Grunge - how did the '80s hair metal bands react?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5e/Native_Tongue_Cover.jpg

I was gonna say on that 70s thread that in the US "punk" didn't really hit until grunge...

they got butthurt and moaned how it took the funmoney out of their bank accounts rock n roll

Not really hair metal but I thought this was a pretty good reaction:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KQlh6G_ERA8/SYHbHpZPqqI/AAAAAAAABxk/FnhryktOJA0/s400/1993+-+Counterparts+(cover).jpg

Whining About How Supposedly Great Hair Metal Was Until Mean Old Grunge Wiped It Out C/D?

xp right, because jon bon jovi and def leppard have clearly put no money whatsoever in their bank accounts since nirvana came along.

there's always an exception.

though def leppard are nowhere as near as big as they were. Bon Jovi can still sell out stadiums here though.

Def Leppard headlined over a (DeYoung-less) Styx here not too long ago.

what size venue?

A thirty-seat supper club.

Uh guys do you not watch CMT? Def Lep is huge among the mainstream country fans right now.

Uh guys do you not watch CMT?

I thought they branded themselves out of existence.

No, they are always popping up on the Palladium HD channel with different country stars, mostly just Taylor Swift though.

the answer is they hated it then mimicked it and finally grungingly accepted it

apparently grunge was invented in 1977

Alice In Chains opened up for both Van Halen and Metalicca prior to Nevermind.

Def Lep is huge among the mainstream country fans right now.

^^^ haha I thought this exact same thing listening to country radio stations on a road trip yesterday - when did country music become so damn focused on heavy rock rhythms? fuck that shit. a lot of mainstream country radio stations are essentially (really shitty) southern rock stations with a few passably country tracks thrown in

this makes total sense. its like grunge (or hip hop/r&b) never existed in large swaths of north america... hard rock/heavy metal and country have never died in the midwest.

When Bon Jovi came back a few years post grunge years they had to change their sound/image to be more serious the they were.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b31HkdMDHa4

though not extant in the '80s, these guys and this video sum up this period for me. they're clearly hair to the bone, but also crave respect, acceptance and sales from the grunge crowd.

In terms of conforming to the grunge zetigeist, few acts dove in deeper than the Goo Goo Dolls, whose image was completely amorphous prior to this horrific Nirvana-wannabe low:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk-VzGDOcLg

I mean Cobain had a better excuse than heroin there.

Um, Def Leppard may be hitting the country sweet spot for the exact same reason Shania Twain did, no? But anyway, xposting, there is no way Def Leppard is at all equal to Bon Jovi these days. Bon Jovi inexplicably sells out multi-night stands at stadiums. Def Leppard is a few steps up from the state fairs, headlining nostalgia bills.

Bon Jovi executed the most profitable crossover in pop: they were accepted by NASCAR fans.

Oh I wasn't trying to argue that Def Leppard was at the same level as Bon Jovi, no, but I think they are a little more popular than you are giving them credit for. I mean they headlined a tour with Cheap Trick and Poison this summer that hit the First Midwest Amphitheater (or whatever it is now, the old World down in Tinley Park) and thats a pretty sizable shed.

they headlined a tour with Cheap Trick and Poison

Anyway, best hair metal/grunge bridge/divide anecdote I have is from a model UN field trip we took in high school. There was a party at the end, with a DJ, but when he played "Paradise City" he cut the track off early, before the double-time part, so that the model UN nerds wouldn't mosh. Must have been sometime in '91-'92. Then again, GNR is/was the exception to many rules.

"Um, Def Leppard may be hitting the country sweet spot for the exact same reason Shania Twain did, no?"

Mutt Lange?

does bryan adams get played on country radio too?

In terms of conforming to the grunge zetigeist, few acts dove in deeper than the Goo Goo Dolls, whose image was completely amorphous prior to this horrific Nirvana-wannabe low:

uh... if anything Nevermind was a rip-off of the Goo Goo Dolls!!! Hold Me Up was a precursor for Metal Blade-type bands turning pop... long before the Sub Pop crowd did at least.

Oh good God you can't be serious. The Goo Goo Dolls entire template was jangle and/or the Placemats until Nirvana broke through. I mean they covered the Plimsouls on that record. Please watch the video.

You obviously are only aware of their post-nevermind career dude. go listen to their first 3 records instead of reading wiki and amg!

