Motley Crue "Home Sweet Home"

I was so glad to read Chuck Klosterman's "Fargo Rock City," because, in a mix of rock criticism/analysis and personal biography, it explored some questions about 80s metal that I had had back, well, in the 80s.

Last week I was writing about liking U2, and how liking U2 (pre-"Joshua Tree" anyway) was not cool with the Cool kids.  No, the Cool kids liked Van Halen (which I liked, but didn't love) and AC/DC (who had a 1/2 dozen songs that were awesome, and a whole lot of dumb shit after that).

In the case of these bands, I felt like not liking them indicated that there was something wrong with me.

Then Hair Metal happened.

And for so many of the kids who had been preaching the liturgy of "For Those About To Rock," latching onto bands with big guitar riffs and lyrics about big lives and skanky girls, made perfect sense to them.

But in the case of these bands, I felt like not liking them indicated that there was something wrong with the rest of the world, not me.

While David Lee Roth could prance, there was no mistaking the fact that he was a manly man on the prowl.  Eddie Van Halen and AC/DC were just pure testosterone.

I understood why 15 year old boys gravitated toward that.

So what was with the bands of dudes dressed like girls, with pounds of make-up and huge, huge hair that had to have been fussed over for hours?  How did that connect to a hormone-driven teenage suburbanite boy?

I can't say that I could have articulated all this in 1986, but on an innate level, I knew it didn't make sense.

Beyond the make-up and hair spray, there was also some kind of cognitive dissonance about the music.

Plain and simple, Eddie Van Halen didn't play any fucking ballads, and Bon Scott would gargle rocks rather than croon a heart-sick love song (and probably did).

But these Hair Metal bands would put out a fluffy, hooky upbeat "rocker" and follow it up with some hokey Moon-June-Spoon weeper.  And while I was not a manly man, nor particularly testorone-y, I couldn't stand this maudlin stuff.

All this, to tell the story . . . whenever I hear Motley Crue's "Home Sweet Home" I think of this one guy I was friendly with.  A group of us were watching MTV, and the room was silent as this song played.  As it got to the fade out, he said, "Man, this is one of those songs that you wish would never end . . . "

Some of the guys nodded, meaningfully, in agreement.

I sat there, quietly imagining the pleasure of gargling rocks.


Hear the song on Youtube.

U2 "Bad"

I read two books in the early Spring, Tina Fey's "Bossypants" and Chuck Klosterman's "Fargo Rock City."

Both books spend quite a bit of time in awkward adolescence, and both books stirred up a bunch of musical memories.  I would write down a note every time some anecdote popped in my.  I've got a good 15 to 20 upcoming posts that stroll down awkward avenue.

"Fargo Rock City" in particular made me think a lot about the music I listened to during high school, as it's part autobiography, part treatise on listening to Heavy Metal in the 1980s.

I was not a Heavy Metal kid.

But Metal, or at least Hard Rock, seemed to be the default position for popular kids in my high school.

Basically, you either liked Van Halen, or you were a fag.

That was the dividing line.  Which side were you going to be on?

(I'll say, that I think this was only really a necessary choice for boys.  Girls could like a much wider range of music and still be cool.)

So I came down on the side of "Yeah, Van Halen is cool."

But I have to admit, that I didn't really get it at all.

"Running With The Devil"?

Guys would go on and on about how great that song was.

I mean, I liked it as much as I liked any dumb rock song.  And I understood why my guitar playing friends were so crazy about "Eruption."  But I just wasn't there, otherwise.

I was a Sophomore in 1984, and while I could fake really liking certain things, to fly under the radar, I was really more interested in all the new music I was ingesting on MTV.

There was this up-and-coming band from Ireland that I and a few of my friends were excited about.  But it wasn't terribly cool to say you liked them.

I can remember being in homeroom, getting ragged on by kids were were cooler (and let's face it, tougher) than we were, for liking U2.  "The Unforgettable Fire" had just come out, and it was starting to get some attention, which, in retrospect, I think rattled these kids and their worldview a bit.

The band was gay.  We were fags for liking them.  It was stupid, fad music that would have no staying power.  It wasn't real Rock N Roll.

It's one of those moments where I wish time travel existed, so someone from the future could have popped into my 1984 homeroom to pass on the information that U2 turned out to be one of the biggest, most popular, most successful, most enduring Rock N Roll bands of the last 30 years.



See the video on Youtube.