I swear I don’t even know what band this is, pictured above, but my God… the sheer volume of hair is… staggering. I can’t imagine how much money these guys must have spent on hair products. Not to mention the time wasted teasing their hair. Just the conditioner bill alone would have kept me poor. This band looks like they accidently stuck their fingers in a light socket. I had a mullet back in the day but it had nothing on these guys…it had a natural curl in the back which always gave people the impression I was being attacked from behind by a small varmint that had somehow scrambled up my back and was at my neck with clearly hostile intent. 

I’ve been thinking about the 80s quite a bit lately. I start every year off with a “50 year look back playlist” to the 70s, this year was 1974. But I was just a little, little kid back then. I wasn’t really listening to music yet. I turned on the radio exclusively to listen to baseball games. Some of that music I discovered later and I dig it, but it doesn’t drive the nostalgia lobe in my brain. After I get that 50 year look back out of my system, naturally I pivot to the “40 year look back playlist,” back to those pesky 80s. This year was no exception and we celebrated 1984. What an amazing year for music that was…it was no 1971, but there were so many huge albums: VH’s 1984, the Cars’ Heartbeat City, Prince’s Purple Rain, and Springsteen’s Born In The U.S.A just to name a few. Now that’s some music that I can get nostalgic about as it’s “blasting off the T-top…”

I noticed on last year’s 1983 playlist, hard rock bands were popping up. In ’83 it was Def Leppard, Motley Crue and Quiet Riot. This year that trend continued with songs from Whitesnake, Ratt and Bon Jovi popping onto the list. We would describe most of those bands today as “hair metal” bands. And as time passes, the term hair metal has become a pretty derisive term. Interestingly enough, I don’t remember that term being used back in the day. I vaguely remember these bands as being described as “glam metal.” They combined the theatrical make up of Kiss or Alice Cooper which itself had descended from the 70s glam rock of David Bowie and T Rex. I just thought of hair metal bands as the metal du jour. It was the style of the day. Hair metal’s reign was from 1983 to 1991 and it was only after it was over that I heard people start to describe it by it’s now notorious moniker.

The hair metal bands of the 80s all wore spandex and leather. They all had that huge hair like whoever that is pictured above. They were all like the New York Dolls with leather pants on, so much makeup. The music was heavy on the hedonism. Yes, there were love songs, each band had it’s power ballad, but mostly it was all about partyin’ and chicks. I always thought that hair metal bands were just a poor man’s version of Van Halen during the Roth era. They each had a big good lookin’ dude on lead vocals and a speedy guitar player. With each successive copy, the picture got blurrier if I can continue that strange metaphor. I’m not saying Van Halen fathered hair metal, but in my opinion they were in the room when it happened. I remember watching Letterman back then and he had seen a video from the rock band Nelson, whose lineup included the twin sons of original rocker Ricky Nelson, and Letterman said, “I was watching this band and these women were beautiful… only to realize those weren’t women,” or something to that effect. He wasn’t wrong:

I have to admit, back in the 80s, I was not into hair metal. I’m not suggesting I was some musical genius and realized back then that time would be cruel to these bands, like my taste was too good for hair metal. I was just so busy researching the music that had come before in the 60s and 70s, as I was trying to catch up my record collection on all the stuff that had come out when I was listening to baseball games instead of the Faces, that I missed out on a lot of the then current stuff. I was looking backward so hard I didn’t catch what was in front of me. It’s like I was living permanently in 1975…it’s a surprise I didn’t wear a boa to campus. I will boast that I did think most of the hair metal was soft. It was like metal-lite to me. But then I was used to listening to Sabbath, Judas Priest, classic Aerosmith, Deep Purple and Zeppelin. The 80s bands just weren’t hitting me as hard. I was a fan of Def Leppard, whose excellent Pyromania I just posted about. I met a girl in late ’89 and I asked what music she was into, like you do when you’re hitting on someone. She said, and I shit you not, “Warrant, Winger and Whitesnake.” I could only think to say, “Wow.” I felt the alliteration deserved to continue.

Say what you want about hair metal, for 7 or 8 years it dominated music, at least the rock music anyway. Older bands from the 70s even co-opted the look and sound to continue or jump start their careers like Aerosmith, Kiss took off the black white make up and put on lip gloss, and the Scorpions to name but a few. It was all you would see on MTV. And yes, I used to watch the Headbanger’s Ball. I actually think MTV overexposure helped kill hair metal. Every video and every band looked the same. Nothing really engaged me musically. The music lacked the menace and violence of punk. It had mostly severed the link that early heavy metal had with the blues. Jeff Beck described his early sound as “heavy blues.” Hair metal was very pop oriented with more hooks – both vocally and guitar wise – than an old fishing hat. It probably should be described as pop metal vs hair metal. And there were just so many bad hair metal bands: Night Ranger, Quiet Riot, Winger and Warrant, oh my.

