Child of the 80's. Saw Quiet Riot in a Union Ave dive bar in Bakersfield CA. Fake ID and front row with my drink sitting on Rudy Sarzo's bass cabinet. Two months later they blew up and were playing the US Festival!
This was quite the history lesson. You guys nailed it overall, and I speak from experience. I was there from 1982 - 1986, playing the Sunset Strip, stapling flyers to telephone poles, and having a pretty damn great time. The only thing I would mention is 'pay to play', that is, certain clubs would issue tickets to the band and if we didn't sell them we ate the cost. This may have been a contributing factor in narrowing the bottle neck of novelty and experimentation and pushing conformity of particular trends. The cream rises to the top, they say, but sometimes it's spoiled from the beginning. It is true that during that season, rife with eyeliner and clouds of VO5, if you had immense talent and a plain or contrarian look, you were dead in the water. I saw a lot of talent fall by the wayside, including my own. But no regrets. It was a glorious and slightly deranged adventure, and worth every moment.
This is probably one of the most interesting topics to me due to watching the fall of this genre start right after graduating high school in 1991. My friends and I didn't even see it coming. We were from a very small town in Illinois, and I don't think we cared about whether or not you owned a copy of 'Cherry Pie', you could still be a metalhead. There were so few of us. Believe me, we were much more into 'Rust In Peace' and 'Painkiller' anyway. We were just waiting for the new Metallica and Ozzy to drop. We were not oblivious to Pearl Jam or Alice In Chains, but we had no idea that it was about to get rough for the glam metal scene. It seemed like an overnight thing, but I believe it was a long time coming and a good thing. It forced us to look for other types of music and became a blessing. Nice show, guys. I enjoyed it. Peter Jones, your incite is wonderful to hear and appreciated.
What a pleasure to read all the wonderful comments!! I had a very specific experience and did my best to comment only on what I felt and dealt with. I appreciate the kind words and also the thoughtful replies that didn't agree with me as well. That is what makes these shows worthwhile. I express my view, my fellow Contrarians theirs, and you the viewer get to chime in as well. We all appreciate everyone taking the time to watch and comment!!
Really interesting video! I grew up in the 80s. In high school, I was huge into the Whitesnake, GNR, Def Leppard, Ratt, Bon Jovi, and Van Halen albums (among others). I still love them all. When I went to college in 1991, I got into Metallica, Alice In Chains and Pantera but I never stopped listening to my 80s stuff. It was probably around that time I also got the Journey Greatest Hits album and a little later, So Far So Good from Bryan Adams and those also became part of my favorite listens. I guess my point is, I never abandoned what I listened to in HS, I just added to it.
Heavy Metal Parking Lot from maybe 1986...so funny, low-budget doc about fans tailgating before a Judas Priest show in Maryland if I'm not mistaken. Check it out!
I was Glam/Thrash. Still am at age 55. Couldn't care less about time itself or opinions. I've played drums, guitar, bass, keyboards since I was 9. I've been in pretty popular underground bands (Willow Wisp, Astrovamps, Salems Lott) and currently in Post Mortem Superstar and Black Heroin Gallery. Luckily I still have my hair and am in good shape so the makeup and clothes look cool on me, even though it's more of a dark Goth style. What saved me is the love of a variety of music (blues, jazz, horror soundtrack, etc.) yet my primary passion is always metal (primarily extreme underground metal) Long live hair/glam metal!
I think it’s quite normal - or used to be anyway - for musical styles and image to come in for 3-5 years, and then it’s done. I think the image started coming back with Twisted Sister in 1982, the music hit it big in 1983 with Def Leppard, Motley Crüe, and Quiet Riot, and then from 1985 to 1987 is was at its most powerful, but began declining from 88 through to 90. Yes, the image and style both changed before the whole subgenre crashed.
I remember towards the end and into 90s had bands like Spread Eagle, Circus of power, Jetboy, Junkyard, Brother Cain , Bang Tango, Love/Hate and others they were gritter darker than what came before .
Haven't watched the show yet, just starting, but I turned 16 in March 1984 so I was at the perfect age to enjoy it when it was new. I'm not embarrassed about it at all because like most forms of music they're good and fun when they're fresh. I also didn't pick sides between them and "real" metal, I had my Judas Priest and Dio cassettes right next to my Ratt and Dokken and Quiet Riot cassettes in my car, along with lighter stuff like The Police. I outgrew some of it and still enjoy parts of it. In 1984 I became a hardcore Rush fan and they didn't fit into any categories and they're still my favorite band. I graduated high school in May 1986 and I'd say by the end of 1987 I had entirely tuned out of the hair metal stuff. I never owned much of any of the 1988-1992 bands. I don't think grunge killed it, I think it died of natural causes just like grunge and disco and prog and the rest that just exhausted themselves at a mass scale after a few years.
I always saw RATT as the “outlier” of the glam scene, even though they were super popular and embodied the “look”. Their music was grittier than Motley’s and had better lyrical content. Poison, Cinderella, Warrant, Winger etc were hair metal. RATT was “sleaze metal”.
I must be honest, when I didnt see the usual contrarians crew, I watched a different video. I came back tonight, and gave it a shot. A GREAT video!! You guys are knowledgeable and passionate about music and I admit, I didn’t give you a fair shot the first time. Won’t happen again. Also, I loved the discussion about Eddie VH and Randy Rhoads. They WERE very different guitarists, and I’m glad someone finally said what needed to be said. EVH was wrong to talk smack about Randy and should have been above that. Thank you.
