Pod Insights Bandsplain Hair Metal Hall of Fame with Molly Lambert About this episode In today’s episode we’re heading back to the Sunset Strip — a leather clad world of teased hair, tight pants, and pure chaos. Guest Molly Lambert helps us remember the golden era of hair metal, when bands like Mötley Crüe, Poison, and Ratt made the Sunset Strip their glitter covered playground. Turn it up, spray it higher and relive the excess and freedom of the 80s with us.
Episode Playlist:
Listen to Hair Metal Fall of Fame Here
CREDITS:
Host: Yasi Salek @yasisalek
Guest: Molly Lambert
Producer: Rob Sundermann
Video Editor: Ashleigh Smith
Audio Editor: Adrian Bridges
Additional Production Supervision: Justin Sayles, Juliana Ress
Theme Song: Bethany Cosentino
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Transcript 22,293 words · 6 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:30 Speaker 01 What's with this band, anyway? I don't get it, can you please explain? Wait, like, Bandplain? Never heard of this band in my life. Oh, you haven't? I'd love that. Really? Why? Yeah, I love this song. Oh, I don't know that one. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain. I really hate this band! Whatever, I'm their biggest fan. Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain, Bandplain. Bandplain!
1:09 Yasi Salek? Hello and welcome to Bandplain. I am your host, Yasi Salek. This is a show where I invite an expert guest on to help me explain a cult band or iconic artist, usually. But today's episode, we're covering a broad range of iconic artists. We're gonna really give a rundown of the broader 80s hair metal landscape via compiling a list of what might be 10 or 12 hair metal bangers. I haven't decided. You guys are my guests today. Writer, podcaster, San Fernando Valley legend, Molly Lambert. Welcome to the show, Molly.
1:48 Speaker 03 Hello, I'm so excited.
1:50 Yasi Salek? I feel you're the perfect person to be here for this. And I can't quite put my finger on why, but I feel it spiritually.
1:59 Speaker 03 I also feel like we were destined to do a podcast about hair metal. The gods decreed it.
2:07 Yasi Salek? Well, I know you're more of a 70s girly, but your newest project, I'll do a little plug for you right away. Jenna World, about Jenna Jameson, is out October 27th. And that is both 80s and 90s?
2:24 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's 80s, 90s, 2000s. But definitely, there's like... There's some hair metal stuff comes up in it, some hair metal people.
2:33 Yasi Salek? Some, some, uh, some hair metal.
2:35 Speaker 03 Tommy Lee is a.
2:36 Yasi Salek? Tommy Lee does, does appear.
2:38 Speaker 03 Yes.
2:39 Yasi Salek? He do be appearing and things having to do with pornography. Um, do you, I mean, we were kind of talking about it off mic, but like, even though a lot of hair metal bands that are like, kind of known in the culture, aren't from California or LA. Doesn't it kind of feel to you, it feels to me like a very quintessentially Californian, specifically LA genre.
3:05 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's a Sunset Strip genre.
3:07 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
3:08 Speaker 03 And even though it hasn't been dominant for a million years, when you go to the Sunset Strip, people are there to look for hair metal and to be, be hair metal.
3:19 Yasi Salek? I know, it's kind of cool. I hope, I hope that's really true though. When I was doing the Motley episode with Mel Ottenberg, which you guys should listen to if you haven't yet. Um, I was really lamenting what has become of the Sunset Strip because we both grew up here. So it's like, we've sort of watched it in one of those like time lapse situations.
3:38 Speaker 03 It also, it just springs eternal. The last time I was there, one of the last times I was there, truly like a hair metal woman turned to me and was like, hey, want a free ticket to the Roxy? And come see this show.
3:52 Yasi Salek? What age are we talking that this woman was?
3:54 Speaker 03 Sort of ageless. But I would say she was probably a, an eighties hair metal person.
4:01 Yasi Salek? Like she was leftover from the actual time.
4:03 Speaker 03 Yes.
4:03 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
4:04 Speaker 03 And she literally was like, hey, want to come to the show at the Roxy? And I was like, I'll bet this isn't a setup. And, um, and took a ticket and went into a show and there was like a huge crowd of people. It turned out to be rap rock.
4:18 Yasi Salek? Fantastic.
4:18 Speaker 03 Which is sort of the hair metal, the air to hair metal.
4:22 Yasi Salek? I couldn't agree more.
4:22 Speaker 03 But I, I do just feel like it always comes back here. There's.
4:26 Yasi Salek? Right. This is like the, uh, fountain of youth for hair metal, the Sunset Strip. You know? You really are our Joan Didion, I must say, because you're the only one I see out here pounding the pavement. I've often talked to you about how much I love watching your Instagram stories, because this bitch is just out here. She's out in these streets capturing what's going on in Los Angeles in a way that nobody else is. Like, you post stuff and I'm like, where in the fuck is that?
