#293. Black Metallic by Catherine Wheel

From the album Ferment (Fontana, 1992)

It is endlessly fun to point out the fact that Rob Dickinson of Catherine Wheel and Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden are brothers.  Both of them elected to name their respective bands after medieval torture devices.  However, a Catherine Wheel is also a pin-wheel firework, suggesting a duality of meaning.   Death and torture, brightness and joy.  Catherine Wheel songs seem to straddle this line.  Iron Maiden does not.  Iron Maiden, elderstatemen of “demonic heavy metal” is just comic book death and murder, usually stupid, and maybe fun at times.  And that’s one fast bass player, which is admirable.

 So what’s it like when Bruce and Rob (each pictured above) get together and jam at family gatherings or what have you?  Do they argue?  Does Rob roll his eyes and or humour Bruce’s head-banging and overwrought metal vocals?  It kind of reminds me of Spielberg teaming up with Lucus.  Spielberg is a genius and Lucas peddles pap, and hence we are insulted with Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, or whatever that abomination was called.

[I just youtubed a few Maiden videos to check back on my memories.  I have not listened to a Maiden song in eons.  I can totally see why my 14 year old self might be attracted to this, which is exactly why it is so bad to listen to today.  Mayhem! Demons!  Dripping Blood!  ARRRGGHH!  How ridiculous. I feel comforted knowing that I was also listening to The Clash and The The, and that I never actually purchased metal records]

Rob Dickinson and Catherine Wheel were a serious band.  Maybe too serious.  And they were co-leaders of the poorly named shoegaze movement in the early 90s that produced some transcendental music (cf. My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Ride, etc.).  The song that broke them in North America, #293 on the Top 500, is “Black Metallic”. 

This is a seven minute epic of a song, quintessential of the genre with soft, dreamy vocals over top of quiet droning guitar ruminations alternating with blasts of technicolored, walls of sound.  Whatever Dickinson is singing about is made profound by a delivery that alternates the subtle with the mammoth – it comes at you in big, relentless waves, and threatens to take you away.  But I don’t know what he’s singing about.  Dickinson has said it’s about a car, which is disappointing but also makes little lyrical sense, except for the chorus.  I hope he is fucking with us.  I prefer to believe he is singing about a person that is sealed up emotionally.  Impenetrable. Can't get under that skin sort of idea.  Just feels more refined and artistic than a car reference.

 

My own personal Catherine Wheel story is one of disappointment.  The band was slated to appear at a small hall at the University of Guelph.  This was surreal.  The idea of exotic British artists touring little towns in Southwestern Ontario was strange, but somehow Catherine Wheel were coming.  (This also happened with a double bill of The Jazz Butcher and Blue Aeroplanes, which was a fabulous night because we snuck back stage and met Pat Fish and the very weird Blue Aeroplanes singer.  I also fell off the end of a couch, because I was so loaded, which was embarrassing).  Until of course they cancelled.  Apparently they were not treated well and decided to bail.  I was rather devastated and I have never seen them live.  Black Metallic remains up there as one of the best songs I could have, but did not, witness live.