In which the Devil gets all the best tunes

As a fan of both heavy metal and horror movies since my pre-teen years, I've long been fascinated by this storm-in-a-teacup cultural phenomenon. that was the 'Satanic Panic.' To an Australian raised in a part of the world where no-one worries about much at all, it seems like a uniquely American response. Is this because the USA was founded by Puritans and, in more recent times, has given evangelical Christianity more cultural influence than elsewhere?

Full disclosure: I was raised in an Anglican (Episcopalian) family and went to church regularly in my youth. I did so with little in the way of faith because it was part of my Sunday routine. Nowadays when I go to a service, it's out of respect for the traditions my mother held dear and as a way to remember her.

In some ways my parents' brand of Christianity was and is quite progressive and left leaning. Mother Of Mine was never much concerned about what I watched, read or listened to and I don't recall being told off about the posters on my bedroom wall or the presence of Alice Cooper, Black Sabbath, KISS, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest et al in my record collection.

Dad, a man of the cloth no less, sometimes looks askance at me even today and intones warnings about excessive morbidity when I enthuse about my latest short story idea. His early attempts to persuade me to listen to Wagner went nowhere, but neither parent feared for my safety or my soul as I explored the darker side of human nature through music, film and fiction.

Had I lived in middle America or the heart of the Bible Belt, it's fair to say my tastes would have caused a great deal more controversy. From age ten onwards I read about Tipper Gore and her PMRC and the alleged influence of Metallica, Slayer and Ozzy on a number of teen suicides and wonder how on Earth people (American people in particular) could take all this so seriously.

As the years wore on I began to research more widely. I learned about accusations of Satanic ritual abuse (SRA) in books like Michelle Remembers (1980) and read of many similar claims throughout the decade. These, and the hysterical media coverage that surrounded them on talk shows like Geraldo, persisted despite a total lack of evidence, and were eventually all but debunked by FBI agents Robert Ressler and Ken Lanning after years of investigation.

The stories persist, however, and are today almost exclusively the domain of online conspiracy nuts. I have one cleaner who firmly believes everything is controlled by the Illuminati and that there's an army of Nephilim frozen under Antarctica. Another takes the Bible as literally as his work roster and regularly lectures me about opening myself to Satanic influence when I leave my yoga exercise diagrams or meditation notes on my desk. I do so purely to get a rise out of him and it works every single time.

Thirty years on from the height of all this hysteria, it's not uncommon to see people from religious fringe groups distributing leaflets outside concerts by 'controversial' acts or to hear them calling for Harry Potter books to be banned. They don't attract as much attention as they used to because, as Stephen King says, 'the world has moved on', but they still make a fair bit of noise. Is any of it warranted or are they simply trying to drum up publicity for their own beliefs, some of which are more distorted and potentially harmful than the 'evil' they decry?

If you look past the name and image, Black Sabbath's early lyrics are quite cautionary. Terry  'Geezer' Butler, who wrote the bulk of them, grew up a good Catholic boy and considered training for the priesthood at one point in his life.  He also read too much Dennis Wheatley, who was himself one of the most socially conservative authors in a very reactionary genre. The situation Ozzy describes in the song that gave his old bandmates their name and their musical calling card for nearly fifty years is straight out of a nightmare, and his anguished cries of 'oh no, no! Please God help me!' make it quite clear whose side he's on. For all his offstage mayhem and controversy, the man baptised John Michael Osbourne is a member of the same church I was born into and prays before each show.

Similarly, when Iron Maiden released The Number Of The Beast in 1982 and toured the US supporting Scorpions, Rainbow, Judas Priest and 38 Special, they earned more than their fair share of protesters and column inches. Singer Bruce Dickinson tells the tale of a man who literally took up his cross, a lifesize replica of the one Christ carried all the way to Calvary, and lugged it around the venue's car park for the duration of the concert. Unlike the original, however, he'd fitted a small tail wheel for convenience. If the Son Of Man had thought of such a luxury in 33 AD, I doubt he would have asked to stop for a rest on the soon to be Wandering Jew's doorstep.

