I never cared much for late’80s-early ’90s Hair Metal.<\/p>\n
If I were a rock historian, I’d say Hair Metal was a snapshot of a particular era – the cha-cha days of the late Reagan \/ George HW Bush years – and a particular place, a very prosperous and dissolute Los Angeles.\u00a0 \u00a0You’ll note that was a time of my life I was neither especially cha-cha nor prosperous, nor, I hasten to add, a the angry teenager I’d been 5-7 years earlier who’d marinated his brain in the Clash, the Kinks, the Who and the like.<\/p>\n
So the whole genre sort of left me cold.<\/p>\n
Poison?\u00a0 \u00a0A lite-metal boy band.<\/p>\n
Motley Crue?\u00a0 A bunch of yobs trying and failing to ape Alice Cooper.\u00a0And that’s if you leave out Vince Neil’s role in the death of “Razzle” (more below).<\/p>\n
Cinderella?\u00a0 Please.\u00a0 Waterboard me.<\/p>\n
But as with all episodes of this “Love and Hate” series (click the tag below for some history), I’m writing this not to bury hair metal, but to praise it.<\/p>\n
Well, some of it.<\/p>\n
And I know what you’re gonna say.\u00a0 “Everyone\u00a0<\/em>likes Guns ‘n Roses.\u00a0 That’s a gimme”.<\/p>\n And indeed you’re right:<\/p>\n