From Glam to Hair Metal to MTV - The History of Rock Music (Part 8)

1:39 What's good everybody? This is Scoobert Doobert. Welcome back to love music moreWe are continuing on our journey throughout rock history and this is a fun oneThis is the story of glam rock to hair metalYeah, soRock and roll has become so over the top and it's become so competitiveBecause think about where we are in time in the 70sHere it'sThe Beatles have taken over the world in1964

2:14 Everybody that was watching the Beatles come and and become the band that they became started a band and

2:21 Now they're all trying to compete to take the mantle to become the next Beatles to make their money as musiciansAnd when you create that hyper competitive environmentEverybody does everything they possibly can to get ahead to stand out to be different

2:39 And that's a really cool interesting like Petri dish, right for like what comes out of itWhat kind of music comes out where you have incredible financial incentive?You can be a rock star with everything that comes with itThis is like the rock stariest of rock star time, right?

2:54 This is Led ZeppelinBut Led Zeppelin becomes Led Zeppelin because they are winning the arms race But then now you already have Led Zeppelin so you got to go beyondAnd that's where we get some of these great acts thatEmbrace their personalityTo a really really deep and interesting level and they look at it and they say okay rock is this likeflamboyant andHyper-masculine thing, but what if we make it more androgynous?

3:21 What if we flip the idea on its head still larger than life?But incorporate these things like LiberaceIn the case of Elton JohnOr the fullAndrogyny of David Bowie

3:41 Also consider Judas Priest obviously this comes in the 80s, but it's all part of the same conversationof rockEmbracing and understandingthatLarger than life personas don't come in necessarily one sizeOne gender, one sexuality

4:02 And that's where I really want to focus on David Bowie and how important David Bowie was for that reframing of that ideaDavid Bowie's like first really huge momentSpace Oddity 1969 everything happens in 1969But it's that blend of sci-fi with rock the theatricalIt's reinvention, it'scostumery and you see in the modern era tooI just saw a picture of Chappell Roan and it was like showing the

4:37 Fashion through lines from David Bowie to the modern biggest pop star or Lady GagaAnd then you have these these movies like the Labyrinth that justAmplify the idea of Stardom beyond its traditional bounce and it is creatingA persona certainly but a persona that isNew and not just fitting into like one sort of masculineRockstar go get all the women kind of energy

5:08 I'm sure that David Bowie was able to get whoever he wanted to get but the idea of just likePushing boundaries in every respect and I think that that's where

5:22 Punk and glam they kind of dance with each other and that's where you get somebody like the New York dollsFormed in New York CityAnd it's it's got this likePlatform boots heavy makeup and then punk rock all kind of mixed in it's not greatIt's not great musicBut the live showsSeemed really fun and the live shows also inspired other people that come downstream like kissAerosmith twisted sister

5:53 And there's a there's like a quote about the New York dolls often that's they're too punk for glam too glam for punk

6:00 And that's why I think that they're a really interesting bridge between these two scenes where David Bowie is kind of the progenitorAnd then you have queen with like super theatrical performances you have

6:11 Elton John super theatrical performances you have all of this kind of upswellingof a different kind of rock star

6:19 Happening in the 70s and then you have the New York dolls that are kind of pushing it to this like very underground edgyAre they serious are they making fun of it is this who they are?I don't know kind of kind of place and that's where you getacts like twisted sister andSo here honestly if you haven't listened to the twisted sister podcast that I that I did with JJ French

6:41 You might want to just put that on now because he he tells the story of this transitionFrom glam rock to hair metal better than anybody else and I feel like twisted sister is actually kind ofThe best example of what it actually looked like because they weren't just built in a labThey were like a working band that went through so many trials and tribulationsThey self-funded they made their own costumes

7:07 They were doing everything they could to stand out in a very crowded New York city sceneBut they were also like the outside of Manhattan kind of sceneWhich is really interesting to like the the punk episode where I was talking really about CBGBAnd how that was such the Manhattan scene of the Manhattan underground sceneBut then you also had this it's kind of like Long Island scene that was coming up that was very

7:32 Just a different edge and I think that twisted sister typifies this and tells it from the perspective of not somebodyThat really have that major label sheen you know like a bon Jovi right nothing wrong with bon Jovi's music cool musicBut twisted sister they iterated they changed over timeAnd they also did some things that I personally you know foundLike they didn't they didn't hold up to history very well

7:55 But it was interesting hearing from JJ French the the thing that I'm speaking of specifically is the hate towards disco one of my favorite genresBut JJ put it into perspective and I believe themOf it wasn't necessarily that he didn't like musicI believe that he's a genuine music fan across the board and total music nerd just exuded from that interview that I did with himHe

