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It’s not hard to bring to mind the stereotype of a metal head. Since heavy metal’s arrival on the music scene in the early 1970s, it’s been accused of everything from Satanism to plain old Beavis and Butthead idiocy. And it doesn’t help much that the accusations are not often defended by its own participants.

“Metal should be long-haired dudes drinking beer,” said Keith Buckley, singer of heavy metal band Every Time I Die.

But that doesn’t mean that all metal heads put their pocket change into six packs rather than the local barber. In fact, Professor Robert Walser, chair of the UCLA musicology department and author of the book “Running With the Devil: Power, Gender and Madness in Heavy Metal Music,” keeps his hair combed neat and happens to sympathize with the genre from an academic perspective.

In college, Walser became involved in heavy metal music through playing guitar in a band. He wrote the book because he wanted to investigate the stereotypes that heavy metal is crude, musically simple, sexist and, quite simply, unintelligent.

“I was interested in it as something that grabbed me personally but also as something that people were debating,” Walser said. “Millions of people are building their lives around metal and millions of other people think that they shouldn’t.”

Walser interviewed numerous metal fans and musicians, and analyzed the actual music from a musicologist’s perspective. What he found probably isn’t surprising to anyone who has really sat down without an upturned nose to listen an Eddie Van Halen solo.

“They all had some kind of classical training because the guitar solos we’re talking about drew from Vivaldian Bach. A lot of that music was taking ideas, chord progressions and ways of playing from that classical music that was supposed to be so far away from what they were doing.”

The book was published back in 1993, but with the resurrection of MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball 10 years later, it will be interesting to see if virtuosic guitar playing will still stand as the genre’s winning characteristic.