I actually watched the very first "Decline of Western Civilization" and they made the LA Punk scene seem straight up respectable compared to the hatchet job they did on the LA Metal scene several years later
Hanoi Rocks were the missing link musically and visually between 70s bands like Mott The Hoople and 80s Glam/Hair metal. They pioneered the look that GNR perfected, with hats, leather and leopardskin
Excellent conversation, gents!! Could've been twice as long and i would've stayed engaged. 4-6 year shelf-life hits home as truth. These were groups i liked in high school, but have since moved on and every time i try to revisit just seems cringe. Over-sexualized lyrics and presentation while celebrating perversions is just too marginal and childish.
Never like the 80's Glam Metal scene. Once Motley Crue went from wearing leather & chains from 81 - 83 to wearing pink tights & lace arm stockings in 85 (Theater Of Pain era) i was OUT. 1970's Glam Rock is ok. but only if it's T-Rex & Ziggy Stardust era of Bowie.
I always laugh at the terms Hair Metal and Glam Metal, Back in the 80s I knew Poison, Warrant, Ratt, Bon Jovi, Great White, Cinderella, White Lion, Black N Blue and dozens others were not Heavy Metal. I dug them all just thought they were Hard Rock or just Rock N Roll bands. To my ears some bands, and songs have aged better than others I still love a majority of these bands and rediscovered others in recent years. Music always changes and the 90s just went in another direction similar to the 60s. I remember hearing the term cock rock and that 90s rock/grunge had cool riffs but no guitar solos and were downers. I drifted from these bands but reconnected with them in 2002-03 and even more in the past 2 years. This genre will probably always laughed at and disregarded but it was MY soundtrack and still is to this day. In fact earlier I was listening to Faster Pussycat, Slaughter, LA Guns, Great White and Jetboy at high decibels...
There was also the "er" bands, too---every band's name ending with "er"---Slayer, Slaughter, Winger, Stryper, Trixter. When Beavis and Butthead made it "uncool" to like Winger, the lowest common denominator farm boy in the Midwest finally got the message
Tesla was never a glam metal band though, so they should not have been used in this example, I would also say that Cinderella wasn’t either, they were more of just a hard rock and ballad band.
I tend to agree with you, but the line is such a gray area. It's funny because I think at some point or another I've heard someone in virtually every one of the bands at the very center of it say "We weren't really part of that, yeah we poofed our hair a bit but we were more of a pop band, or more of a metal band, or more of a blues band, or more of a prog band, or more of a classic rock band...". It's like everybody was there but nobody was really in it, 😂. It's a term without definition. Just like in the 70s when all "heavy metal" really meant was distorted guitars. Everybody from Black Sabbath all the way to Heart was heavy metal as far as the press was concerned. So I think now we fans might say that Queensryche and Tesla and G&R and others were adjacent to hair metal but not really part of it, at the time they were certainly all marketed to the same people. And at the time when MTV played a Def Leppard video, a Van Halen video, a Tesla video, and a Bon Jovi video back-to-back none seemed out of place even though now each fan base might say they have nothing in common with the others.
It's mostly the look that determines whether you're a glam/hair band or not, also if most of your fans are girls, and the love lyrics, etc, and Cinderella definitely fit all of those, Tesla didn't. Many people fit all 80's rock into one category: hair rock/metal, but there's definitely some differences though, IMO real heavy metal is bands like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest: no love ballads, no big hair(although Priest looked like they temporarily sold out with their look on Turbo lover), no love lyrics, fans are majority guys, etc.
@@youtoo2233Yeah, attracting girls was a big part of it. Whether rock or metal or whatever the early 80s had a bunch of frontmen that looked like Dee Snyder and Ronnie James Dio and Kevin DuBrow, but by the end of the 80s MTV basically filtered them out for Kip Winger and such. By then the Whitesnake guys and Bon Jovi and the rest looked and posed and were styled like male models that just happened to be in bands.
Pete Jones hated it cause he wanted to go against the grain and that's respectable but to me it was the coolest, funnest, exciting time for hard rock. It was a movement and a phenomena that had music, fashion, culture.
Agree totally with Tom....once Van Halen got so popular, the heavy glam rock scene took off. Their were bands a few years in 75-76 before with that same vibe/look/image - Angel, Sweet, Moxy to name a few...
I was so happy when Janes addiction came out in 87’. Doofuses’ Metallica it’s a big inspiration to grunge. When guns came out In 87’. Whew. The metal was so shitty. We needed a cleaning. What a pack of major dorks. Then nirvana came in 90’. It was amazing. Bleach!! Ruled.
Revisionist History it was all just Heavy Metal. Then in 1986 Motley Crue - Theatre of Pain happened, which was the first time the term Glam Metal was used. then everybody copied them.
The whole thing about Jani Lane crying about Cherry Pie is from one interview that appeared on VH1. Some years later, Jani had given another interview where he explained that he was in a dark place personally during the time that he gave that interview, and that he had a much better appreciation for the song. He acknowledged that it was had remained a big fan favorite, and was happy that people continue to enjoy the song. But people do like to talk about how Jani said in the earlier interview how he "became the Cherry Pie guy" and that he said "I could just shoot myself."
I remember MTV playing Welcone to the jungle for the first time on Headbangers Ball. It was good, but then again there were so many bands at that time that I didn’t really think they would take off like they did!
I imagine so yes. If you remember, Axl had the big hair, so that was the look. They sounded and looked like the bands of the time, so when people heard the rest of the album, they must have realized it was very different indeed!
Dude in the upper right was going down a path i want to continue. Yo! MTV Raps in 88 and the MTV Spring Break Party in 89 pulled away a ton of female hair metal fans who didn't ever return to metal or grunge. Dudes not so much. Rock music hasn't been the same since. Strip clubs once played rock now play rap/hip hop. I hate that crap but the girls love it.