8:17 He just recognized that there was a cultural moment that they could tap into with the like I hate disco thingObviously there there's some there's some problematic stuff in there for surebutIn terms of the historical context, I think you have to meet them where they're at and understand where

8:34 This paradox kind of lies and this is one of the things I find really fascinating about glam is that there are these strange undercurrents ofmisogyny andLike heteronormative kind of stuff within itwhile it is embracingwearing like women's clothing and and heavy makeup

9:00 And I think that tension is really interesting about where rock was at where society was how

9:08 It almost was like reminiscent of minstrel shows and all of that kind of historyBut I that's clearly not what David Bowie was doingBut it seems like that's kind of where a lot of the punk inspired New York people that were definitely going for the David Bowie thingBut I think they took it to a different placeBut then when it goes to LA I think it changes yet again

9:37 So from the rebellion of New York City the twisted sistersThe New York dollsWe go and we get the sunset stripThese are places like the Whisky a Go Go the roxy rainbow barThese are spots I've played the Viper Room. I've had some really fun shows at the Viper Room very strange place to playUmThey they turned the guitars up real out they're true to their history

10:10 That was always my favorite part about playing a sunset strip venue is that it was just so guitar focused that I just could likeI'm gonna take a longer soul than the night guys you're all on for the ride because we're on the sunsetstripBut that that I guess he was built hereAnd also by the doors Jim Morrison and the doors they were they were playing the sunset strip a decade earlier

10:31 Sunset strip had got that edge thatCBGB had but it had the LA Sheen so it was this kind of interesting interplay of you had the glam

10:41 That was getting big and interesting in rock and so you have these bands that were kind of being influenced by itHe had the Mötley Crüe, Def Leppard poison

10:50 Van Halen where the hairs getting bigger. It's influenced by Led Zeppelin to the theatrics are thereBut it's in a club and it's like heavily influenced by the strip club sceneSo it has that like masculine feminine dichotomy built in just like we were talking with twisted sisterBut a little bit less like New YorkI don't know how else to say it. It's very LA.

11:12 There was a different level of intentionality and sheen you know like just look at the differences betweenEarlier photos of twisted sister and or earlier live live sets by themAnd then like early live sets by Mötley Crüe and you can just see that the Mötley Crüe folks were trying to be pretty because they were trying to get girls the twisted sister folks were trying to be like

11:36 Brash and bigger and louder because they were trying to get people in the door like they were just trying to like hustle and make moneyAnd be undeniable and it's just like kind of this different sense of like very east coast west coast kind of of like what are youWhat are you in it for and like Mötley Crüe is pretty clear

11:54 They're in it for the sex drugs and rock and roll. They're trying to be rock stars here and twisted sisterHonestly, I think they were just trying to make money like they were just trying to make a living with musicAnd so yeah definitely listen to that JJ French episode.

12:06 It was really coolReally good context and it's great to hear it fromThe man himself unfiltered like he's got he's always had no filter But I got the legitimate sense of who he was as a person versus who he was as a personaAnd I think that's a really refreshing interesting thing and one of my favorite things about doing this podcast is you know dive in deep and

12:24 And check it out kind of like what people what makes people tick is music people are music people right and that's kind of the fun thing too about

12:31 Thinking about this history because I you know, I say those things about Mötley Crüe. But I'm like I've never talked to Mötley Crüe. I don't know if that's actually how they think or feel

12:40 I've read some of their memoirs and it's gnarly they've done some wild stuff in their livesBut it's hard to it's hard to separate what is the marketing and what is the musicMaybe maybe one of them will come on the pod somedayThat was actually my first concert that I ever went to was Mötley Crüe. I was really big into hair metal when I was like you know1314 and

13:04 Change my life and so Mötley Crüe is certainly partially responsible for me being a musicianFunny how that is so no hate there.

13:12 I actuallyWas absolutely obsessed with their musicBut I think there's something there about like hair metalVan Halen that over the top thing that just like excites a teenageteenager like doesn't matter gender just like teenager just It's it's it is teenager music it is like like if you watched um stranger things, you know

13:35 It's like the kind of using the but I could set on your muscle car or whatever you drive down the 1980s highway

13:42 Obviously, I was not born in the 80s, so I don't know, but my popular image of it aligns and

13:49 There's like that shredding thing too with the guitars where it transcends being like let me play a tasteful blues rock guitar soloOr or let me play a jazzy progrock thing orLet me really like throw it back and hit you withThe bluesiest of bluesy rolling stones roots rock kind of thing it goes noLet me play as fast as I fricking can like let me play with both hands so I can play faster

14:16 So let's let's talk about let's talk about Eddie Van HalenAbsolutely revolutionary and a key part of why guitar became so frickin shreadySo one of the moves that you can do on a guitar

14:27 You know everybody's done it is hammer-ons and pull-offs. That is where you have one hand one handYou have one finger that is kind of your anchor of the note and then you slap another note with the other fingerSo you're able to quickly trill in between thoseLike that kind of thingYou know, why don't I grab a guitar?

