Fargo Rock City (6 page)

By virtue of this criteria, it would seem that heavy metal was a completely definable entity. And when I was a younger man, those guidelines did indeed seem totally clear. But as an adult, it's damn near impossible for me to make a comprehensive list of every '80s glam band that ever existed, because I've come to realize that metallurgy isn't an exact science. Nonetheless, zine editor Matt Worley did a pretty decent job in a 1995 issue of his publication
Lies
(which may or may not have taken its name from the 1988 Guns N' Roses EP). Here's his hit list: Bang Tango, Love/Hate, Smashed Gladys, Bon Jovi, Mother Love Bone, Poison, D'Molls, Cinderella, Dangerous Toys, Guns N' Roses, Tora Tora,
L.A. Guns, White Lion, Whitesnake, Great White, Little Caesar, Roxx Gang, Enuff Z'Nuff, Child's Play, Danger Danger, Snake Island, Spread Eagle, Kix, Shotgun Messiah, Warrant, Extreme, Vain, Dirty Looks, Dogs D'Amour, Faster Pussycat, D.A.D., Rock City Angels, Dokken, Skid Row, Royal Court of China, liquid jesus, Circus of Power, Katmandu, Kill For Thrills, Bulletboys, Junkyard, Kiss, Lord Tracy, Sleeze Beez, and, oh yeah, Mötley Crüe.

Well, Mr. Worley obviously forgot Helix. But he still did an admirable job of hitting most of the bands everyone else has forgotten. He only missed a handful of major notables: Ratt, Britny Fox, W.A.S.P., Lita Ford, Twisted Sister, Frehley's Comet, Vinnie Vincent Invasion, Winger, Hanoi Rocks, King Kobra, Fastway, Slaughter, the Sea Hags, Tuff, Tiger Tailz, Accept, Quiet Riot, Europe, Zebra, Helloween, Loudness, Autograph, Heavens Edge, Vixen, Tesla, Badlands, Stryper, EZO, Pretty Boy Floyd, Y & T, and Hurricane. I will grant that some of these additions are debatable; I'm sure a lot of these bands would vehemently insist that they were “just a rock 'n' roll band” and shouldn't be included under the amorphous parameters of metal. I read an interview Nikki Sixx gave after the release of the unremarkable Crüe reunion LP
Generation Swine,
and he was bemoaning the fact that a magazine listed Mötley Crüe, W.A.S.P., and Twisted Sister in the same sentence. He seems to think Mötley Crüe was far better and far different than those other groups, which is absolutely insane. Oh, they were better, but they certainly weren't different. Mötley, W.A.S.P., and Ratt were often discussed as a leather-clad trinity of L.A. metal excellence (Twisted Sister hailed from New York). In fact, Sixx personally thanked W.A.S.P.'s Blackie Lawless in the liner notes of
Shout at the Devil
. At one point, I'm pretty sure they were even in the same band (that group was called London, which remains best known for having all its most talented members quit in order to become rock stars with better bands).

Sixx's attitude is an unfortunate (and all too common) denial of his roots. Part of the reason '80s hard rock will never get
respect—even kitschy respect—is because so many of the major players have retroactively tried to disassociate themselves from all their peers. Disco didn't wrestle with this kind of shame: Even after it had been flogged like a dead horse, former discotheque superstars were still proud to be part of the phenomenon they built. Subsequently, it's become acceptable to play disco albums at parties. Nikki Sixx could learn a lot from Donna Summer.

The reason so many metal groups hate being lumped into the same category is that writers often turn the phrase “heavy metal” into “glam metal,” which is used interchangeably with “hair metal,” a term that purposefully ignores musical ability and classifies a band by its follicle volume. By the mid 1980s, it had actually become a savvy business move for some bands to pitch themselves as having no visual appeal whatsoever, because those groups fostered their own niche audience. Somehow, there was a working-class credibility in ugliness. The Scorpions were never dismissed as glammy, and neither were the equally unattractive guys in Krokus or the blues-loving idiots in Great White. AC/DC wasn't either. By lacking visual flair, they were granted street cred.

