Rock of Pages: The Literary Tradition of 1980s Heavy Metal

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Rock of Pages identifies how the "dangerous" heavy metal of the 1980s can be analyzed through literary criticism, how heavy metal helps us understand what's dangerous about literature, and why this matters.

In 1985, the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), led by "Washington Wives" Tipper Gore and Susan Baker, conducted a moral and legal crusade against the Filthy Fifteen, a list of songs they found to be objectionable from the likes of AC/DC, Judas Priest, Def Leppard, Twisted Sister, and Mtley Cre. Each chapter of this book takes the PMRCs own criticisms of metal - that it promotes violence, drug use, sexuality, and the occult -and uses them as channels of literary and cultural analyses. Contrary to the critics, 1980s heavy metal was good. It was even smart. Heavy metal, it turns out, is part of the same literary tradition teens were supposed to be learning about in English class.

With a broad, fun approach, Jesse Kavadlo explains how heavy metal may have gotten its name from The Heavy Metal Kid, a character in William Burroughss 1961 novel The Soft Machine. How Metallica thought it was adapting the film version of Ken Keseys novel One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest but may have been channeling Sigmund Freud. How heavy metal, just maybe, ended the Cold War but helped elect, of all people, Tipper Gores husband Al as Vice President. And much more. Rock of Pages explores histories of literature, art, culture, and music from which 80s heavy metal was, and still is, excluded.

Author Bio

Jesse Kavadlo is Professor of English and Humanities at Maryville University of St. Louis, USA, where he has taught writing and literature since 2004. He is the author of Don DeLillo: Balance at the Edge of Belief (2004) and American Popular Culture in the Era of Terror: Falling Skies, Dark Knights Rising, and Collapsing Cultures (2015), editor of Michael Chabons America: Magical Words, Secret Worlds, and Sacred Spaces (with co-editor Bob Batchelor, 2014) and Don DeLillo in Context (2022), and has published nearly 30 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. He has been a masthead contributor for PopMatters since 2018. Jesse is also the lead guitarist in Top Gunz: The St. Louis 80s Party Rock Experience, playing under the name Dr. NoiZe.