Uh guys do you not watch CMT? Def Lep is huge among the mainstream country fans right now.
Yeah they played Frontier Days in Cheyenne, WY last year! I think the hair band/country thang is pretty dead-on -- there's a cowboy bar in Denver that's always hosting kinda random hair bands like Warrant or the Bret Michaels Experience or some shit.

i always thought it was kinda funny that anthrax pretty ably adjusted to the grunge era by going out and getting the singer from....armored saint.

also: slave to the grind by skid row to thread, that did it well.

the junk monkey's five star fling is pretty good faux replacements too, if you like the metal blade goo goos records

iirc motley crue did it not so well

metallica cut their hair, worked with marianne faithful

isn't this kinda part of the reaction as well?
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_k-Fm2vJ8Fw4/SKLbcPx0NFI/AAAAAAAAAU4/E5x5Epsg5ho/s400/g+n+r+-+spaghetti+incident.jpg

"the spaghetti incident?"

xpost Man, I'd be shocked if Bryan Adams didn't get country play!

Remember when Buffalo Tom was nicknamed Dinosaur Jr. Jr., and Soul Asylum was considered Husker Du redux? Makes the Goo Goo Dolls shift seem weak by comparison.

That was because J produced the first BT album and Bob produced SA's first two.

i mean soul asylum was around pretty early on anyway, as loud fast rules, they were pretty much a part of the same scene as huskers for the most part

slave to the grind by skid row to thread, that did it well

But that was mid '91, by which time lots of hair bands (Cinderella, Poison, etc) were already "getting serious," before grunge broke through. I have an a piece on this in the current issue of Spin btw (didn't notice all the comments until just this second, though):

http://www.spin.com/articles/myth-no-2-nirvana-killed-hair-metal

And yeah, Goo Goo Dolls were totally a Soul Asylum style indie-rock band (as in Replacements + Husker Du - most of their inspriation) when they were on Celluloid and Metal Blade Records in the late '80s.

And nope, Bryan Adams doesn't get on country radio. But Bret Michaels has been a judge on Nasvhille Star and is supposed to be on Hillary Duff's imminent "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" cover, Carrie Underwood covered Motley Crue, Jon Bon Jovi collaborated with Sugarland (and a couple country acts covered "Wanted Dead Or Alive" -- "I'm a cowboy, on a steel horse" etc), Tom Keifer from Cinderella was on an Andy Griggs album a couple years back, some guy frome the Bullet Boys has a country rock band, and so on. So yeah, hair metal still lives, in Nashville.

didn't the dude from Keel end up as country too?

Aargh...not Hillary Duff, I mean Miley Cyrus (whose Nashville connection is her dad, obviously.)

and right, the Keel guy went country too.

I'd definitely second that assertion about skid row - they weren't reacting to grunge so much as courting a "proper" metal audience. after their early patronage by bon jovi went sour, they were trying to shake off the pretty-boy pop-metal thing they'd been saddled with. hence the hardening of the sound (at that time, virtually every pop-metal band claimed they were going to do this), touring with pantera, etc.

come to think of it, the sven gali track above may be a hair-metal response to skid row, rather than grunge.

and of course pantera used to be hair metal too before going for the hardman image

this is true. they presumably shared hair-flattening tips.

If some hair metal bands went grunge, how many went Pantera hardman or nu-metal?

http://media.fanfire.com/images/product/large/TLE/TLECD001.jpg

Or maybe you just Uzi Suicide wasn't a legit label in the first place? (I've never thought of this before, but did they even put out any other records? Triple X obviously did, over the years, albeit sporadically.)

Wiki, fwiw: UZI Suicide was a record label that was created by Guns N' Roses to release their first record, Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide. The next record (Appetite for Destruction) was released through Geffen Records although UZI Suicide legally remained in control of this, and all other Guns N' Roses recordings (effectively giving the band an additional degree of control over their music) until the company was closed down when the band went into hiatus in the late 90s. The label also re-released albums by the Finnish glam band Hanoi Rocks.

Dave Navarro states it in no uncertain terms in the Jane's oral history - Triple X was a dead entity at that point, they used it as a way to invoke its rep and get product out, to stage the Warner Bros. coup. Warners allowed and was aware of it, it was marketing.

Uzi Suicide was a fake Geffen imprint. http://www.ladydairhean.0catch.com/Axl/Guides/Suicide.htm

i thought the first pumpkins single was payed for with big label money. or that's what i heard way back when.

