I’m a child of the 80s.
I hit my teenage years when bands such as Bon Jovi, Def Leppard and Warrant ruled MTV.
When we demanded that we wanted our MTV.
Two things might be hard for the younger generation to understand. First, MTV played music videos – all day, every day. Second, not only did MTV play music videos all day, it played a variety of music.
In the mid-80s, while Ratt’s “Round and Round” was a hit, MTV also heavily played Huey Lewis & the News, Madonna and The Cars. Even in the very late 80s and early 90s – when hard rock was the predominant music on the channel – you still saw Janet Jackson, Tiffany, New Kids on the Block, REM, DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, LL Cool J, the B-52s and many other artists.
Sure, there were bands that your peer groups may have labeled as “uncool.” But you still knew those bands and their music because of MTV. It’s why you knew the New Kids’ “Hangin’ Tough” dance but wouldn’t be caught dead showing anyone.
I wasn’t a Prince fan in the ‘80s but knew most of his biggest hits. It opened me up to grow into understanding the brilliance of one of the most talented and influential artists of the decade. This is partially because of how MTV and Top 40 radio were structured back then.
The 1970s introduced us to glam rock legends like David Bowie, T. Rex, Alice Cooper and KISS. The 1980s introduced a video element to the music industry, which brought out crazy styles that matched the era. The glam rock influences were mixed with the excesses of the neon-filled 1980s. A look became a form of marketing as bands tried to get attention in this new video medium.
The 80s were a crazy decade - the fashion matched.
But it’s important to point out, despite the assertion that the image was most important, that so many bands didn’t make it with the right look showed that the music did matter. For every Poison, there were five Britny Foxes.
As the 90s hit, a new musical style emerged in bands like Soundgarden and Alice in Chains. That kicked into overdrive when Nirvana released “Nevermind” in 1991. People seem to forget that these bands co-existed with other subgenres in the rock market and even toured with the bands they maligned. Alice in Chains opened for Van Halen. Soundgarden opened for Guns N’ Roses. Heck, I saw Type O-Negative open for Queensryche.
But let’s set the record straight: There was no such thing as “hair metal.” It’s a lazy term that misses the reality of the era.
I’ve watched 80s rock be mocked for years, as if fashion in other decades didn’t influence band looks. Flannel rock? No-showering rock? Dreads metal? Why is it that the 80s were somehow different?
They weren’t.
The bands of this era were diverse in musical style, even if they “looked” the same for the MTV videos.
Guns N' Roses' infused rock, blues, punk and metal with an aggressive attitude.
L.A. Guns incorporated sleaze rock with Tracii Guns’ gritty guitar riffs, bluesy undertones, and a raw and energetic edge.
Whitesnake was rooted in hard rock and blues rock, with David Coverdale’s soulful vocals.
Pretty Boy Floyd was straight-up glam pop rock with a flamboyant stage presence celebrating the excesses of the Sunset Strip scene.
Cinderella was blues-infused hard rock with country elements.
Enuff Z'nuff featured a Beatlesque influence, often with a slightly psychedelic and eccentric flair.
There was musical variety - even if stylists teased hair extra high and leather was plentiful in the music videos. There was a little something for everyone, depending on your tastes.
Let’s not forget that The Black Crowes unleashed its Rolling Stones-influenced southern rock debut, “Shake Your Money Maker,” in 1989 at the height of the 80s rock scene. They were in heavy rotation next to Motley Crue’s “Dr. Feelgood” album.
I’ve read Crowes’ drummer Steve Gorman’s book “Hard to Handle: The Rise and Fall of The Black Crowes” several times. In it, Gorman takes shots at the 80s music groups as if they were lesser. But the reality is – at least in the beginning – his fanbase overlapped heavily with the fans of those bands.
Why? Because of MTV. If I had watched a block of MTV in 1989, I might have seen Whitesnake, Poison and The Black Crowes back-to-back. I thought nothing of it because they were all just different rock styles. It wasn’t the either/or decision that was pushed on people when grunge hit.
