Did Grunge really kill hair metal?

[*Wyche'sWarrior*]

(01-23-2018, 09:17 PM)BengalsRocker Wrote: I guess this is what I'd like to be clarified.

What is "Hair Metal"?

I think Glam Rock is more what I see fitting the "Hair Band" moniker itself.

Poison, Warrant, Bullet Boys, Enuff Z NufF, Winger and others fit that mold with the glam look from the start.

Some grew into it.

Whitesnake, Def Leppard, Motley Crue, Great White, Dokken all grew in that direction.

Whitesnake was an off shoot of Deep Purple/Rainbow sounds.

Def Leppard's early material is guitar riff heavy and they admittedly wanted to chase AC/DC's feel and sound.

Motely Crue was a different band in itself.  With their Kiss influenced look & budding mid 80s hard rock.

Dokken had great guitar work and were another mid 80s hard rock band that got sucked into the whole video look.

Tesla is not a "Hair Band" in my opinion.  Just like Def Leppard initially were they were AC/DC inspired riff rock and blues.  Great White were straight bluesy rock up until they covered "Once Bitten Twice Shy" and leaned towards glam.


Those of you that didn't like 80s rock you probably won't be convinced by this statement...

In the 80s Hard Rock/Metal genres infused more musical styles in their music(especially guitar)than most eras before.

In one song you could here any mix of rock, metal, funk, blues, classical, pop, rap, opera, you name it.

It was a melting pot of many styles.  Guitar styles for sure.  No boundaries.

Of course there were bands before who dabbled in this and now a days it's a lot more common.

I do think some of the best music was made in the 60s and 70s.  So I'm not just biased to that 80s stuff.

I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but if we say glam rock, we're going to have to go back to the 70's with Bowie, Gary Glitter, T. Rex, etc.  Which, I dig some of that stuff too.  I mean, I like a lot of different genres, and subgenres.  It's unoriginal stuff, and the hangers on that I don't like.  I don't really like much pop music, with some exceptions here and there.....that said, I have no problem with it as long as the execs KEEP IT IN THE POP GENRE.  Don't call it country or anything else, but for the love of God, STOP CALLING IT COUNTRY......friggin' Garth Brooks.

Back on topic, good point about a lot of these bands that morphed into the hair band era.  I really dug Great White and Whitesnake too.  (Do you recall the one off of Coverdale/Page?).  Def Lepperd is one I can take or leave.  I don't despise them, I just never really got into them.  I liked some of Tesla's stuff.  I liked a little RATT.

I certainly agree with the melding of a lot of musical influences in hair band rock.  The 80s were about excess, and hair band music had plenty of that....lol.  I liked a lot of the guitar work from the era.....just found it to be lyrically shallow in a lot of cases, and some of those voices....YIKES!  That said, it's still better than 90% of the garbage out today, where instruments are not to be found, and a lot of the vocals are friggin AutoTune.