As the hit Netflix show Stranger Things concluded its fantasy epic in December 2025, now is the perfect time for the arrival of Rock of Pages: The Literary Tradition of 1980s Heavy Metal. What, you ask? The Stranger Things character Eddie Munson is a fan of heavy metal music and the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. Friends and colleagues of author Jesse Kavadlo (who is also a PopMatters contributor) have commented flatteringly on his resemblance to Munson, and it is this gambit that Kavadlo uses to introduce his symbiotic love of heavy metal, role-playing games, and literature.
Rock of Pages flaunts its historical credentials by treating its era as a long decade. Taking a view similar to that the 18th century started with the Glorious Revolution in 1688 and ended with Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo in 1815, Kavadlo posits that the 1980s took flight in 1978 when the glorious guitar wizardry on Van Halen’s self-titled debut album revolutionized rock, and it ended in 1991 upon the defeat of heavy metal hedonism by Nirvana and the Seattle sound.
Lauding Van Halen as both heavier and more virtuosic than the stadium rock of the 1970s, Rock of Pages proceeds to cover much of what has since made heavy metal its own thing. The Cold War MAD-ness of Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” and Bon Jovi’s Reaganite fable “Livin’ on a Prayer” set the scene for literary expositions of Dio, glam bands like Motley Crue and Poison, New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, and thrash metal bands Metallica and Megadeth.
Rock of Pages carries a weightier purpose than simply tapping into the nostalgic appeal of a popular TV show. At its core, the book introduces a formidable antagonist: the notorious Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), established by Tipper Gore. The PMRC spearheaded the 1985 Senate hearing on “porn rock”, where the opposition included notable musicians like Frank Zappa, John Denver, and Dee Snider, frontman of Twisted Sister.
Before the hearing, record companies started placing Explicit Lyrics: Parental Advisory warnings on records, but the Parents Music Resource Center wanted the music industry to be even more explicit about the objectionable nature of album content. The PMRC advised an alphabetical ratings system of V for Violence, D/A for drugs and alcohol, X for sexual explicitness, and O for Occult, and these themes provide chapters for Rock of Pages.
The book contends that surface-level criticisms of heavy metal frequently overlook the deeper context of the songs, often digging only as deep as the song titles. For example, Def Leppard’s “High ‘n’ Dry (Saturday Night)” was flagged D/A for its perceived references to drugs and alcohol. Kavadlo probes the ambiguity in the title phrase, and the tension between being both “high” and “dry”, and argues that references to drug use, as well as sex and violence, in heavy metal reflect underlying themes of self-agency rather than promotion of substance use.
The problem with this approach is that the PMRC didn’t hold as much weight as they gave themselves credit for. Having failed to coerce the music industry into adopting its stringent codifications, the PMRC was soon openly and aggressively mocked on albums bearing its warning stickers and in TV shows like Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons. Writing for Reason magazine in 2017, Greg Beato argued that in the 1990s, “A hip-hop album that didn’t warrant a Tipper sticker was artistically suspect.”
Stranger Things also revived the star of the iconoclastic queen of British art-pop, Kate Bush, sending her 1985 song “Running Up That Hill” to the top of the Billboard charts in 2022. In the 1980s, literary references were abundant in the music of Kate Bush, Joy Division, and the Smiths, and for British fans, a love of pop music and literature went hand in glove.
While these artists didn’t break big in the US until long after their performing peak, American hard rock also struggled to find an audience in the UK. After all, Britain had invented heavy metal in the 1970s, and it was time for something new in the form of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal.
This raises the relativity of relatability. On songs like “The Headmaster Ritual” and “Barbarism Begins at Home”, the Smiths’ lyricist and singer Morrissey’s revulsion at institutional violence is underscored by dark humour, prevalent in many classic novels, that would not land so well if it were not so heartfelt. Kate Bush brought a feminine sensuality to interpretations of Brontë and Joyce that were almost absent in rock music. In choosing to do a deeper literary dive into the themes of sex, violence, and the occult that offended the PMRC, Rock of Pages risks digging deeper into the stereotype of heavy metal as amoral, escapist fantasy that has continued to ward off many otherwise open-eared listeners.
Take “Under the Blade” by Twisted Sister. The PMRC claimed it was about sadomasochism, but Dee Snider countered that it was inspired by guitarist Eddie Ojeda’s fear of surgery. Snider was schooled enough to argue that “the beauty of literature, poetry and music is that they leave room for the audience to put their own imagination, experiences and dreams into the words,” but lines such as, “You’re cornered in the alley way, you know you’re all alone,” are hard to interpret as being about anything other than a fear of being cornered by a Jack the Ripper-type serial killer.
Of course, explicit material is not limited to heavy metal. The PMRC drew up a list of the Filthy Fifteen songs that displayed the depravity of popular music. Alongside nine heavy metal acts were three of MTV’s biggest stars: Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, and Prince. Rock of Pages isn’t about comparative criticism, however, and Kavadlo is not about scoring points for heavy metal being less sordid or more cultured than pop. The book sticks largely to discussing heavy metal.
Even so, Rock of Pages makes a lively case that the theatricality of 1980s heavy metal concealed a far more literate imagination than its critics were willing to admit. By tracing connections between the genre’s fascination with myth, horror, rebellion, and excess and a wider literary tradition, Kavadlo reminds readers that the distance between the library and the loudspeaker was never quite as great as the Parents Music Resource Center’s moral panic suggested. If the book sometimes risks revisiting the stereotypes surrounding the music at the time, it nevertheless offers an energetic and thoughtful attempt to situate heavy metal within the broader cultural currents of its era.