S&D: Glam Metal/Hair Metal

SEARCH: Motley Crue, Ratt, Cinderella, W.A.S.P, Hanoii Rocks, Guns'n'Roses (kinda), Faster Pussycat, Def Leppard, Quiet Riot, Helix, Twisted Sister

DESTROY: Brittney Fox, Poison, Firehouse, Autograph, Trixter (the bottom of the fuckin' barrel), Bon Jovi, White Lion, Grim Reaper, Bullet Boys, Enuff Z'nuff, Vinnie Vincent Invasaion, Slaughter, Vixen, etc.

Search: Kix, Redd Kross and the aformentioned. Do Japan's first two albums count? I say yes.

The holy bible remains Stairway to Hell for me. If anything, I think there's *less* theory with Eddy than with Klosterman! ;-)

Def Leppard's Hysteria and Pyromania, Poison's greatest hits comp and a homemade CDR with, among other things, Ratt's "Round and Round," Motley Crue's "Looks That Kill" and "Girls Girls Girls," Enuff Z'Nuff's "New Thing" and "Fly High Michelle" and Quiet Riot's "Cum On Feel the Noize" and "Metal Health (Bang Your Head)" will stand you in good stead as a starter. Do not, under any circumstances, let the vile idiocy of Bon Jovi pollute your soul. There are higher achievements to look for -- like the first Pretty Boy Floyd album or Kix's "Don't Close Your Eyes," say.

But why Quiet Riot's "Cum On Feel The Noize"? Stick with the Slade original!

so far: motley crue - dr feelgood, poison - talk dirty to me, w.a.s.p. - animal (fuck like the beast), cinderella - nobody's fool, enuff z'nuff - mother's eyes, def leppard - pour some sugar on me, hanoi rocks - people like me, warrant - cherry pie, skid row - i remember you, love/hate - blackout in the red room, faster pussycat, pretty boy floyd and some other stuff.

i'm mainly relying on the popular audiogalaxy choices here and, typically, i keep getting the lighter-in-the-air crap. if anyone can come up with the harder, rockier stuff that'd be good.

also were there any GOOD female fronted bands of this type? I remember Phantom Blue, but not, er, for musical reasons. Vixen were typically dismissed as 'female Bon Jovi' and the only Lita Ford I know is the Ozzy duet..

Destroy: Motley Spew (they suck ass)

he he Ned, you should let Bon Jovi pollute your soul!

I must find that Love/Hate album!

And that's precisely why Klosterman's the better book, as its not caught up in ridiculous theory (as if the genre in question lent itself to hours of chin-scratching, enigmatic pondering? It's not like it's fuckin' Free Jazz or something) Chuck Eddy, moreover, has loads of bizarre theories that just don't add up (why are Kix mentioned in his book so often?!?! Why does he consider certain artists -- like fuckin' Teena Marie -- metal and others not?) It's an interesting read, but it's just not credible. Chuck Klosterman, however, is the real deal: a white guy from the rural Midwest for whom Metal was much more than just some cultural phenomenon to be pompously ruminated over.

One more thing: Redd Kross were *NEVER* a Glam Metal/Hair Metal band.

Uh, I think you missed my point! I actually think Klosterman is trying to pack more theory and justification and more into his book than Eddy is with his. There's this striving in Klosterman from the point of view of his later years that is all about screaming (if politely), "This MEANS something! I know it did! I'm going to prove it!" Whereas Eddy seems to be mostly about suggesting things and changing his opinions with time -- which is why the Teena Marie suggestion so gets up your nose and that of many others! His book now would be a much different thing if he completely rewrote it; as it was the revised edition suggested a slew of new paths.

Maybe they should be read less as detailing/analyses of a culture as autobiographies, though -- which Klosterman's more openly is, but Eddy's is as much, the references are scattered throughout (it's even more clear in Accidental History, natch).

Moreover, Eddy's writing is often needlessly dense and pompously convoluted (from his review of WHAT'S THIS FOR by Killing Joke: "The funkless 'groove' doesn't 'go' anywhere --it just is --, but these artsy Eeyores really did get a meritorious rump-bump beneath all their echoplex churn.....The most illegible Weltasnschauung is your usual end-is-near Weltschmerz, so it's shallower idea-wise that it thinks it is, but maybe that's where its humanness -- and maybe even its rock'n'roll -- comes from."

Now, this may sound like sour grapes coming from me (being a zealous Killing Joke fan) but nine-tenths of the above passage add up to nothing.

Search: Femme Fatale-"Waiting for the Big One"

God, remember Starz? Wrong era, I know, but "Pull the Plug", the Karen Ann Quinlan-inspired euthanasia power ballad--what a song! I think. I should download it first before I start making these outrageous claims.

Revive. I spent a very long time without hearing Def Leppard's Pyromania (25 years?) and I heard it this past weekend and I'm kinda feeling it. Also ISO RIYL Ratt "Round and Round".

No serenade, no fire brigade.

Steel Panther are kind of the worst

They certainly seem like it, but I've never actually heard their music. Satchel is one of my favorite stage names though.

i hate them so much lol

Chuck Eddy vs. Chuck Klosterman: some other universe.

Steel Panther made a half second of sense back in early 2000s Metal Sludge days, maybe.

I keep hoping Justin Quirk is going to get his last 3% funding on Unbound to publish.

are Diemonds glam metal?

I found the track listing for the five-CD set I made for a girl who did an '80s glam night at the High Five back when I lived in Ohio. In retrospect I might have included some of the original '70s glam bands to mix things up but still, not a bad box set if I say so myself:

DISC ONE
1. Kix - Cold Shower
2. Alice Cooper - Poison
3. Skid Row - Youth Gone Wild
4. Firehouse - Love Of A Lifetime
5. Judas Priest - The Hellion
6. Judas Priest - Electric Eye
7. Warrant - Uncle Tom's Cabin
8. Guns N' Roses - Sweet Child O' Mine
9. White Lion - Wait
10. Arcade - Nothing To Lose
11. Enuff Z'Nuff - New Thing
12. Cinderella - Shake Me
13. Killingbird - Just Like Heaven
14. Faster Pussycat - You're So Vain
15. Bon Jovi - Livin' On A Prayer
16. Great White - Once Bitten, Twice Shy
17. Bon Jovi - Runaway
18. Steelheart - I'll Never Let You Go
19. Def Leppard - Rock Of Ages

DISC TWO
1. Dirty Looks - It's Not The Way That You Rock
2. Vixen - Edge Of A Broken Heart
3. Tesla - Gettin' Better
4. The Poor - More Wine Waiter Please
5. Keel - The Right To Rock
6. Bang Tango - Dancin' On Coals
7. Buckcherry - Lit Up
8. Mötley Crüe - Shout At The Devil
9. Dokken - In My Dreams
10. Britney Fox - Long Way To Love
11. Kingdom Come - Get It On
12. Mötley Crüe - Smokin' In The Boys Room
13. Twisted Sister - We're Not Gonna Take It
14. Poison - Talk Dirty To Me
15. Katmandu - The Way You Make Me Feel
16. Def Leppard - Foolin'
17. Beautiful Creatures - 1 A.M.
18. Every Mother's Nightmare - EZ Come EZ Go
19. Guns N' Roses - Paradise City

DISC THREE
1. Whitesnake - Still Of The Night
2. Mr. Big - Addicted To That Rush
3. Hanoi Rocks - Teenangels Outsiders
4. Shotgun Messiah - Babylon
5. The Cult - Fire Woman
6. Whitesnake - Here I Go Again
7. The Honey’s - Pink Velvet Cocaine
8. Mötley Crüe - Live Wire
9. Extreme - Get The Funk Out
10. Trixter - Bad Girl
11. Aerosmith - Dude (Look Like A Lady)
12. Winger - Seventeen
13. Guns N' Roses - You Could Be Mine
14. Killer Dwarfs = Dirty Weapons
15. Firehouse - Don't Treat Me Bad
16. Accept - Balls To The Wall
17. Nelson - (I Can’t Live Without Your) Love And Affection
18. Mötley Crüe - Girls, Girls, Girls

DISC FOUR
1. Danger Danger - Slipped Her The Big One
2. Van Halen - Hot For Teacher
3. Manda And The Marbles - Sex Object
4. Def Leppard - Pour Some Sugar On Me
5. Hericane Alice - Tear The House Down
6. Loudermilk - Estrogen Oxygen
7. Krokus - Midnight Maniac
8. Drivin' N' Cryin' - Fly My Courageous
9. Warrant - Cherry Pie
10. Lita Ford - Kiss Me Deadly
11. Guns N' Roses - Welcome To The Jungle
12. Pretty Boy Floyd - Rock & Roll
13. Quiet Riot - Cum On Feel The Noize
14. AC/DC - You Shook Me All Night Long
15. Gene Loves Jezebel - Jealous
16. Zodiac Mindwarp - Prime Mover
17. Ugly Kid Joe - Everything About You
18. Dogs D'Amour - I Don't Want You To Go
19. Poison - Every Rose Has It’s Thorn
20. Ratt - Round And Round

DISC FIVE
1. Kik Tracee - Mrs. Robinson
2. Skid Row - I Remember You
3. Dangerous Toys - Pissed
4. Bon Jovi - You Give Love A Bad Name
5. Ozzy Osbourne - Shot In The Dark
6. Hardline - Hot Cherie
7. Jesse Camp - See You Around
8. Slaughter - Up All Night
9. Poison - Nothin' But A Good Time
10. Kiss - Heaven's On Fire
11. Kix - Blow My Fuse
12. Love / Hate - Why Do You Think They Call It Dope?
13. Poison - Unskinny Bop
14. Bonham - Wait For You
15. Heavy Pettin' - Love On The Run
16. Scorpions - Rock You Like A Hurricane
17. Faster Pussycat - Bathroom Wall
18. L.A. Guns - Sex Action
19. Michael Monroe - Dead, Jail, or Rock 'n Roll

There are a couple of nods to local (at the time) Columbus bands that made the list which may explain some bands most don't know; the rest isn't very obscure, I don't think.

I love everything about this track list

People really don't have enough Krokus in their lives

otm

Oh man, just saw these posts...

Redd Kross were never a glam metal/hair metal band, though they did sometimes do shows with various mid-Eighties Sunset Strip Starz. My friend Kim has a flyer for a show they headlined at a tacky club in the Valley in 1985 with Poison as the opening act! ― Arthur, Sunday, June 16, 2002 8:00 PM

Haha I didnt know Poison once supported Redd Kross. ― Rock Bastard, Friday, March 19, 2004 11:03 PM

One of the McDonald brothers gave me a great story about what is probably that show - they said they played a gig with Poison. At the show, Poison - who was unsigned at the time - had a limo and champagne backstage and a sign on the dressing room door that said they were the "Glitter Glam Slam Kings of Rock & Roll."