It's true that the title track and album cover evoke a particular kind of image. The lyric, on the other hand, is just the opposite. Inspired by one of bass player and founder member Steve Harris's legendary bad dreams, it also recalls Robert Burns's narrative poem Tam O' Shanter. By no means is the song's narrator pleased to find himself in the midst of such devilry. Like Sergeant Howie in The Wicker Man, a film about which Maiden would write a similar classic two decades later,  he is determined to  reassert the dominant moral paradigm set his captors back on the righteous path. Had he chosen not to meddle in things he found frightening, he wouldn't be so tormented by 'the evil face that twists my mind and brings me to despair.' 

Like most moral fables, The Number Of The Beast is a story of actions and consequences. Is it really that different from the fairy tales I might one day tell my daughters or sons if I ever take sufficient leave of my wits to sire any? Evangelical Americans and Mary Whitehouse types miss the point of this altogether and probably always will. Rock and roll has been a threat to public decency since Elvis was caught swivelling his hips on television and, if the alternative is the kind of world those people expect us to live in, I hope it will continue to corrupt me for many years to come.

  

'How long is the pattern going to speak for you?'

On 'RUOK Day' I looked in the mirror and decided to be honest with myself. I came to understand that I really, really wasn't OK and the effort of pretending otherwise wore me down even further. Losing my Mum and adapting to life without her was a significant part of that, but the truth is I've felt like shit (mentally) ever since the debacle of my Masters in 2005. This became normal to me because I never confronted or resolved it. I just tried to soldier on as best I could. I didn't want to hurt or upset people I loved by letting them see anything was wrong, so I went through the motions. Day after day, week after week and year after year, I painted on a brave face and tried to convince myself I was fine. I hoped my belief would help create the reality, but it was like treating a brain tumour with a bandaid.

For all my bluster and bravado, I have little confidence in my ability to do anything much. Whenever I succeed or achieve on any level, even with the simplest of everyday tasks, no-one is more surprised than I am. I've tried to sort out my silly old brain once before, and I found that process useful in the short term, but it only helped with the symptoms rather than the cause because I couldn't admit what the real problem was.

I'm tired of feeling this way and I'm tired of disappointing myself and others with constant subconscious sabotage. At present I use about a tenth of my ability because I don't trust myself to let loose and find out what I'm really capable of. Fear is to blame for this and, while I'll never eliminate it, I can and will learn to push on in spite of it rather than hide behind it.  I have big plans over the next few years and, if I want them to succeed, I need to face my many demons and take the buggers down. They, whoever They are, say 'behind every cynic is a disappointed idealist'. I am determined to dig mine out of his shallow grave, dust him down and let him breathe again. He's not dead, he's just restin'. Or possibliy pinin' for the fjords.   

'Tonight we're gonna let the music do most of the talking.'

Prone as I am to muse on this sort of thing, I find myself thinking about bands with a niche or cult following who've taken a risk on the support they have to try for a hit or a wider audience across the board. Who failed, who succeeded and how did that success affect the rest of their careers?

Several examples come to mind. Gene Simmons said in 1992 that 'radio never really gave a shit' about KISS. That was true, until they decided to soften their approach and had a go at a sound that, like tying an onion to your belt, was the style at the time. The result, despite still being one of their most popular songs today, alienated a lot of fans. Never mind that the rest of its parent album sounds as much like KISS as ever to my ears, and eight ninths of it has better drumming than anything that came before.

Thirty plus years after its release, Owner Of A Lonely Heart remains one of my favourite Yes songs. I was six at the time and I now know a bit more about how the band are 'supposed' to sound. I'll be damned if I don't still love that riff though.

Metallica's Black Album was huge, and deservedly so. Unfortunately its success gave them musical schizophrenia and everything since sounds like a second guess. They tried and failed to move with the times (though Load and Reload have a handful of good songs between them), the less said about St Anger the better and, while Death Magnetic was a good stab at getting back to their roots, it felt more like an attempt to appease the fans than genuine inspiration.

