INTERVIEW: ‘Jersey Metal’ celebrates one-year anniversary with Volume Two on the horizon
Photo: From left, Frank White and Alan Tecchio are the creative forces behind Jersey Metal. Photo courtesy of Jersey Metal / Provided with permission.
Metalheads Frank White, a successful music photographer, and Alan Tecchio, a singer in many metal bands, have been busy these past few years. Right before the pandemic, they started to craft an expansive history of New Jersey’s legendary heavy metal scene. Their efforts paid off when they released Jersey Metal: A History of the Garden State’s Heavy Metal Scene: Volume One: 1969-1986 during the Halloween season of 2022. In fact, they premiered the coffee-table book at the biannual Chiller Theatre convention in Parsippany, New Jersey, which is taking place again this weekend.
Now, the two music lovers can look back at their publishing feat with much pride and promises of more to come. They are hard at work on Volume Two of the heavy metal trilogy, and although no firm publication date has been set, fans can expect more of White’s photography and Tecchio’s writing as they explore the unique history of this head-banging genre in the Garden State.
And they have found success. It’s hard to find a metal business in New Jersey that doesn’t have the book for sale, and when attending a rock show in the Garden State, Jersey Metal T-shirts are almost as numerous as Iron Maiden and Metallica apparel.
“Well, I started to think about it probably in 2019 or so, and I started collecting photos,” White said in a recent phone interview. “But I wanted to do the book with somebody else who had a different thought pattern. … So I thought about it for a while, and then Alan came back into my life because he reviewed my book on Ronnie James Dio [Ronnie James Dio: A Life in Vision: 1975-2009]. And after hanging out with him for a while, I thought this guy would the best one to be my co-author because he wrote for Metropolis Nights at that time, and before that he was with Steppin’ Out.”
The two joined forces formally in February 2020, right before the music industry and the world shut down, but they soldiered on with the book project. And they continue to this day, often meeting on Thursday nights to talk metal history. They began their exploring by looking at the late 1960s, a time when some mega rock bands were turning to heavier sounds. In the Garden State, some of those legendary groups would tour to nearby New York City or Philadelphia, and then Jersey musicians started to be influenced.
“So they started doing tribute and cover bands, and that’s how the scene got started,” White said. “And then obviously Twisted Sister a couple years later, and we went on from there.”
When White and Tecchio started on this expansive project, they both realized there was too much information to fit into one volume. There are so many musicians to cover and so many venues to write about that it became obvious that they needed to start thinking about three books. To be honest, an entire book could be written about a band like Overkill, perhaps the most legendary of all heavy metal bands from New Jersey, so White and Tecchio didn’t want to shortchange anything or anyone.
“We started doing the layout, and we’re looking at it and counting pages,” Tecchio said. “Frank did some really awesome photos, and you want to make them present well. So we started to realize that this would be over 1,000 pages if we kept with the original idea, so we had to break it up. Initially we thought about two books, and then as we did it more and more, we realized it had to be three.”
The guys believe New Jersey is blessed with an unbelievable rock and metal history for a number of reasons, the most dominant one being location, location, location. Being situated between two large cities, one of them the largest city in the world and a bonafide musical capital, doesn’t hurt.
“We live in between New York City and Philadelphia, and a lot of people settle into New Jersey because it’s close to a lot of different places,” White said. “And a lot of talent ends up growing here, and heavy metal was building up steam in the early ‘70s here in New Jersey. And it just went on from there, and it got heavier as time went on.”
White pointed to Jon Bon Jovi and Joe Lynn Turner, two New Jersey natives, who would go on to huge success in a number of bands. Bon Jovi essentially ruled the 1980s, while Turner would eventually join Rainbow and Deep Purple. These musicians would often play small clubs around the Garden State, venues that are mostly (and sadly) gone in 2023. Jersey Metal documents many of these ballrooms and dive bars.