I think I remember the exact quote: "We heard they were into the Dolls, but really they just liked Van Halen. And we decided then that we never, ever wanted to be associated with that again."

lol

those cds are great!

I've been reading that hair metal oral history, and tbh forgot what most of these bands sounded like. And the answer is ... they sounded like garbage. Bad songs, terrible production, everything bad but the image, which wasn't bad so much as lazy and stupid. Like, I just spent a bit listening to stuff on youtube by Faster Pussycat and Cinderella and Poison and White Lion and Warrant and Winger and it's pretty much all soooo bad, made probably more embarrassing when the guys can actually sing kinda cool (like Tom in Cinderella) or play (like the guitar solo on White Lion's "Wait," which is super cool) and yet are so beholden to a certain sound that it still sounds like shit. And then the videos ... woof. Even as a middle schooler smack dab in the middle of this particular marketing bullseye I thought this music was shit, and with few exceptions it's aged terribly. It's all so thin and shrill and treble-y, with huge marshmallow snares that take up half the mix (and try to make up for the fact that there's nothing to hide in there anyway).

Imo.

I will stan for Cinderella, wtf!!!!

mostly their later, bloosier stuff, but even the more glammy stuff.

It's gonna be a long cold lonely winter without Josh in Chicago's love.

Note: I saved some of my limited praise for Cinderella specifically.

the solo for "Wait" is really cool, like Vito Bratta figured out some way forward from EVH that was actually interesting

Tom Keifer doing his Cinderella thing solo has been *sad* from the videos I saw, though. He screeeeeeeamed his heart out for a wee bit too long

~cries, clutches aquanet~

YOURE TERRIBLE

I went on a glam/hair metal kick after seeing GNR a few years back and I discovered that I do like eaaaarly Motley Crue, and Dangerous Toys (somewhat), and Black 'n Blue, and I think Ratt, but I hate a lot of it. do not care for Dokken!

Tooth and Nail!!! Cmon

Enuff Z'nuff were the best of these bands, more like Redd Kross musically speaking (if not lyrically).

Enuff Z'nuff were the best of these bands, more like Redd Kross musically speaking (if not lyrically).

― did you hear about the midnight ambler gambler? (Matt #2), Wednesday, May 12, 2021 4:07 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

haha they were such the "best pop metal band" for people who didn't like pop metal, kinda bored me personally

Dokken rules

this is the most underrated hair metal album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSV6R9ZVFFY

I'll ride for Ratt, the first Skid Row record, early Crue.

One other unexpected record I pull out when I'm in the mood for glam metal is Whatever Gets You Off, a Nikki Sixx produced record by The Last Vegas. Their records before and after it aren't worth much at all, but they somehow managed to capture some hair metal magic in a bottle in 2009 for one record.

Dokken are great, also:
Cinderella
LA Guns
WASP
The Leathür Records release of Too Fast For Love sounds a lot better than the “official” Elektra remixed version, ie hearing vince’s voice semi-normal/not-sped-up makes it much more enjoyable

Faster Pussycat’s albums suck, their singles are the only thing you should listen to

Enuff z Nuff are awesome but so far at the end of the period, timewise as to not reallllly fall within the genre. They’re closer to the hippie pop revival than pure glam metal. But they have A+ hooks and def have a slight Cheap Trick vibe and i love that first album SO fucking much

i fucking hate Ratt but i think i’m already on the record for that

oh and Twisted Sister rule also

Enuff Z'nuff were sort of the Cheap Trick contingent, whereas a lot of these acts started and ended with Kiss.

It's amazing in this book how many times you hear some variation of "they couldn't play, but ... " The quotes from Poison producer Ric Browde alone: "And Bret, you know, is to be commended because up to Poison I think the ability to carry a note and sing in tune had been a barrier to entry." Or (again) re: the first Poison record: "It's a piece of shit, that album. It sucks. Sonically, as a producer? It's the worst record ever. And I became known as a garbage producer because of it."

Most interesting bit I've come across is that Kip Winger was more or less classically trained (and also took ballet lessons), and that his own pre-Winger demos were much closer to prog and Peter Gabriel, at least as he describes them. That's sort of what I mean. Some of these people are pretty talented, and yet they have no vision or integrity. It's just about the chicks and free beer. I mean, Kip Winger might have been classically trained, but he still signed off on Winger, and he's such a wuss that in the book he claims he always hated the band name, which may say a little about how he thinks of himself.

xpost

I doubt I could make it through an entire album by any of these choads, good singles or no. They literally hurt my ears, and iirc did back then, too.

sorry that you hate fun, lmao

starting with a high bar is kind of pointless for this genre

the lower your standards the more enjoyment you will get out of it

i mean guitar shredding is really the highlight
if you have any other sonic/lyrical requirements you will be disappointed lol

but sidebar jesus, bay area speed metal, early 80’s punk all sound like they were recorded inside aluminum garbage cans so i think you are also hampered by yr own dislike for the genre :)

Hair metal I would absolutely still listen to today, in descending order:

- the first three W.A.S.P. albums
- the first Junkyard album
- the Ratt EP and the debut album
- Mötley Crue, Shout at the Devil
- the first Skid Row album

xpost Sure! I mean, they don't need me as a fan. Still, those bay area speed metal and early 80’s punk albums may have sounded shitty, but they were shitty by necessity, not as an aesthetic trend-chasing choice.

By the way, Bon Jovi (band and man alike) come off really well in the book. Just stand up, supportive guys.

unperson otm
first three WASP albums are unfuckwithable, so great!!

the crue have some killer jams for sure

and yeah first ratt album is solid

does LA Guns count? their first album rules

I think Cinderella was pretty good

I never though of Twisted Sister as related to this whole thing, maybe because they were from nowhere near LA. Are they in the book much?

Yeah, as kind of the old guard. Kiss and Ozzy, then Van Halen, then Twisted Sister, Quiet Riot and iirc Ratt and WASP as these bands that were sort of always around. Motley Crue seems to be the band that really lights a fire under the Sunset Strip. And by that I mean yes, the book includes Tommy Lee lighting his farts on fire.

LA Guns, they're another one that just sort of hovers on the periphery, for some reason.

A lot of these bands seemed to swap and/or share members in the early days. Like, I know a guy from such and such band, and that band has a guy from such and such band, and then they combine and fire another guy and get a new guy from a third band, etc.

Y&T were cool, they were like a real life Spinal Tap, started out in the very early 70s as Yesterday & Today then just kept evolving through 70s hard rock and into 80s pop metal

twisted sister is definitely from the ny dolls/glam/kiss/dictators type lineage

in that documentary they are playing like lou reed covers and stuff in the early days

Twisted Sister always charmingly inept, no Nuno Bettencourt shredding for those guys!

Twisted Sister had at least two ex-Dictators in their (ever-shifting) early lineups. They started performing (under other names) as early as 1972.

Heh, I always rated Vito Bratta and also liked Tom Keifer as a singer.

The fact that Dee Snider thought Twisted Sister would have a big hit with a cover of "Leader of the Pack" says a lot.

One of my favorite products of the genre is Vinnie Vincent Invasion's first album. VV's guitar solos are insane, they remind me a bit of Ritchie Blackmore.

There's an endless series of blogposts out there somewhere where VV's drummer details how the album recording got derailed by Vinnie's apparent OCD tendencies, it's tragic.

Yeah exactly, it was a pretty small scene, Slash almost ended up in Poison. Where are Guns N Roses in the hair metal canon, below Motley Cue and above Poison or something?

Where are Guns N Roses in the hair metal canon, below Motley Cue and above Poison or something?

Kind of one step to the right; I think they're seen as hair metal-adjacent, especially since they went in a much more mainstream 70s/trad hard rock direction on their second album(s).

My understanding of the prevailing wisdom is that, like Black Sabbath, they were sui generis and transcend mortal categories.

xp

Y&T were awesome right up to (& including) “Summertime Girl” - once you have a robot on the beach in your music video, it’s time to pack your gear

iirc VV invasion ditched Vinnie and became Slaughter

I believe Vinnie Vincent guitar solos were the only time atonal music made the Billboard charts

GnR kind of ended hair metal for me, just seemed so much better, more savage and dirty compared to the other bands

Mark Slaughter sings on the 2nd VV Invasion album. The first album has an ex-Journey singer on it, though Mark Slaughter lipsyncs that guy's vocal in the "Boyz Are Gonna Rock" video.

I don’t know, looking back on it now, GnR blend in even more into the hair metal scene than they did at the time when they, Skid Row and Extreme desperately tried to make a ‘tougher’ image stick.

xp: like a watered-down version of how Kip Winger was in Alice Cooper's band during the Kane Roberts years.

Hair metal factoid: Rough Cutt's Paul Shortino played Duke Fame in This Is Spinal Tap, the rock star they bump into in the hotel lobby ("They were still booing him when we were on stage!"). Rough Cutt were abysmal btw.

Also, in hair metal continuity factoids: Two guys from King Cobra (Carmine "Vanilla Fudge" Appice's post-Ozzy 80s band) went on to start the BulletBoys. Here's King Cobra (tepidly) covering Hunger by Spectre General (aka Kick Axe):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixEV13jggvY

vs the glorious original

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGwEiiVyPwA

Among the curios of the era is this not at all stereotypically offensive deal, which I urge you to listen to for the first song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dV0l3VDYP-c

The back cover revealing the full hair farm says it all, and yes in the upper right corner there, that's them striking poses on stage somewhere in full costume with (presumably fake) katanas

https://img.discogs.com/cNfuITMJp43V0FbutypZN7JQAXI=/fit-in/600x450/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-5479924-1394444257-7315.jpeg.jpg

They may have sprung forth fully-formed from my 6-year-old dreams.

based on the Nothin But A Good Time book, Tracii Guns should publish a memoirs, he is a pretty decent storyteller imo - also the fact that he’s local & intersects so many parts of the scene gives him extra credibility since so many bands were transplants

I follow him on Twitter, he's pretty good for an 80s metal singer

Yeah, he's def. a linchpin of the scene.

Y&T def. pop up here and there in the book, mostly as a band other bands open for. I mentioned Ratt as a band that been around, too, and indeed, they formed as Mickey Ratt back in 1977.

In the book GNR are definitely seen as an unintended nail in the hair metal coffin, even though those guys definitely sprung up from the same scene and were buds with the same people. It was partly because they never got glammed up, and Slash/Izzy were not weedle-weedle type shredders.

in Duff’s memoirs he said the first thing they did was get rid of all the bullshit on Adler’s drumkit including second kick drum lol

That's in this book, too, ha. The opposite is when they hire Rod Morgenstein for Winger and all he wants to play is what they call "fuck-shit" drum parts, just boom, snare, boom boom, snare, and they're like, we didn't hire you prog fusion monster to do that, show off a little!

