The newest episode of the Old Dad's Records podcast is up! This time around I was inspired by old music from 1983 I that's popped up in my life. I start with "Photograph" by Def Leppard, which I heard at a Mets game this week. It is perhaps the starting point of hair metal, a genre I despise. At the same time, it is one of that genre's few real gems. 1983 wasn't just about hair metal, it was also the year that launched REM onto the college radio stations of America with Murmur, an album then gave me a lot of comfort in my youth, and still plays that role in these dark days. I end with a recommendation for Weyes Blood, who has crafted a lovely art folk sound.
I spent all day yesterday in a state of anger and sadness over the recent police killings, and needed something to distract me in the evening. I opted for watching The Decline of Western Civilization II: The Metal Years. In case you don't know, the original Penelope Spheeris doc was about the early 80s punk scene in LA. The sequel concerns the heavy metal scene on the Sunset Strip in the late 80s, but feels a few centuries rather than a few years away. The film really is a kind of real-life Spinal Tap, and made me laugh at the pretensions of some of the mediocre unsigned bands and cringe at the general air of misogyny. There was also the grim humor in seeing all of that sprayed hair on people who thought they were oh so cool when in four years that look and the music that came with it would be dumped into the dustbin of rock history by grunge.
After an hour and a half of glam metal types crowing about their sexual exploits and drug intakes, it ends with a performance by Megadeth, whose pure thrash metal acts as kind of a rebuke to what we've just seen. While the arc of LA metal bent towards Poison, it was not always thus. The first band from that scene to hit was Motley Crue, and some of their early material had some real bite and menace.
"Looks That Kill" is not one of their big hits, but it was the song that put them on the map, in large part because of the video and the image projected through it. It starts in what looks like the set for The Cave Dwellers or any other MST3K-ready 80s B-movie attempt to cash in on Conan the Barbarian. There are metal babes, but dressed like a D&D playing nerd-boy's wet dream rather than in frilly, lacy 80s lingerie. The boys in the band are dressed like the New York Dolls meets Escape from New York, and are holding menacing torches, chasing the ladies and literally penning them up before rocking out on stage. There's no misogyny like 80s metal video misogyny.
The guy we see least in the video is Mick Mars, the lead guitarist. Most casual music fans may know the names of Tommy Lee (he of the illicit Pam Anderson tape and his own reality show), Vince Neil (the lead singer and star of his own less glamorous sex tape), and Nikki Sixx (the coolest looking one and perhaps the best interview ever on Behind the Music), but not Mick Mars. Mars was not nearly as telegenic, but his musicianship is by far the most crucial element to the song. Sixx and Lee are an okay rhythm section, and Neil has about as much vocal range as Elvis had acting range. The riff on this song, however, is an absolute monster. It is a beautifully trashy hook that would make Johnny Thunders tip his cap. I friggin' hate Motley Crue, but I like this song because the riff is just that rocking.
The video though, oof. Caged women, flying pentagrams, spinning drumsticks, flaming torches and any number of other excesses. The band's success would allow them to go more over the top, but the fly by night, chintzy nature of this video does redeem it somewhat. Here the excess of the LA hair metal scene is just kind of funny and silly. By the late 80s it would be overbearing and devoid of any silly fun. When I watched The Decline Of Western Civilization II, it was a reminder of why a genre of music that seemed to dominate rock died so suddenly. The difference between "Looks That Kill" in 1983 and "Unskinny Bop" (a future entry in this series) in 1990 helps explain why.
For some reason my head's been in the 1980s these last few weeks. In some ways in might be a kind of return of the repressed, since I tried so hard for so long to forget much of my early past. It is shocking to me when I view films and television from the time, and see the world presented being both so familiar and entirely foreign to me. No relic reminds of that gulf more than the music video, a touchstone of the time's youth culture which is practically meaningless today as a cultural force. Also, while heavy metal still lives, it is now far, far away from the mainstream, unlike in the 1980s. Just for kicks, here's a list of 80s metal videos worth watching.
Motley Crue, "Looks That Kill"
Someone seems to have watched one too many B-level post-apocalyptic movies. I am still sure how they managed to have all of those flaming torches around all of that hairspray.
Scorpions, "Rock You Like A Hurricane"
Ironically, it took metal gods from Germany to find the right tune to rock monster truck rallies all across America. This video might have more synchronized guitar rocking and musical grimaces for the camera per minute than any other in existence.
Dio, "Holy Diver"
There has perhaps never been any soul in existence more metal than Ronnie James Dio. This pint-sized wonder had more rocking in his pinky than most people have in their whole bodies. The video for this song looks like Dungeons and Dragons cosplay with guitars.
Accept, "Balls to the Wall"
Sludgy guitars: check. Simultaneous guitarist rocking: check. Demonically dwarfish frontman: check. Ridiculous song title: double check. 80s metal awesomeness: no doubt.
Metallica, "One"
I was not into metal back in the day, but I loved this video. The plot and footage lifted from Johnny Got His Gun were darker and much more politically meaningful than just about anything out there on MTV. The lush, almost classical guitars at the start also made Metallica less threatening to me and millions of others before they really cashed in with the "black album" a few years later.
It all looks to be a pretty unrealistic, air-brushed, and sanitized version of the whole 80s metal scene. I should know, because metal ruled my small Nebraska town growing up. This was not the music of glamor, but of dirtbag burnouts slamming back big-mouth hand grenade bottles of Mickey's Malt Liquor while blasting Motley Crue from their Camaro car stereos.
Listen up kiddos, if you want a glimpse of the real thing, check out the guerrilla documentary/anthropological field report known as Heavy Metal Parking Lot. It is what it says: a bunch of footage shot in 1986 in the parking lot of an arena before a Judas Priest concert. (Notice that these are the true metal fans out for a true metal band, not suburban teeny-boppers with mall hair hoping to see Jon Bon Jovi shake his be-spandexed little ass.) The makers of the film have provided us with a one-of-a-kind document of a bygone age, and entertainment that's much more fun (and disturbing) than anything Hollywood can conjure. These sixteen minutes are also a powerful reminder of the dangers of nostalgia.