Queensryche's Empire arguably got it right. Less a simplification than a streamlining of the band's sound, it's a distillation of everything they did well that somehow landed them on the radio and earned them a much bigger audience. It brought them the success they always wanted, yet very nearly destroyed them. The tour schedule was punishing, and one listen to Promised Land will give you a fair insight into their headspace afterwards.

Aerosmith forsook their late sixties blues rock roots when they cleaned up their collective act and launched a comeback with Permanent Vacation in 1987. The polished, MTV friendly sound of that album and the two that followed was intended to ape the Def Leppard/Bon Jovi model and no doubt left fans of the older material scratching their heads. In commercial terms it made little difference, and today the band are better known for that dreadful ballad on the Armageddon soundtrack than any of the records they built their early sound and reputation on.

At the other end of the scale (ha!) there are old warhorses like AC/DC and Iron Maiden, who know what works best for them, understand what their fans expect and deliver it, year on year and tour on tour, no questions asked. Despite an ever changing lineup, Maiden's American cousins Iced Earth also fit this description. Main composer and rhythm guitarist Jon Schaffer builds his songs around variations of the same descending riff, often to the point where it sounds like he plays it in a different key each time and hopes no-one will notice. I do, and it doesn't stop me buying or enjoying their music. 

I suppose it depends how you define success, and how far you're able to 'sell out' and respect yourself in the morning. I'll know I've crossed the point of no return if I ever include romantic elements in my fiction for their own sake. To me that sort of thing is no more than a sign of lazy writing, and shows the author hasn't bothered to think of a more interesting or worthwhile source of conflict for his or her characters to face and resolve. In my days as a fan of The X-Files, I had no patience for or understanding of those who clamoured for Mulder and Scully to have 'a relationship'. They already had one, you dolts, and to me their bond was far more significant and enduring than if they'd been a couple. Pairing those two off to believe and disbelieve happily ever after makes about as much sense as Black Sabbath releasing a country and western album, but perhaps somewhere there's an alternate reality where that's already happened. The mind boggles.    

'The writer stares with glassy eyes, defies the empty page...'

How much do an author's views affect your opinion of their work? I was thinking about this earlier today and then, by pure coincidence, got into conversation about it. My correspondent mentioned she was a big fan of Roald Dahl as a kid, but feels conflicted as an adult because 'apparently he was a raging anti-Semite'. His books meant the world to me when I was a little boy, and seemed a lot more real than maths or geography lessons. I see no reason why his politics should change my opinion of his writing today.

Similarly, H P Lovecraft's racism appalls me. His prejudices and phobias are all through his writing (who wants to bet Cthulhu looks the way he does because our boy Howard really, really didn't like shellfish?) and I simply can't agree with the way he portrays races other than his own, but dammit if his stories aren't great, unforgettable works that helped reinvent a genre.

I am, as is commonly known, a great fan of Clive Barker. His views on sexuality are a big influence on the way he represents 'the other' in his plays, stories, paintings, novels and films, which is why he tends to focus on the miraculous side as much as the monstrous. I approach his work in much the same way I do David Cronenberg's early movies. As a person with a disability born into a body that doesn't work properly, the process of transformation or becoming something beyond the self fascinates me. Usually in horror (at its core a very reactionary genre) people fear this and struggle against it. I say why not embrace it as the opportunity it is?

That's me projecting my perspective all over the place, and using it as a neat little segue into talking about my own stuff. My writing is full of people who, for one reason or another, don't quite fit into the mainstream workaday world. They observe society and exist on its fringes, but can never quite bring themselves to join in. They react to the sense of not belonging in ways I never would, and their responses often make sense to no-one but them, but there's always a rationale behind the behaviour

For years I thought this was due to all the Ruth Rendell I read in my twenties. The late and much lamented Baroness was and will remain a huge influence on everything I write within the crime genre, but there are other factors at play and I have a dear friend to thank for bringing them to light. During one of our very long lunches, said friend pointed out that I'd been writing about myself. Before I could either deny everything, make light of it or swiftly change the subject, I realised she had a point. I don't belong in the able bodied world or in the disabled world and I doubt I'd ever feel entirely at home in either. Instead I am compelled to carve out a niche in the spaces between them, taking things I like from both and using them for my own benefit, education or pleasure.

