80's music question for those who were there

[Denzil Dexter]

I was partial to a bit of Bon Jovi,Def Leppard,EUROPE(Cringe), etc in my Early teens but alas being from a wee Island off the West Coast of Scotland getting to gigs was a logistical nightmare!
You have to remember this is all pre Internet and the flow of information was pretty poor back then?
I like many of my friends used to get a regular fix of the BBC'S Friday Night Rock Show with legend TOMMY VANCE supplying the bullets swiftly followed up by Radio Clydes Rock show taking you into the wee hours with the likes of NAZARETH URIAH HEEP KING CRIMSON PURPLE etc etc...
Caught AC DC at the Gasgow Appollo supported by Y&T on the For Those About To Rock Tour but that was about it for me on the gig front.
I was lucky to have two Elder brothers with over 2000 LP's(Vinyls) at their disposal and a fresh Album dropping on a Monthly basis for years.

Good times crap hair and wild spandex but that first Jovi Album was a belter....The intro into Runaway well It blew me away big time!

Life was simple then methinks?

 

[Pat Catalano]

I don't want to piss any one off. but lol... I can not stand the term "Hair Band" as apposed to what guys in bands that are all bald? I get the fact that the look went a little crazy in the late 80's but most of that was due to the record companies who saw the originators of that glam look were making money so every band had to look that way. I remember back in 91 opening for a band called Tuff. awesome band, amazing music and talent but they had that cookie cutter look like all the bands did. I had a conversation with the singer back in the dressing rooms and i said what you guys not getting all dressed up for the show? and he was quick to say hey man the record the company forced us to have that over the top look i hate it.
I had got the same info from they guys from Britny Fox when i did a show with them. So I guess what I am saying is if you like the music that is all it should be about. I love the music from that era. In my opinion bands from 60's 70's and 80's are more talented than the grunge that came out in the mid 90's. I know in the late 80's a lot of copy cat bands came out because the record companies were going nuts to cash in the blond singer singing a ballad looking oh so sexy for the girls. But the bands that stood the test of time that had real music were still going and still recording new music and still making it happen. I can go on and on about this topic. Its my opinion and I don't expect many to agree with me but I never sit there and say "Oh when I was young I liked them" WTF is that.
When some one says that to me I reply with, Do we stop reading Moby Dick because its old. Do we no longer look at the Mona Lisa and say Eh that's so 1507. I guess what I am saying is if a band, a song, a piece of music speaks to you or moves you... why should you be ashamed to still like it.
This coming from the guy that just cranked "Eye of the Tiger" driving home from the grocery store lol
Any way that's just my opinion.

 

[DaKillerWolf]

I never liked the glam metal thing at all. Bands like Poison, Pretty Boy Floyd, Danger Danger, Britny Fox etc... I hated all that make up wearing pop rock crap with a passion!!!!

I do like some of the bands that get lumped into that scene though. I like some Dokken, the first 2 Motely Crue LPs, early Twisted Sister. WASP, G'n'R. some Whitesnake etc. Cinderella's first alum was alright ( though I wouldn't admit it at the time ,even though some of my pretty hardcore friends liked it lol ) I hated the look and most of it ,,,the poppy, crap music, pissed me off at the time, and made me want to punch someone lol

TBH, I really don't give a damn if someone wants to make music that, to me is goofy pop crap w/ guitars, but the fact that they were calling it METAL infuriated me. :mad
It gave everyone the impression that if you like metal you listen to sugar coated, pretty boys w/ guitars...Whatever though, I'm over it now, and like
I said, I actually like a handful of the bands that are lumped into that category.

Now, whether I agree with that categorization is another story, but even most of the bands that I like I wouldn't really consider real METAL bands.
WASP yeah, most the others hard rock, IMO.

 

[Tarn]

I think my biggest shock probably had to do with Warrant. I remember hearing Uncle Tom's Cabin on the radio a lot and just loved that song but for whatever reasons (sort of have an idea but don't want to go there) I didn't pursue finding out which band did the song or what album it was on. Some years later after I'd gotten into the CD format I bought a Best of Warrant CD because I noticed Uncle Tom's Cabin on the track listing. I looked at the rest of the songs on the CD and went the Cherry Pie guys are the same guys who did Uncle Tom's Cabin?

