S&D: Glam Metal/Hair Metal

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.

Sykes was the man. Tygers, Lizzy, Whitesnake...he shaped every one of those classic albums in the 80s. David Coverdale owes his career to Sykes.

https://i.imgur.com/umOjSu8.jpeg

Stones and Who a little conspicuous there

Metallica between Journey and Quiet Riot kinda out of place

Oddest one out there is surely Nirvana!

Where's Nirvana?

https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.d81V9tOuYwKakkdDzx3ibAHaEK?w=293&h=180&c=7&r=0&o=5&dpr=1.3&pid=1.7

ha I thought that was part of the Bon Jovi logo, but that's this:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d1/Have_a_Nice_Day_Bon_Jovi_album.jpg

goddamn smirky eyebrow-raised badass poochie cartoons nowadays

comes with:
ticket for hard rock cruise +1 awkward solo at guitar center
divorced-dad apartment

I was saddened to learn Marcie Free died a couple weeks ago. When she was Mark Free in the 1980s she fronted Carmine Appice's glam band King Kobra, which was one of the better smaller bands in LA. Ready to Strike was a really good album, and "Hunger" remains one of the best singles of that era.

Her transition in 1993 was a brave thing to do to say the least. It essentially killed her music career in the '90s, but her band Unruly Child consistently made music in the 2010s. Sadly, she went full MAGA and fell down that cult rabbit hole for the rest of her life, but what pipes she had, and what a presence on record.

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

RIP. interesting. was not aware of her

Never Say Die, Marcie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPPEPsjxGT4

We got a Night Flight subscription & I watched the doc “Inside Metal: The L.A. Metal Scene Explodes!” (2016, dir: Bob Nalbandian)

(I think ums or someone recommended it to me a while back)

It’s pretty low budget but it’s wall to wall notable, semi-notable & hanger-on dudes from the scene (and like, 3 women) - honestly pretty good!

And they play the hits if you’re marking your bingo card: bitter Don Dokken, defensive Stryper, smoothbrain Stephen Pearcy, etc

Apparently there’s a part 2 for this (from 2017) floating around somewhere but it’s not on Night Flight

Anyway I highly recommend if you are a pilled saddo like me

(nvm i found pt 2 on Tubi — they’re all on there too fyi)

yeah it's great! there's another one about the roots of thrash metal that I think is by the same people

Oh cool, I might check that out too

Apparently the director was the editor of Headbanger zine - I was thinking he had to have legit connections to get all those interviews