Page 189 - Cultural Studies Volume 11

REVIEWS 183

understood without looking at the conditions of production. No one should criticize
this book (or any other) for not providing the Theory of Everything. Running With
The Devil is text analysis backed up with historical data and an extremely rich
audience survey. It would be childish to demand that Walser also provide a fully
worked-out political economy of metal: this book already contributes more to
cultural studies than can reasonably be expected. But the problem with this gap is
that we are left with a Postmodern Romanticism, whereby (if you did not know
any better) you might assume that the conditions of production which made
possible the Berlioz Symphonie fantastique in 1830 were still in place when Dave
Davies cranked out ‘You Really Got Me’ in 1964. (‘It wasn’t called heavy metal
when I invented it’ was, if memory serves, Davies’s grandiose take on that moment,
despite claims that Jimmy Page had a hand in developing the sound of the Kinks.)
The Kinks song might well parallel some of the sentiments behind Berlioz’s efforts
to court Harriet Smithson (pop and high culture joined in desire), but formally and
at the point of reception, there are clearly some radical differences. That the
doctrine of aesthetic autonomy is incorrect (a point made by Adorno and by other
members of the Frankfurt School, who are soundly criticized here) does not relieve
us of the task of discovering how different moments of relative autonomy actually
operate.
Two lacunae can be identified here, if we take the view (as I do) that texts do
not result purely from a world of discourse. (Walser knows that, it’s just that his
book does not fully take account of this feature of cultural analysis.) The first
problem concerns the pressures and limits which contemporary capitalist culture
industries place upon musical production. It is now widely recognized that scholars
in cultural studies must return to some of the questions asked by political economy.
Adorno is blasted throughout this book for his reductionism, élitism and racism;
yet his famous analysis of the formal features of the pop song, while out of date
now, remains an important element in accounting for how classical music is
structured, as compared to pop. That some ‘progressive’ metal departs from the
form of the pop song is important, and can be explained, perhaps, if we turn from
aesthetics and think about the national-cultural origins of heavy metal.
This is the second issue I want to raise—why did metal turn out the way it did?
Reading Walser’s account, it is striking that so many of its creators are British.
Whether it is the proximity of a Western classical tradition, the influence of the
artschool trained musician or (as I suspect) the domestic media environment in
which British record companies once operated, the discourse of heavy metal as a
departure from mainstream pop forms (never more obvious than in the music of
Led Zeppelin) needs to be explained institutionally. Walser lists three albums
which ‘definitively codified’ heavy metal, in 1970: Led Zeppelin II, Deep Purple
In Rock and Black Sabbath’s Paranoid. It is no accident, in my view, that each of
these acts is British. (My other quibble about Led Zep’s place in this book is that
Walser’s focus on guitar—his other instrument—allows for insufficient attention
to rhythm in metal; this leads to a neglect of the essential role played by drummer