hangover from the mid-1960s clashes between mods and rockers. The
long-haired bohemian types described above not only liked the “wrong”
type of music, like motorbike riding rockers they were also a visual affront
to the mods’ penchant for sartorial neatness (Green 1999). The skinheads’
emphasis on a kind of proletarian tidiness, epitomized by the cropped
haircuts, also made them the visual antithesis of the long-haired heavy
rockers.
Brocken recalls how the situation was exacerbated by the antics of the
door staff at the Cavern who would exploit the tensions between the sub-
cultures for their own amusement:
One of the problems with the Cavern was, you would have a separate way in
by 1970; as I remember, [the Cavern] was a split-level club actually. You’d
go in and down the steps which is where the Beatles used to play and that
kind of thing, and that was our club, it was full of hippies, people with no
money, all that kind of thing. But upstairs usually Billy Butler would have a
Motown disco upstairs, which was great, we were separate from the skins
and the mods, but the doormen used to take great pleasure in letting us all
out at the same time. […] I think [door man] Paddy Delaney really enjoyed
trying to get us peace-loving hippies to come out at exactly the same time as
the lads upstairs. (Brocken 2019)
The risks involved with attending the Cavern led Brocken and others
attending basement gigs to ensure that they left a bit early (usually after
the final act had finished their set) so as not to encounter any skinheads on
their way out.
The skinheads’ hostility towards the types of youth dwelling in the
basement of the Cavern during the early 1970s was perhaps rooted in
perceptions of class difference. Gordon Logan and David Cooke, found-
ing members of Robespierre, a Merseyside-based New Wave of British
Heavy Metal act, were actively involved with the nascent heavy rock scene
during this period and they recalled that many within that scene were
middle class. Cooke explained in an interview that: “I always looked at the
majority of rock people, most of them probably were middle class, they
seriously were, or slightly above the Neanderthal which hated us” (Logan
and Cooke 2018). Given some of the skinheads’ efforts to assert a prole-
tarian hard masculinity, it is unsurprising that heavy rockers who were
perhaps perceived as more middle class became a target. This could on
occasion lead to brutal violence being dished out by gangs of skinheads.
For instance, Logan recalled how his cousin had received a savage beating
at the hands of skinheads:
My cousin got basically virtually beaten to death at one point in West Derby
by a skin head group. He was hospitalized […] We used to wear cut off
denim jackets and things. His hair was quite long at that point. We didn’t
have motorbikes, we used to go round on push bikes. The skinheads used to
call us the push bike greasers. He got virtually kicked to death, yes. It was
terrible, awful. (Logan and Cooke 2018)
Therefore, an appreciation of this socio-cultural context and of the vul-