Long after I'm dead and students are complaining bitterly about having to read my books as part of their English courses, I hope their teachers will bear all this in mind while also treating my stories as the simple entertainments I intend them to be. Any creative work worth its salt should function on a number of levels, and I will do my utmost to ensure mine are no exception. My politics don't enter the equation because I don't have any, but my experiences and reflections on them colour every word. That's unavoidable, but the stories owe it to themselves and their readers to stand on their own merits without prior knowledge of the author's life or mindset.

'I am being diminished, whittled away piece by piece, great chunks of my past detaching themselves like melting icebergs.'

News of Ruth Rendell's death on Saturday morning (UK time) did not come as a surprise after her stroke in January, but it hit me very hard. I have read her novels and short stories for half my life and drawn the kind of inspiration from them that no other author ever offered me. Her insights into damaged psyches and fractured, unhealthy relationships encouraged my fictional obsession with same and explains the frequent presence of both in my clumsy attempts at writing. I still have Val McDermid, Minette Walters and countless other favourites, but a world with no more Inspector Wexford mysteries, stand alone psychological thrillers or labyrinthine Barbara Vine novels where a secret past casts long shadows over the present will take some getting used to.

In 1997, as an angry young man of twenty, I devoted half of a misbegotten Honours thesis to Rendell's work. What a wasted opportunity that turned out to be. No-one explained to me that I needed to include some elements of the theoretical studies I mocked so relentlessly. If they had, and if my supervisor had been any use at all, I might have dug deeper into the minds of Freud, Jung and Adler and traced their influence on the young Rendell. A psychoanalytical interperation, even from an amateur, would have been a far worthier response than the glorified book review I eventually submitted.

My fondness for Rendell's writing endured in spite of this, and each new or hitherto unread novel or volume of short stories soon found a place in my collection. They became family affairs too. Between stretches in hospital when she could do little else but sit in her armchair and read, Nanna would devour the books at a rate of knots, often guessing whodunit within a few chapters. Later on Mum asked me for a few recommendations to read in bed and, in those rare moments when she could tear herself away from the radio, we discussed my choices over dinner. There was never any shortage of Rendell material around the house. Most birthdays and Christmases brought with them either a new release or a reprint of an old favourite I'd borrowed from the library but never owned.

All of those books, and many more, are now piled on the floor of what was once my bedroom. I cleared out my bookshelf so it could be moved into my present sleeping quarters. Sometime between now and doomsday, I need to decide which ones to keep, which to sell and which to donate to St Philip's next Autumn Fair or book sale. Parting with Ruth Rendell's near complete body of work won't be easy because each story has a memory attached to it, even if the twists and turns of the plots have long since blurred into each other.

The most treasured of all those memories is the author's signature inside the front cover of The Rottweiler.  I went to see Ruth Rendell at Adelaide Writers' Week in 2004, and it was a privilege to be in the presence of one of my most important role models if only for a few minutes. She was quite reserved and didn't talk to readers individually in the signing queue, but getting her autograph was and is a very big deal.

I have smaller but no less significant memories of my other Rendell books. Inscriptions like 'To Stephen, Love Mum 22/9___' or 'To Stephen, Love From Nanna 25/12___' carry more weight today than they did at the time, and that's not the sort of thing you can transfer over when you get all the ebooks and put them on your iPad.

I'd like to finish on a lighter note in the words of Baroness Rendell of Babergh herself, who once said she overcame her fear of getting police procedure wrong 'largely by leaving it out'. I think there's a good lesson in that for all of us who sweat blood over the finer details of who does what at a crime scene.

