The tale of the Heavy Metal Kids is a topsy-turvy, rags-to-rehab saga of comedy, drama and tragedy. Stranger still, it’s recently gone full circle with the addition of some new chapters, though minus its central character. Fundamental to this story is the London-based band’s choice of moniker, a tongue in cheek though decidedly ill-suited name that its five members were initially partial to, but which would prove to be a curse as well as a blessing.

The Kids (as they later preferred to call themselves) were simply ahead of their time – a riotous, hell-raising, collection of rock’n’roll rebel-rousers who not only went on to befriend punk rock icons like the Sex Pistols and the Damned, but also musically inspired them. Indeed, their flamboyant, high-energy rock has been cited as the missing link in the story of Britpop.

At the eye of their hurricane was a singer now infinitely better known as a TV personality. Those who knew Gary Holton say that carpentry aside, he didn’t have to act too much to portray Wayne Winston Norris, the skirt-chasing, beer-swilling, loveable rogue that charmed the nation in the brickies abroad TV comedy Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. It’s common knowledge that Holton died of a heroin overdose – indeed, the series was revived after a 16-year absence with a love-child son taking his place – but Gary’s musical career is also worthy of considerable note.

A quintet comprising Holton, guitarist Mickey Waller, bassist Ronnie Thomas, keyboard player Danny Peyronel and drummer Keith Boyce, the Heavy Metal Kids were born thirty years ago in typically bizarre circumstances. Mickey Waller and Ronnie Thomas had been with Heaven, a band billed as England’s answer to Blood Sweat & Tears, but with prospects fast fading. Under the guise of a farewell gig in Southend, they collared Keith Boyce as replacement for their Glitter Band-bound percussionist, loaded the transit with equipment and fled from their manager’s winding up order to accept – of all things – a residency in an Indian restaurant in the South of France.
“It was playing Rolling Stones covers to 20 customers a night in Nice,” recalls Boyce. “But it lead to some better gigs in St Tropez.”

A paternity suit kept their singer in France, but Heaven had to return home at some point. In need of a new frontman they turned to Gary Holton of the band Biggles, who despite a raucous Cockney accent had joined the touring company of Hair two years earlier, aged just 17. Holton was becoming unhappy at Biggles’ progressive rock pretensions.
“They were like Emerson Lake & Palmer, in fact Carl Palmer’s brother Steve was their drummer,” divulges Ronnie Thomas. “We’d smoke dope and watch Gary rehearse with them, caterwauling above all this synchronized jazz-rock. Like us, he was a complete looner.”
“Biggles had a huge record deal but had never recorded a note, just like Heaven,” adds Boyce sagely. “They blew their entire advance; never even did a gig.” The addition of Argentinean-born keyboard player Danny Peyronel from The Rats completed the line-up.
“My American accent soon became a Cockney one, but till then Gary and Mickey put me through hell,” Danny winces. “When I spoke correctly I became one of the boys. It made me realise that Gary could be sharp and obnoxious, but also the nicest guy you could wish to meet.”

Ronnie recalls Ricki Farr, the band’s manager (whose boxer father Tommy once fought Joe Louis), suggesting the group call themselves the Heavy Metal Kids, from the writings of William S Burroughs. The choice was viewed as a masterstroke, but it would backfire.

Co-manager Laurie O’Leary secured the Kids a regular gig at his club the Speakeasy, a notorious London hangout for musicians and music biz employees. Keith Moon, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie and Bryan Ferry were all regularly spotted hanging out. Despite the clientele’s often blasé atmosphere, the Kids knocked themselves into shape. “It was a great practice ground for us, and Gaz in particular,” Danny explains. “He’d holler, ‘Oi! Fucking listen!’ The only other time I saw the place react the same way was to Bob Marley & The Wailers.”

