Motorhead apparently made me the upstanding citizen I am today.
Little did I know that when, as a 12-year-old boy, I first heard “Ace of Spades” and subsequently saved up enough lunch money to buy the band’s “No Remorse” compilation album on cassette, that I was clearing a path to mid-life balance and happiness.
A new study led by Tasha R. Howe, a psychology professor at Humboldt State University, shows that metalheads from the 1980s “were significantly happier in their youth and better adjusted currently” than their middle-aged counterparts, or even current college kids (GenX wins again, millennials!).
The research was published recently in the journal “Self and Identity.”
A former “heavy metal groupie,” according to Humboldt State’s website, Howe and her team issued a cattle call for Facebook users to partake in the study. In all, 377 metal fans, groupies, former musicians, middle-aged non-metal fans and current HSU students responded.
Researchers issued an 85-page questionnaire on the respondents’ childhood, personality traits, history of drug use, sexual experience, income and happiness.
Sure, they found that 1980s kids who twisted their fingers into devil horns and wore Anthrax concert shirts more likely came from troubled homes, used drugs and engaged in sex. But they also reported that fans of Kreator and Sepultura grew up to be as well-adjusted as those who listened to Bauhaus and Bananarama. Moreover, the latter group was more likely to be in therapy, researchers found. This is your brain on Depeche Mode.
The theory is the metalhead identity “served as a protective factor against negative outcomes,” and “participation in fringe style cultures may enhance identity development in troubled youth.”
Though a fan of thrash metal and later death metal, I never participated in fringe cultures. Always my own man, I could wax long about the beauty of a Boogie Down Productions or a John Prine record as much as a Voivod album.
(Here, my wife would object. After describing to her my high school mullet, leather jacket, and backward ballcaps, she said, “you were a hesher?” She was a proud goth, that group of wannabe rebels with the silliest of affectations.)
Still, while Tipper Gore and televangelists were preaching against the supposed evils of metal music, Iron Maiden was teaching me about Greek mythology (“Flight of Icarus”), the Battle of Britain during WW II (“Aces High”), and Romantic Movement poetry (“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”).
During that era, it was common for metal bands to be accused of blending subliminal — and frequently Satanic — messages into their music. This was funny, because there was nothing subliminal about Morbid Angel.
It’s even funnier now, because based on Howe’s study of how metalheads turned out, the subliminal messages apparently were: Aspire to middle management and join the PTA.
A friend of mine is a successful artist who travels the world, is married, has a daughter and occasionally still plays for a SoCal-based metal band that garnered a modicum of success in the 1980s. I know one high-ranking official who is well-acquainted with one of the most devastating and popular metal bands of all-time. Anecdotal evidence and all, but Howe and her researchers wouldn’t be surprised.
So tonight, after I pay some bills and read another chapter of “The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane” to my daughter, I’ll turn on some Slayer, perhaps “Reign in Blood,” and thank Tom Araya and the boys for scaring me straight.
Contact Josh Dulaney at 562-714-2150.