Wiki claims in re: Pumpkins that "I Am One" was money Corgan's grandmother left him for tuition. Would be more inclined to believe that as Caroline was hardly a "big label" to begin with and he was a major self-starter.

awwww...

"One was recorded in 1990 and was the Pumpkins' first release and first on Limited Potential. This recording was financed with the money from Corgan's college tuition fund left by his grandmother."

x-post

yeah probably just a scurrilous rumor some hipster told me back in the grunge days.

Did not need to see the cover of that single ever again. Wonder if my college pal that had it has checked the going eBay rates.

the limited potential label that the first pumpkins single was on was started by a guy named mike potential! great name. here's a fun post of his from idolator:

Yeah, I've known the dude since we were twenty. I put out his first single, helped hook him up with Butch Vig for Gish, hooked him up with Sub Pop for their single of the month, basically got him his deal with Virgin by virtue of the "I Am One" single landing on the right desks back when Caroline was distributing our crap...

And since then, have watched him systematically alienate and outright fuck over every single human being who ever did him a favor or said a nice thing about him (which, okay, granted, is like five people in total). As a human being goes: this guy is the most fundamentally fucked up piece of shit I have ever encountered, EVER - and I actually still LIKE the guy. Just an absolute joke of a basket case, this guy is, and now that he's found "god..."

Oh, people, please, just quit buying and listening. There are REAL artists out there.

we hate it when our friends become successful.

That is funny but I think you have to account for how good (or at least "marketable" if you hate them) the Smashing Pumpkins were. I mean I knew girls coming off New Kids on the Block that were positively rabid for Gish. It was a serious crossover with little behind it, financially.

So I'm too lazy to research this (and don't care that much), but are you saying there was a similar fake-indie-imprint backstory connected to the release of Bleach on SubPop? (Way more skeptical that Soundgarden would figure in this, though, since their first indie single was three whole years before they wound up on A&M.)

(Well, not fake imprint obv, seeing how it was SubPop.)

Oh god no it was a joke, Nirvana worshiped Sub Pop and were hugely into the independent scene, like, emotionally.

I still think there was a shift in mainstream pop culture around the late '80s/early '90s, at least in terms of how that culture understood itself and presented itself. Of course there are many exceptions, and to those who thought the '80s were mainly about Flipper and Black Flag, they may not believe this story. But this is mainly about the pop culture that was coming through TV, Hollywood movies, and Billboard-selling music. The "cutting edge" bands of the early '90s may have been ripping off '80s bands - but those bands never appeared on Billboard or Soundscan charts or MTV (outside of maybe "120 Minutes"). The early '90s brought a cult of authenticity, but at the same time there was a cult of irony. These were perceived as being related. There was a new generation on the rise, "Generation X", which was supposedly alienated, apathetic, sarcastic, distrustful, and unmotivated. To this generation, angst and irony were authentic, and any other attitude was fake. Of course, this narrow view about what could be authentic was naive in its own way. But it was a self-conscious reaction.

This shift is generally nerds winning in a way that isn't marginalized like Devo or Weird Al.
Simpsons -- written by nerds with theme song by Oingo Nerdo!
Twin Peaks -- David Lynch's nerdism finally embraced by middle American soap opera fans!
Eddie Vedder reads Ms Magazine -- what a nerd!
Soundgarden appears on Bill Nye the Science Guy -- what nerds!
Sassy -- insanely popular girl's magazine -- but written by progressive nerds!

"progressive nerds"

The editorial staff of Seventeen were all thuggish Republican jocks who loved Stryper

the Seattle sound (just like NIN-type industrial, and whatever the Butthole Surfers and White Zombie and Meat Puppets and Flaming Lips and Soul Asylum etc eventually had hits with) was an '80s sound that sounded a whole lot more compromised and less wildass by the time it finally hit the mainstream in the '90s. So it seems really strange to pretend the '90s suddenly turned music dangerous. (Though, I guess if you never heard anything in the '80s that didn't get on MTV, you might somehow get that delusion.)