I had the same thought with Warrant ... always known as the cherry pie guy and Uncle Tom's Cabin and a lot of other songs were sooo good and so much better

Two other bands I was into during the "hair band" era - NOT bands from that time which I discovered later on - are Cinderella and Great White. Cinderella I don't think I made much of how they looked and enjoyed their music. Great White to me seemed like a "normal" straight forward rock band who I think got sucked into that "hair metal" label even though I still don't think they are/were.

Cinderella's first album cover is how they were probably told to look by a record company (by the by Tom looks like he has one leg lol) and the music isn't actually what I would call these days "hair metal" it is blues based rock as someone else mentioned.

The whole 80s "hair" thing took off in the 80s, so every band had to wear heels and makeup and have big hair. then of course it got over saturated.. people wanted a change... and we got grunge

 

[stepcousin]

to me there were 3 glam or hair metal eras of the 80's: the early years of '82 to about '84 or '85 with Dokken, Ratt, Quiet Riot and Motley Crue. They were coming off the NWOBHM movement after it reached L.A. and it was real, songwriting ability and the heavy metal attitude were still present. 1986 brought in a whole new wave of posers like Poison and everything was being glammed to death (see Judas Priest "Turbo" and Ozzy's "Ultimate Sin"). I hated it. In 1988 and '89 the third wave brought the "W" bands i.e. Warrant, White Lion, Winger, and it was now officially a corporate formula and it no longer was about the music but all about image and the frikkin BALLADS! Uuugh! Grunge didnt kill glam metal, it killed itself.

 

[Tarn]

Grunge didnt kill glam metal, it killed itself.

agreed

 

[Khor1255]

After the glam movement even bands like GnR sounded ok and Grunge was an absolute breath of fresh air.

Well, not absolute since grunge still embraced (to an extent) the minimalism of punk but it was much much better than just about any of the drool that came out in the 80s.

 

[Magic]

Visually, I totally missed out on the 80's glam scene. I didn't get to go to that many concerts, and I definitely didn't watch MTV (newlyweds are too poor for cable TV,yanno).

What exposure I had came from the radio. I loved the early 80's bands like Night Ranger, Quiet Riot, Dokken, Great White, White Lion. Also during the early 80's, I was completely mesmerized by southern rock bands more than the glam scene. Afterall, I did live in the south during the early 80's. Bands like Blackfoot, Better Than Ezra, Rossington-Collins Band, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Poco...these all caught my attention way more than glam rock.

When I really stood up and took notice of glam rock / glam metal was late 80's early 90's, just as the scene was winding down. I fell in love with the ballads.....and still love the ballads. The glam "look" never phased me, although I did like to wear spandex myself and I loved big hair.


My Faves:

Aerosmith
Bon Jovi
Guns n Roses
Motley Crue
Scorpions
Tesla
Cinderella
Skid Row
Def Leppard
Steel Panther
Winger
Warrant
XYZ
Danger Danger
Poison

The list can go on and on......since I have discovered more glam bands in recent years than I ever knew existed back in the 80's.

 

[TheWhalerfan]

^ I am sure spandex looked great on you, but I sure didn't need to see Kip Winger donning it..yuuuuck.

For those fellow old skoolers like myself, when Appetite came out, did you lump GnR in with the other glam acts? From the first time I heard the album I knew this was something totally different from the status quo. Am I alone in that mindset?

 

[Lynch]

First time I heard Appetite, I said that GnR was going to be HUGE. I thought there were things about them that reminded me of Aerosmith and I do remember telling friends at the time that this was going to be a band that everyone would know before long.

In all seriousness.... GnR put out 3 real albums in their "hey day" + the Lies EP. And they are going into the RnR HOF in a couple of months. Not that the HOF is a true measure of anything other than popularity, but I wasn't wrong about how big they'd get.