Mark Wilkinson’s artwork for the cover of Marillion’s 1983 album, “He Knows You Know.”
 
After leaving art school, Mark Wilkinson found a nine-to-five office job drawing illustrations used for heating and ventilation companies. Realizing this was not exactly what he had in mind for a career, he started freelancing for comic books and magazines catering to fantasy and science fiction fans. This was fine for a while and kept Wilkinson busy while he searched for gigs in the realm of album art. His first would be a concept he executed for an executive at RCA who envisioned the cover art for a 1982 heavy metal compilation called Hot Shower, featuring a Tron-like image of a guy in an asbestos suit and helmet wielding a Stratocaster spewing neon flames. Wilkinson’s next album cover would mark the beginning of a long relationship between the artist and English prog-rock band Marillion to the tune of nineteen of the band’s studio albums, as well as records for the group’s original vocalist Fish.

Wilkinson came by the job after overhearing a conversation about a company called Torchlight and their need for new artistic talent while at a pub in London. He then phoned Torchlight inquiring about work and was invited to come in and meet the art director, who told him the job was creating album artwork for Marillion. In an interview for a Bulgarian Iron Maiden fan site, Wilkinson would call this point in his still-young career as his “big break.” Another turn of good luck for Wilkinson was scoring the job of creating posters for the Monsters of Rock festival held at Castle Donnington. This would lead to requests for his master-airbrush services by mega-metal acts playing the festival, specifically Judas Priest, who the artist has also had a long relationship with. Others would follow, such as the Scorpions, Iron Maiden and Swedish band Europe.

His air-brush work, while most closely associated with the 80s, was inspired by the psychedelic 60s British graphic design duo of Michael English and Nigel Waymouth, known as Hapshash and the Coloured Coat. He also credits underground Zap Comix hero and psychedelic poster artist Rick Griffin with helping guide his artistic style. His work with Iron Maiden would begin after the band decided to give a little makeover to the most famous heavy metal mascot of all time, Eddie (created by Derek Riggs). Iron Maiden’s co-manager Rod Smallwood appreciated Wilkinson’s approach to his images of Eddie as he believed the artist clearly saw that Ed was much more than “just a skull.” His work with Maiden has appeared on various albums and other Maiden merchandise. Wilkinson would return to comics, creating incredible artwork for the Judge Dredd series on several occasions in the 1990s and beyond. In 2000, Wilkinson released the now hard-to-come-by book, Masque: The Graphic World of Mark Wilkinson, Fish and Marillion, a 180-page volume full of color images of his work. You can also purchase prints and more from Wilkinson on his official site.

Examples of Wilkinson’s work follow.
 

Marillion, ‘Misplaced Childhood’ (1985).
 

1984.
 
Many more after the jump…

Rob Loonhouse on stage with Iron Maiden at the Music Machine with his trusty homemade cardboard guitar.

“Oh no, I don’t bother with frets…It’s supposed to look like a guitar, but it’s not really supposed to look like a real guitar.”

—Rob Loonhouse on his handmade cardboard guitars in 1981

When Rob Loonhouse (born Robin Yeatman) started rubbing shoulders and banging heads with bands like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, he was gainfully employed as a wedding photographer. The photographer-by-day had a not-so-secret life which made him somewhat of a minor celebrity, or at least oddity. Loonhouse would frequent pubs and clubs in London including NWOBHM (New Wave of British Heavy Metal) haven, The Soundhouse, and its sister backroom club The Bandwagon, where he would bust out his best air guitar routine. His pioneering performances would eventually become like competitions featuring “homemade imitation guitars” made of cardboard (or “hardboard” as coined by Loonhouse). His claim-to-fame is backed up further by two UK journalists, Pippa Lang and author Garry Bushell in his 2010 book Hollies: True Stories of Britain’s Biggest Street Battles, where he also identifies Loonhouse as the originator of the “new circle of hell that is air-guitar playing.”

According to Loonhouse, the idea to make his cardboard guitars was the result of a throw-down which would decide who the “Headbanger of the Year” was. At the time, Loonhouse was still air-guitaring it when he was approached by another local who had made his own Gibson-style guitar, and wanted a chance to compete. Loonhouse knew he had to up his game and went home to make his first cardboard guitar, described as “very rough.” In Loonhouse’s own words, his guitars were only supposed to look “like” guitars, not actually look like “real” guitars, and if your head is spinning like mine, the faux guitarist went into a bit more detail regarding the evolution of his DIY cardboard guitar collection:

“I’ve got three at home right now, a (Flying) V, a twin-neck (Flying) V, and an inverted (Flying) V which I made especially, which is a bit of a flop really. In all, I’ve made about a half a dozen, getting progressively better all the time.”