Sorry Contrarions but I can't take your guests seriously at all. There was a TON of innovation in glam from 89-94 from many bands across the country, most people just never heard them because they were never carried mainstream. In Texas you had Ice Cold July, Pariah with to Mock a Killingbird, you had Asphault Ballet with a new singer released their second album Pigs which sounds like nothing else, you had bands like Spread Eagle, Circus of Power and Warrior Soul in NYC, Heavy Bones the Hand that Feeds, and unfortunately there's so many more that I'm blanking on. The truth is that the industry suits screwed everything up because they got lazy and didn't want to search for newer bands among the Southgangs, Firehouses and Trixters all in LA. Grunge became the easier job to find bands in that style, and these industry suits gravitated towards the easy work. It doesn't mean you didn't have a ton of cool innovative stuff at the time. Turnover among bands is natural and it happened all throughout the 80s, you can't use that as an example (oh LA guns failed, Britny Fox failed, etc and that's why glam failed).. no.. it ended because the industry suits wanted an easier job of just signing any Grunge band as opposed to listening through countless demos and finding innovative glam that may or may not sell.. many of them were only in it for the money at that point and not for the music!!!!! In short you cannot blame the bands because there were newer bands willing to take up the mantle, and they were just as good if not better than what came before. It didn't matter anymore they weren't getting heard.
The other thing is, if you're going to cover this topic and you don't remember how it went down, do a bit more research than the end of hairmetal video from Dee Snider that everyone and their grandmother has seen.. Dee had his own band Widowmaker at that time, they were pretty innovative and had two albums and toured both.. guess what, they weren't heard.. also another band Imperial Drag check them out, singer was the same guy from Snakepit.. honestly there's so many amazing bands, it really is a crime that the rug got pulled.. Wildside was another good one..
Not to mention Seduce’s brilliant 1988 album that was basically grunge several years before grunge. And that great Law and Order album, Guilty of Innocence, that nobody paid attention to.
Am I correct in thinking that this was mainly an American phenomenon? Over here in the UK none of these bands was very big. Were Whitesnake really "glam metal"? Surely they had too much musical ability to be lumped together with Ratt, Poison etc?
It was actually the rise of Thrash Metal (thanks to Metallica's Master Of Puppets album) that created the first shift away from Glam & yes Nirvana's explosion (or the Seattle music scene) in 1991 was the final nail in the coffin. Then rise of 90's Punk (Green Day, Elastica) was the celebration dance.
From Prog-punk, glam-grunge all music genres fade out after being over saturated by the music industry. Usually new genres only last 3-5 years max. Glam was thought of as the disco of the 80's.
Guns n Roses were the last A-league band. So it’s like 35 years ago. No other band since belongs to the dinosaur type era. And I wouldn’t consider Bands like Slipknot belonging in that category.
Hot take. Grunge had nothing to do with glam metal or sunset strip metal. Just like nothing ended grunge or the Seattle scene. Regional scenes tend to not last more than a decade. It starts out strong with many great bands and albums but as the decade rolls on those early bands are now trying to get their 3rd or 4th record squeezed out of them and the record industry is giving the D list bands who aren’t very good record deals. There are other factors of course including the demographic started to age and get fickle. I still love listening to much of the great music of the era all these years later.
Its not a hot take to say the major labels created glam metal and then they killed it. Created it by signing a ton of bands that played that style and they spent a ton of money on them to get them all over the radio and MTV and make them popular. They have done that with every rock subgenre that they made popular. Sign a ton of bands, dump a bunch of money into them to see what hits and then eventually pull the plug and move on to something else. Nowadays there's no popular rock or metal movement or genre as the major labels now have decided to turn pop stars and rappers into "rockers" and sign solo artists off of Tiktok and build bands around them. Very different music industry nowadays since the money in it is a shell of what it once was. Thankfully rock and metal still has a home on the independent labels and you can listen to bands playing whatever subgenres you like.
@@Chaz4543 yeah I agree with almost everything you said, my pushback would be while record companies absolutely fund and fuel bands and scenes I don’t think they create anything as to Glam Metal or Grunge. Something hits and then the record industry pumps money into squeezing every dime out of it
@@quantumparadox2518 Well no they simply gave the bands a larger platform for more people to find out about them. Actually I did hear that some of the successful glam bands were indeed created in the studio in that it was 1 guy signed and they added a bunch of players/musicians around them which nowadays seems to be more common.
I just remember what little "originality" any of those bands had left had already been spent by the time Nirvana reared their ugly heads and most of them were busy doing "third rate" covers of "classic rock songs" like "Cats In the Cradle", "Can't Find My Way Home", etc. Really bad stuff!
