Fargo Rock City (5 page)

Every so often, guitar magazines come out with a list that's usually titled something like “The 100 Greatest Axe Gods—Ever!” Sometimes Edward Van Halen is number one on the list, and sometimes he's number two behind Jimi Hendrix. The Eddie-Jimi battle goes back and forth from poll to poll. Ironically, Eddie always seems to fall back to number two anytime Van Halen releases a new record. This is because almost every new Van Halen album is horrifically disappointing. But Eddie still scores very well whenever people are
waiting
for a new Van Halen LP, because it makes all those young guitar hopefuls hearken back to “Eruption.” (And for those of you who actually care which of these people
is
the better player, the answer is Hendrix. Van Halen remains the most influential guitar player of all time, but only because nobody can figure out how to rip Hendrix off.)

In a now-ancient MTV special about hair bands, Kurt Loder credits Van Halen with introducing a “faster, less heavy” version of metal that pulled it out of the underground. On this issue, Kurt is absolutely correct. Edward's pyrotechnic fret hammering splintered the stereotype of who listened to heavy metal. He gave hard rock musical credibility. He made college girls like it, because you could certainly shake your ass to all the good Van Halen songs (there's never been better summer music than “Dance the Night Away”). But it was still
metal.
It was still long-haired, drunken, show-us-your-tits rock 'n' roll.

However, Van Halen's philosophy did sacrifice one element of the classic metal equation: the sludge. For reasons no one will ever understand, Van Halen took the majority of their influences from Grand Funk Railroad. This is not to say that Grand Funk wasn't a decent group; it merely means they didn't seem to influence
anybody
else (with the possible exception of Autograph, who covered the Railroad's “We're an American Band”). And—apparently—this is too bad, because there are about a kajillion horrible bands who claim they were influenced by Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin. Maybe Grand Funk Railroad knew something everyone else missed (although Autograph completely sucked, so I guess nothing is certain in this world).

Over the past two decades, Eddie Van Halen has taken to citing Eric Clapton as the man who made him want to become a guitar player. This is probably true. Of course, it's almost impossible to hear Clapton's influence in Van Halen's music. I've searched for it, and it's not there. On “House of Pain,” the last cut on
1984,
Eddie opens with a delicious guitar intro, and at the very end (just before the lyrics start), there is a certain bluesy quality to how he finishes the riff. That's about as Claptonesque as Van Halen gets.

This, of course, is a good thing. Eddie and Eric are certainly among the greatest rock guitarists who ever lived, but for totally different reasons. Listening to Clapton is like getting a sensual massage from a woman you've loved for the past ten years; listening to Van Halen is like having the best sex of your life with three foxy nursing students you met at a Tastee Freez. This is why rock historians and intellectuals feel comfortable lionizing Eric Clapton, even though every credible guy in the world will play Van Halen tapes when his wife isn't around.

A lot of that credit must go to David Lee Roth. Roth is not exactly a “musician,” but he always understood the bottom line: If Eddie had decided to become Pete Townshend, David Lee Roth would never have become David Lee Roth. And—as is so often the case—one man's selfishness ultimately worked to the benefit of everybody. Roth demanded that Van Halen had to be about a lifestyle, specifically
his
lifestyle (or even more specifically, a lifestyle where you tried to have sex with anything in heels). Philosophically, his sophomoric antics limited Eddie; Mr. Van Halen really couldn't develop his classical virtuosity when his frontman was trying to hump the mic stand and scream like Tarzan. But in tangible terms, it made Eddie better. Instead of being an artist trying to make art, Eddie was forced to become an artist trying to make noise—and the end result was stunning. Within the stark simplicity of “Jamie's Cryin',” you can hear the shackled complexity of a genius. It has more artistic power than anything he could have done consciously. And that was obvious to just about everyone, including drug-addled teenagers. It's no
coincidence that the
Circus
magazine readers' poll cited Van Halen as “Disappointment of the Year” in 1985, '86, '87, and '88 (the four years following Roth's departure).

