Heidi Shepherd has always loved heavy metal. The louder and faster, the better.
Growing up in a Mormon family in Utah, she found the music calming, she says. She was introduced to it at the skate parks where, “The kids were all nice and allowed me to be myself. I found [nu-metal band] Korn, and that sound on the radio was something I needed. The things he [frontman Jonathan Davis] would sing about were things in my life.”
She also found the sound she liked in bands like Marilyn Manson, Slayer and Slipknot, but when she looked further – in particular looking for females in metal that she could emulate – she found only one that embodied the spirit, sound and hardcore truth of what she liked. That person was Wendy O. Williams of the Plasmatics.
Williams, who committed suicide in 1998, is either best known for her heavy-metal songs with the Plasmatics, the almost-costumes she wore, including the black electrical tape that covered her nipples, or the chainsaws she used onstage to cut things up.
Shepherd looked deeper and found a human being who did things her own way and pushed things and challenged people to be themselves.