Would you say you’re a massive heavy metal fan? Well, will you still be rocking along to your favourite groups when you’re in your old age?

British senior head banger Owen Brown did, a diehard fan who counted Megadeth, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and KISS amongst his favourites, all which could be heard blaring at high volumes from his residential home in Herefordshire, UK.

But the heavy metal community carries an equally heavy heart this week following the sad news that Brown, the genre’s oldest fan, has died at the age of 87, as the Western Daily Press reports.

Having fallen gravely ill to cancer in his last three months, after battling the disease for five years, the 87-year-old would “often be up in the night listening to a programme called Planet Rock,” says his 61-year-old drumming son, Pedro. “He’d be there at 2am listening to really loud rock music. His hearing was fine, he just liked it loud.”

Pedro Brown, along with the rest of the Brown family are ensuring that Owen’s going out the way he wanted, to a soundtrack of scorching riffs and powerful rock, choosing Megadeth’s song ‘Skin Of My Teeth’ for the final procession out of Weobly church for Brown’s funeral service.

Megadeth also offered their condolences upon news of their oldest fan moshing off this mortal coil.

While he took his love for heavy metal to the grave, Brown’s initial musical tastes were a lot more in line with what you’d expect a senior citizen to enjoy. ‘‘I was about 23 when I first started listening to music and surprisingly it was Cliff Richard who got me listening. Then I moved on to Elvis and I never looked back,” said Brown in an interview with the Western Daily Press several years before his passing.

“Nobody else liked music like my dad,” says Pedro Brown. “He worked on the land all his life and he was a very gentle man, except for his music,” he adds, noting that he and his siblings thought it was usual for fathers to blast Iron Maiden and Deep Purple at high volumes at home. “It wasn’t until my friends started coming round that I realised how unusual that was,” Pedro says.

Even without the tell-tale leather and studs, Brown spent his twilight years enjoying cups of tea and listening to vinyl in his shed. “‘When all the kids were at home they would often ask me to stop playing it or turn it down but it’s only worth listening to at full blast,” Brown adds. “It’s great because I can play it as loud as I want in [the shed]. I can sit back with a drink and listen to Megadeth with no worries in the world.”

Eventually Brown sold his 26-year-old record player when his wife of 65 years, Maria, fell ill; trading in his LP collection for CDs, but though he gave up his vinyl, he didn’t give up his obsession.

Brown passed away in hospital on 15th August, and is survived by his wife, his three daughters – Margaret, Ann, and Jennny, and his two sons Pedro and Neil, as well as 15 grandchildren and 21 great grandchildren. Surely one among them will take up the family’s heavy metal heritage.

(Image: SWNS Source: The Western Daily Press)

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