Glam metal ruled in the '80s, disappeared in the '90s and is finding a niche in 2001

July 26, 2001

By PHIL LUCIANO
of the Journal Star

Rock and roll is getting pretty again.

"Hair bands," left for dead by grunge a decade ago, are suddenly a stalwart of this summer's concert season - a guilty-pleasure counter-balance to the super-serious rockers (Creed, Staind) that have taken over the radio, but stomped the party out of rock 'n' roll.

Welcome back, hairspray, tight spandex, fur coats and leather boas - with few apologies.

"We just do our own thing," says Bret Michaels, flaxen-haired frontman for Poison, which headlines Tuesday's '80s-retro Glam Slam Metal Jam at the Peoria Civic Center Arena along with Warrant, Quiet Riot and Enuff Z'Nuff. "We do what makes us feel good."

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Time was, all a rock band needed was a wardrobe stocked with blue jeans and black T-shirts.

And then came Ozzy Osbourne, who - depending on your tastes - may deserve the credit or the blame for the hair band phenomenon.

As the idealism of the '60s withered in the early '70s, pop music began to fade under the burgeoning weight of heavy metal, with its searing riffs, moody melodies and dark lyrics. Black Sabbath, with Ozzy at the helm, made metal commercially viable, and soon Judas Priest and other chains-and-leather outfits joined Sabbath in selling out arenas.

But by the early '80s, some metal bands (nearly always comprised of male musicians) began to take a close look at those massive crowds: The youngsters pumping their fists and thumping their heads were decidedly male.

What guy ever joined a band to hang out with thousands of other guys?

So, many young metal groups borrowed their girlfriends' compacts and hairspray, and created a new species of rock: glam metal, a kind of metal-lite, replete with friendly hooks and shout-along lyrics.

Guys (at least for a while) liked the sawing guitars. Gals liked the pretty-boy singers. And record companies liked the sell-out nightclub crowds.

The first big spark for glam bands came in 1982, when Motley Crue, a ragtag quartet living in squalor in Hollywood, released the album "Too Fast For Love." Led by preening, blonde lead singer Vince Neil, the band's leather-and-hair look entranced videophiles. Soon, Crue colleagues and copycats boasted outrageous ensembles rife with pastels, fur and feathers, and (with the aid of models wriggling in bikinis on-camera) quickly began to dominate MTV.

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For Poison, flash was always important.

As Motley Crue raced up the charts in the '80s, Poison was toiling in the pool halls and nightclubs of Hershey, Pa. Even in those tiny dives, they'd mix chemicals in coffee cans, lighting off flash-pot exclamations throughout their shows.

"Sometimes there were more cans of pyro than there were people," chuckles frontman Michaels. "The show for Poison has always been this: to have the production of Kiss, to be as down to earth as Lynyrd Skynyrd and to have the attitude of the Sex Pistols."

In 1984, Michaels and his bandmates sold all of their possessions (save their guitars, drums and amplifiers) and headed to Los Angeles in a beat-up Chevette and a run-down ambulance. The band kept banging away in clubs, earned a record deal and began selling albums. As the hits kept coming ("Look What the Cat Dragged In," "Nothing But a Good Time," "Fallen Angel"), Poison videos became a staple on MTV.

Meanwhile, Quiet Riot, which had been plugging away as a hard-rock outfit since 1975, suddenly shot up the charts with 1984's "Metal Health" album, which included the singles "Cum on Feel the Noize" and "Metal Health (Bang Your Head").

As Quiet Riot became a quick favorite on MTV, singer Kevin Dubrow - whose frizzy hair, bulging eyes and eagle's beak made him an antithesis to his pretty-boy brethren - didn't much mind when fans and critics lumped Quiet Riot in with the glam bands.

"I don't even care," he says. "As long as people enjoy what we do, call us whatever you want."

Yet some bands struggled with the glam-metal movement.

Jani Lane, frontman of the L.A. band Warrant, says the group originally had a heavy sound. But after the band signed a recording contract with Columbia, the company pushed Warrant to follow the glam-metal formula that was selling millions of records.

"I didn't think it mattered at all, because I didn't think anyone would ever hear us," Lane said with a laugh. "I was happy to go vinyl, let alone gold or platinum."

After the success of early pop hits like "Down Boys" and "Heaven," Lane says Warrant became pigeonholed as a hair band.

