SAD NEWS FOR 80’s METAL

As a performer in this era, I can tell you that rock/hard rock/metal has morphed and changed its focus many times over the course of its existence. For that matter, hair metal still exists and there are still glam related bands that play that style today (Steel Panther being the most famous but they are also a comedy/parody band deliberately drawing to it… and doing a stellar job at it it as well).

Point is, hair metal for a time became pop. We can thank Motley Crue, Ratt, Cinderella, and Bon Jovi for that initial burst, and we can thank Guns n’ Roses, Skid Row, and a number of other bands for carrying it further and a little less garishly glam. When this was all going on, the labels signed as many bands as they could and threw them out to the listening market to see what would stick.

What stuck particularly well and then became the overplayed hallmark of the time was the “hair band power ballad”. Done to excess. I lived through that time. I wrote one as well with my band at the time. It got some airplay and attention.

The problem was that there was a glut of these bands and for the bands that were genuinely good, there were a lot of bands that were mediocre at best (raises hand!). Grunge was, effectively speaking, just hair metal that took on alternative and punk elements. One needs only to look at older Alice n’ Chains shows to see Layne Staley as a full-on glam performer with teased hair, leather, and makeup. While these bands did indeed develop into a style of their own, there was lots of other music going on at the same time that fed into what they were doing. Grunge didn’t exist in a vacuum.

Seattle offered an alternative to the hairspray and makeup of Sunset Strip. It was also a middle ground between the glam hair band style and the thrash scene of the San Francisco Bay Area and elsewhere. it also incorporated elements of alternative and punk. Again, grunge wasn’t a monolith. Soundgarden and Nirvana sound nothing like each other.

In short, the hairband era was top-heavy and listener fatigue had set in with regard to the pop circles and label attention. The Seattle sound offered an alternative and a variety of sounds. My favorite Seattle band was Mother Love Bone. Calling them grunge would have been a stretch but they got carried along with that sound and time because of the Seattle connection.

Those of us in the trenches playing the clubs took notice and most of us participated in the sea change that took place. In late 1990, hair bands were all over the place, and power ballads playing on every rock station. By the end of 1991, literally every band had gone through an image makeover of some sort (mine included) as we all realized that the hair band aesthetic had been played out and Seattle’s take on alternative metal (i.e. Grunge) was what people were paying attention to.

As I said, it never really went away, bands played with the glam/makeup approach for decades afterward, slowly morphing into the emo and scene bands that would follow on and put their spin on it. The death of hair bands wasn’t so much death of the style, just it falling out of pop music relevance. It ran its course, had more time in the sun than many phases of pop music, and the world just kept on turning.