My favorite line re Adler (I forget where I read it) is "He was so high, he thought he played on the album."

BTW, I was curious about the revelation that Kip Winger's number one was always Peter Gabriel, so I searched out a later example of a solo track he thought was indicative of that influence, and ... hmm, kinda!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAwOBr4BVN8

Slash/Izzy were not weedle-weedle type shredders

Which hair metal guitarists do you think of as shredders? Reb Beach and Bratta were shredders but both were from NY. Vincent also Northeastern. I don't really think of the Sunset Strip guitarists that I can recall as particularly virtuosic, not more so than Slash, I don't think, but will freely admit that I haven't been listening closely in a while.

srsly? George Lynch comes to mind for a start

I would say Warren Dimartini and George Lynch were the true shredders in the LA scene (Rhoads excepted as being more than just that scene)

Paul Gilbert got a little mainstream with Mr. Big

Ah, OK, I was thinking about e.g. Motley Crue and Poison. I actually only know a couple of songs by Dokken and Ratt. (Didn't recall "Round & Round" being that much of a lead guitar showcase.) Was thinking of Rhoads as a different scene, yeah, but maybe he should count.

now being reminded of the "Blues" Saraceno era of Poison, meh

(which, btw, Blues isn't a stage name)

I have much to learn about glam metal shredding, clearly.

who were the WORST glam guitar players

Mick Mars and C.C. DeVille, and whoever was in Trixter.

Guitar magazine, which was mostly written by rockist snobs, once said glam metal eventually turned into "Coke jingles with a guitar solo thrown in for street credibility" by the late 80s, and i hafta say, twas a good zing.

CC deVille for sure

I didn't think Mars and deVille were more virtuosic than Slash?

Glam metal (and glam-metal adjacent) earworms from lesser lights that I enjoy muchly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaXh96lsTlQ

Later-LA group Killingbird take on The Cure and turn a romantic song into something sleazy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt7pfTnaPR4

Not glam, really, more AC/DC-inspired (from Australia, even!), but a killer riff while the singer abuses alcohol but not the wait staff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rK2iq-jClLw

Fun fact: I interviewed Ron Keel for a local Columbus weekly when he was living there doing Iron Horse, a biker-country kinda thing. He has since gone full country. He was also on the Yngwie Steeler album that is kinda classic. The video is hilarious!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BnJRwe8CGM

Beautiful Creatures is a post-Bang Tango project and I love the triumphant psychedelic guitars and how they mash with the down-and-out lyrical 'tude.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZuXwyZANI0

Sweet Dolls cover by the often overlooked Shotgun Messiah. Tim Skold went on to some renown in industrial metal circles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcDEk6XEwio

Columbus group put out a record on Go Kart records. This song is just perfect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0QP_5RQIYE

DreamWorks signee from Washington state at the height of grunge but they didn't fool me, this is a very glammy track if you ask me!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da11syT3i04

"Fly Me Courageous" is their go-to glam rock moment but man, this song... I ran into Kevin Kinney after a show in Raleigh at a convenience store and I told him Smoke was my favorite album of theirs. He looked at me and wryly responded, "Yeah, they love that one in Germany."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruX1dzsM4Ek

Kerrang! heroes not really glam, but dood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyXq7Qmua7A

I picked up this CD on sale for $9.99 which was a great price for a new CD back then. Drunken blues metal done right.

Hardline got noticed as a vehicle for some Journey guys. This song is cheesy as fuck but I remember one drunken evening playing it ten times in a row and the chorus stayed in my head for the next three weeks.

Chuck Eddy's favorite band, the pride of Hagerstown, Maryland, I love this video - there's new wavers, preps, everyone's invited to the Kix party in this early video, as long as they're cool (and a kid).

This song and band got some mileage, but special shout out for the version in Decline which is decadence personified.

I can sometimes be convinced this is my favorite song by anyone. Heavy Pettin' seems like glam's version of Diamond Head in that they had everything they should have had - songs, sound, looks, even pretty good timing kicking around with Def Leppard also emerging (Lettin' Loose - they must have hated the letter G - came out the same year as Pyromania) but they never did anything. Pity.

Oops...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCosZhWikhA

Hardline got noticed as a vehicle for some Journey guys. This song is cheesy as fuck but I remember one drunken evening playing it ten times in a row and the chorus stayed in my head for the next three weeks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQMwY66HdLk

Chuck Eddy's favorite band, the pride of Hagerstown, Maryland, I love this video - there's new wavers, preps, everyone's invited to the Kix party in this early video, as long as they're cool (and a kid).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PFWSoBF8Ks

This song and band got some mileage, but special shout out for the version in Decline which is decadence personified.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P71FibOAUPk

I can sometimes be convinced this is my favorite song by anyone. Heavy Pettin' seems like glam's version of Diamond Head in that they had everything they should have had - songs, sound, looks, even pretty good timing kicking around with Def Leppard also emerging (Lettin' Loose - they must have hated the letter G - came out the same year as Pyromania) but they never did anything. Pity.

i think they were answering my question about "worst glam shredders" when they said Mars and DeVille.

btw this old thread is hilarious: https://www.harmonycentral.com/forums/topic/961269-why-the-cc-deville-hate/page/2/

evh1984
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Posted August 6, 2010
Deville was well on his way to becoming the white Hendrix before they derailed him.

i mean i love poison for being stupid fun but he really was fkn terrible

what i *do* love about Poison is all the stories about how hard they worked to make it. like they may not have had enough brains collectively to power a toy car BUT they were hungry af and took it seriously. i like that.

Oh that makes way more sense. Yeah, those were the guys I was thinking about originally.

lol this feels like the tuneless guitar solo Nigel plays at one point in Spinal Tap:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejStUVgMaS4

oh toooootally forgot about this lmao

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5sb93HSh18

I still get a kick out of the fact Brian Baker (Minor Threat, Dag Nasty, Bad Religion) did a stint in fuckin' Junkyard.

i mean i love poison for being stupid fun but he really was fkn terrible

what i *do* love about Poison is all the stories about how hard they worked to make it. like they may not have had enough brains collectively to power a toy car BUT they were hungry af and took it seriously. i like that.

― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, May 13, 2021 12:04 AM

By all accounts, Bret Michaels is an insanely nice dude. Dunno about the other guys.

Rikki Rockett always seemed more like someone’s midwestern aunt, he is so dorkily sincere

mr veg used to work for Bill Graham Presents in SF & once refused Bobby Dall backstage access to his own concert bc he wasnt wearing his pass & mr veg didnt know who the fuck he was lmao

Haha!

By all accounts, Bret Michaels is an insanely nice dude. Dunno about the other guys.

I interviewed him once, shortly after I was diagnosed with diabetes (Michaels is a famous diabetic for those who don't know), so I was in a somewhat raw headspace and it became a much deeper conversation than your average plug-the-new-album interview. He is, in fact, very nice, at least in my experience.

WASP continued making great records long past their first three! but maybe they were no longer hair metal at that point

random names my brain is spitting out from ads in old Circus and Hit Paraders:

Brighton Rock
Guiffria
Lexx Diamond
Leatherwolf
Laaz Rockit
Salty Dog
Pretty Maids
Blue Murder

Lillian Axe, don't forget!

And speaking of axes, Lizzy Borden.

haha both good ones

Rock City Angels

Yo, I bought that Rock City Angels on vinyl just within the last year. It's not quite as good as I remembered, but I'm not mad at it.

btw LEGS Diamond not Lexx

saw Rock City Angels open for Jimmy Page, second show I saw as a kid

Hair metal is one of those things I loathed when it was current but I'm sometimes nostalgic for now. I can't imagine I'd want to hear whole albums by anyone but there are tons of great that I kind of love. I also strongly separate GnR from hair metal and remember me and another guy my age once arguing with a bunch of guys how they weren't in the same camp as Poison and Warrant but they refused to believe us.

One of my colleagues was in the LA hair band scene during this era, and has crazy stories about being in a love triangle with a woman and the singer of one of the bands everyone here knows, etc. His band had some benefactor who funded them (so they didn't need day jobs) and they were getting groomed for success and a major label deal, but then, as he put it, "Nevermind came out, and it was all over". Like they tried to wear flannels and shit for a while but it didn't work so he gave it up and went back to school.

Heh, I remember Brighton Rock from CBC's Video Hits. "Hangin' High and Dry" still gets in my head once in a while.

The weird thing about GNR is that they totally *were* in the same camp, traveled in the same musical circles, etc, just never were into the hair and costumes and poppy stuff. A lot of that could have simply boiled down to personality. Axl and Izzy were like stray dogs, Slash was an LA insider, Duff a northwest outsider. Adler was probably the most in line with the Sunset Strip scene, and as referenced above the band quickly put an end to his big drum set excess. Clearly the group was on a different level than a lot of their peers, though, which is why Appetite both sold a bajillion and stands up better than most of the other LA hard rock records of the era. Ironically, perhaps, they got a lot more ridiculous and OTT later, after the glam/hair metal stuff had all died down.

Poison in the book come off more or less pretty well in every regard aside from their music. They work hard, they're nice, etc. They and Faster Pussycat are always being referenced as bands that just didn't know how to play. And yeah, Mick Mars (who is almost a decade older than his bandmates) acknowledges toward the end of the book that he never studied scales or really moved much beyond being a rhythm guitarist.

There's a quote in the book from Phil Collen about the danger of less-than-flashy guitar solos in this athletic shredder era. Something like, "you've got shitty songs and shitty lyrics and shitty production and shitty outfits, and now you want to show everyone you're a shitty guitarist, too?" But the post Van Halen shredders were, like, guy from Ratt, George Lynch, guy from White Lion, Paul Gilbert, Nuno, Vinnie Vincent, Jake E. Lee, Rhoads, etc. (This is overlooking the sci-fi weirdoes like Steve Vai or Yngwie or whomever.) I think the book makes a good observation of the trend as a reaction against British guitar hero standards, which were still bluesy and about "feeling," which EVH handily discarded in favor of sheer elation. Regardless, like I was saying earlier about I think Winger (whose guitarist Reb Beach was also something of a shredder with a session dude CV), none of your skill matters if you're willing to sell it out to make boring by the books hair metal boilerplate. The trappings and trends just stifled creativity, which is why something like that White Lion "Wait" solo really sticks out.

Reb Beach had a Berklee degree iirc? Winger's solos stand out too imo! I only know the singles but I kind of felt like they got a bit of a bad rap.

I never really thought of Extreme or the predominantly instrumental guitar mag shredders as glam metal, nor Ozzy.