I don't know how one goes from glam rock to the proggiest prog rock in only a years time, as prog, by its very defintion is "faceless"---nothing flashy about a band like Kansas, Rush, or Yes at all. Letting their music do the talking. But Utopia did it, and I suppose Roxy Music did, as well
as a teen buying casettes in the early 1980s, I bought Def Leppard's Pyromania and thought Shout at the Devil by the Crüe was hard af. by the end of the 80s I'd heard Black Flag, the Cramps, Love and Rockets, Swans, guitars were less wheedly-wheedly and more distorted and dirge-y for me at least. I was in Los Angeles in 1988 and can confirm that then-and only then did Appetite for Destruction become massive. Nothing's Shocking by fellow local band, Jane's Addiction made an impact before Guns N' Roses did. the fall of glam (or as I recall it was called mainstream) metal seems more like a sea change, as the underground influences began to resonate more with mainstream audiences than the teased hair, spandex, and cheesy love ballads. I think glam fell into the trap of most popular genres and became homogenous, but no new categorization in rock music can occur without at least a handful of true originals that define them. to me they are: 1. Motley Crüe - you can't take those first 2 albums away from them 2. Night Ranger - the 1st record is pretty heavy 3. Y&T - they may have underground roots but they easily fit the glam metal tag by the time Mean Streets came out. they have some good records
1985 86 was when hair metal took over alot of rock bands-artists from early 80s popularity fell off styx foreigner reo speedwagon billy squier saw their sales drop big time
And that was mostly because of MTV. In the early years of MTV---1981, 1982---things were pretty much still like they were in the 70s. Styx, REO, Journey, Kansas. 38 Special, could still be popular and any video channel worth their salt would be a fool not to at least include some "concert" videos of those bands. You could still get by being "faceless" But things changed when bands became more "visual", so the harder rocking bands had to become more "visual", too. And Def Leppard, Quiet Riot, Motley Crue looked better on TV. The earlier bands fell flat on their faceless faces trying to pretty themselves up for the camera. Poor Kevin Cronin and his "curly mullet" in 1985 just couldn't compete with David Lee Roth's crazy look and antics in his video. But those bands from the 70s never had to think about their looks before. If you didn't hear them on the radio, the only other time you could ever see what Styx looked like was in concert or on the back cover of their albums
I will never forget reading articles where "artist" would outright say that the "look" was the important thing. How well you could play or write music was not the consideration. These fake cheap bands would, without shame at all, admit that they did not hire the better singer or player because they did not have the "look". That accepted philosophy produced some of the most terrible recorded music in history.
Nah Roxx Gang kicked ass. They were trashy sleaze metal which I like more than that Bon Jovi Poison stuff. Give me Spread Eagle over that stuff any day
The Seattle sound lasted less than Glam metal. I find it the most throw away period of rock. It made Rock unlistenable to me. Glam metal was a good time. The contention none of these guys could play is ridiculous. Glam is not my favorite, but it is a genre I enjoy. Grunge is something I hate vociferously and find it to be atonal, glum, garbage.
Not one of your better podcasts. Nobody called it Hair Metal in the 80s?(ayfkm?) KISS were a glam band? AIDS killed Hair Metal? C'mon, guys. I'm thinking too much weed got smoked before this podcast.
No one said AIDS killed hair metal but the epidemic contributed to a change in societal attitude from a carefree anything goes sexual permissiveness to something else. The change could be seen in the lyrical content of the music. Perhaps you didn’t experience it?
there’s no way Kiss wasn’t a glam band, at least in attitude, look at their videos and appearance in the mid to late 80s, they were a glam band 💯 in fact look at asylum, they looked like one of the glamiest glam bands around
Oversaturation happened with the hair metal style, big bands releasing new albums with one good song and the obligatory ballad , disappointing fans with the rest of a weak album.. Nirvana although not much of a major change to the end of the hair scene offered another pop hook option.
When I heard Mother Love Bone in 1985 and Soundgarden in 1987 , I already knew the radio hair bands days were numbered , it was going to be taken over by them at some point in time, happened sooner than I thought
Child of the 80's. Saw Quiet Riot in a Union Ave dive bar in Bakersfield CA. Fake ID and front row with my drink sitting on Rudy Sarzo's bass cabinet. Two months later they blew up and were playing the US Festival!
This was quite the history lesson. You guys nailed it overall, and I speak from experience. I was there from 1982 - 1986, playing the Sunset Strip, stapling flyers to telephone poles, and having a pretty damn great time. The only thing I would mention is 'pay to play', that is, certain clubs would issue tickets to the band and if we didn't sell them we ate the cost. This may have been a contributing factor in narrowing the bottle neck of novelty and experimentation and pushing conformity of particular trends. The cream rises to the top, they say, but sometimes it's spoiled from the beginning. It is true that during that season, rife with eyeliner and clouds of VO5, if you had immense talent and a plain or contrarian look, you were dead in the water. I saw a lot of talent fall by the wayside, including my own. But no regrets. It was a glorious and slightly deranged adventure, and worth every moment.
This is probably one of the most interesting topics to me due to watching the fall of this genre start right after graduating high school in 1991. My friends and I didn't even see it coming. We were from a very small town in Illinois, and I don't think we cared about whether or not you owned a copy of 'Cherry Pie', you could still be a metalhead. There were so few of us. Believe me, we were much more into 'Rust In Peace' and 'Painkiller' anyway. We were just waiting for the new Metallica and Ozzy to drop. We were not oblivious to Pearl Jam or Alice In Chains, but we had no idea that it was about to get rough for the glam metal scene. It seemed like an overnight thing, but I believe it was a long time coming and a good thing. It forced us to look for other types of music and became a blessing. Nice show, guys. I enjoyed it. Peter Jones, your incite is wonderful to hear and appreciated.
as a younger (born in 99) i have a quetion.. back then the genre was called "Glam metal" or just heavy metal/rock and roll/hard rock e.t.c ??
What a pleasure to read all the wonderful comments!! I had a very specific experience and did my best to comment only on what I felt and dealt with. I appreciate the kind words and also the thoughtful replies that didn't agree with me as well. That is what makes these shows worthwhile. I express my view, my fellow Contrarians theirs, and you the viewer get to chime in as well.
We all appreciate everyone taking the time to watch and comment!!
Really interesting video! I grew up in the 80s. In high school, I was huge into the Whitesnake, GNR, Def Leppard, Ratt, Bon Jovi, and Van Halen albums (among others). I still love them all. When I went to college in 1991, I got into Metallica, Alice In Chains and Pantera but I never stopped listening to my 80s stuff. It was probably around that time I also got the Journey Greatest Hits album and a little later, So Far So Good from Bryan Adams and those also became part of my favorite listens. I guess my point is, I never abandoned what I listened to in HS, I just added to it.
