Fargo Rock City (33 page)

Sometimes this assumption was right. Obviously, you had Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads. Both of those players were raised with classical backgrounds, and one assumes they would have been wonderful talents in whatever sonic medium they pursued. There seems to be a universal belief that someone like Rhoads could have been a world-class oboe player, if that had been the cool thing to do. Of course, Rhoads gets a little extra credit for having died in a plane crash. Nonbreathing people get all the breaks. Clearly, the easiest way to become “great” is to get “good” and then get “dead.” Rhoads is now an axe legend and will be forever (relatively speaking), and his work on those early Osbourne albums
is
—at the very least—very good. But was he as great as everyone seems to remember? Maybe, but probably not.

“I've never seen anyone become a better fucking guitar player by dying than Randy Rhoads,” Lemmy Kilmister told me in
1998. “Nobody ever talked about him when he was alive, but suddenly everyone started saying he's some kind of fucking genius. He was a nice guy and a very good guitarist, but he wasn't a Hendrix or a Clapton or anything like that.”

Whether or not Rhoads was really that great really isn't the issue, though. The issue is that his style—and particularly his “goal,” for lack of a better term—has been copied exhaustively. So has Eddie Van Halen's (to an even larger degree), as well as that of guys like Ritchie Blackmore and Jeff Beck. These ardent followers were the patron saints of the whole “guitar school” chic movement that spawned some of the dullest music of the late twentieth century.

The music of Yngwie Malmsteen was shit. It was virtually unlistenable. Like an intricately designed maze that went nowhere, it epitomized pretension—which was exactly what so much of the era's good metal never had. Malmsteen was cursed by three things: a tremendous amount of technical musical prowess, the complete absence of any musical soul, and a horrific unwillingness to pick a stage name. No rock guitarist ever fused classical influences to metal with such unabashed abandon; he even preferred song titles like “Icarus' Dream Suite.” At the time of his greatest glory (which was never really ever, but for the sake of argument we'll say 1985), all the guitar mags loved raving about the genius that was Yngwie: a speed demon who could jam a million shrieking notes into half a breath, and did so under the premise of art. He called his debut album (and his backing band)
Rising Force,
and that was how the hard rock community initially perceived him. There was a moment in time when metal insiders suspected that the future of metal was held in the rapid-fire paws of Malmsteen; even though he hadn't sold that many records, there was a strong belief that—in time—
every
metal band would sound like Yngwie Malmsteen.

But Malmsteen never sold records. He did not reinvent metal. In fact, he never even became famous; today, he's remembered only by obsessive guitar freaks (and by people who like to make fun of '80s metal, I suppose).

Ultimately, Yngwie had four problems. One was the ridiculous name, which wasn't really his fault since he was Swedish, the Holy Land of ridiculous names. Another was his attitude, and that was his own fault. Malmsteen openly referred to himself as a genius and constantly attacked the metal genre, even though that was his only audience. He was flatly unlikeable. A third was his musical direction. Regardless of its sonic merits, Malmsteen's style made the mistake of moving metal away from its roots. He never seemed to understand that he was really playing for an updated version of the kids who loved Sab and Zep, two groups who were really just heavy blues bands. When you listened to a record like
Odyssey,
you never really knew what it was—it sounded like rock, but it didn't
seem
like it. There was nothing visceral or angry about it, the songs were sterile, almost robotic. Malmsteen took the blues out of rock 'n' roll, and the sex and drugs disappeared with it.

But the real problem (number four) with Malmsteen's music is what I stated before: It was boring. In fact, it seemed to create a whole new way for music to suck. It was boring in that way that made you feel vaguely ashamed, kind of like reading
Moby-Dick
or A1 newspaper stories about Kosovo. It made your eyes glaze over; the instrumentals would play on and on, the pyrotechnic scales would climb higher and higher, and it gave you nothing but tinnitus.

Now, that criticism is not the same as suggesting Malmsteen's material
said
nothing, because most metal said nothing (and sometimes even less). Music that doesn't have a point is totally acceptable. But this kind of rock—this so-called impressive metal—wasn't even fun. It was laborious. Critics like to accuse '80s metal of being pompous, and I usually disagree with that assessment; I don't think the majority of hard rock bands displayed as much pretension as the alternative bands who replaced them. But the handful of metalheads who were the exception to that rule took pomposity to an entirely different level.