So there you have it: a hard rock band that wasn't ponderous and trippy (like Vanilla Fudge) or poppy and sloppy (like the Ramones). Instead of the Hammer of Thor, it was an assault from a thousand guerrilla warriors, all consumed with getting laid. Though the term wasn't yet applicable, those first two Van Halen albums created a future where metal would be “glamorous,” both visually and musically. Marc Bolan knew how glam rock was supposed to look, but Eddie Van Halen invented how it was supposed to sound.

Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen loses his left arm in a car accident.

Speaking of Marc Bolan, aren't car accidents weird? I mean, they're obviously
bad,
but every car accident I've experienced has been more memorable for how totally bizarre it seemed.

Like all North Dakota farm kids, I started driving in fifth grade. People from urban (or even semiurban) areas are always amazed—and sometimes terrified—when I tell them this, but it still seems perfectly normal to me. North Dakota farm kids are expected to work like adults, so they start driving trucks and tractors long before junior high (I was driving
to school
in eighth grade). And even though I was a majestically appalling farmhand who spent most of his youth trying to avoid dirt at all costs, I was still granted the obligatory opportunity to start driving at the age of eleven: My dad put me in a Chevy Silverado 4x4 and told me to drive across an empty field of recently harvested barley. I must have done okay, because I was driving on actual roads six weeks later. Of course, ten months after that I put our Silverado in the ditch for the first time, thereby starting a long career of absolutely catastrophic highway destruction.

This may sound trite, but things really do slow down when you're about to have an auto wreck. There's that little moment of clarity where you remain spookily calm and find yourself thinking something ridiculously understated, such as, “Gosh, this is going to be problematic.” But as soon as your paws instinctively clutch
the steering wheel with nature's biological death grip, everything kicks into overdrive: The vehicle suddenly moves in three different directions at once, there is a horrific metallic sound coming from
somewhere,
and every fabric of your existence is pushing the brake pedal into the floorboard. The impact happens in half a moment. And then—just as suddenly—everything stops. And
then
you freak out. That's when it feels like your heart is going to explode, and you feel your hand shake as you inexplicably turn off the radio (which, for some reason, is always the first thing I do whenever I crash). The scariest part of any car accident is the first thirty seconds (when you realize you're not dead).

However, I'm guessing this might not be true if the seat belt lops off your arm at the shoulder, which is what happened when Def Lep skinbeater Rick Allen rolled his black Corvette Stingray on New Year's Eve in 1984. I'm guessing he probably just went into shock, which would explain why he was found wandering around the Sheffield countryside, searching for the severed appendage that had once pumped out the fills for “Rock of Ages.”

At this point, I am tempted to say something highly stylized and sensational, such as “News of Allen's tragic mishap crossed the Atlantic with supersonic immediacy.” However, that would not be accurate. Oh, I suppose it
technically
did (I'm sure I could locate an Allen snippet on the AP wire from 1-1-85 if I looked hard enough), but this incident never seemed like “breaking news” to anyone I knew—and I knew
a lot
of Def Leppard fans. It was more like a weird rumor that was almost crazy enough to be true, and—of course—it was.

To be honest, I remember a lot more conversation about the wreck Vince Neil had caused three weeks earlier, which killed Hanoi Rocks drummer Razzle Dingley (I'll discuss that fiasco at length when we get to 1991, and—I assure you—my decision to place this event six years in the future will make sense when we get there). I suppose Allen's situation made me wonder what would happen with Def Lep's next release, although the concept
of Allen staying in the group never seemed remotely possible. And the fact that he eventually
did
overcome such overwhelming, unbelievable adversity should have blown my mind; it should have made me think that Def Leppard was the greatest fucking band in the world. However, this did not happen. What I mostly remember about Allen's stunning recovery is that I immediately started to hate Def Leppard, because I felt they had quit making heavy metal.

I'm guessing that most readers are now asking some fairly reasonable questions: “Huh? Wazzuh?” This leads to a whole new battery of abstract inquiries: Here again, what exactly are we referring to when I say “heavy” metal? Moreover, what qualifies a band as metallic? What makes a metal band “glam”? Can a “glam metal” band also be a “speed metal” band? Is a “death metal” band always a “speed metal” band? And—perhaps most importantly—is there a difference between being a “rock” band and being a “metal” band (because musicians certainly seem to think so)?