nerability experienced by members of the emerging rock music scene in
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day. To begin with, they would lose the Laidlaw case and it was all, Sable
thought, due to that false start which Gage had made. He had rather
decisively taken the matter out of Gage’s hands towards the end but the
thing had been lost already—or he preferred to think so. Sable could bear to
lose cases but not a case which involved so much money. It frightened off
the right sort of clients.
When Gage was a cub lawyer, arguing cases with flaring energy in the
local courts, Sable had picked him out as a bright young man. He had kept
his eye on him and his progress, with sheer admiration for the practical
genius with which he picked up important clients and gained and held their
confidence. He edged in on politics after a little—and in Mr. Sable’s own
party. Then King and Sable had made a proposition to young Flandon—that
he join them, bringing his clients, of course, and coming in, not as an
ordinary apprentice lawyer but as the colleague of Mr. Sable. It was an
amazing offer to be made to so young a man. Gage accepted it. Two years
later King, rather elderly now and ready to retire, went to Congress and the
firm name changed from King and Sable to Sable and Flandon. Flandon
made good. He made important alliances for Mr. Sable, he played the
political end for Mr. King, he made money for himself.
These things were not to be passed lightly over and Mr. Sable had them
all docketed somewhere in his mind. He was fond of Gage too, in his own
restrained way. But Sable was fifty-eight. He had seen many a brilliant start
end in disaster, many a man with ability fail. He knew most of the signs of
failure in men. He knew further exactly what steps Gage should take to
achieve eminence. They were broad and fair before him. Instead it was
increasingly clear that Gage was not keeping his mind on his work—that he
was letting his nerves get the better of his judgment. For some reason or
other he was making a fool of himself. When a man made a fool of himself,
there were, in Sable’s experience, one of three things back of it—a woman,
liquor or speculation. He was watching Gage to see which of these things it
might be in his case.
All this talk which Flandon was always getting off about women now—
thought the senior partner—that was camouflage. He felt fairly convinced
that Gage must be playing the fool with some woman. Irregular and
disappointing, with a lovely, fine looking, distinguished wife like Mrs.
Flandon. Rotten streak in Flandon probably. Sable chose the woman
solution rather definitely. Gage drank when he could get it of course. And
he nearly always had a supply on hand. But he used his head about it pretty
well. It didn’t seem like liquor trouble. As for speculation—surely he
wouldn’t play the fool there. There was plenty of money coming to Gage,
and he always could get more.
It must be a woman. Probably Flandon was trying to keep it from his
wife and that was what was on his nerves. Some little—Sable characterized
Gage’s visionary lady impolitely. He thought on, his mind lighting, for no
apparent reason, on Freda. And there it stopped. Queer, Flandon’s bringing
that girl into the office. Bright enough but no experience. Unlike him too,
considering his usual impatience with inexpert assistance. He wondered—
So while the Brownley girls gossiped in ugly, furtive, rather lustful
conversations and Ted Smillie told his little discovery on occasion as being
an instance of what those “smooth touch-me-not girls were usually up to”—
while Mr. Sable, his mouth tight in repression and his eyes keen, watched
and noted Freda. Freda went on her serene way. She was serene and she was
happy. At times her happiness seemed to shut her completely off from every
one—even in her thoughts from her father. She never tired of exploring her
memory for the sound of Gregory’s voice, the touch of his hands, the
mystery of love. More and more as the days went by she hugged her secret
to herself. She could not have shared a vestige of it. Its exquisite privacy
was part of its quality. She had the vaguest notions of what might be
waiting her as Gregory’s wife. Certainly she might have a baby—normally
that probably would happen to her in the next nine months. Gregory was
poor. They’d have to work. And there might be hard things. She thought
once or twice that it might be an ugly sort of proposition if she did not have
the particular feeling she did for Gregory. But there it was. It wasn’t a
matter of the mind—nor of physiology either. She didn’t believe it was
physiology which made her deliciously faint and weak as she read
Gregory’s strange letters—letters so frequent, so irregular, so curiously
timed and written—on the back of a menu, on a scrap of envelope, on a
dozen sheets of hotel paper. Each message, beating, alive, forcing its
entrance. This was the love that according to Margaret was the undoing of
her sex. She knew she would go anywhere Gregory wanted her to go, to be
with him. That she knew her life with him would have its independence
completely in so far as her own love allowed it, did not make it less clear to
her that even if the independence had been less, if she had found him a man
of convention she would none the less—but would she?
She was immensely interested in possibly having a baby, and anxious to
know about it. She wanted to tell Gregory. She wrote him letters in which
she spent the deepest of her thought. She said things in her letters which
would have astounded her if she had read them over. But she never did read
them after she had written them. It would have seemed almost like cheating
to read them as if for criticism.
But to-day she had not had a letter from Gregory and several unpleasant
things broke in upon her absorbed happiness. She missed his letter which
she usually went home at noon to get. In the afternoon as she sat at her desk
working and trying to feel that she could fill up the time until she went
home that night to see if there was a letter, Bob and Allison Brownley came
in with another young girl. They were as resplendent as usual and Freda
judged that they were collecting for some fashionable charity, from their
intrusion with pencils and notebooks. She had seen women invade these
