Heavy Metal Thunder

I've been tracing back the origins of heavy metal radio shows for years now. Back in 2010 I wrote about early metal radio shows and traced all the "oldest" active shows back to the early 1980s. [LINK] I hypothesized that the earliest metal radio shows would date to the mid-1970s. [LINK] I found that program in Vinyl Edge, on WGTB, and even a few digitized recordings that confirm it's place in the history of metal.

To my surprise, I recently discovered that there was at least one predecessor in the DC metro. There was a radio program on 1500 WINX-AM named "Heavy Metal Thunder". I didn't learn that from any book or any trade magazine or even my own research. It was an anonymous commenter on this very blog. [thanks!] This ties right into the etymology of the words "heavy metal" and might be the big daddy of them all. It's so early that it makes Lester Bangs look late to the party.

So let's review the origin of that phrase. It appears in the lyrics of the classic 1968 Steppenwolf song "Born to be Wild." The songs initial popularity was driven both by airplay and it's appearance in the film "Easy Rider" in 1969. The phrase refers to the roaring sound of a motorcycle engine. This isn't conjecture, that was the explanation from Mr. Mars Bonfire, the songwriter himself. The phrase instantly hooked into some kind of cultural gestalt. This etymology exists in parallel to the Burroughs etymology; beside it, not replacing it.  The phrase appears in the book Goldstein's Greatest Hits: A Book Mostly about Rock 'n' Roll in 1970 (above). By 1978 those three words were appearing in advertisements for Burman amplifiers. I doubt Bonfire got paid.

"Hey, let's make a Peter Fonda movie. It'll have bikes— big steel mothers, with the heavy-metal-thunder understood. And grass— because no one looks as good-looking stoned as Peter Fonda."

By 1973 the phrase was being invoked to describe hard rock and psychedelic blues music. Even that phrase "Heavy Metal Thunder" reads like its the antecedent of Heavy Metal. Richard Goldstein was a writer for the New York times from 1980 to 2007. He was one of the original rock n' roll journalists. That passage (above) also ran in the New York Times, and re-running a collection of their film reviews. Goldstein had a column in the Village Voice starting in 1966 "Pop Eye." He's notable and rarely credited in the etymology and almost certainly one of the earliest musical applications of the phrase. [SOURCE] 

But Goldstein wasn't alone. In February of 1973, in a review by Mark Astolfi in MIT's The Tech [SOURCE] we find a similar metaphorical use of "Heavy Metal Thunder." (He later ran Cozmik Debris.) It does not reference Steppenwolf, but makes the leap to re-use the phrase to describe another band credited as a heavy metal progenitor:

"Deep Purple, progenitors of Third Generation Heavy Metal Thunder long before there was even a Second Generation, are up against that murderous moment which has decimated more than a few of the Big Names in rock — can they follow up the great, the near-perfect record with something close to being as good, if not better?"

Just a few months later in April 1973, The Tech ran a review by Neal Vitale for the somewhat less deserving album "Mothers Pride" by the band Fanny. He was right though, "I Need you to Need Me" was by far the hardest riffing tune on the LP.

"Mothers Pride has a wide variety of different types of songs, from the wistful, acoustic "Long Road Home," to the bitterly sarcastic, autobiographical "Solid Gold" (drummer Alice de Buhr's lead vocals reminds one of a drunk Ray Davies), to the biting, heavy metal thunder of "I Need You Need Me."

That was  a lot of background but lets get back to WINX. Some sources date the start of the show Heavy Metal Thunder to 1969, but that strikes me as dubious. I credit the Washington City Paper [SOURCE] and their 1972 date as more plausible. [SOURCE] It also agrees with Skips later interview material. Skip has had some comments over the years that help us understand the start of the program like this interview with Signaland [LINK]. 

Skip caught the front of a cultural wave. Free form FM was on the airand "progressive" rock playlists were popping up everywhere slowly transmuting into AOR. Later in the 1970s there was not only WHFS and WGTB, but also there was WHMC-AM and WAYE-AM. But nobody was doing what Skip was doing.

"Nobody else was playing heavy metal at the time. There was no DC101 in those days. HFS was playing Grateful Dead, Little Feat, and things of that nature—Bonnie Raitt. So Pentagram were fans of my show and I went over and produced a six song demo by them, and then a year later I put out a 45 by them, and a year after that I put out another 45 by them." 

Groff was born in Waltham, MA but mostly grew up in Washington D.C. Like many of his generation became interested in music when the Beatles hit hard in 1964. He became a DJ at WMUC at the University of Maryland. WMUC was a carrier current station prior to getting an FM license in 1979 for 88.1. He would have been 31 in 1979 so Skip sadly missed that boat. He was first hired at 92.3 WSID (later became WLPL) to work weekends in 1968. In 1977 he opened his own record store Yesterday and Today Records, then in 1978 he was already running his own indie record label: Limp Records. It was the start of something very punk rock.

That timing with WSID is interesting because in 1969 it changed formats. WSID did not flip directly from Soul to Top 40. In early 1969, the station went to AOR, a format it aired for almost a full year before the flip. Skip had a 6:00 PM to midnight show on Saturdays and Sundays. He was a still a U. Maryland student at the time. We don't have playlists, we don't have tapes; but in that Signaland interview he names some sides he was playing then: Vanilla Fudge, Wind, Blue Cheer, Gun, Circus Maximus, and The Seeds... this is a mix of garage rock, kraut rock, and hard psychedelic rock, the precursors of metal. 

Because his show was a success on WSID he was able to cross the street to WINX, though interrupted by a stint in the army. He was there 1969 -1974, then returned in 1976 and stayed to 1977 when he was also working for RCA. In 1981 he started working at WPGC which lasted barely over a year, moving to WAVA in 1982. There he hosted 'Rock of the Nineties.' Skip was interviewed by  DSI records in 2010 creating probably the best source material on him and his various music endeavors:

• Part 1 [LINK]
• Part 2 [LINK]
• Part 3 [LINK]
• Part 4 [LINK]
• Part 5 [LINK]
• Part 6 [LINK]

In part 2 of the interviews he described his "Heavy Metal Thunder" program's playlist: Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Sir Lord Baltimore. It ran 6:00 PM - 10:00 PM at night. This is more metal than his program at WSID. That's how he met the band Pentagram, and got their career started. [LINK] If you make it all the way to part 5 he talks about his current radio show he specifically names the Foo Fighters as a band he'd play today. I never heard his WPGC program but I can imagine it now. More here.

Skip died in 2019, and the storefront closed in 2001. But his wife continues to operate the business online. More here. They donated his papers to his alma mater [LINK]. One can imagine that in that archive might be actual playlists and maybe, just maybe... tapes.