Having been spotted at the Speak by a secretary of Dave Dee (also of Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich fame), then general manager of the new Atlantic Records office in England, the quintet began to attract label interest.
“They were young and raw, but there was nothing quite like Gary Holton in full flight,” says Dee now. “He’d wander round in a pair of wellington boots – well before Freddie Starr – and a top hat. So Phil Carson and I decided to sign them [for Atlantic], but on a low-key level. What attracted us was that they were all characters. Besides Gary they had Mickey, another legend in his own lunchbox.”
“You’d be halfway up the M1 on the way to a gig, and Mickey would’ve forgotten his guitar,” elaborates Ronnie. “He’d run up huge bar bills – Cognac, everything – but have no money to pay. To this day, he lives in Paris and is banned from most bars in the city.”

Dee produced the band’s self-titled, debut in a whirlwind eight days, with the Eagles working on their ‘Desperado’ album in the studio next door. But there was already a problem.
“Gary had begun shoving gear up his nose, and he and I fell out in the studio,” explains Dave. “The others were pretty solid blokes, but Gary was a loose cannon. In the studio, I lost a stone and a half in weight.”
When the album was released in 1974, ‘Ain’t It Hard’, ‘Always Plenty Of Women’ and live set closer ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll Man’ captured much of the band’s live ebullience. Though not a huge seller, it upped their profile immensely. The Kids broke Jimi Hendrix’s attendance record at the Marquee, then began gigging across Britain and the continent to what Peyronel describes as “exhaustion point”. More than 300 gigs per year were played, the Melody Maker acknowledging them as “the hardest working band in showbusiness”.

At an early gig at London’s plush King’s Road Theater, the Kids hired a fire-breather as their opening act. “It was a girl, actually,” recalls Peyronel with a smile. “Very exotic-looking.”
Although ‘Heavy Metal Kids’ sold reasonably well, the group found themselves in a vacuum. “There were all these bigger bands like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Uriah Heep, and then there was pub rock like Bebop Deluxe – we were kinda of in the middle,” observes Peyronel. “We supported Heep and Humble Pie, but half of the audience was still out in the Hammersmith Odeon foyer drinking, it didn’t feel like we were getting anywhere. It was much, much different when we got to America. Kids over there would drive 100 miles to see you and were willing to give you a chance.”

Perhaps for the above reason, possibly for the sheer devilment, the Kids garnered a reputation for rearranging hotel rooms. They were banned from the Holiday Inn, Trusthouse Forte and Ramada chains as rooms were flooded, furniture destroyed, kitchens and bars stripped of food and alcohol.
“In this country, you can’t get a ham sandwich after 11 o’clock, and we’d all bowl back after a great gig high as kites,” observes Ronnie. “We were raiding the kitchen one night when suddenly the lights went on. Gary overtook me on the stairs, with a string of raw sausages hanging from his pocket. When I got to the room he was trying to flush ’em down the toilet – hiding the evidence.”

But the Kids outdid themselves the time their road crew snaffled a 15-foot Christmas tree from the reception of Torquay’s Holiday Inn.
“They took it out of the pot and bent it in half to get into the lift, there were all these birds in our room so it was party-time,” recollects Ronnie. “We’d plugged all the lights in when, ‘Bang, bang, bang!’, hotel security were knocking at the door and accusing us of nicking their tree. We tried to deny it, but there was a huge trail of mud from the lift to the door of our room.”
By the time of the second album, 1975’s ‘Anvil Chorus’, there had been many changes – not all of them for the better. Mickey Waller had been replaced by the enigmatically named Cosmo, and Andy Johns taken over as producer. Even this was an after-thought, his brother Glyn Johns (Led Zeppelin/Rolling Stones/The Who) being their first choice.
“Andy walked in with Gary on the first day, and Andy collapsed on the floor,” remembers Boyce. “They were both pissed.”
According to Peyronel, Waller’s departure was enormously significant. “The magic was affected – okay, Mickey sometimes played out of tune,” he muses, “and maybe he also drank too much, but he was the quintessential Heavy Metal Kids guitarist.”
Significantly, they’d also decided to abbreviate their name to The Kids. Reasons Danny: “It gave off the wrong vibes. We weren’t a heavy metal band – metal people don’t think Spïnal Tap is funny.”