offices almost every day for some such reason but it was her first encounter
with Bob since that night on which she had left her house. To her horror she
found herself flushing, and hoping that Barbara would not notice her and
that thought enraged her so that she raised her head and looked full at the
girls coming towards Mr. Flandon’s office, evidently referred to her.
She expected some embarrassment in Barbara and instead met a glance
of insolence and surprise. She looked at Allie but Allie looked away and
left it to Barbara.
“Can I take your message?” asked Freda with a little hauteur.
“We prefer to see Mr. Flandon personally,” said Barbara, and went by. It
was in Freda’s mind to stop them but Barbara was swift. Freda could hear
Mr. Flandon’s voice greeting her and judged it was too late to do anything.
She sat down at her desk frowningly and was further surprised when the
door opened very shortly and the girls went out. They, especially Barbara,
had heads unpleasantly held, angrily tilted. The buzzer sounded for Freda.
She found her employer sitting at his desk looking as angry as his
departing guests.
“Sit down a moment, Miss Thorstad, will you?”
She did as he told her. It was evident that he had something important
and difficult to say. She watched him. He looked nervous, tired too, she
thought.
“That young lady made some unpleasant remarks about you and I asked
her to leave the office,” he said.
“Oh—I’m sorry,” answered Freda. “She’s been abominable, Mr.
Flandon. But it’s too bad you should have been involved.”
“Don’t let that bother you,” said Gage grimly; “it’s of no consequence.
But I wonder if you ought to let her be quite so broadcast in her remarks. It
could be stopped.”
“It doesn’t matter—truly it doesn’t. Let her say what she pleases. If any
one wants to know the truth of the matter I always can tell it, you see.”
“Would you think it infernal impudence if I asked you what the truth
was?”
She hesitated and then laughed a little.
“You know the funny thing is that I had almost completely forgotten the
whole business. It seemed important at the time but it was really trivial.
Except for the fact that it opened up other things to me. Of course I’ll tell
you, if you want to know.”
She did tell him in outline, stressing the fact of the misunderstanding all
around, on the whole, dealing rather gently with Barbara, now that anger
had gone out of her.
“I had made rather a fool of myself you see,” she finished.
He looked at her as if waiting for her to go on.
“That’s all.”
“I see. She—well—.” He let that pass. “Now ordinarily it is easy to say
that gossip and slander don’t make any difference to a high minded person.
I think you are high minded. I do feel however that she has made this
incident a basis for a kind of slander that is dangerous. Her accusations
against you are, from what I hear, absolutely libelous. It wouldn’t take ten
minutes to shut her mouth if I could talk to her. But I want you to fully
refute her specific attacks.”
“I know. I imagine she might say almost anything.”
“Well, then, you have never stayed at the Roadside Inn, have you?”
To his amazement the face of the girl in front of him changed. She had
been calm and half smiling. Now astonishment, consciousness, and
something like panic showed in her eyes, her suddenly taut body.
“Does she say that? How did she know?” There was a little moan of
dismay in Freda’s answer.
Gage’s face grew stern. He sat looking at the girl across from him,
whose eyes were closed as if in pain.
“To lay her hands on that,” said Freda, under her breath.
“I don’t understand you,” said Gage rather curtly.
She lifted her face.
“It hurts to have any one know that—but for her to know it most of all.”
“Such things are usually public knowledge sooner or later, my dear
young lady. Clandestine—”
“Don’t say that,” cried Freda, her voice rising, “don’t use that word.”
And then as if some gate had been opened her words poured out. “Can’t
you understand something being too beautiful to be anything except secret?
It was something I couldn’t have let even those who love me know about.
And to have her ugly devastating hands on it! It soils it. I feel her finger
marks all over me. It was mine and she’s stolen it.”
Her head went down on her arms on the desk in front of her. Gage
watched her with curiosity, embarrassment and pity. To his mind this love
affair was a shady business but she didn’t see it so. That was evident. Her
abandonment touched a chord of sympathy in him. He knew how she was
being rent by pain.
“My dear girl,” he told her, more gently, “I’m afraid you’ve been very
unwise.”
“No—not unwise.” She raised her head and smiled unsteadily. “I’ve
been quite wise. It’s just bad luck—that’s all.”
“Could you tell me about it?”
She got up and walked to the window, evidently trying to compose
herself. “It’s nothing that matters to any one but me. And I suppose you are
thinking things that, even if they don’t matter, had better be set straight. For
perhaps you think they matter. There’s nothing that I’ve done that I
shouldn’t have done. I was there at that Inn—with—with my husband. It
was just that we wanted—he even more than I at first until I learned why—
to keep that little bit of life for ourselves. We didn’t want people to know—
we didn’t want to share with any one except each other. I know you won’t
understand but there’s nothing to condemn except that we had our own way
of—caring.”
“But I do understand,” answered Gage, “and I’m glad you told me. I do
most entirely understand. Because I’ve felt that way. Is your husband here?”
“He’s gone,” said Freda, “but he’ll come back. You see I married
Gregory Macmillan.”
A memory of that slim, gaunt young poet came to Gage. Yes, this was
how he would do it. And how perfect they were—how beautiful it all was.
“Mr. Flandon,” said Freda, “let them say what they please about me. Let
them talk—they don’t know about Gregory—or do they?”
“No—they don’t.”
“Then don’t tell them, will you? Don’t tell any one. I don’t care what
they say now if they don’t lay their hands on the truth. I can’t bear to have
the truth in their mouths. Please—what do I care what any one says? I don’t
know any one. I never see those people. He will be back and we’ll go away
and they’ll forget me.”
She was very beautiful as she pleaded with him, eyes fresh from their
tears, her face full of resolution.