 

Rob Loonhouse and former Iron Maiden vocalist Paul DiAnno.
 
Former Iron Maiden guitarist Dennis Stratton remembers Rob’s air-guitar competitions before he started making his cardboard axes and was widely photographed with the band during the early 80s, on stage with his trusty fake guitar in full headbanging mode. He was also featured on an episode of UK pop culture television show, 20th Century Box that, in part, attempted to define the NWOBHM as anti-woman with some help from comments by Loonhouse, such as:

“You find very few women down in the front actually headbanging. They are actually quite content to stand in the back and listen to the music.”

Later in his rather extensive interview, Loonhouse was asked another leading question by the BBC as to whether women make “good headbangers.” This time, Loonhouse lived up to his last name a little bit more with his puzzling answer—an analogy involving manual labor: 

“It’s difficult really, you know because many women just don’t have it in them, you know. There’s very few women digging holes in the road. Maybe that’s one of the reasons there’s very few women headbangers.”

Now before we tear into Loonhouse’s words of wisdom, which I’m sure got him laid all the time, it’s safe to say he is merely equating true heavy metal fans to tough, (mostly) manly roadmenders, or ditch-diggers. Of course, Lemmy Kilmister’s gal-pal Wendy O. Williams would probably have a few choice words for Loonhouse, as would the members of Girlschool, Betsy Bitch, Doro Pesch, and others. However, Loonhouse has historically been recalled not as a headbanging misogynist, but as a fun-loving goofball who managed to air-guitar his way into the good graces of Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. And again, to be fair to Loonhouse, one of the goals of the piece was to perpetuate the myth that heavy metal lyrics were anti-woman and that heavy metal shows were no place for a girl.

Loonhouse’s first claim-to-fame (after his air-guitar accomplishments of course) was a photograph he took of Iron Maiden on the band’s first album, with vocalist Paul DiAnno, The Soundhouse Tapes. Loonhouse’s next big break would be his appearance in Judas Priest’s 1980 video for “Living After Midnight” directed by Julien Temple. In the video, there are several nods to air-guitar playing and even drummer Dave Holland has some fun hitting an imaginary drum kit hard during the thundering opening to the song. People in the audience are seen holding up cardboard guitars. Loonhouse wraps up the video by thrashing his cardboard Flying V” outside Priest’s tour bus. Later in 1980 Loonhouse’s inverted Flying V would appear on its own in another video directed by Temple, “Breaking the Law,” where it is played in a bizarre scene by a bank security guard. Previously, Loonhouse had been credited with the role of the bank security guard, but it clearly isn’t the cardboard guitar god, though the inverted Flying V is undoubtedly Loonhouse’s unique weapon of choice.
 

Loonhouse shredding the shit out of his cardboard Flying V.
 
Loonhouse was just 23 at the time of the 20th Century Box show, and described himself as not having the time to become a “really good guitarist.” But this wasn’t a bad thing in Loonhouse’s mind, as later in 20th Century Box, he happily mused being a headbanger was a “lifelong thing” and he was going to make a business out of being a “headbanger” because that was what he was “good at.”

Continues after the jump…

One of the greatest photos ever taken (in my estimation anyway) shows Judas Priest hanging out with Andy Warhol in the band’s dressing room in 1979.
 
After playing a gig in 1979 at the Palladium in New York, Judas Priest would meet Andy Warhol after a second late-night show at the Mudd Club. According to Halford’s recollection of the evening now nearly 40 years ago, Warhol came backstage after the band had finished their set. Halford engaged the artist in conversation, or so he thought noting that it seemed that Warhol was fond of responding to his queries with only two words; “Oh?” and “Really?” This prompted Halford to have a little fun with Andy by removing his famous handcuffs from his belt and clasping one of them onto Warhol’s wrist and the other to his. Then Harford broke the “bad news” to Andy that he didn’t know where the keys for his handcuffs were to which Warhol coyly replied, “Oh really?”

If the words about this story had not come from the lips of Halford himself, I would have thought it was a heavy metal fever dream I conjured up after listening to British Steel all night in reverse. Halford told the story during his “Town Hall” interview on SiriusXM Radio with David Fricke of Rolling Stone recently, and after watching it I found a newspaper article with a short interview with Halford telling the story in a bit more detail:

I got Andy Warhol handcuffed to me in the dressing room. He was there as we were playing, he was taking pictures. Andy came backstage and I was messing around with chains and handcuffs and I go “I’m going to put these handcuffs on you, Andy.” And he goes, “Oh really?” And all about Andy would say was “Oh really?” about anything. And I put them on and we are both handcuffed together. And I thought, “This is really cool. I’m handcuffed to Andy Warhol. Somebody, please take a photo.” And the label photographer took a couple of photos. And then I said, “I’ve got bad news, Andy. I’ve lost the key.” Those were in my drinking days as well, so I said: “Looks like we are handcuffed together for the night!”