― xhuxk, Monday, December 21, 2009 8:54 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

okay, but that's my point entirely! i WAS listening to the grunge & "pigfuck" & post-HC noise & no wave in the 80s. and i saw a lot of that as a contemporaneous response to plastic MTV pop. but it tended to be a niche or even an underground thing. visible to critics & hipsters, but totally invisible to pop radio & mall music stores & "the mainstream".

in the 90s, the values & aesthetics of this 80s underground went mainstream, though often in a dumbed-down, distorted, and/or politically neutered form. the anti-ness of the 80s indie scene relative to commercial culture became a dominant paradigm - which was weird, since it was so deeply predicated on its own outsider status. most obvious example of this being grunge a la nirvana & pearl jam. SST's "corporate rock still sucks" punk values pushed into arenas and onto top 40.

Exactly, when "alternative" is the mainstream, then what it is an alternative to?

Republicans

another view holds that mid-to-late 80s indie/underground was at its core musically and culturally conservative, a reactionary macho response to all that gay new pop/MTV fluff of the early 80s

cobain wearing a "corporate rock still sucks" shirt on the cover of rolling stone always struck me as the height of self-delusion

xp Yeah, we've talked about this on other threads plenty -- red-blooded American guitar bands countering all those faggy synthy Limeys. (At least, that's how indie rock was pretty much marketed, circa 1983-84)

joe carducci is working on a new book: "poptimism & the rockist narcotic"

'"corporate rock still sucks" shirt on the cover of rolling stone'
wasn't this "corporate rock magazines still suck" or something? it was some ploy to get out of being on the cover but they ended up running it anyway? the other t-shirt they had was a cartoon duck taking a duck shit on jan wenner?

another view holds that mid-to-late 80s indie/underground was at its core musically and culturally conservative, a reactionary macho response to all that gay new pop/MTV fluff of the early 80s

― chief rocker frankie crocker (m coleman), Monday, December 21, 2009 2:21 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark

i think both views are correct. for me at the time, as a serious young man, it was easy to see the noisy indie/underground stuff as raw honesty in relation to a commercial pop culture that was interested only in marketable inanities. in retrospect, i can see that the "inanities" were often a fascinating & sophisticated form of play, and that the angst i so prized often reads as reactionary masculine drag - but not always in a bad way. big black and killdozer, for instance, tended to be humorously ironic about the tough-guy shtick.

"angst i so prized often reads as reactionary masculine drag"
How would you compare that against actual reactionary masculine drag as practiced by hair metallers?

I can't say for certain how real all this realness was, floating around in 89 - 94, but there was at least a huge change in marketing.

You see it in the commercials, where everything became Xtreme, and exploding on skateboards; and Sprite ads where Grant Hill wasn't going to kid you cause you knew it was a commercial, and he knew it was a commercial, and Sprite knew it was a commercial so let's just be REAL about it.

And I still do see a difference between RHCP and Green Day and Sublime, Mighty Mighty Bosstones and all the fun 90s bands, compared to all the fun party 80s bands. It's a difference that's hard to explain but I can sense it none the less. Maybe it's that the 80s had irony and the 90s had sarcasm? A sarcasm that Chandler from Friends was designed to embody.

I think that by the 90s, the average fan had a bit more insight into the realities (and iconic motifs) of life in a rock band. So bands had to posture differently because the audience wouldn't fall for the same smoke & mirrors (ie The Beatles drink milk and eat jellybeans/Michael Jackson is a benevolent god/Kurt Cobain is an indie-rock martyr). It's a continuum that stretches back decade after decade and the only solution for the really fabricated artists is to go after the youngest and least cultured paying demographic available. Everyone else (the bands that are "keeping it real") is stuck justifying their existence in whatever sense works best for the time and place (and allows them to sleep at night).

Well there was dialog *on MTV* about all of this, when Green Day broke they had their little soundbite interview where Billy says "You know everybody talks about 'alternative' it's like alternative to what?" because so many of these bands were playing clubs and doing the punk/cred/fanzine circuit, whatever you thought of their commercially polished material. The Offspring are a very interesting case, because they were possibly the most "credible" group of folks to come through, yet one of their breakthrough hits ("Self Esteem") was a complete "Smells Like Teen Spirit" knock in all respects, down to the video. And they endured in the mainstream for a while, during a window where it seemed Green Day would not (of course they bounced back in frighteningly conservative garb, to address that line of thought, and won stupefying mainstream acceptance).

