heavy mental kids

 

This is 1975 - I wonder if they got "Heavy Mental Kids" from the band Heavy Metal Kids, or direct from Burroughs. 

Burroughs, a writer I'm glad existed but who I never have any desire to read.

New York Dolls, a band I'm glad existed but I never have any desire to hear.

Except, except, for this

Heavy Metal Kids, a band where the name is much better than the sonic actuality 

punk (just) before punk

Coincidentally published around the same time as All the Young Droogs's release, a piece at Dangerous Minds on the well-droogy Heavy Metal Kids - whose Gary Holton got some inspiration from Alex in A Clockwork Orange. The argument advanced - Heavy Metal Kids as missing link between glam and punk - is also advanced in Shock and Awe in the chapter entitled "Ultraviolence".

Only problem with Heavy Metal Kids -  what kept them from being punk - was A/ they were just a bit too theatrical and over the top (a bayonet in the stage?)...  B/ the music was too good-times pub boogie in the Faces style.  With Gary's Ronnie Wood-like hooter, the effect is more like Black Crowes with a gorblimey guvnor accent than a blast of fresh air clearing the stale Dingwalls/Marquee/Rainbow fug of the first-half  Seventies.

Also the name is confusing, because they have nothing to do with heavy metal the genre, but the name makes you think they do - and thus part of something existing, rather than start of something new.