Monday, October 25, 2010

SPOTLIGHT: Decline of Hair Metal pre-"Nevermind"

There's a common narrative that has long since spilled over from academic / journalist circles into public discourse: in 1991, hair metal bands like Poison, Motley Crue, Winger, etc still ruled over the kingdom of pop music, their reign unchallenged and seemingly bulletproof until Nirvana came along in September of that year and banished the hairspray and Spandex brigade to the hinterlands, never to be heard from again.

Well, I'm not here to argue the idea that Nevermind changed the popular music landscape - that it certainly did - but there is a decided bit of myth making to the other end of the argument that it's high time was exposed, that being the idea that hair metal was still in a sanguine state at the time. On the contrary, as we'll see below, hair metal peaked around 1987-88 and by two years later was already a shadow of its former self.



And so, without getting into a full blown history of the genre, it's safe to say that the rise of hair metal was tied pretty closely to the spread of MTV in cable-ready households. Scoring early crossover hits in Quiet Riot's cover of "Cum on Feel the Noize", Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It", and several singles off of Def Leppard's Pyromania album - all of which had prominent and hugely popular music videos on MTV circa 1983/84 - it would take a few more years of one off hits before a full blown frenzy for all things glam would take the reins of the zeitgeist.

Bon Jovi really got the ball rolling in 1986 with their mega-smash Slippery When Wet album, which was still churning out hit singles a year later when a slew of classic hair bands put out career-defining records: Whitesnake's 1987 (titled simply Whitesnake for the American market); Aerosmith's Permanent Vacation; Kiss' Crazy Nights (probably career-defining in all the wrong ways, but still a popular comeback record at the time); Great White's Once Bitten...; Motley Crue's Girls, Girls, Girls; Def Leppard's Hysteria; and, of course, Appetite for Destruction by the once venerable Guns N' Roses. Add to that acclaimed second tier releases by White Lion, Faster Pussycat, Dokken and others, and regardless of how you feel about hair metal qualitatively you have to either admire or envy the depth of riches the genre was pumping out in 1987.

The following year saw the aforementioned albums continuing to produce hit singles, all of which kept their parent bands out on the road (the better to milk said singles), so 1988 was the year for brand new bands to get the record deals and vie for second tier dominance: Bulletboys, Britny Fox, Winger, L.A. Guns, Warrant, etc. There were also a handful of established bands that graduated to greater publicity - Kix, Lillian Axe, Hurricane - as well as a couple of bands that helped Bon Jovi lay the commercial groundwork with hit singles in 1986 but, as a result of being on the road, leap frogged 1987 and didn't get around to sophomore albums until the following year: Cinderella and Poison.

And so, sales-wise things seemed to peak for the glam / hair metal genre around 1988, but there was also trouble in paradise... while veteran bands like Whitesnake, Bon Jovi and Def Leppard were enjoying career peaks and numerous upstarts were getting their time in the sun, there were also a few established acts that were starting to show chinks in their armor with lackluster releases that year:

- Ratt's Reach for the Sky had one minor hit with "Way Cool Jr", but quickly succumbed to market saturation and cold indifference from hardcore fans who didn't appreciate the poppier sound as compared to the previous records.

- Europe, whose 1986 album The Final Countdown vied with Slippery When Wet for chart ubiquity that year, followed it up with Out of This World, which - like Ratt's Reach for the Sky - had a solitary minor single with "Superstitious" and then was quickly forgotten. Even Ratt never really rebounded from the disaster of Reach for the Sky, and they'd managed to establish a loyal following over the years with several quality albums, so you can imagine how quickly the public turned their back on Europe when they failed to produce.

The whole churning trend - where some bands experienced career peaks while others headed for permanent decline - continued into 1989.

- Comebacks: Alice Cooper (Trash)

- Holding steady: Motley Crue (Dr. Feelgood), Aerosmith (Pump), Great White (...Twice Shy)

- New(er) bands making waves: Skid Row (Skid Row), Tesla (The Great Radio Controversy), Mr. Big (Mr. Big), Extreme (Extreme)

- Falling off a cliff: Kiss (Hot in the Shade), Whitesnake (Slip of the Tongue), White Lion (Big Game)

In addition, there were a number of new bands that were heavily promoted but for various reasons didn't quite take with the public: Kingdom Come, Bang Tango, Enuff Z'Nuff, Nitro, Leatherwolf, etc.

