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Listening to Diamond Head’s most enduring of epics (although forgive the mild misnomer “epic” as it happens to be under 5 minutes long), offers the chance to discuss exactly why Stourbridge’s hairiest, most underground rockers never quite grasped the glittering prize of major league renown. As the title track of 1983’s critically mixed Canterbury swaps range from the minor chords of a solemn solo piano which unfurls the sanctity of a cold gloomy cathedral atmosphere, into the kind of fable from which rockers take on the expected duty of patching the narrative into a metal recitation of Beowulf, Diamond Head’s astonishing versatility thus becomes their beacon and albatross in one foul swoop.

Sean Harris wasn’t one to undermine his own dynamic capabilities. It’s Electric from the group’s acne-laden days found Harris’s vocals tipping the hat to the punks Diamond Head did not shirk from acknowledging. Am I Evil equally known and stymied by Metal’s uber-megalomaniacs M******** forfeits the yawn-inducing array of distortion pedals, working as much in harmony with Thin Lizzy’s darker fancies as it did with the trash metal it inspired. His multi-tasking was as vigorous on the fret-boards, even supporting Brian Tatler’s dive-bomber runs from time to time. On lyrical duties Harris could often leave a stadium full to be desired though, Sucking My Love a cringing example of why the band’s versatile nuances weren’t always for the greater good. Tatler does a great impression of Tony Iommi circa 1971/2, Sean sees Justin Hawkins in the crystal ball that comes free with all 1980s metal starter packs, and beats him to rather limp punch. Never mind.

Canterbury could’ve been Diamond Head’s meal ticket. For all the album’s well-intended failures, the title track is ironically something that could have benefited from being at least 10 minutes long, the piano dignified, yet pushy, elegant, even spooky, Tatler’s influx of ascending chords then preach from a different script, one very few from outside the old-school even really pin down with real success. That stinging Flying V and Marshall combo is sorely missed from rock these days. Get the picture now? Good. But it still needs to be asked that was their eclecticism actually their downfall? Just bare in mind that MCA Records were the completely wrong label for a band still in their relative infancy. Sounding like Def Leppard in places (admittedly in Elliot and co’s somewhat worthwhile early incarnation) and Megadeth elsewhere, Canterbury as a whole doesn’t really deviate significantly from much of the magic formula the group played around with before, perhaps the restless urge to be a collosal sum of their parts was just a step too far as early into their careers as 1983.

Many of those in opposition back then can take heart from a track like Canterbury though, leading the way for hard rock/metal instead of pleasing L.A. decadence, the lyrical content turns its nose up at sword and sorcery temptations, where Harris ventures back to the days of pre-Gothic intrigue when faced with the alternative horrors of spandex fetishes 20 years on from 1983. Ignore the mass of inferior pop-rock and trash metal numbskulls who name check Diamond Head as if somehow it was the West Midlands group who owed them for the recognition. They’re worth a lot more than that kind of condescending homage.

Words launch other words, and names have a way of establishing themselves as footholds - nothing could be truer than with the name Jesus, which -  thanks to the centuries of teaching, tradition, imposition and imperialism which have used him as currency - has come to mean whatever you earnestly wish. The devil may have the best tunes, but in at least several top-class songs Jesus gets a mention.

Jesus the Mexican Boy - Iron and Wine

O.k, so it’s not the ‘real’ Jesus, but that’s exactly the point in this word-made-flesh ballad, where the singer and subject drink beer on the fourth of July.  Underneath the soft beautiful melody there’s a tight-packed tale of debauchery and human failing.

File this along side the excellent Frightened Rabbit tune  Heads Roll Off : ‘Jesus, is just, a spanish boy’s name’. 

They ain’t makin Jews (like Jesus any more) - Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys

This is judo music, a strange oriental power-play where you use your opponents strength/momentum to flatten them. Kinky  strolls into a redneck country music bar, both in the narrative and musically speaking, and proceeds to trash its foundations using a pedalsteel guitar and some home-truths.  Alice Walker, in The Colour Puple had her characters debate whether Jesus was black: “”Somewhere in the bible it say Jesus hair was like lamb’s wool, I say. Well, say Shug, if he came to any of these churches we talking bout he’d have to have it conked before anybody paid him any attention. The last thing niggers want to think about they God is that his hair kinky…”. Kinky Friedman and Alice Walker together, though, agree in art on one thing - whatever race or colour Jesus may have been, he sure as hell wasn’t a w.a.s.p’y-texan, beer-drinking, god-loving, race-hating bigot.

 

Plastic Jesus - Ed Rush and George Cromarty

Written by two beatnick hippies in their student days as a social satire and folk parody, the song gained extra weight by being included in the Paul Newman film Cool Hand Luke. It’s been covered and added to by everyone from the Flaming Lips through to little-known social satirist Billy Idol (?!?)
“I don’t care if it rains or freezes, long as I got my plastic Jesus, riding on the dashboard of my car”

on a follow up theme you could also check out Soundgarden’s Plastic Jesus: “Plastic Jesus, where are you from? Korea or Canada, or maybe Taiwan”

Jesusland - Ben Folds

The crash course collision between christianity and capitalism that is the American dream is captured brilliantly by the man that wrote Satan is my master (not to be confused with the equally splendid Satan is my motor by Cake).

If you’re going to listen to this, I suggest the spine-tingling accappella version recording that Folds produced of the The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Loreleis choir for his University A Cappella project. 

This is a song that makes you yearn for and hate that ‘beautiful mcmansions on the hill’ society.

Personal Jesus - Depeche Mode

The practice of building churches on ground sacred to other cults became a guiding principle of the expanding Church in its early centuries and through to the Spanish conquests of the Americas. Take a winning formula and change it slightly, give it a ‘value add’ and see where it takes you. So too, then with Depeche Mode, the band that started out as Basildon whitewashed jeans and synths likely lads on Top of the Pops, and merged into S&M rock n’ roll beasts with an eye on the darker side of faith, love, and devotion (all the while reigning supreme in the US church of Stadium rock).
The majesty of this song is testified to by the fact that artists poles apart like Johnny Cash and Italian metal band Lacuna Coil have chosen to cover it.

The Mercy Seat - Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds 

Speaking of Johnny Cash - a man with a bit of a thing for Jesus, it’s safe to say - it’s no surprise that he was drawn to this, perhaps the most emblematic of Cave’s songs. Jesus has turned into Christ here, ‘born into a manger, like some ragged stranger he died upon the cross, and might I say, it was quite fitting in its way, he was a carpenter by trade, or at least that’s what I’m told’.

There are no atheists in the trenches, they say, and this is a song battling between old testament defiance and new testament redemption, all told on death row as the singer awaits that most American of judgements, the electric chair.

Jesus Gonna Be here - Tom Waits

This is what you get when you get America’s greatest song-writer rhapsodising about the rapture. With his gravel-rolling vocal chords taking the lead, accompanied only by some twanging and clapping, it sounds as if Tom’s been called from the grave, ready to greet a cargo-cult ass-kicking Jesus, back to judge the living and the dead. Forget the beautiful ballads, the doomed romanticism, in this tune Waits puts himself into the worn-out shoes of a believer walking the last mile. The results are spectacular.