Being signed to Atlantic, the Kids crossed paths with Led Zeppelin on a regular basis, even socialising with them from time to time. Peyronel recalls one memorable late night drinking session in Blake’s Hotel in Chelsea suggesting that cracks were appearing in Zeppelin’s internal relations as well as their own.
“John Bonham was at the bar drinking quadruple brandies when Gary went up to him and said something out of earshot,” he says. “Bonham just turned and whacked Gary in the stomach.

Then without warning, Holton decided to form his own band.“It really fucked us off,” Ronnie relates with considerable understatement. “Gary had been a good mate, but he was doing more drugs than ever and becoming really obnoxious. I’d been the best man at his wedding, but he was turning into a nasty little bastard. And onstage it all went out the window; he’d just do whichever song came into his head.”
After a gig in the Isle Of Man, the proceeds from which were squandered by Holton in a casino, Keith Boyce decided that enough was enough. Ronnie Thomas soon followed suit, but both were persuaded to play one final show – at the Speakeasy, where it had all begun. The farewell gig was as memorable for the faces that attracted as for the simmering dressing room tension.
“As Gary was getting ready to go on, he was wearing white cowboy boots with spurs, no trousers and pink posing pouch,” says a still gobsmacked Ronnie. “Across his chest he actually had two bullet belts. Gary was then trying to load this Smith & Wesson revolver; he was completely out of it, bullets all over the floor and roadies running in and out. I mean, people were trampling over live ammunition.”

In the gig’s front row was Johnny Rotten, who loudly and theatrically pronounced: “boring, boring, boring” to anyone within earshot. But the Kids had already made an impression on the Sex Pistols frontman, proven when he passed on his approval in rather more private circumstances. One night a hush had descended upon the Roebuck pub in the King’s Road as Messrs Lydon and Holton spotted each other in an upstairs snooker room.
“Gary was holding court with me and a group of others by the fireplace, when the atmosphere suddenly changed,” recalls Ronnie. “Rotten had walked into the room with two big bouncers – he always had to be protected because he was such an obnoxious little cunt. There was a deathly silence. Finally, Rotten undid this huge gold safety pin and put it on Gary’s lapel. He then patted his cheek and said, ‘You’ve been ripped off, Holton. How does it feel?’”

Even though he’d been forced from the band he loved by that time, Peyronel still feels like he and the Kids were cheated, to use a famous turn of phrase. “What happened to the Pistols in ’77 should have been us,” he says ruefully. “We were one of the first bands to have the term ‘punk rock’ used to describe us.”
The fact was not lost on The Damned, who once invited Holton to replace singer Dave Vanian when the latter couldn’t make a gig in Scotland. The ensuing shambles was still spoken of in hushed tones when bassist (and future UFO member) Paul Gray joined the band.
“Vanian had pulled one of his disappearing tricks I believe, so at the last moment Rat [Scabies, drummer] called Gary,” relates Gray. “En route to Glasgow, the first stop was an off license. It’s a fair old trot from London to Scotland, and lyrics went flying out of the window along with empty cans. When they arrived, Gary could only remember the title of one song, which happened to be ‘Neat Neat Neat’, repeated ad infinitum until, unsurprisingly, bottles started flying.”

“The nicest thing is that people don’t think we’re a bunch of old farts playing the blues,” Ronnie insists. “Close your eyes and we could be in our twenties.”
Older and wiser, but no less charismatic, the band’s offstage demeanor has at least changed for the better. “Keith used to be an animal,” observes Ronnie. “Now he empties the ashtrays in his hotel room before he checks out.”
Even Dave Dee has returned to the fold, this time as manager. He admits: “The reviews all say that ‘Hit The Right Button’ is an excellent record, but we know it’ll be hard for a band like the Kids. Basically, they’re gonna go out on the road and start again from scratch. They’ve got a fantastic product… sometimes all you need is a bit of luck.”
Hey, don’t the Heavy Metal Kids deserve a slice of fortune after all this time?

