Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow - Metal in the 1980s

In the dim and distant past, somewhere between punk and grunge, a strange phenomenon occurred: metal became mainstream, dominating the ‘pop’ charts on both sides of the Atlantic. However, this was not metal as had gone before – although some of the earlier bands tweaked their approach to ride the wave – but a new kind of metal with a new kind of image that saw the genre at the peak of its popularity. So, I hear you ask, what caused this and where did it all go wrong? Well, as a stalwart of the metal scene in the 1980s myself I’ll attempt to provide my perspective on what transpired during the 1980s when, for a fleeting and glorious moment in time, metal took centre stage . . .

Part 1 – The scene at the dawn of the 1980s

I think it fairly un-contentious to say that most scenes are born out of disaffection with the current scene, for whatever reason, and that, as Emile Durkheim once posited: “the solidarity of a in-group is a function of conflict with an out-group”. By this is meant that what bonds people together in a scene, in this case, is the perceived antagonism with another scene . . . we are united by our displeasure with other scenes. This was no more starkly evident during the latter half of the 1970s where our metallic forefathers, and their prog-rock cousins, had taken musicality to the extreme and in so doing had disenfranchised the emerging youth scene. It appeared that the rebellious need in youth was not to be satiated by a 25 minute Keith Emerson Hammond extravaganza or by Jimmy Page bowing his Telecaster for 30+ minutes . . . and I can see their point! The rock scene as it was in the 1970s had, whilst producing some outstanding music and groups, rather begun to implode and crawl up its own a** to the point where it didn’t connect in either subject-matter or musicality with a new generation of youth.

The result, as we all know, emerged in 1976 with the Punk movement in the UK with the Sex Pistols, the Damned and the Clash being at the forefront of a scene that was the embodiment of the disaffected new generation referred to above. In the States too a clutch of bands out of CBGB’s, among a few other notables, were formulating their response to disaffection too but from a personal perspective the UK scene had a real vitriol and almost hatred attached to it of all that had gone before that made it such a revolution culturally.

There were two prongs to the punk attack: image and music. For the former, as with any new movement rebelling against a previous scene, an opposite to what had gone previously was adopted . . . out went long hair and the remnants of hippy-dom clothing and in came crew cuts, skinheads and ripped clothing. Musically, out went virtuosity, ethereal/mythical lyrical subject matter and extended tracks and in came three chords, bad tuning, shouted vocals, politicised lyrics and 2 minute tracks.

Within two short years, the punk revolution was largely a spent force; it’s job done. However, as with any revolution, once the essence against which a group is rebelling is overthrown what is there left to rebel against? Punk had become mainstream popular culture musically but was no longer fresh and ‘dangerous’ but almost establishment! Record companies and many bands jumped on the bandwagon and homogenised the genre which rather saw it fade as quickly as it had arrived by the end of the 1970s.

But what of metal? Well, as a genre hard rock/metal has proven incredibly resilient and adaptable in the face of cultural change and this was also the case here. A lot of young metal musicians it transpired were also embracing of the energy and spirit of the punk movement and sought to combine the better elements of both that and the previous rock scene in the UK from which emerged the New Wave of British Heavy Metal at the close of the 1970s with bands like Iron Maiden, Tank, Motorhead and Saxon providing a new, grittier-edged style of metal based around tight riffs, high energy and no frills images. Almost like punk, the NWOBHM movement came in with a bang and rewrote the rock/metal scene rules but itself was short-lived.

Part II – Image is King

1980, time for another popular scene revolution? Simultaneously with the emergence of NWOBHM was the more mainstream rebellion against the punk ethos – following the tried and tested principles of any revolution of taking the opposites of the scene against which you are rebelling. Image suddenly became of paramount, and impeccable, importance with the emergence of the New Romantic scene: clothes, hairstyle and idyllic lifestyles became key to the new scene embodied by bands such as Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet.

But how was metal to respond to this further marginalisation? The NWOBHM was producing some strong bands musically but in terms of image it was still very much jeans and t-shirt and lyrically the sword and sorcery of the pre-punk scene hadn’t been totally forgotten either so it was a movement that whilst gaining some popularity was most likely to be a sideshow to popular music (which, let’s face it is no bad thing).