Extreme drew some from hair metal but also like, Van Halen, methinks. and by their third album, they were a completely different thing.

Pornograffiti is a lot of fun and I also like III Sides to Every Story.

Maybe these mental barriers should be taken down, though.xp

I think glam/hair metal is ultimately a red herring, because it's as much of a fashion choice as musical choice. So no, Extreme and Ozzy were not really in that mode, but the guitar players definitely intersected with that scene, and of course all their roads (no pun intended) lead back to EVH. Like, the first line of Nuno's wiki bio is basically "Unable to make a dent in the music world with his Boston-based hair metal act Sinful ..." And Ozzy of course preceded the hair metal scene, but he definitely drew band members from it. Jake E. Lee was in one of those early versions of Ratt, etc.

Iirc Beach in the book says he dropped out of Berklee because they frowned upon that sort of flashy playing.

the true shredder stuff was the whole Guitar Institute/Berklee/Shrapnel Records axis, Tony MacApline, Paul Gilbert, Vinnie Moore, David T Chastain, Marty Friedman, Jason Becker etc

still find it hilarious that Rivers Cuomo started out being like a hair metal shredda

I bet a lot of (mostly) dudes were.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0mQlJqOFxY

xpost he said he took guitar lessons from Jim Matheos of Fates Warning (v much not a hair metal dude)

xxxxxpost Around the time of The Ultimate Sin (and forward) Ozzy was going for a glam look at least

omfg at Fogerty video. lol at solo with whammy dive bombs and tapping solo before "Keep on Chooglin'"

there was also "Close My Eyes Forever", so despite his protestations about glam/hair metal, he definitely dipped his toes in the water a *little* bit.

I bet a lot of (mostly) dudes were.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, May 13, 2021 8:39 AM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

when i was an intern at the magazine i worked for, one of the editors had grown up in buffalo with pat wilson from weezer. there was a small group of buffalo ex-pats there, so when weezer was on their green album comeback tour they had a bbq at their place and we got invited. ended up talking to pat about ronnie james dio for a long time, he loved dio...also said he was in weezer for the money at that point

That gives me the warmest feelings I've ever had for a Weezer member maybe ever.

The weird thing about GNR is that they totally *were* in the same camp, traveled in the same musical circles, etc, just never were into the hair and costumes and poppy stuff.

I mean it didn't help them in any way being wiped out with all the rest of em once the combo of Pantera/Biohazard + Nirvana/Pearl Jam swept their middle school fanbase away, but in retrospect it does seem to have given them more cred.

I think my (v possibly mistaken) 11-12yo pov was that Extreme was more like the poppy end of arty funk-metal like FNM or Living Colour. I do think they were going for something pretty different by III Sides to Every Story at the least, although it has been years since I listened.

there should be a Cock Rock Cruise

ugly kid joe always felt like they dressed the grunge part but were really of that before time

I just listened to Winger's "Headed for a Heartbreak" btw and the extended solo still sounds pretty epic.

xxxpost I mean I did think about Living Colour when I made my original post as Nuno's riff style has some similiarities to Vernon Reid, Pornograffiti has elements of sleaze, but there's a pretty well-regulated limit to how far it goes (unlike most hair metal), and the choruses are more Van Halen-esque with smooth, layered vocal harmonies, rather than the sleek,gang-style vocal harmonies of hair metal.

and yeah, III Sides pretty much leaves any connection with hair metal behind. it's not as arty per say, but Cherone leans a lot more into his Everly Brothers influences on vocals, songs are a little more stylistically varied, with orchestrations used on a few tracks.

haven't heard the debut or Waiting for the Punchline.

Suzy wants her all day sucker suzy wants her all day WHAT

i love the interview in the book w Steve Brown of Trixster. it’s so the opposite of the stories of the early scene bands, like just completely blowing mad piles of cash when the whole scene is literally over

they spent $600k on their second album that came out in ~1992~

and ***$250k*** on the video for the single “Road of a Thousand Dreams” … that MTV didn’t air

sad trombone lol

"Headed for a Heartbreak" actually does some pretty tricky things with tonality! The verses are mostly over Bb and C chords with a lot of extensions, while the melody is largely centred around C. It might lead you to expect an F major resolution in the chorus but the chorus mostly seems like G minor. Then the bridge is built over a Db pedal with Db-Eb movement in the chords and a melody that seems centred more around Bb. Then the last 3 minutes of the song are a long guitar solo.

Like, Poison wasn't doing things like that.

That makes sense, Neanderthal.

imo Winger are the Queensryche of this genre, they maybe more proficient & do better things musically but it will never ever (for me) save them from their lead singer being an unrepentant douchecanoe imo

interesting how quiet this thread was all day in the uk time zone.
also, this thread revival made me dig out a cd i picked up cheap a couple of years back, and had never listened to it.
the debut by l.a. guns.
damn, it was a lot of fun, i listened to it all the way through which i never expected to.

I went to a college with a guy who, well into the latter half of the '90s, would argue strenuously that Kip Winger was a criminally underrated musical genius.

wanted to post two minnesota hair metal era curios....and two of the more ridiculous (or ridiculously awesome) bands of that era

1) SLAVE RAIDER

Staples of the Minnesota club and ballroom scene, led by Chainsaw Caine (who now owns the traveling hair metal tribute band Hairball), they used to do kinda Alice Cooper theatrics, fire stuff and the chainsaw itself. He was really bitter about Jackyl's success; he claims they saw Slave Raider and stole the bit. Anyway, absolutely knucklehead silly shit, but catchy. Always got the sense Chainsaw was in on the joke. This video is so hilarious

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuGTrTPut1w

2) MORTICIA

Ex-punks who started as a goth/deathrock type band, had more synths like Sister of Mercy or something...eventually ended up an odd mix of goth and sleaze metal...one of them I believe went on to to be a touring member of the Cult.

i think they are still around kinda, went back to the goth roots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUyrpwG9eCU

xxpost I really like that first LA guns album, i listen to it a lot.

re Slave Raider, all I ever wanted to do as a kid was film a post-apocalyptic metal video at some abandoned quarry or construction site.

Hanoi Rocks on the edges of this?

I always thought Queensryche and Crimson Glory sounded a bit glammy but more things look/sound like like glam metal to an outsider, I haven't heard much of this genre.

Imo, Hanoi Rocks yes; Queensryche definitely aspired to something comparatively more progressive.

oh, and before this revival i randomly picked up a 'best of' (2004 comp) yesterday by def leppard.
are they regarded as hair metal, or are they too produced/polished ?

I guess I would put them in a category with Van Halen, definitely influential and formative to what became "hair metal" but big enough and unique enough that they were sort of their own thing, bigger than the genre if that makes sense

And I hear that Hanoi Rocks and Wasp have a lot more critical acclaim plus credit with other types of metal fans who might not care for glam?

that makes sense.
digging around i found a white lion 2cd anthology i had forgotten about, and even a w.a.s.p cd (inside the electric circus).
both of which i am not sure i have ever listened to.
could be an interesting, unexpected weekend soundtrack here.

xpost.

W.A.S.P. are more traditional heavy metal with glam elements than pure glam. Rock 'n roll is a big part of glam and it is with W.A.S.P. as well - hence lots of their cover song choices.

they definitely dressed the part for glam, though there was a bit of a shock rock element to their wardrobe too. the sleaze was there in full force, in the lyrics, the music, the performance. the chorus harmonies are pure glam, though Blackie's voice is a bit shrill compared to other glam vocalists (other than maybe Tom Keifer). but the riffing and songs could be much more aggressive than that scene at times too. especially on like Headless Children, or the back half of the s/t.

it's actually a pretty masterful blend as they liked to savagely cave your skull in but with catchy melodies and pretty harmonies.

I love W.A.S.P.

oooh INside the Electric Circus is great! it's no s/t but you should enjoy.

WASP/Electric Circus : title track on now - and yeah, this hits the spot.
i clearly prefer the dirtier sound as opposed to the clean side of this era.

well then you'll love W.A.S.P., who basically bathe in bacon grease and KY Jelly

glad you like that first LA Guns, sleaze masterpiece

just remembered I did buy that first LA Guns during my hair metal revisitation period and I did indeed like that one.

Going back to my initial misgivings, the issue as I see it is that just about all of these bands were equally inspired by Kiss and Van Halen, but none of them were even close to as good as Van Halen and at best some of them were about as good as Kiss, which is about as meaningless a victory as you can get. The smartest or the best of the bunch were the ones the hewed closest to '70s hard rock and punk.

I do feel a little bad for a lot of these folks. They were making so much money but ultimately losing so much more, and in the end if the only reason you're making music at all is for the adulation and the booze/drugs/girls that goes with it, and those things go away, then you're not left with much. It's not like Rikki Rockett was going to start writing bestsellers, you know? That said, I'm sure all of these bands are doing fine on the nostalgia circuit, along with their equivalents from the same or other decades. And at the end of the book the aforementioned Mr. Rockett is now espousing the virtues of girls in their '30s.

Oh, and back to this dude:

I went to a college with a guy who, well into the latter half of the '90s, would argue strenuously that Kip Winger was a criminally underrated musical genius.

A few years back Winger got a Grammy nom for Best Classical Contemporary Composition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L81u2K2d3To

Hanoi Rocks were fully in the middle of it imo- influenced a lot of ppl in the scene & then there’s Razzle’s death in 84 w Vince Neil
inextricably linked you could say

I feel like Hanoi Rocks were your favorite band's favorite band

I don't remember anyone actually listening to them back then

Yeah I feel like they were always kinda whispered about as being "legends" among hair metal kids back in junior high, but no one had really ever heard them because you didn't see their records around.

They never really toured America, right? Until '84 or whatever? But yeah, they're definitely in the sub-genre's sleazy DNA.

Hanoi Rocks were the only glam/hair band that had a saxophone

Obv. Johnny Thunders was the patron saint to a lot of these folks, too.

Haha, I didn't realize (or forgot) that that was the same Kip Winger!

Litterer Band was from northern Iowa and played the MN circuit some, always liked this song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMia4oEwbi4

Johnny Thunders was basically the pivot point between Faster Pussycat and The Replacements, not that the latter would have liked to admit it.

Angel of course were another massive 70s-era influence on all this stuff, and also spawned both Giuffria and House of Lords. More satin and silk than scarves and bangles though, image-wise.

Starz too

Girl was the early 80s NWOBHM attempt at emulating the NY Dolls, featuring later members of LA Guns and Def Leppard. Hair metal was never likely to be done successfully by Brits though, later bands like Dogs D'Amour and the Quireboys were more sleazy rock'n'roll than shred-glam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4pWGrvt8yM

Although let's not forget Wrathchild

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwT2X93BrKc

what about.... Disney After Dark (D.A.D.) from Denmark?

xpost Points for bringing out a bazooka, minus points for having it fire confetti. I think they can be safely forgotten.