“It’s all right, my dear,” said Gage, “no one shall know. You are right.
Keep your memories to yourself. What they say doesn’t matter.”
He was standing by her at the window now, looking down at her with a
tenderness that was unmistakable. It was unfortunate that at that moment
Mr. Sable entered without notice.
II
There was an argument that night. Sable had forced it. He had said that
Gage had to “cut it out in his own office.”
Gage had asked him what he meant by cutting it out and his partner said
that he definitely meant getting that girl out of the office at once.
“And my advice to you is to keep away from her after she is out.”
The upshot was that Gage had refused. He had simply said that there was
no reason why he should turn out a useful employee simply because any
one disliked her or thought evilly of her. Miss Thorstad was extremely
useful to him and there was nothing further to say. At which Sable had
snorted in disdain.
But, seeing Gage’s stubbornness he had possibly guessed at what might
be the depth of it and grown milder.
“It’s a difficult business for me, Gage,” he said, “but I’ve got to go
through with it. She must leave the office. We can’t afford scandal.”
“Suppose I won’t discharge her?”
“I’m not supposing any such nonsense. You aren’t going to act that way
unless you’re crazy.”
“But if I did?”
Sable looked at him.
“It means a smash probably. Don’t let’s talk foolishness. You know
you’ve got too much tied up in this business to let it go. You couldn’t afford
to say you smashed up your business for a woman. That’s not the way
things are done. I can’t insist on your giving up the girl but I can ask you to
remove the scandal from an office in which not alone your name is
involved.”
“Such rotten minds,” thought Gage, almost without anger. He was
feeling curiously clear and light and deft. He had felt that way ever since he
had found how Freda felt. Something had been strengthened in his own
philosophy by her simple refusal to share her secret with every one. She put
other things higher than the opinion of gossip. So must he.
They let the thing ride for a few days. Gage thought of nothing else and
found himself dreaming a great deal when he should have been working,
according to Sable. He also found that Helen was becoming almost anti-
pathetic to him. She was to make the seconding speech for one of the
candidates at Chicago and was busy with its preparation. There were
conferences constantly, and she had allowed a picture of herself with her
children to be syndicated. Gage found it before him everywhere and it
enraged him. He felt it on his raw mind as an advertisement of the result of
their love, as a dragging into publicity of the last bond between them.
“I feel like the husband of a moving picture actress,” he told her,
viciously, one day.
She said what she had never meant to say. She was tired and full of
worrying and important matters. Gage and his brooding seemed childish
and morbid. And she had her own secret grievance.
“From what I hear of your escapades at the Roadside Inn you act like the
husband of one,” she retorted.
She had not meant to say that. But when the gossip about Freda had
reached her there had come an ugly coupling in her mind of that gossip and
Gage’s interest in the girl. During that very week-end Gage had been absent
from the city—on political business—he had said vaguely. Yet she had tried
to control her suspicions, convince herself that there was no cause for
investigation or accusation. This flare of hers was unexpected and
unguarded—dangerous too.
A shudder of misery shot through both of them at their own coarseness.
But they were launched. And it was clear to Gage that in some way or other
not only Sable but Helen had thought him involved with Freda. It did not
make him particularly angry. He rather courted the injustice of the suspicion
because it justified him in his own position. This was where this business of
Helen’s had landed them then. Alienated, loveless, suspicious—this was the
natural outcome of the whole thing. Minds running on sex all the time—that
was what happened to these women—yet without delicacy, without reserve.
So she thought he was like that, did she? She was thinking that sort of
viciousness while he’d been trying to protect her even from himself. What
was the use of it all?
“I don’t know what you hear of my escapades as you call them,” he
answered. “Possibly you might inform me?”
She was sick with shame at her own impulse but perhaps it had been at
the bottom of her mind corroding it more than she knew.
“I didn’t mean to say that, Gage.”
“You must have meant something.”
He was insistent, brutal. He would have the truth out of her. He wanted
the inside of her mind, to torture himself with it if he could. He wanted it
over with.
“Not to-night, Gage. I’m tired. Let’s talk over some of these things when
we are both fresh. I—I apologize.”
She moved towards the door of the living-room on her way upstairs. But
Gage caught her hand. He stood looking down at her and as she met his
eyes she saw that his face was almost strange. His eyes looked queer. They
were brutal, excited, strange glints. His mouth seemed to hang loose and
heavy.
“Not to-night, Gage,” she repeated. In her voice was a droop of
weariness that was unmistakable.
“Why not to-night? Because you want to save yourself fresh for your
public to-morrow? You don’t want to be bothered with a husband and his
annoyances?”
“Not to-night because you aren’t in the right mood.”
He still held her hand.
“But suppose I want to go into it to-night. There’ll be no better time.
Day after to-morrow my wife goes to the National Convention to dazzle the
American public. Suppose she sets her house in order first. Every good
politician does that, Helen.”
“There’s a devil in you, Gage, isn’t there?”
“A hundred, and every one bred by you. Tell me, what you were
referring to as my escapades? Tell me.”
He shook her a little. She felt a hairpin loosened and the indignity
suddenly made her furious.
“Let me go.”
“I will not let you go. I want you to tell me.”
“I’ll tell you,” she said bitterly, her words coming as if anger pushed
them out. “Heaven knows I’ve tried to conceal it even from myself. But
your viciousness shows you’ve got a rotten conscience. When you took that
Thorstad girl into your office I wondered why—and then after I told you
