My Cultural Diet

I didn’t listen to hair metal back in the day, but it was practically inescapable. My schools’ hallways were awash with Cinderella, Poison, and Skid Row t-shirts as well as the requisite acid wash jeans and Aqua Net-suffused hair. And I can still remember my incredulity upon seeing the music video for Mötley Crüe’s “Girls, Girls, Girls” for the first time (and at my grandparents’ house, no less). Steven Blush’s American Hair Metal is no “academic” treatise on the genre. Even so, it delves into hair metal’s roots (npi) and captures the genre’s debauchery via numerous photos of classic acts alongside lesser known ones (e.g., Nitro, Roxx Gang, Tuff, Vain) in all of their gender-bending glory (teased hair, mascara, leather, lace). The book is also full of quotes. Some are misogynistic, some are arrogant, most are bone-headed, and few have aged well. (A classic example from White Lion’s Mike Tramp: “We’re a rock and roll band of the ’80s — here today, here to stay, here tomorrow.”) Blush’s book lays bare just how shallow the genre ultimately was. Classic songs emerged from the era, but hair metal wasn’t built to last. The bands were entirely too obsessed with image, style, and excess (often at their labels’ prompting) — an id-driven reflection of the ’80s that, for all of the sex and drugs, was surprisingly conservative and thus, quick to fall at the rise of grunge and alternative music in the early ’90s.

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