Wrathchild was fantastic, imaging a universe where even the LA Strip bands loved Motorhead.

I guess there were some serious Motorhead vibes.

what about.... Disney After Dark (D.A.D.) from Denmark?

Great band!

were there two Wrathchilds? because I swear I remember Wrathchild America

https://www.discogs.com/artist/1359235-Wrathchild-America

Shannon Larkin left the band in 1994 to fill the drum seat in Ugly Kid Joe; and some time later in Godsmack as well.

Red carded for that alone

DAD are great, def on the tail-end

way @ ugly kid joe connection

VG - I always detected a hint of surfy/gothy guitar in DAD, like they might have been into some new wave stuff

Yeah, 1987 was (in my estimation) hair metal's peak year, and starting in 1988 onward everything began drying up or getting lame except for a few upstarts like D.A.D. and Bang Tango, etc.

yeah Sleeping My Day Away has that awesome low-tuned guitar that kinda pushes into a different vibe than just straight hair metal

their hair def qualifies them though, lol

were there two Wrathchilds? because I swear I remember Wrathchild America

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, May 13, 2021 5:32 PM bookmarkflaglink

Yea they were a progressive thrash band who got sued by another country's Wrathchild, which derailed their career until they rebranded as Wrathchild America.

Then some of them split off to form the groove metal band Souls at Zero.

oh shit one of the weirdo dudes who I used to skate with and got me into janes addiction somehow ended up with a SLAVE RAIDER t-shirt and nobody had any idea who or what they were


also huge lols at LITTERER as a threatening sounding metal band name

haha I love it, a Slave Raider t-shirt in the wild

https://kcrr.com/iowa-rock-n-roll-hall-of-fame-to-induct-the-litterer-band/

xxxxxpost -

I should defend the Litterer name a bit (though it's ridiculous to expect that anyone would know this) - it was a family band three of the four are the Litterer siblings. They were known as the Litterer Band before.

Litterer siblings

So for a time they were ... kiddie Litterers.

lol

historic night:

In 1986, Slave Raider won all four Heavy Metal honors at the Minnesota Music Awards; that year Prince performed at the ceremony and Soul Asylum won for Best New Band.[1]

Re: Hanoi Rocks--IIRC in Get in the Van Henry Rollins talks about seeing them and liking the show. He compliments the lead singer, saying something like "he hit some Bowie, some Iggy, and some Jagger".

Good point about Hanoi Rocks upthread, i.e. "your favorite band's favorite band." If you read interviews in Hit Parader and Circus and RIP with just about anybody, Hanoi Rocks would come up more than half the time.

But when I went to the store? Zilch. Granted, I lived in smalltown north Alabama with a mall that had only two record stores, but it seems like it might have been hard for everybody to find those albums. When I finally got to hear Hanoi Rocks sometime well into my twenties, I feel like I missed out on what might have been so great about them that I might have recognized better at age 15.

Hanoi Rocks were definitely a band I looked for but didn't find at my mall when I was a kid.

is there a rhino-type various artists box set for this stuff?

probably lots of ghastly budget gas station ones out there lol

Don't think Light In The Attic have got quite there yet

I've been eyeing a Cinderella box set for a while.

Fenriz having a Hanoi Rocks tattoo probably increased their cult status.

hair metal needs it's Nuggets.

Hanoi Rocks were def keeping the New York Dolls dream alive by doing throwback music in a messy fun kinda way.

It was. kind of funny to hear them for the first time; i always heard *about* them as a teen but never got my hands on any music until the early 90’s and i was like wait THIS is what they were all talking about? it was a way different vibe than i expected

Yeah all of that sounds OTM about Hanoi Rocks. I do enjoy the songs I finally heard in my 20s, though. Sort of trashy glam rock/power pop, hit some of the same buttons for me that Cheap Trick and Redd Kross do, not that I was inspired to dig very deep.xps

It was actually the exact vibe I was hoping for.

Yeah, VG and Johnny Fever's experiences matched mine. We definitely all heard of and read namechecks of Hanoi Rocks well before any of us actually heard a note. In fact, I don't think I heard them until I found a cheap vinyl copy of Back to Mystery City in 2005 or 2006. It was not what I expected at all.

Rhino have 4 compilations in the Youth Gone Wild series.

https://rateyourmusic.com/release/comp/various-artists/youth-gone-wild-heavy-metal-hits-of-the-80s-volume-2.p/

being talked about in the metal thread but Tracii Guns and Michael Sweet from Stryper have a new band together called Sunbomb and their new album is great. not glam though, like heavy traditional euro metal/doom/power metal stuff

How many Hanoi Rocks albums were even issued in the US back in the '80s? I think only the last one from before their breakup; the others were only available on import iirc. That partially explains their low profile (ofc I realize we're not all Americans here). The Sunset Strip crowd could just go to Tower or Amoeba and find them, but it'd be a different situation in suburbia.

They were always more of a cult band in the UK as far as I recall it, Kerrang! were into them but the sleaze rock thing hadn't really kicked off yet. Probably helped that drummer Razzle had been in a band with Kerrang! cartoonist Ray Zell, hence the similarity in names!

Malibu Beach and their Up Around the Bend cover got a bit of UK airplay but didn't make the top 40. Wikipedia says the Two Steps From the Move album squeezed into the top 30 here though.

xxpost damn Michael Sweet sounds fucking great still. thx for the rec, ums, will def check this out

Michael Sweet gets around! I just noticed by clicking on "fans also like" that he and George Lynch released a couple albums together as Sweet & Lynch. It's definitely in the more American vein of 80s metal than Sunbomb, but damn do I love hearing George Lynch do George Lynchy things (instead of whatever that dumb band was he had with Dug Pinnick).

lmao

I want to do at least one SUNBOMB show just so I can hear @michaelhsweet say . How y’all doing tonight? We are GUNS N MOSES!!!

— Tracii ⨁ 🇺🇸🇩🇰 (@TraciiGuns) May 8, 2021

ha!

So are any of these yelpers and shriekers secretly good or clever lyricists?

Axl probably the best lyricist by far?

For sure the most distinctive, in the pure Id sense, I guess.

Axl is a great lyricist, great turns of phrase that are so distinctive

Strapped in the chair of the city's gas chamber
Why I'm here I can't quite remember
The Surgeon General says it's hazardous to breathe
I'd have another cigarette but I can't see
Tell me who you're gonna believe

is a cut above

Ricky was a young boy
He had a heart of stone
Lived 9 to 5 and he worked
His fingers to the bone

imo

You got your bitches with the silicone injections
Crystal meth and yeast infections
Bleached blond hair, collagen lip projections
Who are you to criticize my intentions?
Got your subtle manipulative devices
Just like you I got my vices
I got a thought that would be nice
I'd like to crush your head tight in my vice...pain!!

That's actually pretty impressive in terms of rhyme and wordplay!

I really like the lyrics to "Right Next Door to Hell"

Blackie Lawless!

Blind in Texas

An El Paso hellhole, I couldn't get much higher
White lightning moonshine, tastes like fire
I drank for free till I couldn't see
I fell on the floor, what I said is
I'm blind in Texas, the lone star is hot tonight
I'm blind in Texas, the cowboys have taken my eyes
I drank Dallas whiskey and lost my mind
Had high-balls in Houston, three for a dime
Everything starts to spin, loaded on gin
I fell out the door, what I said is
I'm blind in Texas, the lone star is hot tonight
I'm blind in Texas, the cowboys have taken my eyes
San Antonio and the West Texas town El Paso
Corups Christi and Waco, the Yellow Rose is wild
Hey dude, let's party
Raisin hell in Austin just after sundown
When the hoosegow police decided to come round- they said
"Boy what's the matter with you, what you trying to do?"
I looked at the man and I said
'I think I'll have another one'
-We ain't got no more-
'What do ya mean you ain't got no more liqour'
-We ain't got no more, go home-
'What do ya mean go home, what am I supposed to
do... get on a horse and ride back to LA?'
They've got no horse
What do you mean-they got no horse?
There's no HORSE--'the hell you say... suffer!"
I'm blind in Texas, the lone star is hot tonight
I'm blind in Texas, I'm blind

yeah Blackie was definitely from the old school, more Alice Cooper

he was def committed to the idea of the “show”

i rate Tom Keifer/Cinderella for lyrics

and Janey Lane/Warrant as well

Blackie was even in NY Dolls for five minutes

He was! Also weren’t him & Nikki Sixx in London together for like a minute too

Blackie's lyrics to Rebel in the F.D.G. are a nice hedonistic fantasy, exactly the type of song I'd love to play while driving 80 miles an hour on an empty highway and dream of the unattainable "glamorous" form of debauchery where there are no hangovers, any jail sentences are cushy, you don't wind up accidentally killing anybody, and then when your body is partied out, it just dies peacefully. also killer guitar riff.

https://genius.com/Wasp-rebel-in-the-fdg-lyrics

xpost - I think everyone was in London for a minute, that band was like the glam metal farm team

right!? “if you wanna be in this scene you need your girlfriend’s makeup, a teasing comb & to be a former member of London”

I’m still amused that there was both a UK band, London SS, in the original punk scene and the US glam metal London where both bands were starting points for a whole bunch of players. (As separate from the other UK punk band simply called London.)

Didn't London put in a brief appearance in The Decline of Western Civilization Pt. II, or am I thinking of Odin?

they featured quite a bit in Decline 2, on-camera interview clips & some stage stuff i think

they even said themselves in the doc that they were like a gateway band or something

'Bankok Shocks Siagon Shakes Hanoi Rocks' is one of my all time favorites. It's a good and sleazy but has quite a bit of power pop. Their other albums have really good tracks and worth hearing too. I had heard of the band as a teenager but never got any of their music until Geffen put them out on CD in '89.

Axl probably the best lyricist by far?

no.

Man, Hanoi Rock is pretty good. All I knew was what they looked like and their connection to Motley Crue so I never bothered giving them a shot.

Here's a question for armchair historians of the era. The first Van Halen album came out in 1978. So what or when was the first album to feature a finger-tappy guitarist clearly trying to imitate EVH?

Nursery Cryme, 1971

there were a couple Quiet Riot albums with Randy Rhoads that only came out overseas but I've never heard them

It doesn't answer your question but I'm actually curious if Steve Hackett was the first guy to do it on electric guitar in a pop context.

I'm not including Steve Hackett (who def. tapped) or that other guy people cite, I'm talking about the wheedle-wheedle folks clearly influenced by EVH.