"I think the whole glam scene was heavy on image and ... lacking in substance," he says. "But I liked it. I got to play hard rock, which I loved."

As Warrant readied to put out a new album in 1990, a Columbia bigwig thought the work sounded too heavy. He told Lane, "I need something like (Aeromsith's) 'Love in an Elevator.'"

That night, with barely a thought, Lane dashed out "Cherry Pie," a vacant singalong about a pulchritudinous babe. The video, starring the voluptuous Bobbie Brown (whom Lane later married), ruled MTV and helped Warrant sell millions of records.

But "Cherry Pie" forever typecast Warrant.

"It's brainless," Lane says of the ditty. "It's a fun song, but I didn't want it to be a measure of my career. (Fans thought of me as) a mindless idiot who doesn't know how to write anything about girls with big (breasts)."

Poison's Michaels, who has feuded with Lane for years, says Lane has no one to blame but himself for failing to stand up for his band's music.

"If Warrant was told what to do by their manager or record company, it's their own stupid fault," Michaels says. Our (Posion's) success and failures are our own."

Regardless, as even Lane admits, the "Cherry Pie" video helped kill hair bands. Though glam metal already had become self-derivative, shallow and overproduced, "Cherry Pie" posed the question: How could anyone take seriously a musical genre embodied by an insipid video that featured a model sucking on cherries?

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But the definitive death blow came from Nirvana, whose "Nevermind" CD ushered in grudge in 1991. Music fans, apparently, had been hungering for musical depth; in a heartbeat, glam metal vanished, replaced with the likes of Pearl Jam, Jane's Addiction and Alice in Chains.

Faster than hair spray in the rain, most hair bands simply dissolved. Others limped along as glam metal disappeared from the radio, a cheesy joke.

Poison, on the strength of its pyrotechnic stage shows, soldiered on in various incarnations. Warrant, which also went through line-up changes, ended up playing in smaller and smaller clubs. Quiet Riot disbanded for a while, as Dubrow took a DJ job in Las Vegas for a couple years in the '90s.

"I didn't think (Quiot Riot) had a place (in the rock scene) anymore," Dubrow says.

For a long time, Dubrow was right. But by 1999, many rock fans had grown tired of the dour attitude of grudge and its offspring.

"I think there's a new generation done with the negativity," says Dubrow, 45.

A few adventurous tour promoters decided to take a chance with reunion glam acts, and legions of fans - some in diapers when "Headbangers Ball" still ruled MTV - paid big bucks for tickets to see their hirsute heroes return. Well, sometimes.

For example, in 1999, the line-up of Poison, Ratt, Great White and L.A. Guns enjoyed crowds topping 20,000, grossing as much as $184,000 a night. At the same time, a Slaughter solo show in Atlanta lured a mere 174 fans, grossing less than $1,600.

Since then, hair-band packages often have sold well, but solo concerts are hit-and-miss at the ticket window.

Yet for some aging glam acts, a small audience beats no audience at all - even if it means grinding out the same tunes for 15 years.

"Some (bands) have accepted that this is what they do, and they're going to tour on their former glory," says Geri Miller, online editor for Metal Edge magazine. "Not all of them like it. Think of how boring it is to play the same thing.

"They want to play new material, but the fans don't always want it. But the alternative is not doing anything at all. They'd rather tour."

According to the online magazine Metal Sludge (the snarky e-Bible of glam metal), by late June, Quiet Riot's new CD, "Guilty Pleasures," had sold 2,400 copies, while Warrant new album of covers, "Under the Influence," had sold a remarkably low 89 units. Poison's last CD, 2000's live-hits compendium "Power to the People," has sold 60,000 copies.

Says Warrant's Lane, 37, "Even though (the Grand Slam tour) has a bit of nostalgia - which I have to take with a grain of salt, because I don't feel nostalgic - it's fun."

But Poison's Michaels, 38, feels his band is fresh as ever.

"(The show) is the biggest production ever, even beyond way back when: more pyro, more lights, it'll blow you away," he says. "... There's nothing nostalgic about it. I play it like it's the first time we've been on tour."

But by their nature, hair bands must not only sound good, but look good. What do hair bands do when their hair recedes?

"Some look amazingly the same - maybe a little thicker around the middle," says Metal Edge's Miller.

Plus, adds Lane with a laugh, "Some of the fans probably aren't holding up so well."