Heavy Metal Looks Like a Hot Commodity : Convention Studies the Futures Market

It’s a hot California growth industry: Malcolm Forbes is passionately interested; multinational corporations are heavily invested; the products are competitive abroad--even in Japan--and it’s been providing jobs for thousands of the hard-core unemployable.

The industry’s three-day convention starts today in Universal City, where 2,300 people will meet at the Sheraton Universal to discuss management, marketing strategy and product development. There will also be the usual trade-show booths and nightly demonstrations of next year’s line of merchandise.

If the product were specialty steel or computer chips, a proud George Deukmejian or Pete Wilson might be prevailed upon to make the keynote address.

But this is no ordinary industry--and the second annual “Foundations Forum” is no ordinary convention. The product is hard rock and heavy metal. The trade-show booths are operated by guys with hair 3 feet high. And the keynote speaker is Gene Simmons of the lipstick-metal band KISS.

The corporate stars represent organizations with names like Slayer, Motorhead, Megadeth and Kerrang! And the hot topics at the convention are nearly as likely to touch on President Bush’s proposed changes in the capital-gains tax as on Sen. Jesse Helms’ watchdog role on morals.

Metal might be the soul music of suburban teen-age rebellion, but it’s also very big business, and it’s as systematically marketed as shaving cream or Coca-Cola. Hard rock and heavy metal account for a sizable percentage of the record industry’s $6.5-billion-a-year gross--as much as 15% to 20%, according to some estimates.

“Metal right now is like a balloon filled with helium,” said Janie Hoffman, managing director of the forum. “It’s rising really fast, and nobody knows when and if it will pop.”

Bob Chiappardi, president of New York-based metal-oriented company Concrete Marketing, the conference sponsor, calls the forum a “Metal 101” for the music industry. “It’s a bridge between the suits and the people in the street,” he said.

“It’s not even that bad having tapes pushed on you,” Geffen A&R; staffer Jeff Fenster said. “You know that they’ll be rock ‘n’ roll at worst.”

Janet Billig, director of video promotion for New York-based independent label Caroline Records, is somewhat less sanguine: “It’s a chance to learn more about metal, why it exists and why it sells so many freaking records.”

There will be panel discussions on bread-and-butter business issues like retail, equipment endorsements, publishing and merchandising, but also on such “street” topics as speed metal, the pay-to-play controversy and something called “Geraldo Goes Metal.”

Live performances and a “new-band” CD album at last year’s forum exposed successful metal acts such as Warrant, Winger and the Bulletboys to the industry and metal press for the first time. They’ve all since reached the upper strata of the weekly Billboard sales charts. This year, performances by Excel, Babylon A.D. and Faith No More, among others, may speed the plow for those bands, as could an official forum cassette featuring 23 unsigned metal and hard-rock bands.

Despite the heavy sales of hard rock and heavy metal, you don’t hear much of it on the radio, read much about it in mainstream publications, or see a lot of it on MTV. Though the corporate players are largely the same, Lou Mann, a vice president of marketing at Capitol Records who has worked with Great White and Megadeth, describes metal as a world outside of pop with different rules.

“Pop marketing is based around getting airplay,” he said. “Metal usually doesn’t have the luxury of airplay. You have to target specialist metal magazines, underground stations, and retail--it’s an alternative network all its own. As a manufacturer, I have to know about this. I’m here sitting in the tower, making decisions and hoping I’m right. The forum is making me, I hope, a little righter than before.”

“Anybody can have a (folk-flavored singer-songwriter) James McMurtry--critics love him; nobody else knows who he is,” Chiappardi said. “The real trick is in sussing out the appeal of a Britny Fox.”

The forum provides a rare chance for the various captains of the industry--agents, club owners, A&R; men, radio programmers, T-shirt magnates, the folks who book talent for Michelob ads--to trade stratagems with each other and with musicians, those unsigned local bands and the men whose bare chests might decorate your 12-year-old’s wall. But most participants seem to think the music comes first.

“When you’re at the point where a band like Bon Jovi sells 9 million albums and even Metallica sells 2 million,” said Brian Slagel, who heads the pioneering all-metal label Metal Blade, “some intrusion of the corporate process is inevitable. As long as metal is still for the kids, that’s all right--when the bands start listening to the lawyers and the 60-year-old corporate executives, that will be the problem.”

But isn’t this whole concept besides the point--a convention to discuss heavy metal, the last surviving bastion of anarchy in rock ‘n’ roll?

“Foundations Forum just seems like a way for the industry to get together and act like big shots, which is kind of pathetic,” said Dan Clements, lead singer for the hard-core-tinged speed-metal band Excel and a panelist at the event.

“It’s going to be like a big dog pack, but with uglier clothes. In this city, where everybody’s a rock star, it’s sometimes a blessing not to be associated with that scene.”