Those Quiet Riot albums with Rhoads came out right after VH, right? Or more or less the same time? I wonder how much of a flashy Rhoads showcase they are. Anyway, I'm mostly wondering how long it took for guitar players to essentially figure out what EVH was up to. Because for sure by the early '80s there were a ton of imitators. But for example, Steve Vai didn't release any of that kind of stuff (afaik) until around 1983. Or Satriani, his first album didn't come out until 1986. Clearly he knew about tapping before that, but I have no idea what he had been up to before that. Just teaching?

Here's something I just dug up:

In a new interview with the "Behind The Vinyl" podcast, Joe Satriani was asked if he started using the technique of tapping notes on his guitar when he first heard Eddie Van Halen in 1978. He responded: "I'd been tapping before that. I think, just like Eddie, 'cause we were the same age and started playing pretty much at the same time, we saw other people on television doing it. So I saw the guitar players in WISHBONE ASH. There was a show in America called 'Don Kirshner's (Rock Concert)', and I think WISHBONE ASH was on one night. And I think my dad was watching it. And I just walked into the room for a second, and I looked and I see the guy playing with his fingers. And I'm, like, 'Oh my god!' I just went right up to my room, picked up my guitar and went, 'That's a great idea. I'm gonna do that all over the place.'

"My group of friends, everyone was tapping, but the great brilliance of Eddie was what he did with it," Joe continued. "And that's what you can say about everything. We knew the same chords — there's a million guitar players that know exactly the same 12 notes, the same chords, we buy the same strings, we're using the same guitars, pretty much. So what makes Eddie so special? Why did that genius just say, 'Well, I'll take that and just do this with it.' But he did, and all of us responded like it was godsent.

"The first time I heard Eddie was when 'Eruption' came to the radio, and I was sitting there with my guitar just jamming along with the radio, and, yeah, my jaw dropped. And I put my hands down and I went, 'Oh my god. I'm in the presence of greatness. That guy knows how to use things that I know.' It's, like, I've got all the tools laid out on my table just like him, but wow, look what he's doing with them.' And it just made me smile. I was so happy.

"The other part that made me so happy was because he played so aggressively and so melodically — the whole song, like it was a whole Eddie Van Halen world that he would show you," Satriani added. "But it was fun. It was rock and roll. It wasn't perfect. It wasn't pretentious. It was still, like, 'Let's just have fun.' And I thought, 'I need to get everybody that I know in this town to like this, because this is gonna be good for all of us guitar players that really wanna play.' Cause it was that attitude at the time — I was feeling like people were telling us, 'Slow down. Don't play so many notes. No feedback. Try to make your guitar sound like clean guitars from the '60s or something like that.' We were waiting for somebody like Eddie to come along and just like reinvent it. And he did. And it was truly great."

Eddie has said in the past that he was inspired to start doing the finger-tapping trick after watching LED ZEPPELIN at the Los Angeles Forum in the early 1970s. Jimmy Page played the solo from "Heartbreaker", using both hands to tap out notes on the neck of the guitar, which inspired Eddie to take the technique and refine it, enabling him to play a seemingly impossible flurry of notes and pinched harmonics.

"It's like having a sixth finger on your left hand," he explained in 1978, according to BBC. "Instead of picking, you're hitting a note on the fretboard."

DEEP PURPLE's Ritchie Blackmore reportedly claimed that he had seen CANNED HEAT guitarist Harvey Mandel using tapping onstage as early as 1968. DOKKEN guitarist George Lynch corroborated this, mentioning that both he and Van Halen saw Mandel employ "a neo-classic tapping thing" at the Starwood in West Hollywood during the 1970s. Mandel used extensive two-handed tapping techniques on his 1973 album "Shangrenade".

No mention of Hackett, sad face.

the secret tapping dude is Harvey Mandell

Would love to tap Mandel

Cristo Redentor rules

Hell yeah!!!!!

the snake, baby

I've read from George Lynch that many of the other LA guitarists saw Eddie in the clubs and started picking up stuff even before they got big.

I'd say the two guys that Eddie probably picked up some of that style was Richie Blackmore and then Michael Schenker as they both did all those triad hammer-ons based off a pick. They did not go out and tap the first note, but some of the technique is pretty similar. Allan Holdsworth was the guy that Van Halen was even kind of blown away by that type of playing as he takes that hammer-on technique really to a virtuoso level.

in the book Van Halen Rising, there's a part where Eddie and Lynch go see Mandel together to check out the tapping. Also I guess Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top would do like single note two hand taps on certain riffs and Eddie loved ZZ Top (he's only human after all)

Also they open for UFO and he like super woodshedded for weeks before to totally blow Michael Schenker out of the water because people were saying he was hot shit, real Michael Jordan stuff haha

Maybe Ronnie Montrose was doing something similar too, Montrose were a pretty big influence on VH/glam metal I guess.

he also loved the shit out of Cactus who I'm not sure I ever heard

guys

i thought you were talking about Howie Mandell and i was SO confused

lmao

https://uproxx.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/gettyimages-140625530.jpg

well shit check this guy out
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y1WK040cAI

Is there recorded footage of Page tapping during the solo of "Heartbreaker" (pre-78)? I don't think I've seen that in any versions I've seen.

Fans of the Nothing But a Good Time book might enjoy the discussion with its authors on "The Best Show" podcast (w/Tom Scharpling). It goes on for over an hour. At the end the authors field questions such as "What would you consider the Citizen Kane of hair metal?"

I’m curious what the answers were.

My 7 year old has been going to a school of rock intro class which got him really into Van Halen. Later I showed him a Poison video and he described them as “basically four David Lee Roths”

The Citizen Kane of hair metal = first Montrose album, or maybe first VH. Definitely not Shout at the Devil.

*spoiler alert*

One of the authors said Dr. Feelgood by Motley Crue was the Citizen Kane of hair metal. The other author suggested Poison's first album, but then kind of conceded that it's more like the Fast Times at Ridgemont High of hair metal.

dr feelgood is way too late in the era its gotta be the first ratt album or something

Citizen Kane of hair metal I'd suggest is the first Van Halen record (which Montrose for sure laid the groundwork for). "Dr. Feelgood," that's more of a symbolic last gasp, where the band peaked in popularity, got re-signed to a bazillion dollar contract and yet, never released anything of note ever again. And neither did any of their peers, afaict.

oh actually its bangkok shocks by hanoi rocks.

It's down to how you interpret "Citizen Kane," whether it means the blueprint for everything else that follows (in which case, yeah, Montrose or Van Halen) or whether it means the ultimate expression of the genre. The one author of the book thought Dr. Feelgood was the latter, iow the quintessential highpoint of the genre.

Hanoi Rocks and Montrose feel like ur-texts; I'm not sure how much hair metal resembles those acts (musically). I feel Van Halen really established the sleazy party vibe, and their adherents did their best to absorb the influence despite their general lack of inspiration or talent.

Seems like Hysteria>>>>Dr. Feelgood using that Citizen Kane metric.

One interesting thing in the book that the guys kept talkin about is that a ton of the early shit was coming out of later-day Christian Death style deathrock. Rozz Williams was huge in LA. Nikki Sixx was in London and there were a hundred other bands doing the same shit. It was a twisted post goth thing as much as it was David Lee Roth for at least a year.

You mean London the band, to be clear

yes ty

I think the problem with diagnosing a Citizen Kane without nominating something like Hysteria is that, for most of that core 84-90 period, most of the albums aren’t as well renowned as the big singles, the image or the live show.

Def Leppard an obvious exception (but again, how much or how far did DL transcend the hair metal scene with such gargantuan albums?), Crue probably by Dr Feelgood, maybe Poison to an extent

DL are too British hair metal is USA baby

Well part of the thing about Hysteria is that, in the book in question, the authors decided to focus on the US-based bands with some connection to the Sunset Strip scene, therefore Def Leppard wasn't a part of the conversation. Which I thought was kind of unfair and I expressed that opinion upthread. But the authors say in the podcast, if they had included foreign bands in their scope the whole project would've been exponentially more vast and daunting. Which makes sense. But I still think Pyromania and Hysteria were crucial inputs to that scene.

I sorta mutter about hair metal in my old piece on Hysteria:

https://thequietus.com/articles/09833-def-leppard-hysteria

But basically those two American smash hit albums of theirs were...like, TOO good. Or too hyperpolished and pristine, which is not a complaint, but a description. The hair metal types were essentially sloppy/dramatic trashiness, DL and Lange were going "What if glam rock was industrial pop shot through with lasers?"

But how many of those LA bands would have killed to have Mutt Lange produce their music and make them sound less sloppy & trashy

One does wonder!

Slippery When Wet: the Citizen Kane of Hair Metal
New Jersey: the Chimes at Midnight of New Jerseys

As ultimate expression of the genre Dr Feelgood tracks in a way

For me personally I’d say Cinderella “Long Cold Winter” but mostly just bc they’re a better band? Idk. I love Motley but I don’t wanna give them that much credit lol

Whoever said RATT can meet me in the parking lot

IMO Hysteria is the hair metal album Elephant in the Room, compounded by the fact they’re not American, never mind from LA, so as said they’ve always been thought of as a band not strictly ‘of’ hair-metal

It helps to have good timing - if you release your biggest album in 1987 - the peak of hair metal IMO - you’re laughing.
As already mentioned, as big as it was Dr Feelgood seems “late”

Surely Appetite for Destruction takes the Citizen Kane title over Slippery, Hysteria and Feelgood?

Ratt was light years better than Cinderella

Here's Martin Popoff's list of 20 albums that "invented" hair metal, going from influence to prototype:

Led Zeppelin — IV (November 1971)
New York Dolls — New York Dolls (July 1973)
Montrose — Montrose (October 1973)
KISS — Alive! (September 1975)
Aerosmith — Rocks (May 1976)
Van Halen — Van Halen (February 1978)
Def Leppard — High ‘n’ Dry (July 1981)
Dokken — Breaking The Chains (July 1981)
Loverboy — Get Lucky (October 1981)
Mötley Crüe — Too Fast For Love (November 1981)
Scorpions — Blackout (April 1982)
Van Halen — Diver Down (April 1982)
Twisted Sister — Under The Blade (September 1982)
Def Leppard — Pyromania (January 1983)
Quiet Riot — Metal Health (March 1983)
Ratt — Ratt EP (August 1983)
KISS — Lick It Up (September 1983)
Mötley Crüe — Shout At The Devil (September 1983)
Ratt — Out of The Cellar (March 1984)
Dokken — Tooth And Nail (September 1984)

Appetite is the Citizen Kane of hair metal if you take it to mean "everyone says it's the greatest ever, but they haven't watched/listened to it in forever and are really just saying that to sound cultured within their critical peer group." You kinda have to look at hair metal from the perspective of a teenage girl between 1983 (Shout at the Devil) and 1990 (Warrant's Cherry Pie) IMO. What would she think was the greatest album in the history of life? I'd probably argue for Skid Row's debut, myself.

