S&D: Glam Metal/Hair Metal

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.