For the most part, these were all guitar guys. I remember reading an article where Steve Vai actually referred to himself as
a “guitar god.” It was a really lousy article, so my hope is that Vai was being sardonic and the journalist somehow didn't pick up on it. But part of me thinks Vai was probably being serious. After all, he did make an instrumental album called
The Passion and the Warfare,
and the whole thing sounded like one song. I guess that was the point: that passion
is
warfare. Which I assume most people agreed with anyway, even before they heard fourteen consecutive guitar solos.

Dokken was a really boring band, mostly because George Lynch is a supposedly “incredible” guitarist. I can barely remember how any Dokken songs go, because the melodies had no hook. Living Colour was sometimes very good, but sometimes extraordinarily dull; once again, the blame falls on the talent of the guitarist, in this case Vernon Reid. Reid can be very cool on occasion. He rips shit up on the Public Enemy song “Sophisticated Bitch” but he works so hard at the “less is more” guitar philosophy that he somehow manages to jam excess simplicity into every song, ultimately turning all that “nothing” into “too much something.” Joe Satriani surfed with an alien, but mostly it was stupid. Every Whitesnake song that wasn't a smash single is for narcoleptics only, especially when the aforementioned “guitar god” joined the group (Vai was much better when he was with David Lee Roth, mostly because Dave told him to scrap the Guitar Institute bullshit and just get out and push). I also recall a lot of people insisting that Europe and Enuff Z'Nuff were a bunch of long-haired geniuses—
Rolling Stone
even compared Enuff to the Beatles, and I guess both bands did sing about girls named Michelle—but everyone who liked to rock out thought they were crap. For those of you keeping score at home, Europe is remembered for the single “The Final Countdown.” Enuff Z'Nuff is remembered for nothing, except maybe for that
Rolling Stone
thing (and that might be an urban legend).

Another good reason to hate heavy metal is Ted Nugent, or—more accurately—people who are
like
Ted Nugent. Every time I go to a big rock show, I see herds of these kind of men, and they
always make me wish I had the power to give people polio.

As a singular entity, Nugent is not wholly terrible. He didn't make much good music during the glam '80s, but his musical legacy was always within earshot. The vast majority of his best songs are about (or at least make reference to) vaginas, but his guitar playing has always been pretty bad-ass. All the hair bands who consistently ripped off the riff from “Cat Scratch Fever” usually hit pay dirt (L.A. Guns, for example). I tend to enjoy both of Nugent's songs that prominently feature the word “wang,” and the seemingly endless “Stranglehold” was a mainstay in Dr. Johnny Fever's playlist on
WKRP In Cincinnati.
So it's not like we didn't know who Terrible Ted was.

Even as a human, Ted is palatable. His “political” take on all that liberal, leftist bullshit is refreshing, and there's something weirdly charming about his maniacal desire to kill every deer in North America. I certainly have no qualms with the idea of killing animals. After years of research, I have come to the conclusion that animals enjoy being eaten; they think it's fun. If Ted wants to ice a few thousand ungulates before he takes his own dirt nap, I won't hold it against him.

My problem with Ted Nugent is that guys who aspire to be like him—or just
are
like him by default—make me feel ashamed for liking hard rock. They have no sense of humor, and they beat people up and they kill cats for no reason. They get totally fucked up on Budweiser anytime they're in public; if they smoke pot, they only do so when they're already drunk, so they never get mellow (it just makes them a little less predictable, which isn't necessarily good). Once you become friends with these people (and if you're from a small town, you will), you can never relax. If you get drunk with these guys and pass out, they will write on your face with a black Magic Marker. They will literally piss all over you. They will steal your car and intentionally drive it into a ditch. Ex-cons always talk about how the rules of society don't apply inside the walls of a prison; I have to assume the penitentiary experience is akin to partying with a bunch of Nugent disciples.
If you're not consciously being an asshole to someone else, you will become a victim. And what can you do? Nothing. And why not?
Because these are your goddamn friends.