Few people understand the magnitude of these debates. Back in little old Wyndmere, there were four hot-button issues that could never be settled without someone getting shoved: Chevy vs. Ford, Case-IH vs. John Deere (that's right, an argument about
tractors,
if you can fucking believe it), whether or not the Minnesota Vikings sucked, and whether or not Def Leppard was a “metal” band or a “rock” band (the latter term being an insult). Looking back, the answer seems completely obvious:
Of course
Def Leppard was a metal band. If an alien landed on earth tomorrow and asked me what heavy metal sounded like, I'd probably play “Let It Go” off
High N' Dry.
“Let It Go” is not my favorite song (or even my favorite track off that album), but the main riff has the indisputable (yet completely intangible) “feel” of what
heavy metal
is. Moreover, Joe Elliott's voice epitomizes the strain of melodic arena rock, which is probably the best synonym for prototypical heavy metal.

Still, Def Lep was constantly under suspicion of being “poseurs,” the ultimate attack leveled by any metal maniac.
Here's the opening line from a letter to the magazine
Hit Parader
from March of 1985: “I would like to know why so many people are so obsessed with groups like Duran Duran, Culture Club, the Thompson Twins and Def Leppard,” asks a reader from Denham Springs, Louisiana. What we were too dumb to realize was that the guys in Def Leppard hated the term “heavy metal,” and any member of the band would have given his right arm to avoid the label (except for Rick Allen, I suppose).

But before we try to explain why Def Leppard wanted to avoid the metal label, let's try to understand why some of my friends were unwilling to grant them the title (and—as ashamed as I am to admit this—
I was part of the anti-Def Leppard contingent!
). We didn't think Def Lep was worthy of respect for lots of reasons, all of which were about as sensible as the reasons for believing in the existence of the Loch Ness Monster. But here were two of them:

 

•
Def Leppard made a great album, and then they made a bad one that was even more popular.
Everyone loved
Pyromania,
including antimetal people. It was the single biggest reason metal sales jumped from 8 percent of the market in 1983 to 20 percent in 1984. At the time, the only bigger album in the universe was Michael Jackson's
Thriller. Pyromania
was one of the cornerstones of the genre. But then Def Lep released
Hysteria.
Ultimately,
Hysteria
would sell even more units, but success wasn't the problem. The problem was that
Pyromania
seemed like a metal record that crossed into a lot of other demographics because it was so damn good. However,
Hysteria
seemed like it had been specifically made for nonmetal fans. “Pour Some Sugar On Me” sounded like a paint-by-number portrait of what producer Mutt Lange assumed would pass for heavy metal. Even worse, the rest of the record was one long power ballad, which points directly to the main reason Def Leppard couldn't be trusted.

•
Girls liked it way, way too much.
With the possible exception of Floridian porn rap, no genre of music was ever more obsessed
with getting snatch than '80s glam metal. The Los Angeles scene (Mötley Crüe, W.A.S.P., Faster Pussycat, et al.) was particularly pedantic about this pursuit. And since teenage glam audiences were almost entirely composed of horny teenage males, it made for an effective marriage of ideas. The painfully obvious irony is that fans only liked the
image
of women in the scope of metal. Feminists would say the young males were “threatened” by the idea of girls digging hard rock, but—in reality—that had almost nothing to do with it. The distaste came from what a female audience reflected. Since no one could agree on what metal was (or which bands qualified), the only gauge was to look around and see who was standing next to you at a concert. That became your peer group; for all practical purposes, you were the people standing next to you. The metal genre is fundamentally about its audience and always has been. So when girls named Danielle who wore Esprit tank tops suddenly embodied the Def Leppard Lifestyle, it clearly indicated that Def Leppard no longer represented the people who had comprised the core audience for
On Through the Night.
As a shooting guard on our high school basketball team, I recall traveling to an away game and listening to our vapid cheerleaders sing at the front of the bus; they were singing “Armageddon It” and “Love Bites.” That alone was indisputable proof that
Hysteria
sucked.