Anvil! The Story Of Anvil

Doing It The Wrong Way (But All The Way)

There was a brief moment in the early 1980s that the band Anvil was known, even amongst school kids in Sydney. That is to say, ‘Sandy’ Vahdanni from ‘Sadisitik Exekution‘ introduced me to a whole bunch of Heavy Metal acts that were going at the time.  One such act was Van Halen, to which I owe a lot of nostalgia – and hey don’t look now but I did a cover of ‘Jump’ this week with Pharmakeus singing – so at least I owe my Van Halen fandom to Sandy.

There were other bands that Sandy was totally in to, like Def Leppard and Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. The poses, the tight spandex, the cod pieces and the BDSM studded collars sort of browned me off. Like, what’s that got to do with the playing, right? I wouldn’t come back to an investigation of metal until the 1990s.

But back at school Sandy came in with his stash of Kerrang magazines and go on and on and on about how superior Heavy Metal was to plain old rock or how he was going to play in the most heavy, most metallic outfit known to mankind or some such hyperbolic nonsense. He was his own worst self-parody and nobody could take him seriously, and most certainly not as seriously as Sandy took himself; which made for much mirth in the schoolyard much to his chagrin.

Anyway, one day he told us about a band called Anvil and how intense their heaviosity and metalicity were, and that this was the future of Heavy Metal. They were so cool, the lead guitarist played his Flying V with a Dildo! This was the future, man. In a weird way, he’s been proven right, as even Slash says Anvil must be one of the most ripped off stylists of Heavy Metal. In any case, Jeronimus and I couldn’t help but laugh at the obtuse bluntness of a band calling itself after a heavy metallic object. “Anvil. They play Heavy Metal. Get it? Har har” was too stupid and obvious for words.

I miss ‘Sandy’ when I reflect on it. I met him years later and he wanted to be a film maker; he wanted to make the heaviest most avant-garde art films ever to be conceived by any human being. Ever. You get the gist of the guy. He explained that he went from Heavy Metal to Speed Metal to Death Metal until he found himself playing in a band surrounded by guys trying to make the devil’s own music, growling into mics. Then he met a girl, cut his hair, went back to school to study nuclear physics, sold his Death Metal and Speed Metal and Heavy Metal records, and started listening to the Pet Shop Boys. He didn’t get the girl. It probably saved him from moving into the Black Metal stage and burning down churches.

So. That’s how I knew about Anvil way back when. I had assumed they had found metal nirvana, like the rest of those bands in Kerrang magazine had. Imagine my surprise then to watch this movie.

What’s Good About It

It’s a brilliant cross between ‘This is Spinal Tap’ and ‘Rocky’. Except it’s an actual Rockumentary. The old expression, ‘you couldn’t make this stuff up’ aptly describes the human drama of a pair of 50year old metal heads looking for second date with fame as Heavy Metal stars. Punch drunk on life and all its tribulations, Lips continues to shoulder the dream that is Anvil. It might not be so hard to carry if the metaphorical object wasn’t so heavy.

Yet, carry the show he does as he “keeps positive energy going” and “keeps the vision alive”. The people that surround him are amazingly accepting of his persistence, possibly because he has proven them right once, but what is abundantly evident is the bemused love of family and friends of the two key members of Anvil. The humanity is splendid, charming and heartwarming, in an otherwise bleak landscape that could be something out of ‘The Wrestler’ but with Flying V guitars. The pathos is exquisite in parts.

There’s a lot to like in the travails that visit upon a touring band with a crazy fan European tour manager whose accent of origin I just couldn’t pick. They miss trains, they arrive late and don’t get paid for gigs, they play to a throng of people who just don’t make up enough numbers to call a crowd, and end up as broke as when they started. And they still turn up to play the wedding of the tour manager – with songs about 666 and damnation – to the horror of her relatives. The tragicomedy is astounding all because the humanity is vibrant and palpable; and even people who shunned the heavy metal ethos would be hard pressed not to root for these guys.

What’s Bad About It

Nothing. Next!

What’s Interesting About It

Heavy Metal inspires such fierce loyalty and derision in people it’s no surprise it endures in the market place. It also has the added benefit of easy visual associations with the music. Grow your hair long, wear black, wear some lather gear with some studs, have a tat or two, and you’re off. The uniformity through time is actually quite interesting.

Every one of those guys thinks they’re a unique individual rebelling against the commodified system by… buying into this other sort of commodification. You feel sorry for the characters in the film who are totally captive to the myth that propels the marketing of rock music. They just want their second day in the sun, but the glaring absence of any sense of irony about their life is actually quite fascinating. It’s a morbid fascination, but it’s interesting as all get out.

The Spinal Tap Story Arc

This film has the same story arc as Spinal Tap. Some portions of the story are played out longer, and there is no conniving girlfriend who adds to the conflict, but it is so close to the Spinal Tap story, it’s uncanny. They tour, the manager is ineffectual, they lose money, it all falls apart. They go into the studio, and bicker. The record company dumps on their product. The story elements are all there. There’s even a shot of a knob at one point that is callibrated up to ’11’.

They even go from backstage to the stage yelling “Hello Cleveland!” which is in reference to Spinal Tap’s getting-lost-back-stage scene. In the end, the band gets to Japan where they discover they have an army of devoted fans, enough to sustain them and validate them.

The really weird thing is that the parody came first by 25 years.

What’s In A Name?

It’s been mentioned elsewhere but the director of ‘This Is Spinal Tap’ was Rob Reiner.

The drummer of Anvil is Robb Reiner.

The Shadow Of Auschwitz

It’s not said too loudly but the 2 main guys of Anvil are sons of people who survived the Holocaust. Lips’ father in particular survived Auschwitz. And when you watch these guys through the understanding that they ran headlong into Heavy Metal music for its imagery and promise of liberation, there’s something haunting about their failure. Heavy Metal after all harks back to a lot of Dark Ages Europe imagery.

It’s kind of weird that two Jewish kids were ardently aspiring to this Dark Ages Europe and Gothic horror stuff. At least Sandi from ‘Sadisitk Excution’ was Iranian – Iran, of course meaning Aryan.