Essentially, the above trends played out over the course of the next year or two to rapidly diminishing returns. 1990-91 had its share of hits in the glam idiom, but many of the breakthrough bands of 1988-89 failed to recapture similar success on their sophomore albums (see Skid Row, Bulletboys, Faster Pussycat, etc). We'll start by acknowledging what was still working at the turn at the decade.

HITS:

AC/DC "Thunderstruck"

Not exactly a hair metal band in the classic sense, AC/DC nonetheless found renewed life amongst mainstream metal fans with 1990's The Razors Edge. Their previous record, 1988's Blow Up Your Video, had been a modest success following the career trough of Flick of the Switch and Fly on the Wall, but Video's appeal was mostly limited to hardcore fans and the Headbangers Ball crowd. The Razors Edge became a bona fide crossover smash, eventually selling five million copies and yielding more hit singles than any album since 1980's classic Back in Black.



Scorpions "Wind of Change"

Another veteran band experiencing a revival of public interest around this time, the Scorpions had seemingly become one of those bands that are content to put out half assed albums every couple of years, touring largely on the back of an extensive greatest hits catalog, but somehow they pulled their heads out of their asses briefly in 1990 before going back to largely not giving a shit.



Extreme "Hole Hearted"

This Boston quartet had gotten a furtive look by the masses on their self titled debut in 1989, but it was Pornograffiti that defied the curse of the sophomore slump and propelled them to enormous popularity... if only briefly. "More Than Words" was obviously the smash hit from this album, but "Hole Hearted" got its fair share of airplay as well, and this seems as good a time as any to start illustrating how power ballads went from being a single, token "chick song" on mainstream metal albums to actually beginning to dominate them... a trend you can largely blame on Bon Jovi, though it was probably inevitable one way or another.



Firehouse "All She Wrote"

One of the few hair band success stories of 1990 to just then be putting out their debut album, Firehouse for many epitomize the genre's shift from an accessible yet faithful updating of the 70s hard rock tradition to a new form of blatantly pandering, corporate pop. Listening to swill like "Love of a Lifetime", "Don't Treat Me Bad" and "When I Look Into Your Eyes" it's hard to argue that contention, but "All She Wrote" offers a rare glimpse into slightly edgier songwriting skills that would have won favor in the glam underground even in 1984, let alone amongst the relatively barren dregs of 1990.



Slaughter "Up All Night"

Basically the "other" debut hair band making waves in 1990, Slaughter similarly had a one album breakthrough before the wheels fell off the genre. In a way, Mark Slaughter was like the Billy Corgan of his era, with one of those voices that no one seemed to have a problem with at the time, but once his group fell out of favor it became a sort of foci on everything that was wrong with the band, if not the genre as a whole.

By the way, you're not misremembering: there was an official video released for this song, but it's one of those that the record label for some reason feels they need to maintain exclusivity over, and I'll be damned if I redirect you to their ad-heavy Youtube page just because some corporate lacky decided to disable the embedding.



And finally, it's noteworthy enough to mention that Warrant did have the biggest hit of their career in 1990 with "Cherry Pie", but even a hair metal apologist like me couldn't live with myself if I forced that link upon you, so if you really need to relive old glories I'll pause for a moment while you go do what you gotta do.

Done?

Poison "(Flesh and Blood) Sacrifice"

As 1989 came to a close there was no band on Earth bigger than Poison. To understand how big Poison were, you have to look at how huge Bret Michaels is right now, and imagine to yourself that he got that popular for making music instead of wearing a bandanna and maintaining a six pack well into his 40s. Poison's third album, Flesh and Blood, was released in June of 1990 and yielded four top 40 hits, of which "(Flesh and Blood) Sacrifice" was not one of them.

So why am I including it here at the expense of monster chart entries like "Something to Believe In" or "Ride the Wind"? Because the hits are indicative of why - in spite of continued public interest - Flesh and Blood was Poison's shark jumping moment. "Something to Believe In", while not necessarily a poor man's ballad, was nonetheless a blatant attempt at recapturing the attention that "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" brought the band; "Ride the Wind" isn't horrible either, but between the clichéd "freedom of the biker" theme and the overproduced Bruce Fairbairn gloss it's 100% representative of what killed the genre; "Life Goes On" actually is a poor man's ballad, and the less said about "Unskinny Bop" the better.