Totally not getting the irony vs sarcasm dichotomy, tbh. (But then, I never got the Chili Peppers either. Or the Bosstones. Or Friends.) (I want to say, compared to hit rock from previous decades, that what distinguished all those '90s bands -- even Green Day and Sublime and the Offspring, all of whom I liked a lot at the time -- was their clumsiness and smarminess, but that's just probably just me being cranky and old. I still sense it though. And obviously, say, the Eagles were no less smarmy in the '70s. They were just a whole lot better.)

Or maybe you just Uzi Suicide wasn't a legit label in the first place? (I've never thought of this before, but did they even put out any other records? Triple X obviously did, over the years, albeit sporadically.)

what I had always heard was what it says in the G'n'R wiki (though yeah again: it's WP, who knows)

Geffen Records released an EP in late 1986 to keep the interest in the band alive while the band withdrew from the club scene to work in the studio. The four song EP Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide came out on the ostensibly independent "Uzi Suicide Records" label (which was actually a Geffen subsidiary.)

thought I read something about this in that Restless Road book, I'll dig it out later if I can find it.

So, we can all still blame Jesus Jones for all of this, right?

xp Though eh (one 45-minute bike ride later) it's not as if Motley Crue weren't just as smarmy-clumsy as Green Day or the Offspring etc. And those bands were definitely better than, say, the Outfield, or the Hooters, or (fill in some shitty '70s band I can't think of right now.) So I shouldn't have implied all "hit rock from previous decades." (Motley Crue's best-of CD is no better or worse than STP's or Soundgarden's or Soul Asylum's or the Counting Crows' or the Black Crowes', maybe a little worse than the Offspring's and a little better than the Spin Doctors'. Not saying the '90s invented mediocrity, even if mediocrity is what distiguishes the decade in the long run.)

Motley Crue = jocks
Green Day = nerds
Offspring = nerds
Counting Crows = nerds
Soundgarden = nerds
STP = jocks with nerd singer? (Weiland is into Devo and wimpiest pop possible)

90s is the ascent of nerds occupying positions previously held by jocks
in the 80s, nerds are consigned to the novelty ghetto with B-52s, Weird Al and Thomas Dolby.

scott weiland = quarterback of his high school football team and also on wrestling team

believe me the jock/nerd thing is always always way more complicated IRL when you get into it.

also robert pollard from guided by voices is/was an excellent athlete...and gibby haynes from buttholes was an athlete to iirc and in a fraternity in college

Wasn't Britney Spears also a big-deal basketball prodigy, once upon a time in Louisiana?

Top music jock of recent decades would probably be Nelly, right?

"believe me the jock/nerd thing is always always way more complicated IRL when you get into it."
oh yeah there are definitely mountains of doctorate theses you can mine from unpacking all this (like rise of nerd thugs in 00s)
but butthole surfers helmed by jock is not surprising...

yeah, i mean, the wrestling team -- loaded with super nerds bound for MIT who could also kick your ass.

Technically, Kurt Cobain's poor scholastic performance and his participation in high school wrestling would make him more jock than nerd, but c'moooon.

Motley Crue = jocks burnouts who smoked behind the shop class
Counting Crows = nerds hippies
Soundgarden = nerds preps

Didn't I see Tommy Lee palmsmash LL Cool J in the face in MTV's Rock & Jock B-ball challenge, cementing his team's threepeat?

vince neil was good at baseball i think...

lots of burnouts were jocks and jocks were burnouts and nerds were jocks and jocks were nerds IMO

yeah, i mean, the wrestling team -- loaded with super nerds bound for MIT who could also kick your ass.

― tylerw, Tuesday, December 22, 2009 6:07 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hmmm..i think this is more my area but yeah that was not true for me at all, but we were close enough to iowa where wrestling was more of a glamour sport, more popular than basketball tbh

but wrestling is a weird subculture for sure.

lots of burnouts were jocks and jocks were burnouts and nerds were jocks and jocks were nerds IMO

and nerds were burnouts, too

that too

it's like we learned nothing from carlos the dwarf.

or randall "pink" floyd

"gibby haynes from buttholes was an athlete to iirc and in a fraternity in college"

yes! He went to my college about ten years before me. I know the frat he was in (we only had local frats, not national ones, so naming it isn't going to be helpful for you guys)...it was the frat for rich, athletic, good-looking party kids---jocks, basically. I was in another frat, for nerdy drunks, but we'd go to his frat's parties...sadly there were no xrays of girls passing gas there.