![]() ![]() What’s surprising, then, is the effort early bands had to spend to get anyone to pay attention to them. ![]() ![]() In 1995, that was a very grave offense.”īy 1991, glam metal bands had been dismissed as not just musically vacuous but as embarrassingly commercial. I always had a desire to talk to the members of these bands because when I became a music journalist, one was not allowed to, because they had committed the crime of being in hair metal bands. When I started I never really got to interview any of those bands that I had been into because people wouldn’t cover them. “It was that period of the untouchability of hair metal. “It was as if that shit had never happened,” says Beaujour. Though guitar magazines had made piles of money during the ’80s covering super-shredders like Ratt’s Warren DeMartini and White Lion’s Vito Bratta, they and their ilk were now radioactive. This was in the ’90s when Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, and Nirvana were minting gold and platinum records and a new idea of what it meant to be a rock god was being crafted. I was completely obsessed, maybe because it was so much more outrageous than anything I thought I’d be likely to pull off.”Īs adults, both went into magazine publishing, eventually meeting through their work at Guitar World. “I was the exact age where I would be the most receptive to this music. It looked just shocking enough to startle their parents, but the sing-along choruses were built to please. For suburban teenagers in the 1980s, this stuff was like catnip. “We wanted to show that this was a viable creative musical movement with some DIY roots and present it in a way that’s respectful.”īoth Beaujour and Bienstock grew up as fans of rock music of all stripes, but of hair metal, in particular. “ are not what interests us about this music,” adds Bienstock. “It’s hard to beat The Dirt at its own game,” jokes Beaujour. It’s the exact and the right approach to take, and the book makes for a consistently entertaining read. Nor do they glamorize the well-covered debauchery the bands were known for. They spend as much time unearthing lesser-known acts as they do on the marquee names. Instead, they set the albums and the bands and the music industry more firmly into context. They aren’t exactly trying to use it to make the case that the music is under-appreciated, or that critics have somehow gotten things all wrong. Their work is likely to stand as the definitive account of the era. Together they interviewed over 200 band members, music executives, stylists, and scenesters. With their new book, Nöthin’ But a Good Time, producer Tom Beaujour and music journalist Richard Bienstock aim to better situate glam metal into the overall story of rock. The bands who best embody the era, like Poison, Ratt, Kix, and Twisted Sister, almost certainly will not be welcomed into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame anytime soon. Long maligned by critics ( Village Voice‘s Robert Christgau called Mötley Crüe’s genre-defining album Shout at the Devil “utter dogshit” upon its release), the genre is often treated as something of an embarrassing sideshow. For roughly eight years, from the chart-topping success of Quiet Riot’s Metal Health in 1983 to the 1991 release of Nirvana’s Nevermind, which landed with obliterative force onto the glam metal scene Quiet Riot helped to usher in big hair, big guitar riffs, and an unapologetically crude take on rock ‘n’ roll is what makes life worth living. ![]()
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