The 1980s as a decade is largely remembered as a decade of decadence, of style over substance and where aspirations were towards hedonism and wealth. Whilst many of us never achieved the ideal as it was also a decade of great economic instability with the monetarist policies of the UK leading to mass unemployment for the first half of the decade and the ‘trickle down’ ideology in the US proving no less favouring of the masses, culturally things were reflective of such ideals. Think shoulder pads and bouffant hair in Dallas/Dynasty, Duran Duran’s multi-million pound videos on tropical islands etc . . . Another prime motivator in this whole social shift, at least musically, was the launch of MTV – another triumph of image over substance, whereby suddenly bands had to make videos that would be played and played ad infinitum and stand-up as a visual spectacle on this new medium. Suddenly a video of four scruffy blokes sweating away miming to one of their tracks on a small club stage didn’t quite cut the MTV mustard!

Add all the above ingredients together and stir with a liberal dose of metal and what do you get? Well, in the US you got the Sunset Strip club and band scene emerging in LA! As a revolution within metal itself what emerged was a complete move away from the jeans and t-shirt approach favoured by the NWOBHM, to rebel against traditional metal you’d need to do two things: give a commercial edge to tracks, make them catchy, and make an aesthetically strong image – one that would be the metal equivalent of the ‘pretty boy’ approach taken by the New Romantics . . . but obviously starkly different from theirs too as the metal scene is rebelling against the mainstream too remember?

As we know, what emerged was something of a cross between Dallas and Alice Cooper: big hair, make-up and mini-dresses for the girls with big hair, make-up and spandex for the boys . . . and lots of it! A prime example of this emerging scene would be Motley Crue who embodied everything of the new movement in terms of appearance, music and ideology: the scene was about to explode!

Part III – Conquering the World

So the scene was set, MTV’s 1981 launch saw the channel viewed by a huge audience and had an insatiable thirst for music with a visual impact, the bands of the Strip had just that appeal along with a metal sensibility coupled with all the ideals that were embodiment of the decade at that point: a match made in Heaven! Suddenly, a mainstream medium had picked-up on metal and was feeding it to the World endlessly, 24-hours a day, 7 days a week as the decade grew with record companies, keen to exploit this new medium, signing bands at a rapid rate with Cinderella and Poison, along with Motley Crue, being some of the chief protagonists.

Interestingly, that is only half the story however. The full ‘glam’ scene made a huge impact worldwide but had somewhat fractured the metal scene. Those of us not predisposed to make-up and spandex would have been isolated if it weren’t for the other thread of the genre that largely spruced-up the image of NWOBHM, added a bit of commerciality to its songs, and also lit the blue touch paper and waited for lift-off!

Now largely lumped-in with ‘glam’ to a ‘Hair Metal’ genre by revisionist pop journalists, bands like Dokken, Keel, Quiet Riot, Def Leppard, Bon Jovi etc all gained great exposure and popularity during the 1980s but weren’t ‘glam’ and as such largely co-opted those disaffected by the whole ‘glam’ shtick and thus, in total, helping to create a huge metal scene. The new scene’s image conscious approach and commerciality of music also attracted fringe players from mainstream pop, making for a huge audience and huge market – one which the record companies were only too glad to flood with an endless stream of metal bands during the era: Ratt, LA Guns, Faster Pussycat, Skid Row, Europe, Whitesnake . . .

Actually, Whitesnake raises an interesting point: if all the new bands that were achieving phenomenal success in the mid-1980s were commercial glam and power rock bands and you were a hangover from the 1970s or early 1980s NWOBHM, what were you to do?

Part IV – Where’s your party invite?

Let’s rewind a little to pre-1983 (Motley Crue’s release of Shout at the Devil). So we have the NWOBHM bands, in the US there are a lot of AOR bands around . . . basically a lighter metal with harmony vocals and strong melody such as Styx, Journey, Kansas, Toto . . . and there are also some hangers-on from the 1970s era such as Rainbow, Whitesnake, Gillan and AC/DC, for example. Was this a change or die moment for existing and traditional metal acts? Well, no, not really . . . more fractures to the metal scene!

It’s fair to say that a reasonable portion of the metal scene wasn’t caught-up in the whole ‘glam’ thing at all . . glam had largely fractured the metal scene and attracted a new audience from both that scene and the more mainstream pop/new wave scenes and made it very big. However, whilst the power-rock bands were also treading a similar furrow, for bands that had existed before the boom, decisions had to be made.

In the words of Manowar (who I would rarely quote) the main decision, as I saw it, was to answer the following question: are you true metal or false metal? Those who answered the former are Group 1, queue-up over there with Motorhead and Iron Maiden, those who answered the latter are Group 2, collect your tin of Hard Rock Hairspray and skin-tight spandex pants and queue-up over there with Whitesnake and Saxon.