she’d been seen at that place with a man, your silly defence of her might
have told me what was the situation. You talk of her—all the time—all the
time. You were away that week-end. Where were you if you weren’t with
her?”
He let her go then. She had said it. It was said, as he had wanted it said.
He felt triumphant. And he would give her no satisfaction. He would hurt
her—and hurt her.
She went on in a tumbled burst of words.
“I don’t blame the girl, though she’s a little fool. But I won’t stand
having her let in for that sort of thing.”
“Why not?” asked Gage, lighting a cigarette. “Isn’t it a perfectly proper
thing for a modern woman to choose her lovers where she will?”
Helen felt herself grow dizzy, not at his question but at the admission it
made. She drew herself up and Gage wondered at her beauty with a hot
surge of desire even while he wanted to torture her more. It was such a
relief to have found a weapon.
“Come,” he went on, “we won’t discuss that young lady. There’s not a
thing in the world against her. If you have been bending your ear to the
ground and heard a lot of rotten gossip I’m not responsible. If the people
who talk about her had half her quality—”
“I warn you, Gage, you’re going to pieces,” interrupted Helen. “I can’t
stop you if you’re determined to ruin yourself. But you’ve acted like a
pettish child for months about the fact that I wanted to do some work you
didn’t approve of, apparently you’ve run off and got mixed up with this girl,
you’ve been drinking far too much—you had whisky before breakfast this
morning—it’s beginning to tell on you.”
“I miss you, Helen,” said Gage with a kind of sinister sarcasm.
She shivered.
“I’m going upstairs.”
“We’re not through.”
“Yes, we are.”
“Aren’t you going to divorce me—or would that hurt your career?”
“You’re not yourself, Gage,” said Helen. She had regained a loose hold
on herself. “I’d sooner not talk to you any more to-night.”
He flattened the end of his lighted cigarette and pulled the chain of the
table light.
“Then we’ll talk upstairs.”
“Not to-night.”
“Yes, we will, Helen. I’m lonely for you.” He came to where she stood.
“Come along, my dear.”
There was not a tone in his voice that Helen could recognize. A kind of
ugly caress—she shuddered.
He put his arm around her shoulders.
“Gage—you mustn’t touch me like this.”
He laughed at her.
“It’s quite the new way, as I understand it, my dear, isn’t it? Nature—
openness—no false modesties, no false sentiments. After all we are married
—or to be more modern, we’re openly living together. The pictures in the
paper prove it. There’s no use being silly. You’ve had your way a lot lately
—now how about mine?”
He pulled her close to him and pushing back her head sought her lips
roughly, as if he were dying of thirst and cared little what healthy or
unhealthy drink he had found.
III
“You know,” said Cele Nesbitt to Freda, “I think Mr. Flandon acts kind
of queer, don’t you?”
“He’s tired, probably,” she told Cele.
“Doesn’t look tired. He seems so excited. I thought he and old Sable
must be having a row. I went into Sable’s office with some papers to-day
and there they were glowering at each other and mum as oysters all the time
I was in the room. They don’t stop talking business when I’m around.”
“Well, don’t worry about them,” answered Freda, “Mr. Flandon is the
kindest person I know and there’s something wrong with people who can’t
agree with him.”
“Hate him, don’t you?” Cele teased her. “Isn’t it a pity he’s married. And
such a stunning wife and children. Did you see her picture on Sunday? She
ought to be in the movies instead of politics with that hair.”
Except for Margaret Freda saw only one other person at very close
range. That was Gage’s stenographer, Cecilla Nesbitt, commonly known as
Cele. Cele was a joyous soul who had taken a liking to Freda and shortly
invited her to come home for dinner. Freda had gone and been made happy
and intimate at once. There were all the traces of the cottage that the
Nesbitts had before they moved to St. Pierre—old rattan rocking chairs and
scroll topped beds. Over everything, invading everything was the Church.
There was a little holy water font inside the door, there were pictures and
holy cards framed and unframed everywhere, crucifixes over the beds, holy
pictures in the bureau frames and rosaries on the bed posts. To Freda in her
sparsely religious home, God had been a matter of church on Sunday and
not much more than that except a Bible for reference and a general
astronomical warder at the enormity of God’s achievements. This difference
—this delightful easy intimacy with God was all fascinating. This was the
comfort of religion, religion by your bedside and at your table. She
expanded under it. There was a plenitude of Nesbitts, sleeping rather thickly
in the four bedrooms—two brothers, young men of twenty or thereabouts—
there was Cele after them and then two younger girls of ten and thirteen and
stepping rapidly downward the twins of nine, Mrs. Nesbitt having finished
her family with a climax, especially as the twins were boys and made up for
being altar boys on Sunday by being far from holy on all other occasions.
Still their serving of Mass endowed them in the eyes of Mrs. Nesbitt with
peculiar virtues. She had a gently conciliatory Irish way towards her sons
rather different from her tone to her daughters. Freda contrasted it with
some amusement with the cold classicism of Margaret’s attitude. To Mrs.
Nesbitt they were obviously slightly inferior in the sight of God and man,
being female, to be cherished indeed, frail perhaps, and yet not made in the
exact image of the Creator.
They were headed for the Nesbitt flat. Freda had no letter from Gregory,
had had none for two days and her heart felt as if it were thickening and
sinking. She would not let it be so. She set to work to make herself
interested. She would not mope. It was not in her to mope. But she did not
know where Gregory was, for his last letter had said he was waiting advice
from the bureau—one of his talks having been cancelled—and that he
didn’t know where he would go now. It did not make her worried or
nervous but she had been drugging her emotions with his letters and the
sudden deprivation hurt her cruelly. So she was going home with Cele to
forget it.
They got on the street car and hung from their straps with the