14:45 All right, it's gonna be a lot easier to illustrate the point just with a guitarSo here's one note That's my anchor right that's the note that I'm holding on to I'm not moving that finger that is justConstantly there then I'm going to add a little trill with the hammer-on and a pull-off by putting myOther finger a fewFred's higher than it and if I do that really fast

15:13 Yeah, right you've probably heard that and a million rocks all thisEspecially if it bends up a little bit at the endI don't have the right tone to do all this but why not you knowOkay, so what does Eddie Van Halen do he realizes I can play faster with two hands instead of oneSo instead of just playing

15:34 He's gonna add in his other hands now. He's got three fingers. He's got working with themThat's crazy, right?Sounds so fast and then you can move it around too

15:52 All that is is our pagio. It's just a breaking out a chord into its component notes and then playing them really fast when you play in our pagio the

16:02 You know human brain just like takes it and you kind of hear the chord in your headIt all just kind of blends together in your head. That's what's happening with those super fastIt's just a minor chord as opposed to a major chord.

16:18 So it'sYou know, that's like old old school right like aCrosby, Stills, Nash & Young sign I don't know whatever like it's like that, but instead let's play it super fast on one stringBoom we're in the 80sBut you can also make it majorMajor minor majorAugmentedYou know you can do all this weird stuffYou need that really fast if you get super good at it, which I'm not

16:53 Cuz like I didn't want to spend all that time learning that because I don't like it that much

16:59 But a lot of people do and I like listening to it. I was again. I loved it when I was a teenagerNo hate super cool

17:07 I'm super impressed by the people that do it especially the people that have taken it adapted it and added like this gentHard rock thing to it super cool really coolHopefully we'll get to that in the future pot anywayEddie Van Halen he figures that outSome other people for you that out too, but Eddie Van Halen popularizes it slash maybe invented independentlyMaybe barrows it.

17:29 I don't know He takes that he figures out how to do it and he plays this song called eruptionWhich is just him noodling on the guitar it is the nudiliest of noodle songs and he is just jamming out and

17:44 I've heard stories first hand stories from people that has saw him early on in their career and everyone hated itHe'd play like a like a high school or whateverWhat the hell is this it's just a budgetBut thenThe moment struck and the culture was ready

18:03 And he took it to he took it over and it's guitar sound is super cool uses this thing called a phaser that goes

18:10 Actually went on a throw a phaser on my guitar so you can hear what that sounds like all rightThis is definitely the goofiest of the classic rock partsSo I made a phaser soundOne of the funny things that I find aboutVan Halen and also one of the things I actually really like is it so blues influenced

18:34 It's just hidden under layer of layer of layer of evolution and rock and so like even a hot for teacher which I think was likeWhat is itI'm literally like drawn from my seventh grade brain right nowThere's there's La Grange by zz topSomething like that

19:11 You know, it's kind of like all the same thing. I'm obviously playing it too slow and not quite accurately

19:18 But like that you know just little changes in guitar tone little changes in speed changes in the drums that are playing like hot for teacherEddie Van Halen's brother brother Van Halen

19:31 I'm sorry. That's a disrespectful Alex Van Halen. I totally didn't have to look that up. Sorry AlexUmHe's a great drummer really great drummer co-founder of Van Halen

19:45 But context matters. That's how genres are formed and this is why it's all rock. It's rockIt's got the blues thing it like honestly if you just take a lot of these Van Halen riffsYou slow them down you put them with different drums you put it on a scratchy old vinyl record.

20:01 It's a blues songIt's just got just got crazy vocals on topSo one of the interesting things too that happens during this time isthese vocal changesso acdc has this Van Halen has this whereThe Doobie Brothers have this

20:18 Or it's like you have these different eras where it's the same band and they're this big brand of a band andThey bring in another star and it's it's kind of um

20:28 We don't have anything. I don't think that's an equivalent of that in the modern era be kind of cool if we did butumSuch a fascinating kind of arc where Van Halen they start with David Lee Roth and then later they later get Sammy HagarVery different very similarBoth rock vocalists like you know a lot maybe people will be mad at me for saying that but umI am but a ayoung one ishI wasn't there

21:02 This is history by proxy and by umWhat I remember from being a seventh grader learning all of these riffsBut let's reel it back in for a strong close hereI think an important part of this entire genre iscontextualized by the two things I was talking about the

21:22 super competitive environment. There's a lot of bands and not a ton of attention and not a ton of recordLabel interest and things like that.

