If a follower of the history of heavy metal You have to point out a pioneer band of the specially unhappy genre, probably cite Pentagram. Born in the early seventies to share the throne of hard rock along with Black Sabbath, his career accumulates a series of sovereigns that left them not only in the category of cult group, but in a secret. To the hurricane character of its leader, the singer and composer Bobby Liebling, we would have to award much of his zero success. There was a click among the staunch to hard rock: if you go to a concert of heavy In any world room, surely, or on stage or among the public, you can find a musician who once played in Pentagram. It is estimated that almost 100 instrumentalists have passed through the band (among guitarists, bassists and batteries), but Liebling has ended everyone’s patience.
These days, Liebling has broken another record: to surprise Tiktok users, a collective so overestimulated that few things alter him. But it has happened: the eccentric figure of this heavy Setenton, with his big eyes open giving another dimension to the concept “Lost look” and her white hair in the wind, has managed to sneak into millions of screens. The phenomenon has not stopped in Tiktok and has jumped into the neuralgic center of music, Spotify: 200,000 followers that added Pentagram before Tiktok virality has passed 421,000 in a few days. The episode, therefore, has not been left alone in a joke of social network users saying “I feel as if I were looking at me through the screen”; There are many people, in addition, who are listening to Pentagram. It was time, after 54 years of career. But, a moment, who the hell are Pentagram?
In 2011, the documentary (Texas) Last Days Here, where part of the life of Bobby Liebling is told. The film begins with Liebling, then 57 years, living in the basement of his parents’ house, in Germantown (Maryland). Open a large red bag and start getting clothes: a scarf, red bell pants, a silk printed shirt … and says: “These are my clothes to act. Liebling has a decrepit appearance: the eyes seem to get out of the basins, the hair looks greasy and white, weighs 50 kilos. His parents, who live at the top, seem younger than him. His mother informs: “He has an illusion: he says he will enter the rock and roll hall of Fame (loose a laugh). Liebling, in its den of a floor below, consumes crack, heroin and cocaine. It feeds only on bacon pizzas, whose leftovers form an improper spectacle next to some rat excrement, pipas for smoking drugs and a generous collection of vinyl. His Savior walks around, filming everything.
This is Pellet Pelletier, an unredeemed amateur to heavy metal that he found a vinyl in an old store that caught his attention on the cover. I didn’t know the group. It was the first album of Pentagram, 1985. Pellet arrived at his house, a “bigger than usual” joint was preparing, put the album on his team at a good volume and hallucinated. From that moment he set out to discover who that band was mocked his radar.
For some, Pentagram are American imitators of Black Sabbath; However, others consider them some pioneers in the creation of the heavy metal, even at the same level as the Ozzy Osbourne band and Tony Iommi. Pentagram formed in Alexandria (Virginia) in 1971. One of his first songs was titled Forever My Queen, Where Liebling sings: “I escaped from myself, I think I ran too far. They are almost contemporaries of Black Sabbath, since the first work of these dates from 1970.
In 1974 Pentagram meets his great opportunity: Murray Krugman, producer with platinum records for sales of groups such as Blue Öyster Cult or guitarist Johnny Winter, quotes them in New York to record. “They were like Black Sabbath, but in the most street version. But the arrogance and madness of Liebling ended Krugman’s patience. I wanted to record the songs again and again despite the fact that they were already perfect, I shouted, I arrived drugged to the studio … “I wanted to kill Bobby.
The group begins a path of destruction due to the behavior of its leader, who sees how musicians go and are exhausted from the inconsistency of the project. Until 1985 they do not publish their first album. Iron Maiden were already stars at that time and Metallica had just published his second work. Pentagram’s seventuda music had become fashionable. Liebling assumes in Last Days Here (Recall: 2011) that has been consuming drugs 44 years, that drags a heroin addiction for 39 years, and that you cannot leave the crack since it discovered it, 22 years ago.
Sean Pellet Pelletier invests a lot of time, money (that does not have plenty) and large doses of serenity to recover Liebling. Contact members of the First Pentagram formation and get an appointment with Phil Anselmo, fan of Alexandria and a member of Panther, to record and act. But a liebling misoved again. “The problem with Bobby is his intention of doing nothing that has nothing to do with sex, drugs and rock and roll,” explains one of Pentagram’s ex -women. He only manages to leave drugs when Hallie, a girl 30 years older than him joins sentimentally. He leaves the sordid basement of his parents and is going to live with her. Black hair is dyed, gain weight. He is recovering … until at five weeks Hallie leaves home. His insistence calling her by phone forces her to request a restraining order. He doesn’t fulfill it (call her again) and ends in jail. When it comes out, thanks to the bond paid by Pellet, he returns to the basement of his desperate parents.
The pressure with which Pellet is portrained by a phrase that tells Liebling when he takes him out of jail: “I admit it, it makes me nervous you are free: I didn’t have to worry about you while you were in jail.” Last Days Here It ends well, with Hallie returning with Liebling. They get married, they have a son (who was born in 2010) and Pentagram offers a concert in a full New York club. Pellet, who is already the representative of the group, cries to see that all his suffering has been worth it.
Does the misfortunes end here? No. Hallie and Liebling separated in 2013, and the singer returned to the dark side. In 2017 he was arrested and sentenced to 18 months in jail for assaulting his mother, then 87 years. Pentagram came to act without his singer. In recent times, Liebling, with 71 years, seems straightened. Pentagram has just published an album, Lightning in a Bottle, The first in 10 years, and is on tour, recently in Latin America.
Medical science says that Liebling’s mistreated body should have turned off years ago, but he goes on. Now with more fame than ever driven by Tiktok.