Even today, I don't consider Def Leppard a “glam” metal band, primarily for two reasons (neither of which is homeliness). The first is that they were already somewhat famous when makeup and hairspray became in vogue, so Lep kind of predates this period (when they released
On Through the Night
in 1980, they were a remarkably young teen quartet; in a lot of ways, they were pop metal's Silverchair). However, the main reason I don't call them glam is that I can barely remember how they dressed or how they looked. I once interviewed Theodore Gracyk, the author of an incredibly well researched and painfully dull book titled
Rhythm and Noise: An Aesthetics of Rock.
The only insightful point he made during our entire discussion was when he flippantly referred to Def Leppard as “the most imageless band who ever lived.” Def Lep was actually just a harder-rockin' version of faceless AOR bands like Journey and Boston. You never saw
them, except on MTV—and then you really only saw Joe Elliott. The other four guys blended together and were essentially interchangeable (except for Phil Collen, who sort of resembled an underfed frat boy). In and of itself, that wasn't too uncommon; 90 percent of metal nonvocalists all looked like the same guy. The difference was that Def Lep was incredibly popular—way too popular to be anonymous. There's no explanation as to why they were so nondescript. Prior to working on this book, I don't even know if
I
could have matched all five names to all five faces (or all seven faces, if you count the guy they kicked out for boozing and the guy who drank himself to death).

Clearly, the definition of heavy metal is a purely semantic issue. That being the case, let's get as semantic as possible.

Metal
is a visceral word. Standing alone, it doesn't really have a consistent connotation. If you're trying to protect something, keeping it in a “metal box” is good; if your tap water tastes “metallic,” that's bad. It's completely situational, but we can safely assume it's usually masculine, uncomfortable, and—by its very nature—manufactured.

In the opening pages of his book
Running with the Devil: Power, Gender and Madness in Heavy Metal Music,
Robert Walser talks about the dictionary definition of metal, and he prefers to portray metal music as a metaphor for power (in fact, the manuscript's first line is a quote from Rob Halford stating “metal is power”). That's a valuable insight, but it doesn't really get us any closer to understanding what makes a band a “metal band.” Walser's statement would indicate that either (a) metal bands are
always
about power, or (b) powerful bands
are
metal bands.

Certainly, we know the second statement is false. Patti Smith was pretty goddamn powerful, and no one's going to say Smith was her generation's Lita Ford. The same goes for Madonna and Liz Phair. Bruce Springsteen is a powerful character, as was John Lennon. So being a “powerful” artist obviously doesn't automatically make you a “metal artist.”

However, the first statement is a little more debatable. It does seem like performing heavy metal often illustrates the possession
of power. Mötley Crüe and W.A.S.P. literally wore metal on their bodies, almost like the way Hannibal dressed up his war elephants before kicking ass in the Alps. Keel's signature song was “The Right to Rock,” and its opening lyrics were akin to Mel Gibson's rah-rah speech from
Braveheart
: “All our life we've been fighting / For the right to take a stand.” And Halford's thesis that “metal is power” was completely true for his band, Judas Priest: Both lyrically and musically, Priest was
only
about power. Insipid PMRC spokesmodel Tipper Gore hated Priest, specifically for one song that had a lyric that even disturbed me: “I'm going to force you at gun point to eat me alive.” Even to me, that clearly seemed like a song about violence against women, and—as we all learned from
St. Elsewhere
—rape is not a “sex crime,” it's a “power crime.” Of course, Halford recently revealed that he's homosexual and always has been, so the song takes on a new, mind-blowing dimension. I suppose it actually validates Halford's longtime argument that the tune was purely a metaphor, but it's more intriguing to imagine thousands of homophobic teens singing along with a narrative about Halford demanding a blow job from another guy.

ANYWAY, I suppose it all comes down to what you define as “power” (which means we have to mosh through another wall of semantic bullshit). For example: Was Ratt about “power”? You could argue they were. The first cut off their hugely successful debut LP
Out of the Cellar
was “Wanted Man,” which implied that vocalist Stephen Pearcy was some kind of dangerous cowboy; according to my friend Greg's father, most tracks off
Invasion of Your Privacy
glorified prostitution. Yet Ratt never came across as threatening. They had the usual songs about sex and girls, but—if anything—Ratt seemed to be involved in relationships that didn't work, and there wasn't much they could do about it. “What comes around goes around,” crooned Pearcy. Well, yeah—I guess that's true. But what the fuck does that have to do with power? On “Back for More,” a girl is warned that if she keeps hanging around with her boyfriend, he'll screw her over … but she's obviously not dating anyone from Ratt. It's almost whiny; Pearcy's like a nerd
telling the prom queen she shouldn't date the quarterback because he likes to beat up freshmen. Philosophically, “Back for More” belongs on a Weezer record. My all-time favorite Ratt song is “You Think You're Tough,” but that was a sentiment the band members wouldn't have even applied to one another.