Actually, 1988 might actually take the cake purely in terms of box office

RATT sucks and I hate them

Appetite? Nah. GNR were forged in glam metal but (pardon stretching metaphor) as the first nail that was hammered into the coffin *of* glam metal
thx for playing though

There was other early 80s hard rock bands whose sound and look while not being totally LA glam fits with this stuff

I'd say one band not yet mentioned in the thread is Night Ranger. I'd say Sammy Hagar's "Standing Hampton" and even some of the Canadian hard rock - not all tunes but some by April Wine, Helix and Aldo Nova (esp 'Fantasy') fits in with this music.

Helix was pretty sleazy.

Cinderella rules, Ratt iz schitt

If the Orson Welles of a genre is someone who codified technical advances to make a new artistic grammar, here it would be Van Halen on the guitar and maybe Lange as a producer.

Re: Cinderella -are there other well-known metal vocalists who sing mostly in falsetto, like Tom Keifer and King Diamond?

Slaughter

yall warren dimartini is such a sick ass guitar player and frickin don letts directed the round and round video!

Aw, I liked Ratt.

*kicks dirt despondently*

I kinda always thought 'Out of the Cellar' was pretty good and they never really wrote any other good songs. They went way more pop on everything else that followed. I think Ratt was the classic club band that played that first album over and over for years and never really had a good follow up.

Dokken also went soft after 'Tooth and Nail'.

The first EP and first two albums were good.

stephen pearcy is a syphilitic goblin who could not carry a tune in a bucket and Ratt’s songs all sound like they were written with a ouija board and a rhyming dictionary

dimartini is a great guitarist but he is not enough for me to endure sitting through literally any song

thanking u

:D

I'd argue no Ratt albums are good, but some singles are GREAT. Particularly "Slip of the Lip." That song swings better than any other hair metal song and it's not even close.

*gasface*

Redirect that gasface to "Way Cool Jr." and I'll join you.

VG not liking Ratt, I'm genuinely hurt.

also anyone who likes hair metal listen to Vain - "No Respect", imo a lost classic of the genre

xpost sorry dude, this is where i leave u

fare the well

thee lol

fare thee lol

but: i will rejoin you on Vain - thx for the rec, they are p good!!

Pretty surprised by the anti ratt chat in here i thought they were like the “cool” hair metal group to like?

everyone likes them except me and neanderthal. but the record clearly shows that they suck & everyone is wrong :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBYa2xGDAQs

I didn't realise Ratt were on the Point Break soundtrack!

The vocals actually remind me of Dave Mustaine at certain points.

Those first two Ratt albums are close to flawless! Dancin' Undercover shows some cracks but has some phenomenal, original moments. They started to sound cookie cutter after that. To be honest, "Way Cool Jr." is where they lost me.

Way Cool Jr. was one of my favorite music videos when I was 10. Not the best song though, it's true.

dimartini is a great guitarist but he is not enough for me to endure sitting through literally any song

This ties into something in the "Nothing But A Good Time" book. I think Phil Collen observes that thanks to Van Halen every one of these bands wanted a flashy guitar guy, but few could pull it off convincingly. On one (er) extreme were the guys that just weren't that good (Mick Mars, CC). On the other extreme were guys that were *really* good (Dimartini, Lynch, Vito Bratta, hell, Nuno) but were not really enough to make their bands particularly compelling. The bonehead stupid and/or party stuff just stomps all over the flash, really underscoring the lightning in a bottle qualities of Van Halen, the rare band whose frontman was as compelling as its virtuoso guitar linchpin/namesake.

Of course, the emptier and flashier the guitar playing, the more these guys had to stress in guitar magazine interviews that their real goals were "feel" and "musical integrity".

Vito Bratta's solo on "Wait" is one of the best guitar solos ever recorded

found this playlist, lots of off the beaten path bands/songs

i do agree with vg that pearcy's lyrics are like they are written by a horny baby imitating dr suess

Look, let's not impugn the talents of horny babies:

"You know you really want to lay it down
Right now!
And how!"

Out on the streets, that's where we'll meet
You make the night, I always cross the line
Tightened our belts, abused ourselves
Get in our way, we'll put you on your shelf

oops forgot the playlist

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5UsHZLOklMoDXgfsyofaJa?si=RoSNQWviREKbCbiunJZ2_g&utm_source=copy-link

Pearcy is a moron but I dunno, judging hair metal on dumb lyrics seems like a dangerous path to go down

Dr. Feelgood, heal thyself.

silly hair metal lyrics are the best

i agree and ratt were SICK (for like 2 years)

also this band my god they ruled

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3TEo9tKa0o

Vito Bratta's solo on "Wait" is one of the best guitar solos ever recorded

Agree with this. It also helps that the song is waaay more Cheap Trick than hair metal, imo.

hanoi rocks are great

I never got to see Van Halen in person, but Vito Bratta is the greatest guitarist I have ever seen perform. I think I named "Wait" the best pop/glam metal song of the 80s for a big Stereogum piece a few years back.

Strange legacies

Rest in peace Tiffini Hale of The Party. Dug these cats a lot as a teen. And this is a killer cover of a Dokken (!!) song: https://t.co/4HPv6N5KHJ

— Lil Mikey J (He/Him/His) (@tismikejoseph) December 31, 2021

i dont want to come off like im a huge hair metal stan cuz i legit think its the worst genre of all time and life/music was the pits when i was a kid and shitty ballads were on mtv ALL DAY every day. its just a big part of my life because it was the most popular music when i started getting into music that wasnt my parents' records. there was a guy that was around the scene when I started playing in bands named Stevie Rachelle from the band Tuff and his story was that his album came out the week Nevermind came out. people would point at him and go "poor guy." lol

I still love how a chance memory of a couple of old LA Times pieces and a discussion online led to this piece, one of the favorites I've written

https://www.nashvillescene.com/music/rock-drummer-pepper-denny-puts-down-roots-and-still-chases-the-dream/article_b8b359d2-c469-5b68-a7d0-d77e08d853b6.html

i was 9 or 10 when it first started, perfect age to be swept up in Bon Jovi’s handsome hairspray funtimez - that was my starter ban, and Poison’s frosted lipstick & neon, White Lion’s beautiful balladry and Def Leppard … by the time I was hitting my early teens I said goodbye to all that girly stuff and replaced all my Poison posters w Motley Crue … then less than a year later they all came down & up went the GNR posters

i think that’s why i still love it. I honestly didn’t know or think it was terrible until i was much older, but by then yhd damage was long passed being done and i didnt care
lmao

I think the first metal-ly thing I ever heard as a kid was Judas Priest's "You've Got Another Thing Comin'" at the house of a family friend. I was 100% NOT supposed to be listening to that (or anything secular at all), so naturally I loved it. A year or two later, Van Halen's '1984' came out and, though that's never been categorized as hair metal for whatever reason, I'd found my vibe for the next however many years. Thank God for Stryper (pun intended), because they helped me grease the wheel of convincing my parents to let me buy metal tapes.

<3

My first tastes of glam metal were Judas Priest Locked In and Dokken's In My Dreams which I caught on MTV during our first week of cable before mom forbade MTV. I, however, had recorded it on my little cassette player, along with Let's Go All The Way by Sly Fox, No One is to Blame by Howard Jones, Innocent Eyes by Graham Nash. Martha Quinn was the VJ and there was a commercial for Studio Line by L'Oreal as well.

Oh, and I learned about Europe via Nick Rocks (not forbidden) and my parents let me buy The Final Countdown.

The next year I moved to a new town and met some kids a year older than me who mocked my Europe and Dokken, but were constantly playing Hysteria, Girls Girls Girls, Look What the Cat Dragged In, Night Songs to a lesser extent and eventually, Appetite.

I never liked any of the prototypical hair bands, not even when I was the bullseye target audience. Never owned anything by Motley Crue, Cinderella, Bon Jovi, Poison, et al., and generally changed the channel when they came on the radio or MTV (at least by the time we got MTV). The only time it eventually clicked was GNR, which I think we've established as a transitional peak/breaking point. Or I guess Hysteria (if Def Leppard counts), I owned that album, but so did everyone and even if you didn't those songs were so ubiquitous you might as well have owned it. The hair stuff was just so garish and dumb, but in a pretty unappealing (to me) way. When something older like "Breaking the Law" or "You've Got Another Thing Comin'" ever came on Headbanger's Ball it just seemed both tougher *and* more fun. And of course Van Halen transcended the genre.

Bon Jovi was actually an important band for me, because when they started to crest (I was in Philly) they were so annoying and not my thing that I had to more or less stop listening to the radio, which sent me, as a middle schooler, seeking solace in albums and classic/catalog rock. I distinctly remember a long period of Bon Jovi on one radio extreme (lol) and New Kids on the other top 40 extreme and then somewhere at the end of that two-year tunnel hearing "Bring the Noise" and "Potholes in My Lawn" and thinking, finally, something different. Then I was off to the races.

Finished the book a day or two ago. I found it pretty interesting to hear these stories; a decided contrast to the VU and Beatles docs in that tbqh most of these guys don't seem very smart. There's sort of an interesting contrast between the attitudes of some of the early guys like Quiet Riot and George Lynch and Ratt, who seemed somewhat serious about the music they wanted to make, even when it was unfashionable, and a bunch of the guys who came later on like Poison and Faster Pussycat and Warrant who were almost jaw-dropping in their lack of any artistic vision and were upfront about being in it for the fame and chicks. A number of people, esp some of the johnny-come-latelies, certainly not all, didn't really seem that broken up about the swift decline of the music in the 90s - like they rode a wave for what it was worth and moved on. Winger a noted exception - they really seem bitter about the way they were personally targeted by Metallica and Beavis & Butthead, though even they cop to basically cashing in on a trend, although in their case they were prog rock and session guys who were slumming it. The chapter on ballads was kind of funny - so many of them seem to have seen these as a necessary evil they did grudgingly, since they were usually the genre's biggest hits.

I tried actually listening to Winger's first album, since I've always liked the singles, and a lot of the rest really didn't seem that great. I turned it off when I got to the "Purple Haze" cover. Listened to some of Kip's orchestral composition (Conversations with Nijinsky and Ghosts), though, and they're actually decent. I was a bit surprised by the first Motley Crue album - some solid stuff there.

Some of the connections to goth rock and NY punk/postpunk stuff were interesting too.

Winger were kind of analogous to the hair metal scene as The Police were to punk.

Motley’s first album is still their best imo
The original Leathür records version doesnt have the sped-up vocals & bells/whistles & is imo preferable to the wide-release version

xpost Winger also blessed w insufferable lead singer lmao

Winger were kind of analogous to the hair metal scene as The Police were to punk.