Halford would finally fess up to Andy that he had the keys for the cuffs and uncuffed Warhol before the pair took off for a night of partying at Studio 54. According to Halford, he never saw Andy again. If Rob Halford wasn’t already one of my heroes, this bit of mythology would change all that. It’s a good thing I have a long tradition of choosing my idols wisely. Photos of Andy and Rob looking like an alternate universe version of the Odd Couple follow.
 

A newspaper photo of Rob Halford handcuffing himself to Andy Warhol while guitarist Glenn Tipton looks on.
 

Rob Halford and Andy Warhol in the dressing room of the Mudd Club.
 

Another action shot of Halford and Warhol handcuffed together in the dressing room of the Mudd Club in 1979.
 

A short clip from David Fricke’s SiriusXM “Town Hall” interview with Judas Priest.
 
HT: SiriusXM Radio

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Metal Gods: Rob Halford of Judas Priest fronts Black Sabbath in 1992
Rob Halford of Judas Priest challenges his hero Freddie Mercury to a motorbike race, 1980
The time that Judas Priest looked like a hippie band back in 1975 (Rob Halford had HAIR. Lots of it)
Judas Priest’s racy photoshoot with a Penthouse Pet
Could this be the earliest live concert footage ever shot of Judas Priest?

Rob Halford and Freddie Mercury.
 

“I’ve always found it ironic that a certain aspect of gay culture has also chosen to dress this way. I’m not into that kind of thing though. I guess it’s whatever floats your boat y’know? I’m what you’d call a very vanilla kind of gay guy.”

—Judas Priest vocalist Rob Halford on his fashion choices.

Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford is known for many things. Aside from being one of the greatest metal vocalists of all time, Halford’s cultivated image of head-to-toe leather and spikes is synonymous with heavy metal itself. In fact, when the band performed on Top of the Pops on January 25th, 1979, Halford’s badass bondage-style getup spread like wildfire across the world and would soon become the go-to look for headbangers. Another thing Halford is widely known for is his love of motorcycles and if you’ve seen Priest live, then perhaps you’ve been lucky enough to see Halford ride out on stage on one. Which brings me to another mythical story involving Halford and a man he refers to as his “ultimate hero,” Queen vocalist Freddie Mercury.
 

Rob Halford circa 1979/1980.
 
The year was 1980 and Queen had just released their eighth record The Game in June. Audiences went completely bananas for the album and showed a particular affinity for two songs you likely know all the words to, “Another One Bites the Dust,” and “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.” The band would later earn a reputation for releasing unique videos for their songs, and the video for “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” is no exception. In the video, Mercury is dressed up like an outlaw biker in a stage production of the 1961 film West Side Story complete with an authentic but stationary motorcycle which Mercury straddles along with his blonde video girlfriend. And Rob Halford was having none of it.

According to Halford, after he saw the video he went on BBC Radio 1 and challenged Mercury to a real “motorbike race.” I know I’m not going out on a limb saying if the event had actually transpired, it would have been one of the greatest moments in TV history. Sadly, Mercury never responded to Rob’s challenge. Here’s more from the Metal God who walks among us on that:

“I never heard back from him. Freddie is my ultimate hero. The closest I ever got to Freddie was in a gay bar in Athens on the way to Mykonos with some friends from London. We kind of glared at each other across the bar, in a kind of smiling, winking way. When we got to Mykonos, I was determined to track him down, but I couldn’t because he’d rented this huge yacht. It was festooned in pink balloons and it just kept sailing around the island.”

More after the jump…

Defenders of the faith, Judas Priest.
 
If you’ve found yourself with a bad case of the heavy metal bed spins after reading the title of this post, you have my sympathy fellow headbangers. And I’m going to tell you right now that you are not alone as many Priest fans are completely unaware that the epic 1978 jam most would credit JP for, “The Green Manalishi (With The Two-Pronged Crown),” was originally done by Fleetwood Mac in 1970 while guitarist Peter Green was still with the band. According to folklore surrounding the song, the influential Green has said that it was the product of a drug-soaked dream involving a green dog. While the revelation that “The Green Manalishi” isn’t a Priest original might be a surprise to some, Green’s drug use, especially the psychedelic variety, was well-known. Shortly after the release of what the guitarist referred to as his “least appreciated” song, Green would succumb to the side-effects of his overuse of party favors and mental illness and bow out of Fleetwood Mac.

