Get the Ultimate Headbanger Denim Look of Heavy Metal Parking Lot
Tomorrow’s Judas Priest concert at Barclays Center will draw devoted fans in droves but surely none as die-hard as the ones who made the pilgrimage to a certain Maryland stadium back in 1986 to see a double bill of Priest and Dokken, immortalized in one of the most epic tailgating parties of all time. With their dueling lead guitars, operatic vocals, and pioneering the leather and studs style that would come to define the look of heavy metal, Judas Priest bridged the hard-rocking Black Sabbath and Thin Lizzy seventies heyday and the headbanger’s ball apex of the eighties (Slayer, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Poison, and on and on).
Their fans followed suit: Mall bangs sprayed in place, combs tucked in back pocket for mullet grooming, donning skintight zebra prints, artfully ripped T-shirts bearing the logos of local rock stations, and denim torn and studded with true purpose, metalheads came from miles around to get their concert pregame on. And filmmakers Jeff Krulik and John Heyn simply wandered the pavement from cooler to cooler, rolling their cameras as the rock epithets issued forth: “Heavy metal rules! All that punk shit sucks!” shouts one of the hilariously “loaded, loaded” (as one hit Priest anthem goes) herd. “I’m Gram . . . as in gram of dope!” another introduces himself. The resulting documentary short, Heavy Metal Parking Lot, made for sixteen minutes of unintentional cult gold in the nineties, passed among a million VCRs before getting its “proper” release.
“How about your bandanna? Is that a fashion statement?” the filmmakers ask at one point. Yes.
And so, for the Judas Priest devotees bound for Barclays tommorow, and for fans of fan fashion everywhere, here’s how to get the most headbanger-worthy denim looks of Heavy Metal Parking Lot.
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