hair metal
- Thread starter maxi
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blissblogger
Well-known member
Always been partial to this one - especially the breakdown at 3.03, this chasm that opens up in the record. Feels like they must have been listening to hip hop.... or maybe it's just their GlitterDNA
This chorus is like a fist swaddled in cotton wool punching the air.... vocal stacking turning the lead singer into a gang? Or just the whole group shouting in unison.
I read somewhere that Mutt Lange recorded every single chord on this album individually, retuning the guitar because the action of the plectrum on the strings would push it minutely off perfect tuning. I don't know if that's true or even possible, but I like the idea of such maniacal perfectionism going into a studio-concocted creation that (despite the concert-style video) would have been quite challenging to reproduce live I should think.
Another story about Def Leppard.... I guess at arenas they had their own stage built? Supposedly they would have a little secret door at the front... roadies would be sent out into the crowd to escort young women that caught the band-members's eye and escort them to the below-stage chamber of debauchery... When this would take place I'm not sure, though - they don't seem like the kind of band to have a 10-minute drum solo. Maybe it was during the support act...
This chorus is like a fist swaddled in cotton wool punching the air.... vocal stacking turning the lead singer into a gang? Or just the whole group shouting in unison.
I read somewhere that Mutt Lange recorded every single chord on this album individually, retuning the guitar because the action of the plectrum on the strings would push it minutely off perfect tuning. I don't know if that's true or even possible, but I like the idea of such maniacal perfectionism going into a studio-concocted creation that (despite the concert-style video) would have been quite challenging to reproduce live I should think.
Another story about Def Leppard.... I guess at arenas they had their own stage built? Supposedly they would have a little secret door at the front... roadies would be sent out into the crowd to escort young women that caught the band-members's eye and escort them to the below-stage chamber of debauchery... When this would take place I'm not sure, though - they don't seem like the kind of band to have a 10-minute drum solo. Maybe it was during the support act...
shakahislop
Well-known member
i think we come at this stuff from the wrong angle sometimes. some segment of america has some kind of need for massive distorted sounds. the exact genre twists and turns. but 70s neil young, hair metal, thrash metal, linkin park, tool, skrillex and EDM are all fulfilling the same role. filling up stadiums and smashing people in the face with a beat and distortion. everyone facing the gods at the front.
blissblogger
Well-known member
G'n'R definitely hair metallic at this point - Axl's blow-dried hair and eye-make-up
The equivalent to the breakdown in "Pour Some Sugar On Me" is the hectic bass-rush at around 3.34
The gender confusion thing in hair metal is the most intriguing thing about it - you have these macho, strutting types spending an inordinate amount of time getting streaks in their hair and plastering on eyeshade and blusher, basically making themselves look like the kind of women in the audience they aim to sleep with (and vice versa, for added gender confusion - do the girls really want to fuck each other, or themselves?). In some ways, it's not unlike the lads on Love Island spending all that time and energy on grooming rituals... but different, there's no musclebound, steroid-pumped aspect to hair metal's masculine ideal, the front men tend to be sylph-like and nubile...
In the "Welcome to the Jungle" video, Axl plays the feminine naif arriving in Los Angeles AND incarnates the city's malevolence, taunting the "very sexy girl" with scenarios of danger... the gender confusion at its most volatile in the bit where he mimics her sex-sounds...
When it was first released, I got sent the original album with the offensive cover but unaware that A/ they'd be the biggest thing ever B/ the cover would get pulled quickly, making it rare and collectable, I sold it...
The equivalent to the breakdown in "Pour Some Sugar On Me" is the hectic bass-rush at around 3.34
The gender confusion thing in hair metal is the most intriguing thing about it - you have these macho, strutting types spending an inordinate amount of time getting streaks in their hair and plastering on eyeshade and blusher, basically making themselves look like the kind of women in the audience they aim to sleep with (and vice versa, for added gender confusion - do the girls really want to fuck each other, or themselves?). In some ways, it's not unlike the lads on Love Island spending all that time and energy on grooming rituals... but different, there's no musclebound, steroid-pumped aspect to hair metal's masculine ideal, the front men tend to be sylph-like and nubile...
In the "Welcome to the Jungle" video, Axl plays the feminine naif arriving in Los Angeles AND incarnates the city's malevolence, taunting the "very sexy girl" with scenarios of danger... the gender confusion at its most volatile in the bit where he mimics her sex-sounds...
When it was first released, I got sent the original album with the offensive cover but unaware that A/ they'd be the biggest thing ever B/ the cover would get pulled quickly, making it rare and collectable, I sold it...
Yeah, I should have clarified that Welcome to the Jungle was an exception as far as that look, but, as far as I recall, they dropped that look for the other big singles/videos for that album.
Takes me back to summer 87 bandcamp - I remember that being a big hit with other white kids there.
I got their previous album, Pyromania, as a more or less random pick from a record club a couple of years before, and my stepmother was concerned that it was satanic or something.
version
Well-known member
I could be wrong, but think the 'hair metal' tag came about as a perjorative in the '90s, when retro programmes would tell you that the entire world was into Poison and Vixen until Nirvana blew everyone's minds by releasing Teen Spirit, burying the hair metallers overnight, etc etc. But I can't remember anyone giving a shit at the time, except one friend at school who was into Bathory and Slayer and considered all this stuff 'gay' (in terms of not thrashing hard enough, rather than the hair metallers' actual sexuality).
Don't get the Reagan rock angle either: didn't most of these groups end up rowing with the PMRC? I thought that whole scene was apolitical, beyond banging chicks, driving too fast, partying hard and kicking someone's ass.