      
  

'Can you help me occupy my brain?'

I've been doing some pretty intensive physio sessions over the last few weeks, with the aim of building confidence and improving my wheelchair skills. Today I completed a pivot transfer from wheelchair to standing position to standard chair in twenty seconds. I then wheeled around to the other side of the parallel bars and tried the same thing from a different angle. I couldn't do it without help, a few false starts and much bad language.

For the rest of today I have inwardly fumed about my failure instead of being happy with my success. Like a stone thrown into a river, that thought pattern created ripples and I came to understand I've been doing this my whole life. Instead of feeling satisfied and acknowledging opportunities for improvement, I think of things only as I believe they should be and punish myself long and hard because I think I've fallen short. I can't begin a piece of writing just to see where it goes and enjoy the ride. I hone and polish every word in search of some impossible and unknowable ideal. In doing that I choke the life and soul out of it, and rob myself of any joy that may come from the act of creating.

Rather than reflect on the last eighteen months and acknowledge all the progress I've made since my mother died, I dwell on the reason why I had to make those changes and feel miserable and alone. I would like to think of myself as a phoenix rising from the ashes of a life altering tragedy, but that's hard to do after nearly forty years of looking through the wrong end of the telescope. I can do things today that would have seemed impossible to me a year ago, but I rarely celebrate or give thanks for that because I'm too busy obsessing over what I haven't yet done, or believe I can't.

To flog a not quite dead but not at all well horse, I'm convinced that if I ever let anyone outside my family get close enough to love me, I'd spend so much time taking the relationship apart to see how it works that I wouldn't be able to enjoy it for what it was or give my all in return for the affection offered. My old buddy Socrates is reputed to have said 'the unexamined life is not worth living', and I'm beginning to realise the same could be said of a life that's both overexamined and underappreciated.

Because it's human nature to categorise and to label, I've given my tendency to dissect and examine every little thing a name. I call it 'writer brain', and its most obvious symptom is a chronic inability to live in the moment. Seldom can I relax and let myself take pleasure, or any emotion, in anything because there's always a corner of my mind that demands ''what am I thinking right now? What am I feeling? How would I describe this? What would character X, Y or Z do in the same situation? Why?' On and on it goes. Questions without number and self-criticism without end.

I need, as the prayer says, serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom enough to know the difference. I would also benefit from talking with someone in a professional capacity about this, but the only person I ever trusted enough to do that has moved on and I no longer know where to reach her. A fellow Metallica fan, she once told me 'no matter how bad you think what you've written is, it will always be better than St Anger.' It's hard to argue with that.

'But every time you fall you get yo' ass in a sling...'

Would someone explain to me, please, how not being able to sleep or think straight, feeling sick all the time and having your entire mental and psychological state depend on the next email or text message from your pedestal-seated beloved is considered not only a normal part of life but wonderful enough to write endless stories and songs about? I let it happen to me nine years ago, and even the memory scares the living hell out of me. I didn't fall into that pit by accident, I jumped without a parachute and was naive enough to think I could land unscathed. Fortunately I managed to climb out, but it took a very long time and made me all the more determined to avoid a repeat performance.

That accounts for why I've locked all past tender feelings, and the possibility of any future ones, away in an emotional strongbox and will never let them out again, but it doesn't help me understand why some people, having come to the end of one relationship, are so keen to pair off with someone else without taking time out to consider what they've learned. Is being alone really so frightening that they'll 'hook up', as the young people say, with a new partner before the scars of severing their ties with the previous one have healed?

While it's true my atttude to these things at times appears more Vulcan than human, I'll admit I'm not as much of a solitary creature as I always thought I'd be. At times I get very lonely, more so than I ever believed I could, but I'd rather put up with that than risk getting involved with the wrong person just to avoid it and face a world of pain when it all blows up in my face. The single life seems like the lesser of two evils and, unlike Mae West, I'm not brave enough to pick the one I never tried before.