Over the past decade, the main band that is ridiculed for being a bunch of white trash imbeciles is Lynyrd Skynyrd. I honestly think a lot of that baggage came from an early clip of
Beavis & Butt-head
: In the very early
B & B
vignette (way back when it was only a four-minute segment on MTV's
Liquid Television
), a drunken, aging redneck declares that somebody should “Play some Skynyrd, man.” In a matter of months, this became a familiar taunt to toss toward idiots (I can't prove that this otherwise forgettable MTV moment was the absolute origin of the anti-Skynyrd movement, but it certainly seems more than coincidental). I can understand why Skynyrd is an easy target for ridicule; their overt appreciation of the Confederate flag made them seem a wee bit racist, and their overplayed, bourbon-soaked swamp rock seemed outdated the moment is was released. But the ignored reality is that Lynyrd Skynyrd was a brilliant collection of songwriters: Their records have a regional quality that's usually only heard in hip-hop or old country, and the lyrical content is remarkably gutsy (when you consider the demographic of their core audience, releasing an antigun anthem like “Saturday Night Special” could have been career suicide). The assertion that Skynyrd is the music of the dumb is unfortunate, even though it sometimes might be a little true. But if anyone should be shackled with that label, it should be Ted and his crossbow of doom.

Obviously, this is all pointing to a clear contradiction. The logical reader is asking, How can you attack Yngwie Malmsteen for being pretentious and “smart,” and then proceed to rip Ted Nugent for fostering low-grade humanity and being boorish and “dumb”? It would seem that the Motor City Madman presents a product that is perfectly opposed to the Swedish fretmonger, so it's hypocritical to despise them both.

But it's not.

It's not because they are not really opposites. They both suck,
but for totally unrelated reasons. Malmsteen was
pretentious
in the literal sense of the word—people often say “pretentious” when they mean artsy or conceited, but it really means pretending to be something you're not. Yngwie pretended he was a hard-rock Mozart because normal people didn't like his music. He used classical training to hide from his own mediocre songwriting. And by the same token, Nugent was
boorish
in the literal sense: He was clownish and rude, but in a rustic way. There was no theater or irony to his caveman persona, and it established the wrong kind of credibility. Sexist, jingoistic, anti-art rhetoric can be clever—but only if the motive behind it is to
entertain,
not to
persuade.

Right now, the most popular example of American low culture is professional wrestling. The World Wrestling Federation's
Raw Is War
is the most highly rated program on cable television, and Ted Turner's World Championship Wrestling is not far behind. Not surprisingly, the wrestling industry has a close relationship with heavy metal, particularly '80s metal. The most popular personality in the “sport,” Steve Austin, has his own compilation of rock anthems titled
Steve Austin's Stone Cold Metal
—it includes two KISS tracks, the Scorpions' “Rock You Like a Hurricane,” an old Def Leppard tune, and Austin's theme song “Stone Cold” by Rainbow. The WWF and the WCW both have multiple records that promote wrasslin' through metal (in fact, the WCW has a tag team sanctioned by KISS). Even the low-grade ECW (the industry's “extreme” third tier) has a pretty decent collection of metal acts covering other metal acts (Motorhead performs “Enter Sandman,” Bruce Dickinson does a Scorps song, etc.).

The connection between wrestling and metal is pretty obvious: They're both redneck obsessions dripping with wry humor. Pro wrestling particularly appeals to wife-beating trailer park residents, drunk college sophomores, and acerbic cultural pundits; that's pretty much the same audience for Mötley Crüe in 1999. Wrestling is not stupid—it only tries to look that way. And the same can probably be said for Ted Nugent. The danger is that the people who love wrestling (and metal) the most don't want to see
the joke. And it's not that they're fools who don't “get it”: They get it completely. They just prefer to consume the satire as reality. Self-righteous TV critics used to criticize
All in the Family
because they feared the audience would be confused by Archie Bunker's prejudices. What these critics were too stupid to realize is that people who related to Carroll O'Connor's character knew he was a bigot and they knew he was supposed to be a negative image.
That's why they liked him.