Interestingly, after Rob Halford returned to Judas Priest in 2004 following his departure in the early 90s, bassist Ian Hill said that when the band finally got to perform again the first song they would rip into was “The Green Manalishi.” Nice. So how did one of the heaviest bands from the NWOBHM get the idea to put their own spin on Joan Baez’s devastating, “so long love” song about her ex, Bob Dylan? Vocalist Halford recalls it happened like this:

It was 1978 and I remember we were all together and someone from the label or the management came in and said, ‘Listen to this song. The label would like you to consider covering it.’ And when we put it on, all we heard was Joan Baez singing this song with the guitar, and your knee-jerk reaction is, ‘Are you fucking crazy? We are a heavy metal band.’ But again, typical of Priest, we’re like, ‘What’s the logic behind this?’ And then after a couple of listens, we decided it was a good song. And a good song will take any kind of interpretation. It opened the door for us in radio in a lot of ways, and I think that for the first time, a metal band was able to get the kind of accessibility.

 

Dylan and Baez in happier times.
 
So what did Baez think when she heard Priest’s version of “Diamonds and Rust?” She loved it, just like I do. Now, let’s get on to JP’s cover of a Spooky Tooth song found on the final album from the Carlisle band with their original late-1960s lineup, “Better by You, Better than Me.” If you had a pulse and paid attention to the news during the mid-80s, you will likely recall that the song brought a lot of horrifically unwarranted heat on Priest after the 1985 suicide/suicide attempt of Raymond Belknap and James Vance who both shot themselves on a church playground after a six-hour long alcohol and drug infused session listening to Priest’s 1978 album Stained Class. Belknap’s death was instantaneous, however, and despite the fact that he suffered massive facial injuries, Vance would survive though he never quite recovered from the incident physically or mentally. Three short years later he was dead, too.

In court, the song became one of the primary targets of the prosecution who alleged it was a harbinger for subliminal suicidal messages that infiltrated the drug-addled minds of the two young Judas Priest fans. The story is immensely troubling and it is difficult to comprehend how “Better by You, Better than Me” could be considered the impetus for what Belknap and Vance did at the behest of imaginary hidden messages on the version recorded by Judas Priest.

More after the jump…

An early shot of Judas Priest before all the leather and studs.
 
The answer to that question is quite possibly, yes. The vintage footage posted below features Judas Priest in action at the Reading Festival in 1975 and was shot with a Super 8 camera.

In 1975 Priest joined the surreal lineup of Hawkwind; UFO; Lou Reed; Thin Lizzy; Soft Machine, and Yes among others at the three-day festival. The band was still sort of under the radar after the release of their 1974 debut Rocka Rolla produced by Rodger Bain, who’d also produced the first three albums by Black Sabbath. Despite Bain’s groundbreaking success with Sabbath, his heavy metal magic didn’t necessarily cast the same spell for Priest on Rocka Rolla which the band recorded live at Olympic Studios in London. During this time the group was still playing small rock clubs and were struggling quite literally just to find money for food.

According to Rob Halford, things were so bad that Gull Records (their label at the time) handed out food tickets to the formative Birmingham band to use at a local cafeteria which truly gives perspective to the hard-luck notion that rock ‘n’ roll don’t pay. Here’s a little more from Mr. Halford on those early days and his thoughts on their first album which ended up being a flop, from author Steve Gett’s 1984 biography of the band HEAVY DUTY:

It simply wasn’t Priest. We allowed ourselves to be influenced and maneuvered by people who suggested that it would probably open up more of a market for the band because we wouldn’t immediately be stigmatized as a heavy metal group. In actual fact, it probably did us more harm than good.

More after the jump…

Judas Priest having fun with Penthouse Pet of the Year (1977) Cheryl Rixon in an outtake from a photoshoot for Kerrang! magazine, 1982.
 
I was a hardcore fan of Kerrang! magazine back in the 80s until it ditched its heavy metal roots when bands like Soundgarden and Alice in Chains started stealing the spotlight from my headbanging heroes. But for what seemed like a long time Kerrang! was about as metal as a magazine got and I loved it. So when I came across these images from issue #10 of Kerrang! from February of 1982 of Judas Priest and Penthouse Pet of the Year Cheryl Rixon appearing in a naughty comedic caper titled “What Rock ‘N’ Roll Dreams are Maid Of: Room Service” that featured Rixon dressed as a French maid and the members of Priest acting exactly like what you’d expect the members of Judas Priest to be behaving back in the 80s, I had to share them with you.
 

