S&D: Glam Metal/Hair Metal

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.