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Sure, in today’s mindset it was sexist, offensive, tasteless, Neanderthal, misogynistic, exploitive, aggressive, and based entirely in fantasy … but that was the point.
Almost every person we spoke to for this book exhibited a single-mindedness, work ethic, confidence, and, yes, courage, that was nothing short of indomitable.
The price of admission to this rarefied world was to check your backup plan at the door and dedicate yourself to endless practice, relentless self-promotion, nonstop hustling, and, often, the gobbling of enough drugs and alcohol to kill a large dog or maybe a small horse—take your pick. This was total-immersion rock ’n’ roll.
For kids living far from the bright lights of the Strip or unable to sneak out to the shows, some consolation could be found in the fact that MTV served up a steady regimen of the aforementioned music videos—
Like the culture around them, most of the artists in this book have evolved and have also become fathers, mothers, and—yikes!—grandparents.
If anything, glam metal’s greatest sin was arguably that by the end of the ’80s it had begun to suffer from a total lack of imagination and was functioning largely by rote mimesis.
virtually every musician you will meet in this book saw his or her career disintegrate soon after September 24, 1991,
in the twenty-first century, a significant subset of fans can’t seem to get enough of this music. What once was dismissed as anachronistic schlock is the new classic rock.
The hard rock and hair metal fan base never went away—it just got older, became gainfully employed, and spawned children that wanna rock right along with them.
Refusing to be stymied by the indifference of the major labels, many young groups like Mötley Crüe and Ratt (then Mickey Ratt), adopted a do-or-die DIY approach, self-financing recordings and pouring their resources into over-the-top concert productions that were as flashy as they were foolhardy.
My friend and I went to Gazzarri’s to see Van Halen and the crowd was just incredible. A lot of girls; I always thought that bands who had a lot of girls going crazy were gonna make it big.
Well, after Van Halen got signed, then all of a sudden you see these bands like Mötley Crüe and Poison and, geez, what’s the common thread between all these bands? All their singers had bleached-out blond hair, they all wanted to be David Lee Roth.
EDDIE “FINGERS” OJEDA We got signed just in time because the drinking age went from eighteen to twenty-one and a lot of these places were going disco and doing DJs and that whole scene in New York dropped out.
DON DOKKEN I figured, well, Van Halen, that’s an unusual name. I’ll call it Dokken, you know? Rhymes with “rockin’!”
BOB NALBANDIAN The thing about a lot of these L.A. bands is that when they became famous, they weren’t new bands.
People didn’t know the history. They didn’t know that Nikki Sixx had been in London and all these different bands.
DEEDEE KEEL For me it was a natural transition to go from a band like the Dolls into a band like Mötley Crüe. It was the same thing, only more radical. It just got more crazy and more crazy.
Mötley were viewed as a throwback dinosaur that couldn’t play very well. But I rather thought that Too Fast for Love was kind of a glorious train wreck of a record that had a spirit to it and an attitude.
TRACII GUNS What they were able to do was create a lifestyle in the Hollywood music scene. Even the audience started dressing more and more like Mötley Crüe.
MIKE VARNEY Nobody ever came up in the clubs and did stuff like that. This was like a major arena show being done for, you know, four hundred people or something. That’s why the lore of W.A.S.P. grew so fast.
BLACKIE LAWLESS The whole germination came from The Road Warrior. Nobody ever picked up on that. We were astonished. We never got busted.
All this stuff, the raw meat box, the fire sign, the torture rack, we were just making it ourselves.
BLACKIE LAWLESS With all the props and everything, when we came out, we looked like a million bucks. We looked like we had huge money behind us. But we were broke—less than broke!
AL BANE That whole era, the bands that were succeeding were the bands that were pushing the limit on anything they could do. And it was because you had to draw a crowd. And at that point there were lots of crowds, right? But you had to draw them in.
BRIAN SLAGEL It was a total DIY effort in the beginning, way before the labels got into it. And it was a great scene back then. Very independent-minded.
BRET MICHAELS It was New York or Los Angeles, and L.A.’s warm and the chicks were better looking.
it wasn’t until the band delivered their second music video to the network, this time for their cover of Slade’s “Cum On Feel the Noize,” that Quiet Riot became a genuine mainstream phenomenon.
Metal Health would unseat the Police’s Synchronicity from the number one spot on the Billboard album chart and go on to sell six million copies, demonstrating beyond a shadow of a doubt that hard rock was anything but the “dinosaur music” it had recently been dismissed as.
