Brown/Who do we think they are, 4. Ian Gillan and the Legacy of the Operatic Voice in Heavy metal: Borrowed Feminine Classical Virtuosity in Metal Masculinity

The vocal performances of Ian Gillan, on the track ‘Child In Time’ (1970) and on the ‘live’ album, Made in Japan (1972), as well as the original version of the Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical, Jesus Christ Superstar (1970), articulate a debate about the wide octave range of the singer and his influence on other hard rock and metal lead-singers. It is the development of distortion techniques, especially in the high register that defines hard and heavy rock singing, characterised by Gillan’s high octave screams, and his powerful, often first-take studio performances as well as the development of a layered-vocal delivery on later albums, that defines this template, Francesca Stevens, in Chapter 4, not only seeks to analyse Gillan's vocal stylings, but to do so as part of an examination of the interconnections between borrowed classical female vocal virtuosity and the aesthetics of heavy metal masculinity.