Eventually Kurt Cobain and grunge came along in ’91 and killed everything that came before it. Hair metal was the first casualty. Of course it wasn’t only grunge that killed hair metal. Alternative rock by R.E.M., the Smiths, or Jane’s Addiction also came to the fore. With hair metal being so big there was bound to be an eventual backlash, much like disco. I admit, I owned Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet on vinyl but I ended up selling it. Bon Jovi has some really good songs, but I don’t necessarily seek them out… but I don’t change the dial when I hear them on the radio either. Of course Bon Jovi committed the ultimate sin to B&V and recorded a contemporary country record. Sigh.

While much of hair metal is shunned these days there are some bands that I really do like. I think the music of a few of these  bands has stood the test of time. These are the hair metal bands that we still enjoy down here at B&V. I have to admit, we probably still enjoy them because I didn’t discover much of this music until I met the Rock Chick. She introduced me or re-introduced me to a lot of good music from the Cult to Green Day and many of these bands have her fingerprints on them for me. Here is our list, in no particular order that would make sense to anybody but me:

• Def Leppard – I don’t know if these guys even belong in this genre. After Pyromania Def Leppard largely disappeared to go off with Mutt Lange to record Hysteria and missed a significant portion of the 80s. They were the first of the new 80s hard rock bands I got into and opened up the first concert I ever attended. I had largely left Def Leppard behind, consigned to the “cool when I was kid” pile, but recently have rediscovered some of their early stuff.
• Motley Crue – If I’m being honest, these guys are my all-time favorite hair metal band. Their first five albums, before singer Vince Neil split for an ill-fated solo career, are amongst the finest the genre ever produced. Motley had a nastiness, mostly stemming from Mick Mars’ guitar, that I just enjoy. And by Girls, Girls, Girls they had largely stripped off the makeup. I still think about that woman in the “Home Sweet Home” video whose gallant boyfriend starts to take her top off on camera. Dr. Feelgood is a superb LP. I saw them perform that one in it’s entirety in concert… indeed.
• Cinderella – These guys may be the only hair metal band that kept a touch of blues in their music. Long Cold Winter is probably one of my favorite hair band albums out there. I think these guys were discovered by Bon Jovi, who I don’t particularly care for anymore. They had those twin girls in their first few videos… Great band, great vocalist.
• Whitesnake – Sorry, no Winger or Warrant here… Whitesnake could almost be considered along with Kiss and Aerosmith as an older band that co-opted the hair metal ethos to catapult them to fame. But frankly, everything they did before 1984 was basically ignored in the U.S. Albums like Slide It In and Whitesnake were in high rotation all around me back in those days. And yes, who doesn’t love Tawny Kitaen on the hood of a sports car? I was playing “Slow And Easy” when I was building my ’84 playlist and the Rock Chick yelled as she passed by the B&V labs, “That’s a kick ass song!” Yes, my dear, it is.
• Ratt – I can still remember seeing old comedian Milton Berle in their first video. While Steven Pearcy had a bit of nasal vocal delivery, I dug the guitar sound these guys had. Songs like “Lay It Down” or “Round and Round” or “You’re In Love” are hard to resist. They had a pretty good run through the middle of the 80s. I tend to lean into the nastier sounding, less polished hair metal.
• Guns N Roses – GnR are almost the opposite of Kiss, Aerosmith and the bands that jumped into the hair metal ethos to jump start their careers. GnR kind of started in the hair metal category – if you don’t believe me watch the video for “Welcome To The Jungle” and explain Axl Rose’s hair – and almost as quickly pivoted out of it. It’s probably cheating to include them, much like Def Leppard, but hey, they came up on the Sunset Strip, why not?

While we’re not fond of softer metal bands like Bon Jovi or Night Ranger, we’re not sitting around listening to Hanoi Rocks or Faster Pussycat either. But every genre, no matter what the backlash, tends to produce some great bands that will survive the genre. The Police pretended to be punks on their first album and quickly pivoted as punk gave way to New Wave. They seemed to have nice little career.

The Rock Chick is away visiting family this week and I think a little hair metal hedonism might be the call for the holiday weekend. Have a safe and wonderful Memorial Day – or Bank Holiday if you’re in the UK – and if you’re traveling, travel safely. Hopefully we’ve inspired you to seek out your favorite hair metal band to help you down the road.

Cheers! (And for any of you on your own this weekend, “You take the midnight subway train, You’re callin’ all the shots, You’re struck by lightning, You’re in love”)…