nonchalance of working girls who have no hopes or wishes that men will
give up their seats to them, their attitude strangely different from that of
some of the women, obviously middle class housewives, who
commandeered seats with searching, disapproving, nagging eyes. Freda
loved this time of day—the sense of being with people all going to their
places of living, fraught with mystery and possibility. Her spirits rose. She
was not thinking sadly of Gregory. She thought of how her intimate thought
and knowledge of him reached out, over her unfamiliarity with these others,
touching him wherever he was, in some place unknown to her. The thought
put new vigor into her loneliness.
It was an oppressively hot evening for June. They climbed the three
flights to the Nesbitt flat with diminishing energy and Cele sank on one of
the living-room chairs in exhaustion as she went in.
“Hot as hell,” she breathed. “Let’s sit down a minute before we wash,
Freda.”
Freda took off her hat and brushed her hair back with her hand.
“Pretty hot all right. Bad weather for dispositions.”
“My idea of this kind of weather is that it’s preparation for the
hereafter.”
Mrs. Nesbitt opened the door to the kitchen and hot heavy smells from
the cooking food came through to the girls. But Mrs. Nesbitt herself,
mopping great hanging drops of sweat from her forehead, was serene
enough. She shook hands with Freda with vast smiling cordiality.
“You’re as cool looking as the dawn,” she said to her. “Are you tired,
dear?”
“Not a bit.”
“There’s a little droop to your eyes, dear. I thought maybe it was bad
news now.”
Freda had a sudden impulse to confidence, a leap of the mind towards it.
But she drew back.
“No—not bad news at all.”
“Your mother and father’s well?”
“My mother is coming to see me for a few days, I think. She’s going to
Chicago for the Convention for the clubs and she’ll come back this way to
see me.”
“Now, isn’t that the blessing for you,” said Mrs. Nesbitt rejoicingly.
The family streamed in, the boys from their work and the twins from
school. Last came Mr. Nesbitt, his tin lunch pail in his hand, his feet
dragging with weariness. They talked of the heat, all of them, making it
even more oppressive than it was by their inability to escape the thought of
it. And Mrs. Nesbitt who knew nothing of salads and iced tea, or such hot
weather reliefs stirred the flour for her gravy and set the steaming pot roast
before her husband. They ate heavily. Freda tried to keep her mind on what
she was doing. She talked to the boys and let Mrs. Nesbitt press more food
on her unwilling appetite. It was very unwilling. She did not want to eat.
She wanted to sit down and close her eyes and forget food and heat and
everything else—except Gregory.
Vaguely she was aware of Mr. Nesbitt talking.
“It was in the paper and no more stir made of it than if a stray dog was
run over by an automobile—shot down they were, martyrs to Ireland.” His
voice was oratorical, funereal, heavy with resentment.
“Who?” asked Freda.
“Fine young Irishmen with the grace of God in their hearts shot down by
the hired wastrels of the Tyrants. Gentlemen and patriots.”
“What an outrage it is,” she answered.
He burst into invective at her sympathy, rolling his mighty syllabled
words in denunciation, and his family sat around and listened in agreement
yet in amusement.
“Come now, pop, you’ll be going back, if you get as hot under your shirt
as all that,” said Mike.
“It’s too hot for excitement, pa,” Mrs. Nesbitt contributed equably. “Pass
him the mustard, do you, Cele.”
“I’ll show you a true account of it in The Irish News,” said Mr. Nesbitt,
to Freda, ignoring his family.
He wiped his mouth noisily and abandoned the table, coming back to
press into Freda’s hands his Irish News, a little out of fold with much
handling.
“The city papers tell you nothing but lies,” he said, “read this.”
To please him, Freda read. She read the account of the shooting of three
young men poets and patriots, whose names struck her as familiar. And then
she read:
“These young martyrs were part of the group who banded together for
restoration of the Gaelic tongue to Ireland. They with Seumas, McDermitt
and Gregory Macmillan now on tour in this country—”
She read it again. It gave her a sense of wonder to come on his name
here, his name so secretly dear, in this cold print. And then came more than
that. This was Gregory—her Gregory who might have been killed too if he
had been there—who might be killed when he returned to Ireland. She
didn’t know where he was. Perhaps—perhaps he had heard of this and gone
back. Perhaps he had forgotten, forgotten about her—about them. This was
so big—
She had to take her thought away from the presence of all these people.
She wanted to con it over—she must get away. Suddenly she stood up and
the heat and distaste for food—the accurate sight of a piece of brown
stringy meat, embedded in lifeless gravy, sickened her. She pressed her
hand before her eyes and swayed a little.
Mrs. Nesbitt jumped up with Cele.
“She’s sick—poor dear. The heat now has quite overcome her.”
They helped her into the least hot of the little bedrooms and she found
herself very sick—nauseated—chilled even while she was conscious of the
heat that oppressed while it did not warm her. The family was all astir. Mr.
Nesbitt underwent censure for having bothered her. But when Freda,
apologetic and recovered, went home on Mike’s arm, getting the first breath
of air which came as a relief to the hot city, Mrs. Nesbitt came into the
room where Cele hung half out of the window trying to catch the breeze.
“Sick she was, poor thing.”
“Rotten heat got her. She’s not used to working, either, I think. She felt a
lot better. Her stomach got upset too.”
Mrs. Nesbitt pressed her lips together.
“It was a funny way she was taken. If she was a married woman I should
have said the cause was not the heat.”
“Huh?” said Cele, pulling herself in. “What’s that you mean?”
“I mean nothing,” said Mrs. Nesbitt. “Nothing at all. Only I would have
you always be sure to make sure your friends are good girls, my darlin’.
Mind ye, I say nothing against the young lady. But she’s a pretty and
dangerous face and she’s away from her home where by rights should every
girl be.”
CHAPTER XV
THE CONVENTION
T HE Convention gathered. It was an event signal enough to make an