The question at the major labels was no longer whether hard rock had commercial potential, but which acts in the genre had the most.
FRANKIE BANALI Quiet Riot and Twisted Sister, both bands had gone through different incarnations, up to the point that each band got signed and went out and did it. But essentially, you know, we weren’t ’80s bands. We were ’70s bands that had already paid enough dues to make it possible for us to really be able to appreciate the sort of gift that we got.
BILL HEIN One of the things that kept the major label A&R people away from Mötley Crüe was that it wasn’t trendy. It wasn’t new wave-y. It wasn’t what was happening at the time. It was raunchy metal, you know?
GUNNAR NELSON Mötley Crüe was trying to go after all the hot chicks, but Poison intentionally paid extra attention and were extra kind to the ugly fat chicks who actually were much more ardent fans. Those were the girls that, you just treat ’em with a little bit of respect, make them feel beautiful, and they’re loyal like you wouldn’t believe. Those girls were an army for Poison.
FRANKIE BANALI Dee has been really complimentary about how he had heard “Cum On Feel the Noize” and that was in part how Twisted Sister developed “We’re Not Gonna Take It.”
RIKKI ROCKETT Quiet Riot really, truly saved rock ’n’ roll. A lot of people don’t give them credit for that. Because at that time people were still stuck … They just wouldn’t let go of the new wave stuff. But the hard rock, heavy metal, rock ’n’ roll surge, Quiet Riot started that.
GEORGE LYNCH One of the things that was really strange is he brought in a truckload of video game machines, and he encouraged us to play them a lot, saying it would relax us in between takes.
DUFF MCKAGAN He had this ad that said, “Influences: Fear, Aerosmith, early Alice Cooper.” And his name was Slash. So I thought he was a punk rock guy like me.
BRET MICHAELS I got where Slash was coming from. But Bobby and Rikki saw it with C.C. It was one of our first arguments in the band. Because Slash fucking killed it. C.C. came in and barely learned our songs.
TRACII GUNS Izzy kept suggesting Adler, but Axl was just like, “No, I don’t want to play with that guy.” Finally, Steven came down to rehearsal and it sounded great. And Axl’s like, “Okay, fine.”
Axl and Izzy, I wouldn’t say they were best friends but they had a special bond where they were part of a team. Both of them came out to L.A. with nowhere to live. They slept in the street or in someone’s car or on a couch if they were lucky.
“It’s a time that’ll never happen again, in the history of music. It was just unadulterated fun. X-rated Disneyland, you know?” recalls Warrant’s Joey Allen.
Bands would print up hundreds, thousands, and sometimes even tens of thousands of flyers for a single show and carpet-bomb Sunset Boulevard with them, often ripping down and papering over one another’s handiwork.
I was so used to going to metal shows where it was all dudes, right? You go to a Poison show and it was, “Wow, there’s lots of girls here! And they’re dressed up. This is a big night out!” That to me was the thing that clicked. And it didn’t hurt that, you know, they could write hooky songs.
RIC BROWDE Bret wanted to be Kiss and I thought they needed to be a lightweight bubblegum group. They didn’t have the talent to be anything else.
MICK CRIPPS There was a lot of rivalry but there was also a lot of unity and people helping each other out. Because it was a small scene and you didn’t have the internet or any of those kind of means of marketing and stuff. It was all word of mouth and just getting out there and doing it.
TRACII GUNS Before us you had Ratt and Mötley Crüe and W.A.S.P. and Great White, guys like that that are a little older and were in a way a part of the end of the ’70s rock scene.
And the void was being filled by Poison and Guns N’ Roses and L.A. Guns and Faster Pussycat and Jetboy,
The definition of management is that you’re obliged to supply the spontaneous on demand. And I’ll tell you, when Guns N’ Roses provided the spontaneous, it was fucking spontaneous. And it was magical.
NIKKI SIXX With Theatre of Pain we figured out how to take the drum riser and have it lean all the way forward so you could actually get a view of what it looked like to watch Tommy play a drum solo.
PETER PHILBIN Did Russ Meyer like the band? Here’s the real answer: I don’t know. But there’s a rule I have: When you hear “yes,” quit negotiating.
GINA ZAMPARELLI The one thing I saw about Mötley Crüe was they understood overkill. They were, like, guerrilla marketers. I don’t even know how many they made … ten thousand posters, thousands of flyers. Stickers everywhere.