“A lot of those clubs are long forgotten, and a lot of people outside of the state and outside of the country never heard of most of these places,” White said. “So we’re giving everyone a fair shot, either it’ll be a club or a band, a DJ, a place that had a lot of music history. … We decided to put it all out there for everyone to check out.”
Tecchio added this about these clubs: “It’s a touchstone for a lot of people.”
Tecchio’s entrance into music came in high school when he started singing. He made some connections and hung around with other musicians, and this led to a successful career in a number of groups, including Prophecy, Aggressor, Hades, Seven Witches and All Time Low, among others.
“It was a real challenge, and I was definitely insecure at the beginning,” Tecchio said about his early days. “I talk a little bit about that, especially in the next book that Frank and I are actually working on right now. … I’m not a musician. I don’t play any instruments. I got nothing to lean back on. And you’re a singer, so if you’re sick, your voice is your instrument. It’s a little bit different than being a guitar player in that regard. For me, I was definitely not confident. It was definitely a challenge, and over time, I found my voice. I don’t think I really found my voice until 2009, something like that, when I did the Autumn Hour record, and even the Seven Witches records that I did, that really opened me up as a singer to approaching vocals a little bit differently and having enough confidence to not be afraid.”
For White, he started listening to music during the Woodstock era, and he still counts Jimi Hendrix as his favorite guitar player of all time. This led him into Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, two gateway bands for music lovers, and he continued to diversify his tastes and enjoy everything from southern rock to punk to hardcore to reggae. His heavy metal teeth were sharpened on Metallica, Anvil, Raven and the Rods.
“And everything started to collide, and then I got really into it,” White said. “And I met a bunch of a really cool people over the years, as well as some of the other bigger bands through the years, but a lot of them took a lot of interest in New Jersey, partly because of Megaforce Records, [founded by] Jon and Marsha Zazula. Some of them were on their label, and they found a lot of cool places to grow their music here in our state. We became quite popular, and from it came the Old Bridge Militia, a big group of people that dedicated themselves to the heavy metal scene here in the state of New Jersey. And a lot of them were from the Old Bridge, New Jersey, area, and they have a foundation today because of it.”
There are many bands mentioned in the book, and Overkill rightfully receive billing near the top. They are still going strong with Bobby “Blitz” Ellsworth offering commanding performances behind the microphone.
“They’re very relevant today,” White said. “I was talking with Blitz at the Meadowlands [during the parking lot concert before the Metallica gig] … because I thought it was a show that needed to be photographed. They hired me previous to that for the ‘Scorched’ video. We did that out in Scranton. They’ve been relevant the whole way through. They’ve never changed their style of music. They got so many dedicated fans in New Jersey and around the world. They tour everywhere. They’re good guys to hang with and awesome to watch on stage — very reactive, all over the place. It’s great.”
Overkill stands out for their history and their current-day dominance on the heavy metal scene; they’re a band that is still around and with tons of fans enjoying their head-banging ways. But White and Tecchio also know that a lot has changed since the so-called heyday of Jersey’s metal scene. Some parts of the book are like postcards from a beach resort that has shut down a long time ago.
“It’s very different today, for sure,” Tecchio said. “Bands would always go out and support the other bands, even if it was to go out and kind of mock them out. You’d show up at the other bands’ gigs just to see what the competition was doing. It was a friendly competition. You would actually pay admission to go out and see bands, and it was this scene full of support. And I don’t think that exists today.”
Still, there are some remnants of Jersey’s early heavy metal scene still around. White and Tecchio pointed to some legendary venues that are still welcoming rock, metal and other genre acts. High on their list was Asbury Park, New Jersey, perhaps the music capital of the Garden State. The oceanside town hosts the Stone Pony and Wonder Bar.
But, a lot has changed as well, and that makes Jersey Metal such an important document about the people and places of Jersey’s metal past. “A lot of the classics are gone,” Tecchio said about venues around the state. “There are so many different ones that are not there.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Jersey Metal: A History of the Garden State’s Heavy Metal Scene: Volume One: 1969-1986 by Frank White and Alan Tecchio is now available. Click here for more information.