I'm going to add to your "among others" with Aerosmith, Queen, Cheap Trick and ZZ Top if I may. Good stuff...👍
Heavy Metal Parking Lot from maybe 1986...so funny, low-budget doc about fans tailgating before a Judas Priest show in Maryland if I'm not mistaken. Check it out!
I was Glam/Thrash. Still am at age 55. Couldn't care less about time itself or opinions. I've played drums, guitar, bass, keyboards since I was 9. I've been in pretty popular underground bands (Willow Wisp, Astrovamps, Salems Lott) and currently in Post Mortem Superstar and Black Heroin Gallery. Luckily I still have my hair and am in good shape so the makeup and clothes look cool on me, even though it's more of a dark Goth style. What saved me is the love of a variety of music (blues, jazz, horror soundtrack, etc.) yet my primary passion is always metal (primarily extreme underground metal)
Long live hair/glam metal!
Pete Jones, let us see a photo of you back in your rocking days of 1985-86.
I do believe that T-Rex, Sweet, Bowie and Slade. And if not these bands it's got to be New York Dolls.
All genres come and go. Quiet Riot, Motley, Ratt, Dokken, WASP, and so many more are phenomenal. Love it to this day. I never tire of this music.
Great discussion! I enjoyed hearing what everyone had to say.
Good episode. I remember when the heavier bands like Alice In Chains, Pantera and Celtic Frost had their "glam moments" before grunge.
I think it’s quite normal - or used to be anyway - for musical styles and image to come in for 3-5 years, and then it’s done.
I think the image started coming back with Twisted Sister in 1982, the music hit it big in 1983 with Def Leppard, Motley Crüe, and Quiet Riot, and then from 1985 to 1987 is was at its most powerful, but began declining from 88 through to 90. Yes, the image and style both changed before the whole subgenre crashed.
I remember towards the end and into 90s had bands like Spread Eagle, Circus of power, Jetboy, Junkyard, Brother Cain , Bang Tango, Love/Hate and others they were gritter darker than what came before .
Haven't watched the show yet, just starting, but I turned 16 in March 1984 so I was at the perfect age to enjoy it when it was new. I'm not embarrassed about it at all because like most forms of music they're good and fun when they're fresh. I also didn't pick sides between them and "real" metal, I had my Judas Priest and Dio cassettes right next to my Ratt and Dokken and Quiet Riot cassettes in my car, along with lighter stuff like The Police. I outgrew some of it and still enjoy parts of it. In 1984 I became a hardcore Rush fan and they didn't fit into any categories and they're still my favorite band. I graduated high school in May 1986 and I'd say by the end of 1987 I had entirely tuned out of the hair metal stuff. I never owned much of any of the 1988-1992 bands. I don't think grunge killed it, I think it died of natural causes just like grunge and disco and prog and the rest that just exhausted themselves at a mass scale after a few years.
Outstanding dissection of the late 80s metal scene. You guys did a great job here
Yeah, the trend seemed to be to release a fun rocker for the guys and then do a ballad for the girls. Tour. Next album.
First power ballad...Dream On - Aerosmith 1973...great song btw.
Proves my point---Aerosmith was the prototype--not Van Halen!
I love the 80s glam bands. It was the best time of my life. Will never be ashamed of that era!
The 3 missing link band that no one talks about that bridged the scene was the English band Japan, Girl, and Hanoi Rocks.
I always saw RATT as the “outlier” of the glam scene, even though they were super popular and embodied the “look”. Their music was grittier than Motley’s and had better lyrical content. Poison, Cinderella, Warrant, Winger etc were hair metal. RATT was “sleaze metal”.
I've only just started listening to RATT in the last couple of years but they were a really cool proper-job hardrocking band!
I’ve said that myself, “Sleaze Rock” LA, skinny dudes, big hair, better songs than “Glam” or “Hair” metal acts. Think RATT, LA Guns, GnR etc.
Warrant's, "Dog Eat Dog" record is phenomenal, start to finish.
Fantastic discussion gents. I wish I would have jumped on this one.
I must be honest, when I didnt see the usual contrarians crew, I watched a different video. I came back tonight, and gave it a shot. A GREAT video!! You guys are knowledgeable and passionate about music and I admit, I didn’t give you a fair shot the first time. Won’t happen again. Also, I loved the discussion about Eddie VH and Randy Rhoads. They WERE very different guitarists, and I’m glad someone finally said what needed to be said. EVH was wrong to talk smack about Randy and should have been above that. Thank you.
Also pioneers of glam/metal/rock before VH...Starz! Think first record was 1976?
What the second guy said about Van Halen could have just as easily been said about Aerosmith, too, going even further back to 1973
I actually watched the very first "Decline of Western Civilization" and they made the LA Punk scene seem straight up respectable compared to the hatchet job they did on the LA Metal scene several years later
Hanoi Rocks were the missing link musically and visually between 70s bands like Mott The Hoople and 80s Glam/Hair metal. They pioneered the look that GNR perfected, with hats, leather and leopardskin
Excellent conversation, gents!! Could've been twice as long and i would've stayed engaged. 4-6 year shelf-life hits home as truth. These were groups i liked in high school, but have since moved on and every time i try to revisit just seems cringe. Over-sexualized lyrics and presentation while celebrating perversions is just too marginal and childish.
"Van Halen Rising" is by Greg Renoff
Relax Pete, there are some great glam metal albums with excellent songs and musicianship (Ratt, Dokken, Vain's No Respect).
Great dhow gents. Valid points made as usual.
I love sharp edged guitars ;)
Me too, gimme a pointy guitar and I'm good.
Here's the question about Glam Metal. Was it even Metal or just another wave of Glam Rock or Glam Hard Rock?