That leaves "(Flesh and Blood) Sacrifice", which I literally didn't even know was released as a single until right now, and though it's a little weak in the hook department it at least retains a bit of the old yearning tone and the fire in the belly. I guess my final take on Flesh and Blood the album is that it's a mere carbon copy of Poison's previous successes, a poor one at that, and that it only produced as many hits as it did because Poison were so huge that they were riding the crest of massive goodwill and popular momentum, ie. people really, really wanted to like everything they put out... until CC got canned and made them a lot easier to hate. Either way, I include this here under the header of HITS but I saved it for last because in spite of its contemporary success it still represents the last gasp for the genre in several demonstrable ways.



MISSES:

Extreme "Get the Funk Out"

Extreme in both columns? Ohhhhhhhhh, yeah. Can you blame me? The truth is Pornograffiti yielded a slew of singles but the only ones anyone ever cared about were the ballads... and you wonder why the rockers stopped actually rocking. Of course, when your best efforts at upholding the 70s hard rock tradition are the likes of "Get the Funk Out" you can't entirely blame the fickle nature of the public.



Ratt "Lovin' You's a Dirty Job"

This was actually a much bigger hit than "Way Cool Jr" but I'm slating it anyway because a) it's a shit, corporate pop song by a band that used to gleefully exemplify all that was sleaze, and b) it was easily their last stab at any level of radio play whatsoever.



Trixter "Give It To Me Good"

This was actually a fairly big hit, so what am I doing including it here? Because it had no more relation to hair metal than Nelson, Jackyl or Ugly Kidd Joe did, and the fact that the public was willing to be spoon fed these groups under the loose confines of the glam umbrella tells you about all you need to know concerning their loyalty to those genre conventions circa 1990. Also, the fact that the guys in Trixter just so happen to be wearing flannel shirts in this video - which some of them have converted into FUCKING WIFE BEATERS! - over a year before anyone outside of the Pacific Northwest knew what grunge was is the type of "passing the torch" symbolism that couldn't possibly be scripted.



And there you have it. 1991 was so bereft of quality mainstream metal that it almost makes 1990 look like the golden age by comparison. I mean, Guns N' Roses put out their dual Use Your Illusions efforts in 1991 but by then they had transcended any semblance of glam genre trappings, so attempting to co-opt them as an example of hair metal remaining healthy until Nevermind knocked its dick in the dirt would be, at the very least, a bitchslap-worthy offense.

Actually in 1991 there just weren't many glam albums coming out PERIOD ... everyone was either stuck in the middle of a two year touring binge or suffering through the first of many breakups. The few hair bands that did release albums in 1991 had obviously spent so much time touring that not a lot of time and effort was put into penning quality material (see Bulletboys, Tesla, White Lion, Alice Cooper, etc); by that point in a band's major label gestation period the album is just Product, and touring is the label's version of going door-to-door selling magazine subscriptions; ie. they don't really give a shit what it says in the articles.

Speaking of "product", 1991 none too coincidentally saw the first wave of greatest hits packages: Ratt, Motley Crue, even Poison if you want to call out the live album for the anthologized filler product that it is (Swallow This Live naturally came equipped with four new studio tracks, one of which - "So Tell Me Why" - became Poison's last hurrah on top 40 radio. The live portion also featured a lengthy solo by CC Deville, which is made all the more ironic since it would be his horrible guitar playing that got him kicked out of the band that same year).

So, in the end, it's a little disingenuous to give grunge credit for sniping a hearty genre from its well defended perch... the truth is hair metal had already gone deep into decline at least a year prior, for the same reasons every other musical trend du jour does: media oversaturation, bands going from being some A&R guy's pet project to being the record label's bread and butter and the subsequent micro-management, etc etc.

And yet, the narrative lives on... probably because we like to believe in the back of our minds that a similar David & Goliath story is right around the corner every time radio kicks real guitar rock to the curb in favor of the glossy, pre-packaged glitz of Lady Gaga or some bling-happy MC who is really only rapping just long enough to get his acting career off the ground. If anything, the modern David & Goliath story has nothing to do with dueling musical genres, it's more like radio vs internet. The radio represents the snake oil salesmen instead of the bands, and the internet offers both an enormous well of underground talent as well as a new trend every 15 minutes if that's your bag. So even if it doesn't mean anything in 2010 to have a top 40 hit anymore, few of us old school fans would ever want to go back.

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