Book Review: John Tucker, Suzie Smiled...The New Wave of British Heavy Metal

by anna battista

According to music critics the birth of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal occurred during a gig in May 1979. John Tucker’s affair with NWOBHM, though, started a few months after, in December, when the photographer and fanzine writer saw Iron Maiden playing at a nightclub called Routes in Exeter, Devon. Since then the NWOBHM became his life and, in 2003, he set to write the history of this movement, which is just out with the title Suzie Smiled.

Tucker’s volume is not a history of the best known British heavy metal bands, after all there wouldn’t be any point in such a book, but of those bands who, after fame arrived for Iron Maiden, Def Leppard and such likes, were left behind, among them Bitches Sin, Satan, Shiva, Soldier, Trespass, Girlschool, Witchfynde, Saxon and Jaguar, just to mention a few.

With a title inspired by the bands Saxon and Tygers of Pan Tang’s infatuation with the name “Suzie”, the book, divided in six chapters that analyse the histories of the various bands and their sound, starts right on that fatal night of 1979 when Tucker “discovered” Iron Maiden, and features an in-depth analysis of the ‘80s.

The best parts are the ones in which the various bands describe what it was like to keep a band together in the ‘80s and playing heavy metal in the post-punk era, and what it meant to be featured in the music press or in a local paper then. The very last chapter of the book also deserves a mention for analysing various songs from different heavy metal bands, from ‘Am I Evil?’ by Diamond Head to ‘Wheels Of Steel’ by Saxon.

“We should have hung on to the NWOBHM more really, and sort of cherished it,“ Diamond Head’s Sean Harris (who’s also written the introduction to the volume) once stated, “When you look at what came after, the next generation of bands from America, it was all a direct result of the NWOBHM. It should be more celebrated than it is, if for no reason than its place in the evolution of heavy metal.”

While you might get more chances to celebrate this movement by listening to the reissued albums from the various bands, Suzie Smiled is the first and only book that will allow you to celebrate the NWOBHM in print.

{www.impbooks.com, www.suziesmiled.co.uk}