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I just never really understood it. I wasn't around when this developed, but I can imagine a lot of reasons why metal might have made them enemies. all of them pretty silly from todays perspective though.. I myself always understood a lot of the Doom Metal culture as disappointed, angered, alienated hippies. freethinking, loving people with the best intentions for the world, but disillusioned and troubled by it.

so, where did that come from in metal? I wonder about it every time I run into it. now I was reminded of it by some comments in the picture thread. it doesn't seem to be much of a topic nowadays, but it still lingers around now and then, a genre trope like the poser/trueness theme perhaps. would anybody around in the 80s care to elaborate?

Q: How do you hide money from a hippie?
A: Put it under the soap.

'Cause they're useless drug addicts?

I think it's a class thing, most Metal dudes are working class types, you hippies were middle/upper class who could afford to dropout maaaaaaannnnnnnnn.

I'm not sure there really is/was a general 'hippie-hate' in the Metal-scene. It's more of long running joke that we sort of nicked from the punks, isn't it? It's either that or Cartman's fault.

Pacifists are just an easy target for all sorts of ridicule I guess, but personally I think I prefer the late 60's to the 70's, both musically and culturally. Quoted for truth:

Jello Biafra wrote:The 60's weren't all failure, it's the 70's that stunk..

DaN wrote:personally I think I prefer the late 60's to the 70's, both musically and culturally. Quoted for truth:

Jello Biafra wrote:The 60's weren't all failure, it's the 70's that stunk..

Without an awesome 70's there wouldn't have been a Dead Kennedy's.

Ouch, there are just SOOOO many more bands I like from the 70's than from the 60's...

Black Axe wrote:'Cause they're useless drug addicts?

Correct!

'pataphysicien wrote:would anybody around in the 80s care to elaborate?

I wasn't around in the '80s, but I thought that by that time, all the hippies became yuppies. (Another good reason to hate them.)

DaN wrote:I'm not sure there really is/was a general 'hippie-hate' in the Metal-scene. It's more of long running joke that we sort of nicked from the punks, isn't it? It's either that or Cartman's fault.

Pacifists are just an easy target for all sorts of ridicule I guess, but personally I think I prefer the late 60's to the 70's, both musically and culturally. Quoted for truth:

Jello Biafra wrote:The 60's weren't all failure, it's the 70's that stunk..

yeah, I was assuming it wasn't full-on hate. I just phrased the question in a jovial moment. I don't think class was really a defining issue, not for the hippie movement nor for the metal subculture, neither in content, nor in demographics. in single instances sure, but reducing metalheads to "working class" and hippies to "middle/upper" just blurrs more than it clarifies.

now for my bit of myth and lore. one thing I imagine to have been a reason is that metal came into real bloom after the hippie wave crashed. at the same time it was the canvas before which it developed. for those teenagers at the time it was the big youth culture you could rebel against. same goes for punks and skins (who have much mroe right to calling their beginnings "working class"). new musical directions, banding together with your in-group, don't wanna be like the adults, their shit's not as hip as yours etc. also the hippie culture became clicheed so fast, in the mid 70s already. and the clichees became public "property" too because the movement was so known. in one way it might also have been the political nature of the hippie movement. metalheads were never rebels in any meaningful political sense. and the political conformists tend to be sceptical of the changers. in the 80s the latest changers you could imagine were hippies.. might have also been the 80s more generally, maybe even the terrorist outgrowths if you lived in Germany.. then again it might also have been a general sentiment of the 80s: individualism, neoliberal economics, mass culture, consumption frenzy. not exactly hippie friendly values. I mean they all shared it apparently: punks, skins, metals.

also. I love Jello Biafra, but that's a load of bullshit.

I think the hippy movement was indeed very much a class-based movement. Just affording drugs and free time makes it a class issue. And from the degeneration of it there begat the yuppie era. It's not difficult to feel a bit queasy just from that relation.

I don't hate hippies, or anybody. No human is my enemy. But to answer your question I can see why certain metalheads would feel the hippie strain was a useless one, even as exhibited in the proto-doom metal culture as you say. Most metalheads are really not people of social action (unless that action involves them buying obscure vinyl for money they'd otherwise use for food and other bare necessities) but the music they listen to does push for action and taking control of one's life and forging ones personal meaning over existence with iron will and honor, power, might, etc. These things, while not obviously social are very much fundamentally so, unless one lives in a cave with their record player.

Hippies aren't about that at all. They're about inner peace, an acceptance of things as they are and so on... Hippy culture was disruptive towards the 'normals' and to that end it agrees with HM, but HM was much further disruptive, it dealt with inwards disruption, resetting of the polarity inside a man as an end in itself. Death, destruction, lust and power are important means of self-nullification/self-glorification. HM strives on contrasts and perceived mutual exclusivities while spaced out hippie rock wouldn't really bother.

So, when you couple the hippy shit with the nihilistic side of heavy metal you breed a curious, somewhat cacophonous type of fatalism: "The world is coming to an end, everything sucks, but I'm alright with that." It's like starting on this inwards journey of discovery while starting with the social world and then halfway, when you get to the good part, the important part, the fissure of consciousness as it were, you just give up and go 'let's just mellow out, maaaaan". It's no wonder that the 'TRUE METAL!!!!' folks don't listen to modern 'traditional' (as in, 70's inspired) doom metal by and large. Only epic doom for them, heh.

Yes, it is hypocritical to a degree. Unless these people go out and SHAPE THE WORLD ACCORDING TO PASSION AND DECREE or hey at least they reinvent/destroy themselves with diligence (not just the one or the other) then they aren't any different from the perceived doom-hippies. But eh, that's a different discussion. I hope this explains the 'hate', though.


BTW: on the threshold between hippies and metalheads: Manilla Road! Think about it.

Korgull- put the GWAR record down!

at Helm's description of metal heads' financial priorities!

Stereotypes like class differences certainly aren't true 100% of the time, but I think class does play a role here at least in many cases. Hippies are often (but not always) better educated and from more well-off families than metal heads. Many of the hippies I know personaly fall into the category of 'rebelling against daddy's corporate lifestyle by becoming a smelly tree-hugger'. Not always true, but there is a definite trend there in my experience.

nightsblood wrote:Korgull- put the GWAR record down!

hehe...
I was waiting for someone to recognize that.

I still can't understand how some serious Metalhead can't stand to hear this horrible john lennon song "imagine", and worse, how they can support it. That's just opposed to what I can feel while listening to any Metal record.
The hippy movement had some positive aspects, but in the end, it was the thing of bored rich Western teens and young adults. Just like Heavy-Metal was the thing of angry poor Western teens and young adults (I do use a gross comparison, but the truth isn't that far IMO).

"We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee, we don't take our trips on LSD" (Merle Haggard)
"Hippies are squares with long hair, and they don't wear no underwear" (The Dictators)

Nuff said!

Imagine must be one of the worst songs ever written, and I don't hate The Beatles, but John Lennon solo is pretty fucking awful. Something I don't understand is how the same guys who made more complex music lyric and music wise (let's say, Eleanor Rigby) finished doing such lame music like the already mentioned song, or Don't Let Me Down. And since we're at it, I fucking HATE Andy Warhol.