Rob Halford and Cheryl Rixon.
 
While you might think that the goofy photos went over really well with Kerrang’s readership, you wouldn’t be entirely correct. Apparently the magazine received a number of ‘letters to the editor” complaining about the photo shoot (shot by Steve Joester)  calling it “sexist” and “trashy.” Both words—by my estimation and experience as a lifelong metalhead—that are synonymous with heavy metal in (mostly) all the right ways. Here’s a letter likely written by a mom who after looking through young Johnny’s stack of magazines hidden under his bed decided to tell the magazine off old-school style with a handwritten letter admonishing them for the photos that were corrupting her kids brain:

In one foul swoop Kerrang! has plummeted from being ‘The Times’ of heavy rock to being the ‘Daily Star’. No wonder heavy rock is damned for being sexist if the critics see this sort of trash.

If you just screamed “But trash is my LIFE!” then I’m with you. God, the fucking 80s really were weird times. And while I’m not entirely sure how Halford got his motorcycle inside a hotel I’ve always said that Rob Halford can do anything he wants, really, so I applaud him for coming to Rixon’s “rescue” before KK Downing got first dibs on the Penthouse Pet of 1979. I’m sure many of you will also enjoy the photos of Rixon and Halford (who Rixon says she loved working with back in her modeling days) as they bring you back to a time when nobody for a hot second wondered if Halford was gay (not that it matters one goddamn bit) as he posed next to Rixon clad in leather bondage gear and a whip. 
 

 

 
More mayhem after the jump…

 
What I like about this video is that’s it’s a supercut of Rob Halford’s infamous high note. It’s not just one long 5-minute high note to test your patience. I watched this all the way through and afterwards immediately grabbed a glass of water to whet my whistle because… ouch. I don’t know how he does it.

 
via WFMU on Twitter

 
Watch these sick videos of Slayer’s Tom Araya performing covers of Mötley Crüe, Scorpions, Judas Priest and Dio along with his brother John Araya on guitar.  Al Messi plays Bass and Jake Alvarado is on drums. Dimitri Galeos, the uploader of these clips, plays second guitar.

One of the clips dates these performances at November of 1983, which would have been a month before Slayer’s Show No Mercy dropped. Slayer themselves had included covers of bands like Priest and Iron Maiden in their sets, playing small clubs and parties around Southern California. 

It seems a bit odd, in retrospect, to see the singer of one of the quintessential American thrash bands performing songs that would be considered more “pop metal” by today’s standards. It should be noted that in the early ‘80s metal encompassed all of metal and metalheads often tended to embrace the full spectrum, much like punks in the early ‘80s tended to embrace anything under the banner “punk rock.” Once the mid ‘80s rolled around, you begin to see more splintering in both metal and punk scenes with offshoot genres springing up and fans gravitating toward their favored pigeon-holes. These clips represent a time of purity in the scene when basically anything went... as long as it was METAL (Insert falsetto wail here).

The videos, after the jump…

Judas Priest, early 1970s
 
So I’ve been sick with the flu for the last few days which means I’ve been spending WAY too much time online buzzing through the Internets in order to entertain myself. Of the many fantastic things I came across was the following footage from 1975 of Judas Priest performing on The Old Grey Whistle Test.
 

Rob Halford? Yup, Rob Halford!
 
Not only does the mighty Rob Halford have hair (see above), he has lots of it. It also appears that he may have raided Marc Bolan’s closet for the fancy top he’s wearing. And, as the title of this post alludes to, one of the bands that made heavy metal synonymous with leather and spikes looks like a gorgeous bunch of pot-smoking hippies.

In the following two clips, Priest performs the title track from their 1974 album Rocka Rolla, and the somewhat mellow track, “Dreamer Deceiver” (in which Halford appears to be channelling the bare-chested prowess of Robert Plant) that would later appear on the band’s 1976 record, Sad Wings of Destiny.

If you are at all a fan of Priest, you are in for a wicked treat today as the band absolutely kills it visually and sonically in both of the videos that follow. I also find the quiet, laidback delivery of OGWT host “Whispering” Bob Harris amusing—it’s almost like he’s introducing Priest at the damn library. HA!
 

Judas Priest performing “Rocka Rolla” on The Old Grey Whistle Test, 1975
 
After the jump, Judas Priest perform “Dreamer Deceiver”...