Whilst in my head at the time, and a bit now to be honest, Group 2 would have been led to their execution for bandwagon-jumping for commercial purposes and not staying true to their music or fans at that time, as the years have passed I’m willing to let bygones be bygones . . . to a point!

So, the outcome was that many traditional/NWOBHM bands glammed-up and got with the program whilst some stuck to their guns. Fortunately, such was the groundswell of the genre that those of ‘Group 2′ also found great popularity and considerable mainstream success and rode the wave that would, a few short years later, dash many of their glam counterparts, and turncoats, on the rocks.

In summary then, we had Glam, commercial power-rock and the trad/NWOBHM movements existing simultaneously and achieving great popularity and success by the late 1980s which, for someone who hit their teens in that time was an awesome spectacle and one which, I fear, will not be seen again . . . although I hope I’m proved wrong on that score. Good times then, metal was a global musical force, all conquering, but . . .

Part V – Walls come tumbling down

Whilst the going was good, murmurings of unrest had appeared in the ranks. The style over substance element that prevailed at the peak of the scene was as alienating to some within the metal genre as was prog to the pre-punk crowd some years earlier. Bands such as Diamond Head who had emerged in the NWOBHM but become also-rans during the boom period were viewed afresh by some of the new generation entering the metal scene who saw the androgyny and flash image of the current scene as one that had departed way too far from the actual principles of metal and from the music itself and sought to do something about it.

Once again, how do you rebel against something: you take a completely contrary stance right? So an underground movement began that stuck a finger up at the whole image and style of mainstream metal and harked back to the jeans and t-shirt approach of their forefathers but with a twist: the mainstream metal scene had descended into endless pained ballads and commercial ditties so the backlash must surely be play fast and hard with no commercial hooks or catchy choruses? Well, yes it was and bands such as Metallica pioneered such an approach which began to make inroads with what was to be termed thrash or speed metal and attracting all those disaffected with the rather syrupy manner mainstream metal was going with bands like Mr Big and their ilk with slushy, acoustic ballads achieving great chart success but being of little substance, or sincerity – formulaic chart-fodder for the masses.

Whilst Metallica and the growing thrash scene was beginning to attract more and more of an audience away from the mainstream glam scene, yet another scene was pissed at the commerciality and cashing-in approach taken by many of the huge bands of the time. Much as with the emergence of punk, a new scene was developing that really dropped completely all interest in image, as had the thrash scene to a point, but whereas Metallica, Anthrax and Slayer et al were pushing the boundaries of speed and playing to its limits, the bands playing the circuit around Seattle wanted to strip things back to basics with simple chord structures and slow, driving rhythms with lyrics about their disaffection from the mainstream and of how crap life really was for the average youth of the time, not buying-in to the false, albeit aspirational, ideals of the glam scene.

This two-pronged attack from the thrash scene and the emerging grunge scene, as it was coined, hit home at the close of the decade with a new generation of music fan who felt it was speaking to them. As with glam, some bands jumped ship with Pantera, for example, erring on the side of thrash but with many bands just losing their audience and folding seemingly overnight: the bubble had burst!

Part VI – The Aftermath

Just as with the assault on traditional metal some 10 years earlier, some of the originators of the scene toughed it out, such as Motley Crue, and all credit to them for that. Furthermore, bands such as Motorhead, AC/DC etc who had survived the 1980s battering of their brand of metal, emerged relatively unscathed by the whole experience with their credibility in tact whilst those who had jumped-ship, and those who had emerged on the back of Crue et al, such as Poison and Cinderella, fell by the wayside.

Whilst the 1980s was a great decade to be in the metal scene for numerous reasons, things did go too far, way too far. Metal has always had a sense of rebellion about it against the mainstream culture and this has served it well over the years as once a sub-genre becomes mainstream, a new scene emerges to challenge and overthrow it, as has been demonstrated here, which always keeps the scene fresh, exciting and challenging. One of the crucial lessons to be learnt from this tale too is that pretenders will always be found out – each scene has its originators for whom the new scene is borne out of a true desire and ideology and are to be commended and their careers always extend way beyond that of the scene they create. Conversely, on the back of such pioneers always comes a slew of copycat bands and record company protégées who fall by the wayside when the new scene, and market, collapses.

The ‘Hair Metal’ era as it is now termed encompassed several sub-scenes and I enjoyed some of them and, in typical rebellious fashion, rallied against others but with hindsight, one overriding fact remains: for one period in time, metal ruled the World and for that, whatever sub-scene you belonged to, we should view the 1980s as a halcyon time to be a metal fan.