impress even on the great city. Convention Week was recognized by
every one, hotel men, shop keepers, railroad men, newspapers,
pickpockets, police, students in the great universities at the city’s gates, and
the great subordinate multitude which read the newspapers and accepted the
ruling of politics or commerce, as to which days should be held apart—
Labor Day, Mother’s Day, Convention Week.
The streets were hung with banners, great, swinging canvas pieces of
propaganda, bearing crude likenesses of candidates and still cruder
catchwords supposed to represent their opinions or those of their opinions
likely to excite popular pleasure. In the hotel lobbies men swarmed. Desk
clerks, sated with patronage, gave smiling and condescending negations to
those who applied for rooms. The girls at the cigar counters and newspaper
stands worked steadily, throwing back saucy rejoinders to the occasional
impudences of the men.
It was mostly a gathering of men, a smoky, hot, sweating collection of
men who had a certain kind of training in this game of conventions and
politics. They flung themselves into their parts, gossiping, joking,
occasionally forceful, immensely knowing. No one of them was there who
did not feel himself a commissioned prophet—perhaps not as to ultimate
but as to tendencies anyhow. They spoke the great names with a jesting
respect, the lesser ones with camaraderie or a fillip of scorn—but for any
suggestion of political idealists or of women they had a smile. They
admitted the fact that women had been put in the show but it wasn’t going
to change the show any. They knew.
Here and there in the hotels were groups of women, well dressed for the
most part, some of them handsome, all of them more alert, less careless
than the men—talking wisely too but with more imagination, with a kind of
excited doubt as to the outcome, and despite themselves showing a
delighted naïveté in their bearing towards the whole event. That was on the
first day before the heat had really lowered over the city.
Helen and Margaret had been well provided for. They had long before
engaged rooms in one of the most comfortable hotels where previous
patronage made Helen able to choose her accommodations. Gage who had
come after all, had no reservations anywhere and apparently no particular
worry about them. He could always get in somewhere and he had no
intention of staying at the same hotel with Helen and Margaret. He
breakfasted with them on the train and enjoyed it in spite of himself,
enjoyed being able to watch Helen and to bait Margaret with political
pessimism and a jocular scorn as to the effect of women on the Convention.
When they arrived he saw them to their hotel and left Helen to her “glory”
he said, a little mockingly.
“It’s hot,” he said. “Don’t try to make over the whole Party to-day, my
dear.”
“I won’t,” said Helen. Her eyes met his. For thirty-six hours every
glance, every gesture towards him had been unreal, mechanically
controlled. She was not apparently angry—nor cold. It was rather as if
when she spoke to him she had no feeling. Deep in himself, Gage was
frightened. He guessed the fact that anger is often a denial of loss of illusion
and that in Helen’s utter lack of response there was something deadly,
ominous. A glimmer of respect for her work came as he first saw her, the
morning after their catastrophic night, not moping or storming, but studying
notes for her seconding speech. But the glimmer faded. It was because she
really didn’t care. Shallow feelings, easy to suppress, he told himself. She
had probably told Margaret about the whole thing and Margaret had tipped
her off as to how to behave. That thought struck him and made him curdle
with anger again.
If it had not been for Helen there was no doubt that he would have
regarded the women with a kind of tolerance and with some speculation
regarding their usefulness. There was a chance that they might be useful.
But the intensity of his feelings, starting from his invaded love for his wife,
from that sense of exterior influences over which he had no control and
which he did not trust coming into the privacy of their relations, mauling
those delicacies by weighing, appraising emotions and loyalties, chipping
off a bit here and a bit there, bargaining, discussing, leaving a great imprint
of self-consciousness of the whole, had spoiled all that. Gage was confused.
He was in revolt against a hundred, a thousand things, and that he was not
quite sure of the justice of his revolt made it none the easier for him.
He was in the lobby of the Congress Hotel, turning away from the cigar
counter, alone for the minute, when he felt a touch on his arm and turned to
see Mrs. Thorstad. She was dressed in a neat dark suit and a tan sailor hat,
rimmed precisely with white daisies, looking very competent and attractive.
“How do you do, Mr. Flandon?” she asked.
He gazed down at her, smiling. She amused him and intrigued him.
When he watched Mrs. Thorstad he felt convinced that all his protest
against the progress of women was somehow justified. It was his quarrel
with Margaret and the foundation of his dislike of her that he could not get
the same feeling with her and had to build it up with anger.
“I hope you’re well,” he answered, as he shook hands with her.
“I want to thank you for all your kindness to Freda. You’ve given her a
great opportunity to find herself.”
Word slinging, thought Gage. What did she mean by “finding herself?”
“She’s a great addition to my office force.” He wondered what this little
person would say if she knew, as she so obviously did not, of the
tumultuous marriage of her daughter, of the ugly stream of gossip that was
pouring about her feet.
“I have the greatest respect for the woman in business,” went on Mrs.
Thorstad. “Of course I confess I had hoped that Freda would interest herself
in something possibly a little more humanitarian, something perhaps a little
more idealistic—oh, I don’t mean to decry the law, Mr. Flandon, but we
can’t help feeling that the business world lacks certain great ideals—”
Gage grinned, looking like a great humorous puppy.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to excuse me, if you will. I see a man
over there I must speak to.”
Mrs. Thorstad smiled in acquiescence, leaving her chair herself. She sent
a dutiful postal to Mr. Thorstad and went out on the Avenue in front of the
hotel. She had calls to make. The galling sense of the fact that her impress
on the Convention must be a slight one was undoubtedly under her gallant,
moral little smile. To be sure she had come to the Convention, she had a
seat reserved, she was, as she always would be, taking what she could get,
but if Margaret Duffield had not come West it might have been more.
None the less she called on Miss Duffield and Mrs. Flandon. She found
them at their hotel where congregated a brilliant circle. Harriet Thompson,
renowned from coast to coast as a leader of women, was there. She was a
rather plain woman of forty-five, lean faced with good brown eyes and a
rather disconcerting way of seeming to leap at you intimately to discover
what sort of person you were. And there were Grace Hawlett, the novelist,
and the wives and sisters of famous politicians. It was a gay, knowledgeable
group. Most of the women knew Margaret and were instantly attracted by
Helen’s beauty and charm of manner. Margaret introduced Mrs. Thorstad as
“one of the best woman organizers in the Middle West,” and they were all
cordial. Mrs. Thompson took the Mohawk leader aside for a little talk. It
was astonishing how much Mrs. Thompson knew about the situation in St.
Pierre—how she had her finger on the strength of the women and the
strength of the organization in the entire state. She put rapid questions to
Mrs. Thorstad and checked her a little abruptly in the middle of some
generalities.
“How did you all like Miss Duffield?” she asked.
“Very much indeed,” answered Mrs. Thorstad, with the slightest pursing
of lips. The keen brown eyes looked at her for a minute. It was not the
answer usually made to a question about Margaret Duffield.
Mrs. Thorstad departed to find her own kind. She knew she was not at
home in that particular group which while it awed her by its sparkle of mind
and personality, yet left her resentful, and she went on the round of her
further calls. She found women with petty lobbying to do, with little
reputations which they wished to secure, airing their platitudes and
generalities to each other in heavy agreement, talking of the new day and
denouncing the vagaries of modernity with a fervor that was half jealous,
half fearful.
Harriet Thompson looked at Margaret after Mrs. Thorstad had left them.
She always liked to look at Margaret. The serenity in her calm face, the
touch of austerity which kept it from becoming placid, pleased her. She
crossed to where she was sitting.
“What did you do to that little person, Margaret?”
“I? I didn’t do anything. She rather wanted to be delegate at large in
Helen’s place, I think. Don’t speak of it to Helen. I told Helen there was no
one else even willing to do it.”
“Your Mrs. Flandon is a lovely person.”
She wondered, as she said that, at the soft flush of enthusiasm which
came over Margaret’s face.
“Isn’t she? She’s just what you want, too. I hope she keeps interested.”
“Isn’t she very much interested?”
“Yes—but it’s not too easy for her. Her husband’s rather opposed—
makes it difficult.”
“Odd that a woman like that should be married to a reactionary.”
“He isn’t at all an ordinary reactionary,” said Margaret. “He’s a
politician, without any illusions. Hates all the publicity she gets. I think he
wants her to himself you see—most awfully in love.”
“He’ll never have her to himself if she gets into this game. She’s the sort
of woman, from the little I’ve seen of her that we need. Brains and
personality—not a wild woman or an old fashioned suffragist. Did she
reconcile the husband?”
“Not a bit. He’s here. You ought to meet him. But better carry a
weapon.”
“He might be rather interesting.”
“He is all of that.”
“After all, Margaret, it is rather hard on some of these men. I’ve seen it
before. They suddenly have so little of their wives to themselves. It affects
them like the income tax. They hate to give up so large a share of their
property.”
“To a government they distrust. That’s it with Gage. He doesn’t mind
Helen doing any amount of music. But he hates all kinds and forms of
modern feminism. Thinks it’s shameless and corrupting.”
“It is pretty shameless and sometimes a little corrupting. There’s a lot in
the man’s point of view that you never saw, Margaret. They’re fighting for
themselves of course but they’re fighting for the sex too. It’s all right, too.
Man is, I sometimes think, the natural preserver of sex. Women get along
very well without it, or with enough of it to decently populate the earth. But
men are the real sentimentalists. A woman’s ruthless when she begins to