“[The term]
heavy metal
has become such a wide label,” Ratt bassist Juan Croucier said as early as 1985. “I remember when Blue Oyster Cult used that term in 1976, and I thought, ‘Okay, BOC is heavy metal and heavy metal is just the really hard stuff.' I would consider Ratt, more or less, to be fashion rock, FM-oriented, yet it's not as hard as Iron Maiden or Saxon … we feel that there could be more fashion in rock, outside of spikes and the dark leather look. I don't want to say that it should be more
GQ,
but it could be more colorful and up to date.”

Sometimes the power issue is elastic, even within the same group. KISS has always been driven by two forces, Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons. Whenever they're caked in face paint, Paul's character is the Star Child (sometimes referred to as the Lover), while Gene is the Demon. In real life, Simmons has slept with literally thousands of women and consumed vaginas like they were Pop-Tarts; meanwhile, Stanley spent two decades searching for Miss Right and had his heart broken by Donna Dixon, a costar from the sitcom
Bosom Buddies.
Granted, Paul physically interviewed every other candidate along the way, but it always seemed like his heart was in the right place.

Their songwriting style followed suit. Stanley sings songs like “Strutter,” “I Want You,” “Anything for My Baby,” and “Shandi”—all tunes where he longs to be with a woman he can't necessarily have. Certainly, this is not a hard and fast rule (“I Stole Your Love” is an almost comical example of a sex harvest), but as a general precept, Paul Stanley pursues women through song and loses at least half the time.

Simmons is the exact opposite. In “Calling Dr. Love,” Gene sings, “Baby, I know what your problem is.” And we all know what her problem is too: She wants Gene to fuck her. In fact, she
needs
Gene to fuck her (and evidently for medical reasons). In
the context KISS uses these terms, it's all a cartoon, but—if you're looking for tangible examples of domination imagery in pop culture—it's a good place to start. Sometimes it's completely unveiled; on the mega-macho record
Creatures of the Night,
Simmons sings a song titled “War Machine,” where he claims his intention is to “Strike down the one who leads me / I'm gonna take his place / I'm gonna vindicate the human race.”

There's one glaring irony in the Paul-Gene power axis, however. Of all the songs in the KISS catalog, the one that stands out most clearly as a power anthem is “God of Thunder” from 1976's
Destroyer
(it even surpasses “War Machine,” because “God of Thunder” is more epic and archetypal). Simmons carried the vocals, and it ultimately defined what his onstage persona was all about; he usually did his infamous blood-spitting routine during the song's introduction. But what's compelling is that it was written by Stanley, who fully intended to sing it. Simmons likes to insist that Paul was deliberately writing a “Gene song” and always knew he would eventually handle the lead, but Stanley says otherwise. “You want to hear the real story, or do you want to believe the rumor?” he told me in a 1997 interview. “That was totally [producer] Bob Ezrin's idea. He thought it came across better with Gene handling the vocals.” In other words, Simmons's powerful image was a better fit for the song's powerful imagery; Paul's androgynous Girl Power would not translate into menace. At least in this case, the tenuous connection between heavy metal and power was completely conscious in the minds of the people who made the record.

But sometimes what seems obvious is not, particularly when you're trying to categorize what an artist represents culturally. That certainly seems true with Ozzy Osbourne, who doesn't seem obsessed with power
at all.
In fact, he seems more obsessed with weakness, particularly his own.

As a public character, Osbourne is the wildest of wild men. During the height of his career, he was constantly chomping off the heads of birds, pissing on historical landmarks, and generally acting like the most berserk, fucked-up lunatic in the universe.
It's not an act, either; what's unique about Osbourne is that many of the stories about his behavior are at least partially true. But as he's grown older, another side of Ozzy has become more and more obvious: He is an incredibly vulnerable person who plainly lacks confidence. Rock writer Mick Wall talked about this in a VH1
Behind the Music
special about Osbourne, and Ozzy made oblique references to his insecurities in his autobiographical video documentary
Don't Blame Me.
I hate to resort to pop psychology, but it seems clear that Ozzy desperately needs people to like him, and—for a long time—the only way he knew how to do that was through drugs, alcohol, performing onstage, and acting like a complete idiot in public situations. And even though it probably wasn't intentional, that insecurity always came across in his music.