Skating at Washington Street Skatepark is a test of nerves. The walls are 20 feet tall, the concrete is slicker than oil and the falls will bust open your skull. “Isn’t this heaven?” says a man as he hops out of the bowl and catches his board in one hand.
Riding on his fish deck, Chris Oleata flows up and down the bowl as effortlessly as water through a pipe. “I’m 55 and I’m skating the best I ever have.” When Oleata drops in, everyone stops to watch. He’s the only person in pads and the only one able to get up 20 feet vertically in the air and back down while only breaking a sweat instead of an ankle.
Oleata is a musician and a painter with a penchant for metal. “I love [all kinds of music], but I really love metal and blues.” Oleata said. “But before the 80s when things got glammy; it’s more about songs. Take away the genre and you hear the magic of a good song.”
When talking about metal, Oleata keeps coming back to the Scorpions, a German metal band from the late ’70s famous for classic metal hits like, “Rock You Like a Hurricane” and “Still Loving You.”
“As a kid my friends disagreed and made fun of me, but I think their best song is ‘The Sails of Charon.’ Rudolf Schenker can play guitar like nobody else.” - Chris Oleata
“The Sails of Charon” is the first track on the B-side of the Scorpions’ 1977 album, “Taken by Force,” the fifth album in their discography. This was the band’s last album with RCA records, as well as the last one with lead guitarist Uli Jon Roth, who was replaced by Schenker’s brother Michael, by then already gaining legendary status as the guitarist for the metal band UFO.
Oleata likes the early Scorpions albums because, “the early albums were more bluesy with their songwriting. In the ’80s, they lost that crunchy Hendrix sound and guitars became more screechy, like Poison.” Oleata likes Judas Priest’s records for that same sound, but mourns how they also traded their sound for commercial viability, “I went on the Screaming Vengeance Tour in ’84. I like Judas Priest, but by then the sound was glam, less garage-y, it wasn’t for me.”
The Scorpions are guilty of veering towards the more profitable venue of glam metal, evident by their 1984 album, “Love At First Sting,” but their early albums, like “Taken By Force,” exemplify the elements of what is categorized as ‘metal.’ While glam and heavy metal seem to borrow a lot of elements from the spring of hard rock bands like AC/DC and Led Zeppelin, original metal cuts that degree of separation and gets its roots straight from the blues.
Early ‘metal’ bands like Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Iron Butterfly derived their song structures and chord progressions from the blues of the late ’60s. Oleata describes the metal of that time period as “heavy, distorted blues with 15-minute guitar solos, almost like Stevie Ray Vaughan.” The genre might sound antiquated in 2024, but the sound of these bands was integral to the new-wave evolution of heavy metal in the late ’70s spearheaded by bands like Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and eventually Van Halen.
“Taken By Force” sees the Scorpions sitting at a creative crossroads between metal and heavy metal, right before taking the jump into glam. This is most evident on tracks like the road-rage inducing, “I’ve Got to Be Free” and “The Sails of Charon.” The driving force of the rhythm guitar emulates your local blues-festival, the kind where every band has to share one amp and the only volume setting is “UP.”
The lead guitar, provided by Roth, demonstrates the bands European heritage in the way it integrates progressive and classical technical elements with the chord structures of the blues, which is best articulated on their ballads like “We’ll Burn the Sky” and the shirt-splitting head-banger, “The Riot of Your Time.”
The lyrics by Klaus Meine are underwhelmingly crass, and sometimes utter garbage, but by god, are they easily ignorable when he’s shrieking them with the piercing wail of a screaming eagle. There are few voices in metal that can go up against the likes of Bruce Dickinson [Iron Maiden] or Rob Halford [Judas Priest], but Meine is definitely one of them.
Oleata admits to feeling like his music taste has gotten mature, but is shocked by how many younger skaters are still listening to the metal he appreciates, “Sometimes the younger dudes will bring these big speakers [to the park] and blast music and I can’t believe I recognize some of it. A lot of rappers are rapping over metal and it’s awesome!” Oleata said. “The way memories are linked with sound and food and smell, having people play that stuff at the park is really something.”
Check out Chris Oleata’s art at www.oleatavision.com or @oleatavision on Instagram.