Here’s what pisses me off more than anything: There was no reason the bands that carried the 1980s couldn’t have co-existed with 90s bands and continued on major labels.
While there was interest in a new musical style, believing that the masses turned their backs on the bands they enjoyed is wrong.
According to RIAA, Def Leppard’s 1992 album “Adrenalize” sold 380,000 copies in its first week and 3 million copies within its first two months. This is after “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was a hit in the fall of 1991.
While the album sounded about two years too late, “Adrenalize” sold well after the mega success of “Hysteria.” I saw the band for the first time on the “Adrenalize” tour, and it was in a packed arena.
Def Leppard ultimately navigated the 90s well and is, today, as big as they were in the 1980s. Leppard did a few things that worked in its favor. First, it did a “reset” album called “Slang” in 1996. Slang was a very raw and stripped-down Leppard album, recorded in an era of grunge, and the band was processing the death of its guitarist Steve Clark.
Many people hated the album at the time, but I believe it remains the band’s best album (to date) and is a musical journey I never tire of. But it was different, and the album didn’t do as well commercially. Even if it released another “Hysteria,” it’s doubtful it would have sold much better in 1996 because there was so much negativity thrown at 80s rock bands.
So the band returned to what it was known for when it released 1999’s “Euphoria” album. While it’s not my favorite by any stretch, it reconnected Leppard to its fan base at a time far enough removed from the grunge upheaval that it was “acceptable” to listen to them again.
Leppard wasn’t the only one. Tesla sold about 800,000 copies of its 1994 album “Bust a Nut.” The album had no real label support and certainly wasn’t featured on MTV, but had respectable sales at a time when the band’s musical style was supposedly dead.
Bon Jovi’s “These Days” sold more than 1 million copies in 1995. Its greatest hits album, “Cross Road,” went platinum the day it was released in December of 1994 and hit triple platinum by August of 1995.
Were these sales down from albums released earlier in the decade? Yes, but the bands also lost much of their promotion and were constantly disparaged in pop culture. But ultimately, they were big enough to make it through.
Most of the bands of that era were not big enough. Without a major label for distribution and marketing, they couldn’t survive.
Remember, the “internet” wasn’t a thing back then for music. Digital music was years away. YouTube didn’t exist. Social media didn’t exist. These bands still required an extensive distribution network for their albums and big-label marketing to get the singles played on radio to sell CDs.
The reality is that many 80s rock bands were already maturing past the arena anthem pop-rock that made them famous. Warrant may still be remembered as the “Cherry Pie” guys, but its 1993 album “Dog Eat Dog” – left to languish with no label support – featured a mature sound with a heavier edge.
It remains my favorite Warrant album, although its modern rock-sounding “Belly to Belly” may be Jani Lane’s pinnacle of achievement. That’s not to detract from Warrant’s earlier albums. “Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinkin’ Rich” has fun, well-written rock songs. However, six or so years later, the band was clearly growing as artists.
While Winger was made a running gag on “Beavis and Butthead,” the band’s third record, “Pull,” likewise featured more serious tracks than “Seventeen.” Skid Row’s “Subhuman Race” took the band in an even harder direction than “Slave to the Grind.” Saigon Kick’s “Devil in the Details,” Extreme’s “Waiting for the Punchline,” Motley Crue’s self-titled masterpiece with John Corabi on vocals, Cinderella’s “Still Climbing,” Firehouse’s “3,” Tesla’s “Bust a Nut,” Kik Tracee’s criminally unknown “Field Trip” EP - all of these albums were already moving the “rock” genre away from the over-the-top fun anthems like Poison’s “I Want Action.”
Speaking of Poison, its “Crack a Smile” album, which took years to finally see a release after it was recorded, was a solid follow-up to 1993’s “Native Tongue,” a good album in its own right that took the band in a more serious direction with the song “Stand.”
