2. Faith No MoreLive At The Brixton Academy
I used to go to indie rock clubs as a teenager and heard songs like ‘We Care A Lot’. That was sort of the anthem of my teenage years, I suppose. I bought this tape and there was a song, I don’t know if this happens to you, but there’ll be a track on a record, which just catches my ear and then I have to play it obsessively over and over and over again. And the track that caught me was ‘War Pigs’. I didn’t know at the time that it was originally by Black Sabbath, but there was something about it that just caught my eye. Weirdly enough, growing up my parents would listen to bands like Black Sabbath, and Jethro Tull, and Velvet Underground, and Leonard Cohen and all of that stuff. It was in the background, but somehow hearing it as a cover from Faith No More it became my music.
That really started a lifelong interest in Black Sabbath, especially after moving to Birmingham and realising just how important they are, how influential, but also frustrated that that isn’t recognised in their hometown. I started a project called Home Of Metal. We started that in 2007 and then 2011 we held our first big exhibition. It was looking at what the ingredients were in Birmingham. Why did this music come from here? I think that sense of place, that sense of escapism, I find all of that really fascinating in terms what influences a band, that these four guys who formed in Aston, Birmingham 50 years ago, their music resonates with kids that are based in Indonesia, for example, who have created their own metal scenes now.