Great episode guys ! Pete is awesome...once again !
As always, Great Show and Discussion!
Never like the 80's Glam Metal scene. Once Motley Crue went from wearing leather & chains from 81 - 83 to wearing pink tights & lace arm stockings in 85 (Theater Of Pain era) i was OUT. 1970's Glam Rock is ok. but only if it's T-Rex & Ziggy Stardust era of Bowie.
I always laugh at the terms Hair Metal and Glam Metal, Back in the 80s I knew Poison, Warrant, Ratt, Bon Jovi, Great White, Cinderella, White Lion, Black N Blue and dozens others were not Heavy Metal. I dug them all just thought they were Hard Rock or just Rock N Roll bands. To my ears some bands, and songs have aged better than others I still love a majority of these bands and rediscovered others in recent years. Music always changes and the 90s just went in another direction similar to the 60s. I remember hearing the term cock rock and that 90s rock/grunge had cool riffs but no guitar solos and were downers. I drifted from these bands but reconnected with them in 2002-03 and even more in the past 2 years. This genre will probably always laughed at and disregarded but it was MY soundtrack and still is to this day. In fact earlier I was listening to Faster Pussycat, Slaughter, LA Guns, Great White and Jetboy at high decibels...
There was also the "er" bands, too---every band's name ending with "er"---Slayer, Slaughter, Winger, Stryper, Trixter. When Beavis and Butthead made it "uncool" to like Winger, the lowest common denominator farm boy in the Midwest finally got the message
Dave mustaine said back in the day that glam stood for
Gay la music.
Tesla was never a glam metal band though, so they should not have been used in this example, I would also say that Cinderella wasn’t either, they were more of just a hard rock and ballad band.
I tend to agree with you, but the line is such a gray area. It's funny because I think at some point or another I've heard someone in virtually every one of the bands at the very center of it say "We weren't really part of that, yeah we poofed our hair a bit but we were more of a pop band, or more of a metal band, or more of a blues band, or more of a prog band, or more of a classic rock band...". It's like everybody was there but nobody was really in it, 😂. It's a term without definition. Just like in the 70s when all "heavy metal" really meant was distorted guitars. Everybody from Black Sabbath all the way to Heart was heavy metal as far as the press was concerned. So I think now we fans might say that Queensryche and Tesla and G&R and others were adjacent to hair metal but not really part of it, at the time they were certainly all marketed to the same people. And at the time when MTV played a Def Leppard video, a Van Halen video, a Tesla video, and a Bon Jovi video back-to-back none seemed out of place even though now each fan base might say they have nothing in common with the others.
It's mostly the look that determines whether you're a glam/hair band or not, also if most of your fans are girls, and the love lyrics, etc, and Cinderella definitely fit all of those, Tesla didn't. Many people fit all 80's rock into one category: hair rock/metal, but there's definitely some differences though, IMO real heavy metal is bands like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest: no love ballads, no big hair(although Priest looked like they temporarily sold out with their look on Turbo lover), no love lyrics, fans are majority guys, etc.
@@youtoo2233Yeah, attracting girls was a big part of it. Whether rock or metal or whatever the early 80s had a bunch of frontmen that looked like Dee Snyder and Ronnie James Dio and Kevin DuBrow, but by the end of the 80s MTV basically filtered them out for Kip Winger and such. By then the Whitesnake guys and Bon Jovi and the rest looked and posed and were styled like male models that just happened to be in bands.
Cinderella was much more of a blues based heavy rock band, but their look belied that.
I love Glam Metal. I say it starts with Van Halen in and ends in 92 with Adrenalize.
Pete Jones hated it cause he wanted to go against the grain and that's respectable but to me it was the coolest, funnest, exciting time for hard rock. It was a movement and a phenomena that had music, fashion, culture.
Pete Jones sounds exactly like Edward Snowden.
Agree totally with Tom....once Van Halen got so popular, the heavy glam rock scene took off. Their were bands a few years in 75-76 before with that same vibe/look/image - Angel, Sweet, Moxy to name a few...
Sorry, who’s our third speaker? Pete Jones! I really liked what he had to say during his monologue.
I was so happy when Janes addiction came out in 87’.
Doofuses’ Metallica it’s a big inspiration to grunge. When guns came out In 87’. Whew. The metal was so shitty. We needed a cleaning. What a pack of major dorks. Then nirvana came in 90’. It was amazing. Bleach!! Ruled.
Poison took it to "Cartoon levels"!🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Revisionist History it was all just Heavy Metal. Then in 1986 Motley Crue - Theatre of Pain happened, which was the first time the term Glam Metal was used. then everybody copied them.
I still enjoy Ratt, Winger or Dokken today. No Nirvana and other 90s depressing music in my collection. 😂
The whole thing about Jani Lane crying about Cherry Pie is from one interview that appeared on VH1. Some years later, Jani had given another interview where he explained that he was in a dark place personally during the time that he gave that interview, and that he had a much better appreciation for the song. He acknowledged that it was had remained a big fan favorite, and was happy that people continue to enjoy the song. But people do like to talk about how Jani said in the earlier interview how he "became the Cherry Pie guy" and that he said "I could just shoot myself."
Unfortunately he was also viewed as a kind of dollar store Bret Michaels.
It’s a shame, Warrant had some very good songs, and was a talented band. RIP.
Guns n Roses also brought an unglamorous look to glam metal, making it dirty, sweaty, and sleazy. That was the new look to challenge Jon Bon Jovi.
I remember MTV playing Welcone to the jungle for the first time on Headbangers Ball. It was good, but then again there were so many bands at that time that I didn’t really think they would take off like they did!
@@jcollins1305 I heard recently that it took several months for the album to take off. It seems the trouble was finding the right target audience.
