Inside N.J.’s heavy metal history. New book reveals how Jersey shaped the global mosh pit.

Two long-time Jersey head-bangers have written a new book that makes the case for the Garden State as one of the fertile mosh pits for cultivating heavy metal music over the last half-century.

“Jersey Metal” is the first of three volumes that are a part-memoir, part-encyclopedic look at the genre’s local bands, fans, venues and promoters. A revised version of volume one, which track’s Jersey’s connection to the genre between 1969 and 1986, became available Friday.

“A lot of really formative things happened here during the early days of creating what became the metal scene,” co-author Alan Tecchio told NJ Advance Media. “We have our own rock stars.”

He cited metal heroes such as Joe Lynn Turner of Hackensack, a guitarist who started with Fandango and went on to play with Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow. And Zakk Wylde of Jackson, who played with local bands Stone Henge and Zyris before joining Ozzy Osbourne, Pantera and his own Black Label Society.

“A lot of stuff happened here,” Tecchio said. “The first book shows that that scene didn’t just come out of nowhere.”

The book looks at the symbiotic relationship between the local Jersey scene and the rise of heavy metal nationally in the ‘70s, particularly as the leading bands, such as Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, KISS, and The New York Dolls, seeded the next generation with appearances in both Jersey and New York’s large venues such as Madison Square Garden.

Madison Square Garden, in fact, is where the story starts for co-author and photographer Frank White, who took his first concert photos at the age of 12 at a Led Zeppelin concert in 1975. White snuck his mother’s 35mm camera out of their Bergenfield house and jumped on a bus to Manhattan without telling his parents or even his friends what he was doing. He continued surreptitiously snapping pics at New York concerts for months, squirreling away his photos without showing them to anyone. He eventually became a professional and now lives in Franklin (Sussex County), taking photos over the years for magazines, books and album covers.

Tecchio, who grew up in Closter, began singing for bands in 1983 while still in high school — heavy metal instantly transformed him from everyday nerd to local rock star. Now in Denville, he went on to sing for Prophecy, Aggressor, Hades, Non-Fiction and Silent Assassins, among others, as well as becoming a graphic designer.

The book draws on White’s extensive notes during the many concerts he photographed, as well as interviews the authors conducted with band members and fans from back in the day.

White noted that New Jersey punched above its weight in the world of heavy metal for several reasons. It was densely populated and well-situated between New York City and Philadelphia so fans could see headliners as well as local bands. The bands and fans, which were sometimes interchangeable, were brought together by several key businesses and media outlets to create a synergistic community.

The authors start the “Jersey Metal” story in the early 1970s with a preface from Jay Jay French, guitarist for Twisted Sister, which started life as a Ho-Ho-Kus band called Silver Star. The seeds of the scene were often planted in record stores where young people hung out and heard new sounds, as well as clubs after the state lowered the drinking age to 18.

Ambitious promoters began bringing in bands, while Jersey fans themselves began to take up instruments and create an ever-changing roster of local groups that played both cover songs and, increasingly, their own originals. Among the rising local musicians was Sayreville’s John Bongiovi who the book notes began playing with Raze in 1975 at the age of 13, going on to the band Atlantic City Expressway, and eventually becoming the star of Bon Jovi.

Metallica’s New Jersey roots

White relates the first-hand stories of Metallica’s early days when their first album was launched by the Old Bridge-based Megaforce Records. The San Francisco-based band submitted a cassette to Megaforce, which was founded by Jon and Marsha Zazula, who had created the label out of the Rock ‘N’ Roll Heaven record shop, which was initially in the midst of the Route 18 flea market in East Brunswick.

In the book, White tells the story of the thrash-metal pioneers arriving in New Jersey in 1983 in a rented truck, “basically broke,” playing a few gigs between bouts of partying and then firing their original guitarist, Dave Mustaine (who would famously form Megadeth that same year). White notes that they sent Mustaine to the Port Authority with just a bus ticket home, since they could barely afford air fare.

The Zazulas’ Megaforce went on to be the label for seminal metal bands such as Anthrax, Raven and Old Bridge’s Overkill. White noted that Megaforce — in parallel with its promotion of national bands such as Metallica — helped spread the word about rising New Jersey bands, cultivating the local scene.

“They had certain bands from New Jersey on their record label,” said White. “And that helped immensely because they always promoted shows. You could buy tickets from their place. They even staged concerts.”

The nationally known bands Anvil and Manowar even came to the Route 18 flea market to perform there.

The Jersey metal machine

Throughout the 1970s, the Jersey scene grew with an ever-changing roster of clubs.

“Back in the day, there were a lot of places and the bands would go out and even if they were going out to see a competing band, they would still go out and support that band,” said Tecchio. “You definitely went to a lot of the same places and saw a lot of the same faces for sure.”

Tecchio also noted that several key radio stations helped grow the local scene, including WDHA, which had one of the first metal shows in the country as well as WSOU, broadcasting out of Seton Hall University.

“These things were game changers as the scene developed for bands — Rand there were definitely magazines as well,” said Tecchio. “There was a whole community that found its voice and found its connections in different ways without the internet.”

Volume One of the series clocks in at 344 pages and covers 1969 to 1986. Tecchio and White are already working steadily on the second volume, which will cover the years 1987 to 2004, and will be released in 2025. They said a third volume will cover 2005 to 2021 for a release possibly in 2027.

“Jersey Metal: A History of the Garden State’s Heavy Metal Scene” can be found at jerseymetalbook.com and in record stores in the tri-state area.

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