4:55 Speaker 03 That's so nice. I do love to be a tourist in my own town, and I do love the Sunset Strip. I was just there the other day, too. I love seeing all the tourists get out and be like, where am, like, what's happening?
5:08 Yasi Salek? Beautiful Saint Laurent billboard and aloe yoga.
5:11 Speaker 03 One of the last times I went, it was truly like, a biker gang asked me if I wanted a ride. They said, do you want to ride with the devil? And I was like, no, thank you. That's so nice.
5:22 Yasi Salek? So good on that. Thank you.
5:23 Speaker 03 But I was like, oh, wow, like, it's still kind of happening here. I just, I think it can always come back.
5:30 Yasi Salek? I do feel there's like, a turn towards 80s, and I think that's a good thing for us to talk about in general, like, a culturally zeitgeist-y thing. No, probably not a lot of listeners of this show, or maybe my girlies, care about fashion, but like, you are seeing it a lot on the runways. Like, there's a lot of those, like, kind of big 80s leather jackets coming back with,
5:52 Speaker 03 like- Fringe shoulder pads.
5:53 Yasi Salek? Shoulder pads. Like, the new Versace show was super 80s. And I think you and I were kind of texting about it, where like, do you feel like that was the last and least woke time of our timeline?
6:07 Speaker 03 I think it was sort of the last time before collapse.
6:12 Yasi Salek? Right. And before consequence.
6:14 Speaker 03 Yeah.
6:15 Yasi Salek? You know, because like, it hadn't really become, like, the AIDS crisis hadn't really ramped up, so the sex was truly free-flowing. There was like, a sort of a lull in feminism.
6:30 Speaker 03 I think the eighties in general is like an attempt to kind of reset the culture after the tumultuous sixties and seventies.
6:37 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
6:37 Speaker 03 Are interesting because it failed so badly, obviously. But I do think we're kind of in, there's like two thousands reboot now. And with that comes the two thousands eighties.
6:50 Yasi Salek? Totally, which is maybe why like I'm a little like, you know.
6:54 Speaker 03 Yeah, no, I'm like, I had enough of that. I don't need the two thousands ever again. But I do think we'll have, we're, we're like six months out from sweatbands coming back.
7:04 Yasi Salek? There, I'm just looking it up so because I want to get it right. But there is a, there's this Instagram account that Mel Ottenberg put me on to.
7:14 Speaker 03 Oh, is this backstage, the girls backstage?
7:16 Yasi Salek? No, it's these, it's these boys called Monkey Boys. Have you seen this? I need to send it to you. It's M O N K E E underscore boys. They are two seemingly like young, like twenties guys who have like full feathered hair. Like where the look.
7:36 Speaker 03 I've seen people on TikTok too, who are like, I'm eighties.
7:39 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
7:40 Speaker 03 I'm doing my hair all crazy and feathered because like I'm an eighties person. And I once had a friend say to me that they thought everyone in Los Angeles just picks a decade to be their personality.
7:51 Yasi Salek? Yeah, mine is nineties.
7:52 Speaker 03 Right. And I was like, totally true. I'm seventies.
7:55 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
7:56 Speaker 03 Yeah, you just pick, you pick a style and you stay with it, kind of.
7:59 Yasi Salek? Well, because my enduring theory that time stopped in the early two thousands, once the internet gained dominance.
8:05 Speaker 03 Yeah, Y2K happened.
8:07 Yasi Salek? Y2K happened, that's kind of the last.
8:09 Speaker 03 We're in the split timeline now.
8:10 Yasi Salek? Totally. And people just started looking backward and which they always were doing, but they started doing it at like incredibly increased pace.
8:17 Speaker 03 Yeah. And it is like the nostalgia cycles are so fast now. That's why we're back to two thousands eighties again. But I do think just like diving back into this era and kind of trying to look at it without just being like, it's campy and like, listen to the music, actually. I was like, this is awesome.
8:38 Yasi Salek? First of all, it's totally awesome. There's like a hedonism and freeness that feels really, it's just fucking fun.
8:44 Speaker 03 Yeah.
8:45 Yasi Salek? Because it is without consequence. It's like, what if no consequences? What if you could just? Indulge yourself.
8:52 Speaker 03 Right. What if you were just rocking?
8:53 Yasi Salek? What if you just rocked out, babe? I also like me being a total dork and nerd. I am obsessed with the like, where the lineage just came from and ended up here, you know? It's like you go back to Little Richard, who wore eyeliner. And then it got to the New York Dolls. And that's why they wore makeup, but then times a million because they were trying to be shock and punk and whatever. And then without the New York Dolls, there would be no glam metal. Most of the bands modeled themselves after the New York Dolls.