Gary Holton… by those who knew him

Andy McCoy (Hanoi Rocks)
“Gary was a sweetheart, a good mate. I have beautiful stories about him, and some terrible ones that I won’t tell. He had substance abuse problems at the time, which was a huge shame, and of course so did I. Now, I want to see my grandchildren.
“I was the biggest Heavy Metal Kids fan. Gary came to every Hanoi Rocks gig. He hung out, got drunk and did whatever we did. At the time I was living in Great Titchfield Street in Soho, so it was convenient for partying – which we did plenty of! I was in L.A. when he died; I was upset but not too surprised. Like a lot of artists, he took drugs because he was too sensitive. Today you’ve gotta be a hard motherfucker.”

Lemmy (Motörhead)
“The bastard owed me a fiver when he died! In today’s money that’s £25. Gary was the first person I knew to own a Walkman. One night, after we’d been in a north London club, we walked all the way home, both speeding out of our boxes. I climbed through his window and left him a note: ‘You were crashed out, so I did the only thing possible. I stole your tape recorder!’. He was a junkie, but a great guy. Once saw him play a gig in a wheelchair.”

Joe Elliott (Def Leppard)
“I first saw the Heavy Metal Kids at Sheffield Top Rank in 1976. I was in the front row and when they played ‘The Cops Are Coming’, Gary Holton shouted: “What happened next?” Like a fucking idiot I replied: “His head fell off”… Holton threw me this terrifying look. I thought he was gonna jump down into the crowd and kill me.
“I once met Gary at London’s Music Machine, he was just like his TV character. They were such a great band; they all looked like Ronnie Wood, too thin for their own good. They weren’t musos, they were doing it for the right reasons. I still carry the first two albums with me on my i-pod wherever I go. If they ever want the third one [‘Kitsch’ ] remixed then tell ’em to get in touch. I’ll do it as a freebie.”

Max Splodge (Splodgenessabounds)
“Gary Holton was Wayne [his character from Auf Wiedersehen, Pet], he wasn’t acting. One night we overheard some chaps talking about a party for Elton John and Bernie Taupin. Gary rang the club and told ’em he was calling on behalf of Mr Holton and Mr Splodge, who’d been invited but couldn’t make it, only now they’d caught an earlier flight. So could the doorman please make sure they were let in?
“As we pulled up, a motorbike nicked his parking space and its rider boasted: ‘You gotta be fast to do that’. So Gary just reversed over his bike, grinning: ‘You’ve gotta be rich and famous to do that’. Inside the club, we’re given a table and he clicks his fingers to get champagne sent over. He knew all the dancers because he’d been in Hair with them, so he was telling these gorgeous girlies, ‘Come and sit with us, not them old poofs’. It was a blinding night. Elton and Bernie were completely ignored and ended up walking out in disgust.”

Mick Box (Uriah Heep)
“We toured with the Kids a lot and Gary was an all-round great guy. You’d have fun in his company, but you’d always end up in trouble. In a Munich hotel, I was waiting in the lobby for him to come down. The lift door opens and he’s wearing a black and white plastic raincoat with a pair of stilettos. It was floor-length, and looked like a tablecloth. And he was wearing make-up. He’d like to take a bit of Valium and have a good drink, but Gary could talk himself out of a ruck.
“We did fleetingly consider Gary as a replacement for David Byron [in Heep], and I believe he could’ve done the job. His role within the Kids underplayed the fact that he was a good singer. But he never actually auditioned. Like his Wayne character, he’d walk into a room as though he owned the place. That was his persona, it gave him his star quality.”

Michael Monroe (Hanoi Rocks)
“When Andy [McCoy] and I were kids, he had their single ‘She’s No Angel’. I always loved that song, so when Hanoi broke up I recorded it for my ‘Nights Are So Long’ album [in 1987, Scandinavia-only], and then again [two years later] on my worldwide record, ‘Not Fakin’ It’. Hanoi also recorded ‘Delirious’ on our latest album, ‘12 Shots On The Rocks’. That band were so ahead of their time. The verse in ‘Delirious’ goes “No-one in the world likes me” – it’s the Pistols before punk.
“I never got to see the Heavy Metal Kids, but I already knew Gary Holton. When Hanoi first moved to London we all went to see him at the Marquee in his band Casino Steel. He then brought his wife and kids to our Marquee show; all dressed up as cowboys, with cute little guns and holsters.”