21:30 So you need to kind of elbow and claw your way to the topIt's that's part of the reason why things could be like so theatricalAnd then the other thing that's going on isthere's Visual mediums that are coming more and more online music videos are becoming more and more of a thing and then boom1981Video killed the radio star by the Buggles first clip on MTV and these

21:54 Hair metal bands. They just destroy MTV especially likeI like I feel likeWatch a Mötley Crüe or a Def Leppard. They especially Def Leppard actually they they were they would crush the

22:12 music video game and you would see that these are these are the most typified rock starsThey are the mostUntouchable characters and that's exactly what they were going for they were going for likeHands-humanJust untouchable the biggest brightest hair the most outrageous lavish everything lyrics vocal styles

22:35 Stage dramatic pyro techniques with kiss and the makeup and it's just it's just everythingFull saturation and it's kind of funny to say that now because we're in the era of beyond full saturationWith the internet and AI and all of these thingsBut this was the moment. This is the linchpin that turns our culture fromWhat it was with like 60s and 70s into what it is today?

23:02 You can think this arc That's what does it and of course it does. It's saturation.

23:07 It's just maximalistIt's everything everywhere all at onceAnd so full circle you still got the blues influence a bunch of these bandsThey only started because they like the beach boys and they liked the BeatlesLike same thing with the punk stuff like you can listen to my great conversation with Andy Shernoff from the dictators Same deal the biggest beach boys fan in the world

23:30 Do you expect the guy who started the first punk band to say that maybe not but you probably should because all of these bandsThat's their common ground. They express it in different ways.

23:40 They'll use different effects like phasersThey'll have drums that are more or less influenced by John Bonham who's like the other kind of Led Zeppelin's drummer who's like the other kind of god that creates the arena rock drum soundBut my final message is that this is also kind of the end ofthisPart of the family tree of rock and rollIt kind of eats itself. It kind of burns out.

24:07 It's like becomes so extreme They're like, okay, yeahThat's goodAnd the thing that caps caps it off and I think part of the reason why I have the tone that I have towards this kind of musicBecause I definitely revere it. I loved it. I listened to it.

24:21 I know a bunch of the words a bunch of the songs a bunch of the riffsI don't remember them super well clearly But but it's it's part of me. It's part of rock history.

24:31 I do love itThis is there's this movie called spinal tap that comes out and I swear the combination of guns and roses and spinal tapThat just caps off the hair metal and you just can't go anywhere from there spinal tap is so funny It's a rock mockumentary.

24:45 It's like if you're if you like Monty Python or something like that and you like musicYou got to watch it, but there's a million things that You know, you go to the nam shores of like that and people are wearing their mallets still and you go wowIt's just like there's spinal tap.

25:01 They're hanging on to itThat energy is just so perfectly captured of what the excesses and the like Like silliness, but how serious everyone was taking it at the same timeThis whole time period was and there's also like this divorce between the super hyper artistic like the david bowies andtheArt pop like the David Byrnes, a bunch of davidsAnd the the LA sunset stripLike we're in it for the strip clubI think we're out

25:37 And they're still super musical and again, this is the persona. So I don't know what they're actually likeBut the persona starts to eat itself and it collapses under its own weightAnd guns and roses kind of pushes it over too because guns and roses has got like more gritIt has the same sound and it has the same excesses, but it has more of this like kind of raw spirit to it and

25:58 They're kind of the capstone appetite for destruction is kind of the destruction of their metal movementIt's huge record. It's very good. It's very popular.

26:07 It's got all of the guitar riffs that I actually remember a bunch of thoseBut I'm you don't need to quiz me on themI'll quote them in a solo somedayBut but when you have a record that big when you have moments that big And you have personalities that big it can only last so long

26:24 And so long it goes with the rise of grunge which we will talk about in the next

26:30 iteration of this rock and roll history grunge and before grunge the alternative rock movement and how having this kind ofglam and then hair metal

26:42 informed and inspired a very interesting and intriguing underground that was inspired by the art pop but was decidedlyPushing off from that as well.

26:53 I hope you enjoyed thisVery interesting and roundabout trip around hair metal a subject that is so strange and so fun andso difficult to explainI hope you enjoyed it if you did please feel free to share this with your friends It's subscribed to the podcast and rated five stars.

27:12 It is one of the best ways for us to grow next week We're gonna have another great guest conversation so definitely stick around for that and then soon thereafter. I will be getting intoMy personal favoriteStuff the alternative revolution pushing into the grunge sceneMajanUntil next time. Thanks for listening