Quote:
Originally Posted by Briks
If the NWOBHM movement started in the early '70s, and included Judas Priest, then what was the first wave of British heavy metal? I hope I understood you correctly.
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Yeah but it didn't. The NWOBHM broke around 1979 and carried on into about 82/83. Read my six-part (so far) treatise on it in ... where is it now ... was just looking at it a moment ago ... oh yeah. My journal.
Priest were definitely before the whole scene, so were Motorhead. Maiden came up right on the cusp, 79/80 as did Leppard and Saxon, though Saxon's first album pretty much bombed and they only really took off, on the wings of the NWOBHM, with 1980's "Wheels of steel". Many bands who surfaced around the time of the NWOBHM sank fairly quickly; it was a bit of a harrowing thing. Chaff falls away, wheat rises or whatever. Not to say all the bands who made it deserved to, any more than the ones who failed should not have been denied their chance to make it. But it was a tough time, something of a killing fields where new labels who often hadn't a clue had as much to do with some good bands not making it, and the triple tenets of talent, marketing and popularity through gigging were the cornerstones of any band's success, or lack of it, as the case may be.