The Metal Mike Saunders Interview

In the early '70s, Mike Saunders was one of the leading and best writers around, especially when he was writing about the topics most near and dear to him: heavy metal and punk rock of the '60s, in such diverse publications as Flash magazine, Phonograph Record Magazine and Buffalo's own lamented Shakin' Street Gazette. He also was partly responsible for the legendary Brain Damage mag, the great one-shot parody of the big fanzines a few years back. He was also one of the guys initially responsible for the quickly-becoming-legendary West Coast rock critic punk band, VOM, even though he seems to have stepped back from taking a major role in the band, preferring to just "churn out heavy metal riffs." Some of the classics he's written over the years includes such underground hits as 'Got a Dagger for You Jagger', 'Just Killed My Dad', 'Getting High with Stephen Stills', 'Gary Gilmore is my Friend' and many others which will hopefully find their way to vinyl in one form or another, eventually.

Lester Bangs recently told me that Metal Mike was truly "ahead of his time." So to satisfy the needs of all the Metal Mike fans across the globe, we present this little interview recently done by Big Star West Coast Editor, Gary Sperrazza! – Bernard Kugel, 1978