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Metal on Merseyside : Music Scenes,

Community and Locality 1st Edition

More information about this series at

ISSN 2730-9517 ISSN 2730-9525 (electronic)

Cover illustration: getty images/Simone Bergamaschi/EyeEm

In order to truly understand something, you have to immerse yourself in

1 Introduction: In the Shadow of Beat City? Metal on

2 From Troggs to Headbangers: The Historical Development

3 Shaken Foundations? Venues and a Changing Live Music

4 “Support your Scene”: Metal Scenes, Solidarity and the

5 Promoting Metal on Merseyside135

6 Mediating Metal on Merseyside165

7 Conclusion: Standing in the Shadows of Beat City199

Fig. 1.1 Carcass in 2018. (Reproduced with the kind permission of

Introduction: In the Shadow of Beat City?

In December 2015 it was announced that Liverpool, a city in the north of

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Du Noyer goes as far as to claim that “Liverpool has never produced a

indicated, music became “increasingly economically important” to the

The impact of Liverpool’s adverse socio-economic conditions in the

any bearing on the music is a challenging task. Indeed, responding to the

Such testimony, therefore, serves as a reminder that drawing compari-

still resonates with many individuals when they are re-contextualizing

examines cultures of collaboration between musicians, promoters, fans

Approaching Metal on Merseyside: Reflections

To gain insight into the above-mentioned practices, this book makes

From Troggs to Headbangers: The Historical

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 23

alert us to what Behr et al. refer to as the “complexities of relationships

considered in the next chapter. As Sewell Jr. suggests, a diachronic

Early Years: 1969–1976

Liverpool and the Emergence of Heavy Rock: A Minority Interest?

Heavy Rock and Subcultural Tensions

This type of evocative oral testimony illustrates Thompson’s (cited in

Adams’ description of skinheads in this period coheres with Hebdige’s

Therefore, an appreciation of this socio-cultural context and of the vul-

T HE Convention gathered. It was an event signal enough to make an

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1 Introduction: In the Shadow of Beat City? Metal on

2 From Troggs to Headbangers: The Historical Development

3 Shaken Foundations? Venues and a Changing Live Music

4 “Support your Scene”: Metal Scenes, Solidarity and the

5 Promoting Metal on Merseyside135

6 Mediating Metal on Merseyside165

7 Conclusion: Standing in the Shadows of Beat City199