“John Bonham was at the bar drinking quadruple brandies. He just turned around and whacked Gary in the stomach”: The crazed tale of the Heavy Metal Kids, the cult rock’n’roll hooligans with a tragic TV star singer

The Heavy Metal Kids posing for a photograph in 1974.

Tougher than glam rock and pre-dating punk by a couple of years, the Heavy Metal Kids were swashbuckling rock’n’roll pirates fronted by doomed livewire Gary Holton. In 2004, Classic Rock traced the story of a band who deserve to be way better known than they were.