Even if some bands wanted to continue to make fun, party rock, so what? If people still wanted to buy the records, that was their right. The problem was it wasn’t easy to buy such records or even know new releases existed. Again, this was the early 1990s, and the internet was not a thing. Without the internet, fans of such music had difficulty supporting that type of music when the major labels dropped or ignored these bands.
It was the labels that decided to not let music co-exist and to not nurture a healthy diversity of styles. Instead, the labels knifed their most successful artists of the decade. Ultimately, I believe, labels gutted rock and roll and put it into the state we see today: bland and uninspired. Predictable. A few heavy hitters who put out solid efforts every few years and a band that sounds like Led Zeppelin.
When the labels treated their music and artists like they were throw-away with no value, is it really a surprise that the public saw no issue downloading music for free when Napster broke a few years later? Karma is a bitch.
Labels purposely ended the careers of bands it worked to nurture and build followings for in the 1980s. Suddenly, they were to be considered pariahs for recording music and dressing up for photos and music videos in ways the LABELS told them to.
Imagine if a similar tact was taken between the 1970s and 1980s. We would not have had the excitement of hearing Aerosmith’s “Pump” album for the first time in 1989, Journey’s “Escape,” or Van Halen’s “1984.”
What happened to the 80s bands was a travesty. Careers were prematurely ended. A band like Nelson sold millions of records with its debut, “After the Rain,” and was then treated like garbage by Geffen Records. It took five years for the band’s second album, “Because They Can,” to be released, and even then, it received zero label support.
MTV also destroyed itself with its short-sighted stupidity. The channel stopped playing music by the middle of the 90s, and viewers stopped being exposed to musical variety. I remember Cinderella’s Tom Keifer saying in an interview that when “Still Climbing” was released, someone from MTV told him not to even bother making a video because the station wouldn’t play it.
It used to be that you could sit and watch MTV the entire afternoon, and the only time you’d be pissed is when “Thriller” was thrown in. Once MTV and the labels decided they had the power to dictate what people should like, it all went to hell.
I miss the days of enjoying Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar On Me,” Paula Abdul’s “Forever Your Girl,” Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” and DeeLite’s “Groove is in the Heart” all in the same block. I believe it’s why I have such an eclectic musical taste today.
Nobody is demanding their MTV these days. Oh, how the mighty have fallen – self-inflicted by hubris.
Today, many of the aging 80s rock bands made a resurgence. They continue to put out top-notch albums and they attract people to their concerts.
If you think Europe was just the “Final Countdown” guys, check out its newer albums like “War of the Kings” or “Walk the Earth” for something new.
“The Final Countdown” album is a gem of the decade. But I don’t need to hear Europe chasing it 40 years later. Its new stuff is excellent for today without leaning on nostalgia. It’s not 1986 anymore.
L.A. Guns is another band that has consistently delivered high-quality records after its heyday of “The Ballad of Jayne.” It kept its sleaze-rock sound that respects its past but continues to bring in new elements.
Extreme was in my YouTube feed last year with the release of its “Six” album, with YouTubers losing their minds over Nuno’s solo on the song “Rise.” The album was one of the best rock albums of the year.
Skid Row - without Sebastian Bach - generated buzz with its latest album, “The Gang’s All Here,” thanks to a new lead singer, Erik Grönwall (who just recently announced he was leaving the band). It helped that the songs were well-written and were clearly inspired by the past, but not trying to recreate it.
In a way, 80s bands lost the battle but ultimately won the war.
Today, there are not many 90’s bands out there attracting stadiums full of people like the recent Poison, Motley Crue and Def Leppard tour did. According to Billboard, the tour sold 1.3 million tickets and earned $173.5 million – the biggest tour of Leppard’s and Crue’s careers.
There’s a place for angst and depressing lyrics. There was a place for the grunge genre.
But, you know, maybe people did just want to have nothin’ but a good time after all.