I know what you mean, except the Police were really talented and original, even at the start, whereas the Winger guys dumbed themselves down.

After a point, Winger's "Hungry (for your love)" starts to blend into White Lion's "Hungry (for your love)", you know?

Hair metal probably personally significant in that it was probably the first musical genre I both fell in love with and outgrew once I recognized the formulae and imitations.

Actually, listening now, Winger's "Hungry" sounds a bit like it prefigures some of the emo mall-rock stuff that came later.

Maybe relevant: https://www.stereogum.com/2172050/the-number-ones-mr-bigs-to-be-with-you/columns/the-number-ones/

When the W-initialed bands took over that was both the high water mark of hair metal and the point at which the genre became absurd

I turned it off when I got to the "Purple Haze" cover.

My high school band played "Purple Haze"...in the Winger arrangement, because our lead guitarist thought Winger's solo was better.

lmao

o_O

I just played the Noel Redding bassline anyway.

“hendrix aint shit, winger is where it’s at man”

that's hilarious. that's like doing the Whitesnake version of "Day Tripper"

i thought the crüe helter skelter was the funkiest song i ever heard when i was a kid

my high school choir teacher (amazing teacher, still keep in touch w/ her) had this weird habit of making us do the non-iconic versions of songs, usually cos she often would play the recording for us before we learned it and sometimes the only tape she had was a cover version.

Freshman boys were doing "Duke of Earl" and instead of Gene Chandler, she had the New Edition version on tape, so she made our accompanist (a very pretentious, nerdy, straight-laced classically trained dude who scoffed at such music) learn all the cheesy synth parts and play it on the KORG>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kcu0eHDDyis

xpost I like that cover!

Revolver mag did a list of the 10 Heaviest Glam Tracks:
http://www.revolvermag.com/music/10-heaviest-hair-metal-songs-all-time

Sorry but I think a bunch of things I linked to above are way heavier than this list.

i am amused that Poison made the list
i mean it’s a cool track but “heavy”? lol

surprised Twisted Sister aren’t on this list

also “feh” at Ratt but that’s just bc of my personal hatred of them

Not much love for Tesla itt.

BANG BANG

BANG BANG

BLOW YOU AWAY

I've never stopped listening to Mechanical Resonance for the last 36 years. The albums that followed have some highlights, but damn that debut is nearly perfect.

yeah it rules

nobody's mentioned king kobra since keith back in 2002, i've been into them ever since finding out that lead vocalist marcie free is a trans woman. absolute mad respect for marcie!

here's the amazing video video for iron eagle (never say die):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-DIhXTGifU

Someone needs to put together a Nuggets style comp for post-94 hair metal music

and instead of Nuggets you could call it Bollocks

xxp: rushomancy, I mentioned them last year, but I spelled their name wrong!

S&D: Glam Metal/Hair Metal

whoops, so you did! so much for ctrl-f :)

Fucking hair metal. My local “classic rock” radio station used to like 15-20 years ago be all strictly late 60s early 70s classic rock like Zep, Yes, CCR, and Hendrix, and well now I guess they gotta change with their older audience and now they play fuckin’ “Dr. Feelgood” and “Nothing but a Good Time” and “Break the Law” and “Girls Girls Girls” every goddamn day. Motley Crue is considered classic rock now!

idk sounds ok to me

I’ve been really into Motley Crue’s “don’t walk away mad” lately

that song rules, one of my favorite crue songs. v fun to karaoke.

Don't Go Away Mad, but yeah, that's a catchy tune.

lyric stolen from Blondie, but whatev

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dx-PrDQej8

I love the melody on the pre-chorus, I still demand hair metal justice for Vain!

lol the drummer and guitarist is the only one who looks like they could still step into a music video from that era

lol people slow dancing at 1:55

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpeePEUz0bw

Britney Fox lead singer = melted Steven Tyler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbEIi46NAno

That was a weird time. No one could tell where Dizzy Dean ended and Tom Keifer began.

Annoying voice, great freaking song.

how dare u
he sounds like a dollar store Tom Keifer

(how dare u = as in how dare u say no one could tell the difference)

i have been watching a lot of Vevo’s “Hair and Heavy” and nothing makes me reach for the remote faster than Dangerous Toys. Truly dire Axl-mimicry

Firehouse are super boring and i think their Dad must own Vevo bc they have more videos on here than any band except maybe Kiss lol

So far not even one Kix video. I am furious.

Kix is for the people

Dangerous Toys was baffling given Jason McMaster's pedigree. I can't think of too many better examples of a guy jumping on a trend, forfeiting all of their cred in the process, a thing we used to call a "sellout" move. At least when Celtic Frost went glam, the results were listenable in a surreal outsider art kinda way

I will not listen to this slander of the authors of Demon Bell (The Ballad of Horace Pinker)*!

Television was my mom and dad
The six o'clock news told me how to be bad
And when you're really bad the ratings go up
That's why this damn country's getting really corrupt, yeaaaah!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1bsYkAS02Q

*ballad not included

Breaking glam news: turns out the amazing "Two Heads Are Better Than One" song from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure is by a prototype version of Nelson! Now that I never knew.

yes! and cowritten w Dweezil Zappa!

per wikipedia, “Since the band was in the process of being signed up to Geffen, (John) Kalodner recommended them not to use their names for the song, so they were billed as Power Tool instead”

xxpost lmao i forgot about that song

DEMON BELL
DEE MON BEEEEEELLL

Firehouse are super boring

it's insane how ubiquitous they were for a few months on chicago's 103.5 THE BLAZE, and they were so boring. they made Slaughter sound like Motorhead, Steelheart's "I'll Never Let You Go" sounded like "Stairway to Heaven" next to "Love of a Lifetime", etc

yeah they have like, five or six videos on vevo and i’m like, why were they ever pushing these guys, they blow!

they’re normcore looking dudes, not even a hot lead singer! their styling is just jeans and vests, like a bar band.
he can sing ok but no better or worse than anyone else who “Can Sing”?

i find them baffling

They're still around. Playing North Tonawanda, NY in two days.

Still Boring ‘24 tour

i think they were probably filling an empty space between big glam metal releases in 1990 perfectly somehow, like a movie getting released on an otherwise vacant weekend in a dead part of the year. plus they were jacking the style from others, for example they frequently sounded like Motley Crue at their most tepid -- love of a lifetime is sort of a home sweet home ripoff. i cannot believe that shit went double platinum tbh, i mean i don't like the Crue either but at least they had energy and momentum.

other topics of interest prompted by Vevo

Trixster “Don’t Treat Me Bad” literally look like the end of the line with their bare-chested flannel & Timotei Shampoo hair commercial shiny hair & & dirt bikes

Blue Murder “Jelly Roll”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmxK9CS3RV0

DISCUSS THIS ENTIRE VIDEO it is so hilarious and weird
if Sykes didn’t come up with the concept himself i’d be very surprised

Her hair - so straight and golden, right out of a shampoo commercial
His hair - gigantic and fluffy like a Muppet sheepdog

the ponytail! SO funny, i loled

wait til he sings in the rain

its like I Still Believe 2.0

also xposts to me i meant Trixster GIVE IT TO ME GOOD
not Dont Treat Me Bad
i have firehouse brainworms

The rain stuff is great but I also really like when they're arguing in the car and she opens the door and gets out but instead of opening his own door he climbs out for some reason.

i like that she forgives him seemingly because..(checks notes) he sang shirtless in the rain

that video is wild, so many glam dudes took their style cues from Cave Dwellers-era Miles O'Keeffe

loool totally

Some magnificent comments on that Blue Murder video. Damn.

Hi Fans of Blue Murder "JellyRoll". I'm the girl in the video. yes it's true. I skidded in late to the video shoot in my brand new whilte corvette, dust flying off the dirt road. The production assistant said I couldn't park there so I threw it into reverse and saw a crew member in my rear view window dive into the bushes out of my way. As for John, What a great guitarist, vocalist, song writer and kisser ; ) John if you listening, How about a sequel? xoxo, Meg Register

I can’t believe that after all the years since this song was released, I still remember every word of the song. That’s even after I almost died in a coma because my brain was swelling and the doctors didn’t know why. I have trouble with my short term memory, but I’ve gotten back my long term memory. ❤❤❤

A lot of the comments read as if they were ghostwritten by Sykes…!

Was it a Bon Jovi thing that started all the glam dudes playing acoustic guitars on the back porch in their videos? I'm sure Crue and Poison never used to do that, although feel free to supply evidence to the contrary.

every cowboy sings a sad, sad song

I remember being so excited for Blue Murder. Sykes was the man back then: a wicked NWOBHM shredder with Tygers of Pan Tang, he carried Thin Lizzy's Thunder & Lightning, and he literally saved David Coverdale's career. Then Jelly Roll came out, and we were, WTF JOHN?! What a disappointment. That video died as soon as it came out.

He is horribly abusing that 12-string to be right honest.

and then there’s “Valley of the Kings” which is a hard left turn into harem pants town

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfsZ4EzSn80

Every hard rock band must have their piss-poor Kashmir ripoff number

otm

speaking of Kashmir ripoffs, two recurring videos on Vevo

Robert Plant “Heaven Knows”
i always kinda dug this song but the video is like an SNL parody of 80’s music videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9Omu_QYb4Q

and then there’s this utter shite Coverdale Page “Take Me For A Little While
the song sucks so bad but the video is full of weird lols: lady who turns into a lizard! AND turns into a candle!
and Jimbo is playing some nonsensical looking harp-guitar like a stupid goblin twat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-ooOf_rih0

Five singles were released, all of which charted. The highest-charting singles were "Pride and Joy" and "Shake My Tree", which reached numbers one and three, respectively, on the US Mainstream Rock Tracks Chart.[33] Music videos were produced for "Pride and Joy" and "Take Me for a Little While", both directed by Andy Morahan.[34][35] While "Pride and Joy" reportedly did well on MTV (also being featured on an episode of Beavis and Butt-Head[36]), "Take Me for a Little While" received minimal airplay according to Coverdale, as the video was deemed too gothic by the channel.[37]

too gothic is how he remembers it orly looool

no it received minimal airplay because it SUCKED DOGS BALLS

i wish beavis & butthead had done this video, it was RIPE for it

anyway those videos kinda stray from the purview of this thread so i’ll bring it back on topic to say Vevo introduced me to a previously overlooked late -period Y&T track i hadn’t heard from 1990

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA7Bawrpb9Q

i’d always considered “Summertime Girls” to be the cutoff (1985) but this one is really good imo

then again Mr Veg is a big Y&T fan & he kinda hates this so ymmv lol