Music Vol. I

One should be able to write an unsentimental genealogy of the phenomena known as head-banging. It would begin, presumably, as a rudimentary form of dance, especially associated with proto-heavy metal bands such as Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. It would seem to be marked by a certain nervous masculine intensity, perhaps even reaction against the fashions of spontaneous dance associated with the development of rock and roll culture: the jerky rhythms of early teen beat dancers, the overwhelmed screaming of the teenage mania girl, the druggy spirals and freak moves of the so-called hippies. As a movement of instrumentalists, the headbang is style of performance that accentuates a cerebral rhythm of punishing movement, concentration, and quasi-religious neophytism. The phallus of the guitar is sublimated into a kind of spectacle of genuflection to the ritual of sound; a sound pushed to such sublime extremes of volume via motifs of almost brutal simplicity and repetition. The religious elements of this dance need not belabored, however prevalent the reactionary themes of Anglo-American Satanism are associated with the style. That said, the eyes are hooded in a cloak of hair and the body is still. The concussive pain of the dance perhaps its own high, something akin to huffing glue. It is a Pavlovian movement of triggered response like teenage erections and bodily shame, zombie-like quadrilles of judgment, beavisboys with overgrown heads and puny bodies.

It should be further suggested, given the framework here, that the antecedents of headbanging be pursued in musical styles and subcultures marked by a compulsive rhythmic intensity and sublimated sexual frustration. Perhaps a true bastard constellation would trace the phenomenon to the development of early techno-dance subcultures. Here we could begin by properly flattening the correspondence of two mutations qua mutations: hair metal and rave culture.

The term "headbanger" was coined during Led Zeppelin's first US tour in 1969. During a show at the Boston Tea Party, audience members in the first row were banging their heads against the stage in rhythm with the music.

Lemmy from Motörhead, however, said in an interview on the documentary The Decline of Western Civilization II: The Metal Years, that the term "Headbanger" may have originated in the band's name, as in "Motorheadbanger".

Ian Gillan, frontman of Deep Purple, when asked if he invented headbanging he said, "That’s a definite possibility".