{"id":182766,"date":"2015-06-11T18:15:00","date_gmt":"2015-06-11T23:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/06\/11\/real-life-special-forces-heavy-metal-god-actor-knight-descendant-of-holy-roman-emperor\/"},"modified":"2015-06-11T18:15:00","modified_gmt":"2015-06-11T23:15:00","slug":"real-life-special-forces-heavy-metal-god-actor-knight-descendant-of-holy-roman-emperor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2015\/06\/11\/real-life-special-forces-heavy-metal-god-actor-knight-descendant-of-holy-roman-emperor\/","title":{"rendered":"Real-Life Special Forces, Heavy Metal God, Actor, Knight, Descendant of Holy Roman Emperor\u2026\u2026\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; float: right; margin: 0px 10px; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 360px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/zDaDj6v.jpg\" rel=\"lytebox\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" bordercolor=\"white\" src=\"http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/zDaDj6v.jpg\" width=\"350\" \/><\/a><br \/><i>The many faces of Christopher Lee<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/3EkquuS.jpg\" rel=\"lytebox\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/3EkquuS.jpg\" style=\"cursor: pointer; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;\" width=\"350\" \/><\/a><br \/>And Fox f%$#s it up<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"197\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-TnFIDKyX50?rel=0\" width=\"350\"><\/iframe><br \/>I will never think about the song :The Little Drummer Boy&#8221; the same way again.<\/i><\/div>\n<p>I am referring to the iconic British actor Christopher Lee, who <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/entertainment\/music\/posts\/la-et-ms-rip-christopher-lee-heavy-metal-hero-20150611-story.html\">died Monday at the age of 93<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Any actor who played a definitive Dracula and Saruman in &#8220;Lord of the Rings&#8221; would surely be welcomed in the realm of heavy metal fans. But Sir Christopher Lee, the estimable British actor who <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/entertainment\/movies\/moviesnow\/la-me-christopher-lee-obituary-20150611-story.html#page=1\">died Monday<\/a>, is a particular hero to fans of heavy rock.<\/p>\n<p>Lee, a lifelong musician, had dabbled in vocal performance and recorded a track for the score of his 1973 film &#8220;The Wicker Man.&#8221; But Lee&#8217;s foreboding baritone and arch screen presence turned out to lend itself perfectly to a heavy metal setting.<\/p>\n<p>The actor, beloved for his turns in both classic and B-movie horror, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/2015\/jun\/11\/christopher-lee-dies-at-the-age-of-93-dracula\">cut his first metal album<\/a> at the age of 90: &#8220;Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The album, an operatic concept piece recounting the life of the first Holy Roman Emperor, remains a cult favorite in metal, and earned him a &#8220;Spirit of Metal&#8221; award at the 2010 Metal Hammer Golden Gods award ceremony (presented by no less a figure than <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/10316731\">Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>Judas Priest guitarist Richie Faulkner, a fellow legend of British metal, <a href=\"http:\/\/loudwire.com\/christopher-lee-dies-93\/\">told the site Loudwire<\/a> that Lee was &#8220;a very metal guy, he embodies the whole spirit of metal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lee followed it up with a 2013 sequel, &#8220;Charlemagne: The Omens of Death.&#8221; But Lee is perhaps most adored in metal for his exquisitely droll &#8220;A Heavy Metal Christmas&#8221; recordings, where he lent his gravitas to some magnificently silly holiday originals.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>FYI, Lee was a <a href=\"http:\/\/listverse.com\/2014\/12\/14\/10-reasons-christopher-lee-is-truly-amazing\/\">direct descendant of Charlemagne<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As to the SAS bit, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Christopher_Lee\">roll the Wiki<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Lee&#8217;s stepfather served as a captain in the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Intelligence_Corps_%28United_Kingdom%29\">Intelligence Corps<\/a>, but it is unlikely he had any influence over Lee&#8217;s military career. Lee saw him for the last time on a bus in London in 1940, by then divorced from Lee&#8217;s mother, though Lee did not speak to him. Lee mentioned that during the war he was attached to the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Special_Operations_Executive\">Special Operations Executive<\/a> and the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Long_Range_Desert_Patrol\">Long Range Desert Patrol<\/a>, the precursor of the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Special_Air_Service\">SAS<\/a>, but always declined to go into details. <\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201c I was attached to the SAS from time to time but we are forbidden \u2013 former, present, or future \u2013 to discuss any specific operations. Let&#8217;s just say I was in Special Forces and leave it at that. People can read in to that what they like.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Here is a guy who lived an amazing life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The many faces of Christopher Lee And Fox f%$#s it up I will never think about the song :The Little Drummer Boy&#8221; the same way again. I am referring to the iconic British actor Christopher Lee, who died Monday at the age of 93: Any actor who played a definitive Dracula and Saruman in &#8220;Lord &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1065,994,1027],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment","category-obituaries","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182766"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182766\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}