I imagine so yes. If you remember, Axl had the big hair, so that was the look. They sounded and looked like the bands of the time, so when people heard the rest of the album, they must have realized it was very different indeed!
Dude in the upper right was going down a path i want to continue. Yo! MTV Raps in 88 and the MTV Spring Break Party in 89 pulled away a ton of female hair metal fans who didn't ever return to metal or grunge. Dudes not so much. Rock music hasn't been the same since. Strip clubs once played rock now play rap/hip hop. I hate that crap but the girls love it.
Sorry Contrarions but I can't take your guests seriously at all. There was a TON of innovation in glam from 89-94 from many bands across the country, most people just never heard them because they were never carried mainstream. In Texas you had Ice Cold July, Pariah with to Mock a Killingbird, you had Asphault Ballet with a new singer released their second album Pigs which sounds like nothing else, you had bands like Spread Eagle, Circus of Power and Warrior Soul in NYC, Heavy Bones the Hand that Feeds, and unfortunately there's so many more that I'm blanking on. The truth is that the industry suits screwed everything up because they got lazy and didn't want to search for newer bands among the Southgangs, Firehouses and Trixters all in LA. Grunge became the easier job to find bands in that style, and these industry suits gravitated towards the easy work. It doesn't mean you didn't have a ton of cool innovative stuff at the time. Turnover among bands is natural and it happened all throughout the 80s, you can't use that as an example (oh LA guns failed, Britny Fox failed, etc and that's why glam failed).. no.. it ended because the industry suits wanted an easier job of just signing any Grunge band as opposed to listening through countless demos and finding innovative glam that may or may not sell.. many of them were only in it for the money at that point and not for the music!!!!! In short you cannot blame the bands because there were newer bands willing to take up the mantle, and they were just as good if not better than what came before. It didn't matter anymore they weren't getting heard.
The other thing is, if you're going to cover this topic and you don't remember how it went down, do a bit more research than the end of hairmetal video from Dee Snider that everyone and their grandmother has seen.. Dee had his own band Widowmaker at that time, they were pretty innovative and had two albums and toured both.. guess what, they weren't heard.. also another band Imperial Drag check them out, singer was the same guy from Snakepit.. honestly there's so many amazing bands, it really is a crime that the rug got pulled.. Wildside was another good one..
Not to mention Seduce’s brilliant 1988 album that was basically grunge several years before grunge. And that great Law and Order album, Guilty of Innocence, that nobody paid attention to.
Andy Wood from Green River pretty much looked like a Bret Michaels/Vince Neil clone
Loved thrash, loved glam.
Am I correct in thinking that this was mainly an American phenomenon? Over here in the UK none of these bands was very big. Were Whitesnake really "glam metal"? Surely they had too much musical ability to be lumped together with Ratt, Poison etc?
good point, I think Ratt’s musical ability in general is a little underrated though!
Ugly Kid Joe and Bullet Boys were to glam metal---what Sham 69 was to British Punk. They arrived at the party just as it was ending!
I would disagree with Peter but he is 100% correct.
It was actually the rise of Thrash Metal (thanks to Metallica's Master Of Puppets album) that created the first shift away from Glam & yes Nirvana's explosion (or the Seattle music scene) in 1991 was the final nail in the coffin. Then rise of 90's Punk (Green Day, Elastica) was the celebration dance.
seventies rock glam was more U.K. -based. Later developments, MTV, et.al. were mostly U.S.
So glad RUSH didnt do the 80's glam rock thing
This is interesting. I arrived in Western civilization in the late 80s, so I remember only the dying days of the style from my teens.
From Prog-punk, glam-grunge all music genres fade out after being over saturated by the music industry. Usually new genres only last 3-5 years max. Glam was thought of as the disco of the 80's.
Tesla sadly gets lumped in with Glam Metal and they’re anything but.
Guns n Roses were the last A-league band. So it’s like 35 years ago. No other band since belongs to the dinosaur type era. And I wouldn’t consider Bands like Slipknot belonging in that category.
Vinnie Vincent Invasion destroyed Hair Metal...
We will have to agree to disagree 😁
At thath time we in Europe listen to Helloween, Kreator, Running Wild, Sodom.......
It's still around just Underground
Geez, Pete that’s quite a diatribe there on an era that brought us Eddie Van Halen and some of THE best musicians ever…. 🤔 got a grudge?
Yeah, someone pissed in his breakfast cereal that morning.
Hot take.
Grunge had nothing to do with glam metal or sunset strip metal. Just like nothing ended grunge or the Seattle scene.
Regional scenes tend to not last more than a decade. It starts out strong with many great bands and albums but as the decade rolls on those early bands are now trying to get their 3rd or 4th record squeezed out of them and the record industry is giving the D list bands who aren’t very good record deals.
There are other factors of course including the demographic started to age and get fickle. I still love listening to much of the great music of the era all these years later.
Its not a hot take to say the major labels created glam metal and then they killed it. Created it by signing a ton of bands that played that style and they spent a ton of money on them to get them all over the radio and MTV and make them popular. They have done that with every rock subgenre that they made popular. Sign a ton of bands, dump a bunch of money into them to see what hits and then eventually pull the plug and move on to something else. Nowadays there's no popular rock or metal movement or genre as the major labels now have decided to turn pop stars and rappers into "rockers" and sign solo artists off of Tiktok and build bands around them. Very different music industry nowadays since the money in it is a shell of what it once was. Thankfully rock and metal still has a home on the independent labels and you can listen to bands playing whatever subgenres you like.
