The on-line zine Metal Observer recently featured a short essay by “Alex” celebrating the granddaddy of metal aesthetics. No, not Ozzy, and not Jimmy Page either. Not even Anton LaVey. Alex chose instead to trace the influence of an Oxford linguistics professor, nearly 30 years dead, who amused himself in his spare time by devising his own languages and populating an imagined world with different races that might speak them. Pundits kvetched over the recent Waterstone’s poll that named this antimodernist’s masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, the best-loved book of the 20th century, but their questions about literary merit were even less pertinent than usual. J.R.R. Tolkien occupies a unique place as a shaper of internationally shared dreams, and perhaps no one dreams as deeply as a metalhead.
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And, of course, it sounds evil–you don’t need to know the prehistory of Middle Earth to guess that those are some villainous consonants grating against each other. Alex notes that his list is dominated by places and people that the professor, light-sider Catholic that he was, would never have endorsed; he created them to illustrate his notion of pure foulness. But Tolkien’s myths have been adopted enthusiastically by all sorts: fanciers of high-tech atavism and advocates of the primal, dwellers in the mainstream and refugees living on the far lunatic fringe alike. And their agendas have often differed from the author’s. Neofascists have named themselves after Orc captains, hippies fond of “pipe-weed” have named their daughters after Elven queens, and countless high school kids have written papers that compare the War of the Ring to World War II, always assuming the Ring represents the atom bomb and the hobbits represent the English.
Tolkien certainly felt that the hobbits represented him, but not everyone shares his humility. During the first surge of Tolkien’s worldwide popularity, which exploded with the first legitimate American paperback publication of The Lord of the Rings in the mid-1960s (roughly a decade after it was first published in the UK), he was embraced largely by idealists (Led Zeppelin among them) who wanted to align themselves with the noble, artistic, star-worshiping Elves, the freely wandering wizards, and the merry, ancient, and perpetually rhyming Tom Bombadil. Many found a kindred spirit in Tolkien’s foaming hatred of anyone who dared to harm a tree. Tolkien was a bit of a Luddite: upon conquering any territory, his villains invariably level forests and build dirty, noisy machines. So why did metal, once the noisiest and most electricity dependent strain of rock, pledge fealty to his creations?
Metal musicians may be attracted to Tolkien’s villains, but the chief appeal of his work lies in his effective simulacrum of antiquity–a prehistory of prehistory. Tolkien’s palette drew from real legend and lore, real religions (including his own), and real languages. He consciously intended to forge a new national myth for England; while he believed he failed, he did create a coherent myth cycle for many of his readers. His ambitious, ridiculous, wonderful goal isn’t just premodernist or antimodernist–it shoves aside the Age of Reason itself.
The reawakening of the old powers can be risky business. In an artist’s hands you get soul-of-a-nation masterpieces; in others you get, well, the SS’s grotesque appreciation of Wagner. Tread carefully, some say. But like Melkor before him, Sauron didn’t. And like both those nasties, metal doesn’t either–at least in its dreams. The discordant music that Melkor contributed to challenge the harmony of creation was bound to prick up some ears–a sort of primordial Diabolus in Musica with the power to alter the fabric of existence, or perhaps a primal, self-aggrandizing power chord. Because the inspiration of Melkor and Sauron is so grand, so proud, the devil’s advocates insist, it allows us to break away the petty tyranny of the everyday.