@@Chaz4543 yeah I agree with almost everything you said, my pushback would be while record companies absolutely fund and fuel bands and scenes I don’t think they create anything as to Glam Metal or Grunge. Something hits and then the record industry pumps money into squeezing every dime out of it
@@quantumparadox2518 Well no they simply gave the bands a larger platform for more people to find out about them. Actually I did hear that some of the successful glam bands were indeed created in the studio in that it was 1 guy signed and they added a bunch of players/musicians around them which nowadays seems to be more common.
@@Chaz4543 that makes a ton of sense. Get a frontman put some session musicians around him and put him all over MTV
Bon Jovi - only band who survived Grunge . Women army is strong !
yep
I just remember what little "originality" any of those bands had left had already been spent by the time Nirvana reared their ugly heads and most of them were busy doing "third rate" covers of "classic rock songs" like "Cats In the Cradle", "Can't Find My Way Home", etc. Really bad stuff!
Never liked GNR …. Prefer Love/Hate
73 Todd Utopia on the midnight special
Utopia part was heavy..played heavy metal kids
I don't know how one goes from glam rock to the proggiest prog rock in only a years time, as prog, by its very defintion is "faceless"---nothing flashy about a band like Kansas, Rush, or Yes at all. Letting their music do the talking. But Utopia did it, and I suppose Roxy Music did, as well
Kiss and motley crue 🤟😎
as a teen buying casettes in the early 1980s, I bought Def Leppard's Pyromania and thought Shout at the Devil by the Crüe was hard af. by the end of the 80s I'd heard Black Flag, the Cramps, Love and Rockets, Swans, guitars were less wheedly-wheedly and more distorted and dirge-y for me at least.
I was in Los Angeles in 1988 and can confirm that then-and only then did Appetite for Destruction become massive. Nothing's Shocking by fellow local band, Jane's Addiction made an impact before Guns N' Roses did. the fall of glam (or as I recall it was called mainstream) metal seems more like a sea change, as the underground influences began to resonate more with mainstream audiences than the teased hair, spandex, and cheesy love ballads. I think glam fell into the trap of most popular genres and became homogenous, but no new categorization in rock music can occur without at least a handful of true originals that define them. to me they are:
1. Motley Crüe - you can't take those first 2 albums away from them
2. Night Ranger - the 1st record is pretty heavy
3. Y&T - they may have underground roots but they easily fit the glam metal tag by the time Mean Streets came out. they have some good records
Hair Metal couldn't last forever... At a certain moment, the party is over...
1985 86 was when hair metal took over alot of rock bands-artists from early 80s popularity fell off styx foreigner reo speedwagon billy squier saw their sales drop big time
And that was mostly because of MTV. In the early years of MTV---1981, 1982---things were pretty much still like they were in the 70s. Styx, REO, Journey, Kansas. 38 Special, could still be popular and any video channel worth their salt would be a fool not to at least include some "concert" videos of those bands. You could still get by being "faceless" But things changed when bands became more "visual", so the harder rocking bands had to become more "visual", too. And Def Leppard, Quiet Riot, Motley Crue looked better on TV. The earlier bands fell flat on their faceless faces trying to pretty themselves up for the camera. Poor Kevin Cronin and his "curly mullet" in 1985 just couldn't compete with David Lee Roth's crazy look and antics in his video. But those bands from the 70s never had to think about their looks before. If you didn't hear them on the radio, the only other time you could ever see what Styx looked like was in concert or on the back cover of their albums
@@impalaman9707 very true but that also became part of the problem inferior bands being signed based a lot on how they looked
@@bb-gc2tx I know because it was more about looks and less about ability
I will never forget reading articles where "artist" would outright say that the "look" was the important thing. How well you could play or write music was not the consideration. These fake cheap bands would, without shame at all, admit that they did not hire the better singer or player because they did not have the "look". That accepted philosophy produced some of the most terrible recorded music in history.
There's nothing glam about hair metal. I hate that term.
hair metal is still around in pop culture gunge bands have faded away. grunge won battle hair metal won the war
When gnr came out
I knew metal was dead 💀
GnR were massive.
Also I regard them more as a hard rock/rock n roll band. Not glam metal.
Nah Roxx Gang kicked ass. They were trashy sleaze metal which I like more than that Bon Jovi Poison stuff. Give me Spread Eagle over that stuff any day
Grown men. 😂
The Seattle sound lasted less than Glam metal. I find it the most throw away period of rock. It made Rock unlistenable to me. Glam metal was a good time. The contention none of these guys could play is ridiculous. Glam is not my favorite, but it is a genre I enjoy. Grunge is something I hate vociferously and find it to be atonal, glum, garbage.
They were both talented in their own ways. Problem was, it was one or the other.
Not one of your better podcasts. Nobody called it Hair Metal in the 80s?(ayfkm?) KISS were a glam band? AIDS killed Hair Metal? C'mon, guys. I'm thinking too much weed got smoked before this podcast.
No one said AIDS killed hair metal but the epidemic contributed to a change in societal attitude from a carefree anything goes sexual permissiveness to something else. The change could be seen in the lyrical content of the music. Perhaps you didn’t experience it?
there’s no way Kiss wasn’t a glam band, at least in attitude, look at their videos and appearance in the mid to late 80s, they were a glam band 💯 in fact look at asylum, they looked like one of the glamiest glam bands around
More like trans bands 😂
Oversaturation happened with the hair metal style, big bands releasing new albums with one good song and the obligatory ballad , disappointing fans with the rest of a weak album.. Nirvana although not much of a major change to the end of the hair scene offered another pop hook option.
When I heard Mother Love Bone in 1985 and Soundgarden in 1987 , I already knew the radio hair bands days were numbered , it was going to be taken over by them at some point in time, happened sooner than I thought
All of you are great, but Pete Jones killed it 🎉