9:23 Speaker 03 You said something before we, when we were talking about doing this show, you said, Motley Crue are like if the New York Dolls had been really successful.
9:29 Yasi Salek? I believe it with my whole heart.
9:30 Speaker 03 And I was like, that's so true and so smart. And it is kind of like they, they kind of unqueered the aesthetic.
9:39 Yasi Salek? That's exactly right because the New York Dolls, like, which I love and I've, many men have been yelling at me on the internet. And I love that because that is my bread and butter.
9:47 Speaker 03 We're not from New York. We're never gonna be.
9:49 Yasi Salek? But the New York Dolls were not like indie. Like they were because by, against their will, but they were trying to make it. They were trying, they were like not averse to capitalism. They wanted to be a successful big band. They just didn't do it, you know, it didn't happen.
10:05 Speaker 03 And you see people in New York, there's like sort of an eternal guy who's 18, who just moved to New York and listened to the New York Dolls for the first time. And dresses like Johnny Thunders. In the way that here, there's always somebody that just got into hair metal. And is like, you know what? I wanna rock.
10:22 Yasi Salek? I wanna rock. I'm gonna, we don't see that hair as much anymore, but maybe that's coming back too.
10:27 Speaker 03 I think it's coming back. I think times are bad. The hair is gonna get long.
10:30 Yasi Salek? And big.
10:31 Speaker 03 And big.
10:31 Yasi Salek? And also the big hair, I said this on the Motley episode, but I'm just really obsessed with it. The New York Dolls did their hair like that because of Ronnie Spector.
10:39 Speaker 03 Wow.
10:39 Yasi Salek? They were obsessed with the Ronettes and with like the doo-wop girl groups. And so that's where that hair came from. And then it sort of like trickled down into Motley Crue at all. And so really that's like, that's the spiritual, you know, grandparents of hair metal are Little Richard and Ronnie Spector. Two black people.
10:57 Speaker 03 Wow. And it is like.
10:58 Yasi Salek? Back to rock and roll.
10:59 Speaker 03 Yeah. And it is kind of like, I thought it was always funny that it's like, you take this really subversive aesthetic of like, you know, people wearing makeup and having long hair. And then you make it so straight. Just like the most hetero, like they took the glam rock thing and instead of being androgynous and kind of queer, it was just like, no, we are pretty boys and we're gonna make ourselves even prettier.
11:23 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
11:24 Speaker 03 By putting on a lot of makeup and teasing our hair up.
11:27 Yasi Salek? I did say this, I, I still do think it was in an effort to draw women, like, you know?
11:33 Speaker 03 Yeah, absolutely. It was about men being sex objects and also like the new kind of MTV culture really allowed for that.
11:40 Yasi Salek? Cause you could see them.
11:41 Speaker 03 Yeah, I was just like, if you were like a horny teenage girl in this period, this must have been like Mecca. Cause you were just like, there's a million beautiful boys and they all are in rock bands.
11:52 Yasi Salek? I'll say it again, Nicki Six is one of the most gorgeous men I've ever seen in, in the early eighties. That jawline, like it's insane how hot he was. And you had many to pick from. I mean, Tommy Lee was hot, Bret Michaels was gorgeous. Like, there's so many.
12:07 Speaker 03 And it is like, they kind of look identical to the groupies.
12:10 Yasi Salek? Same vibes.
12:11 Speaker 03 There is a different Instagram account that's like Girls Backstage Eighties, I think, that maybe also Mel Ottenberg posted is where I saw it.
12:19 Yasi Salek? Shout out Mel Ottenberg.
12:20 Speaker 03 And it's just pictures. It's like people's candid photos backstage at hair metal shows. I'll send it to you. It's so good.
12:27 Yasi Salek? I'm obsessed.
12:28 Speaker 03 A lot of it is just like women who are like, here I am. I was a Cinderella super fan and here's me and like this show, this show and this show.
12:34 Yasi Salek? Well, you just said something I think that's really crucial is that teenage girls made this happen.
12:39 Speaker 03 Yes.
12:40 Yasi Salek? This, this movement, this, this like money, this came from the kernel was teenage girls.
12:47 Speaker 03 Yeah. And, and that's kind of where it appears in my podcast is that Jenna Jameson was a nineties and two thousands porn superstar.
12:55 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
12:55 Speaker 03 But she grew up in the seventies and eighties. And so her idea of like what it meant to be famous and what it meant to be cool was totally shaped by hair metal.
13:05 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
13:05 Speaker 03 And then it was kind of like, by the time she got there to that scene, it was totally dying and over. But it's still like, in a way, it just kind of stays with you. It's like, that's the aesthetic.
13:16 Yasi Salek? Yeah, where you.
13:16 Speaker 03 What a hot girl is like, is like a leather. Bustier.
13:21 Yasi Salek? It's really kind of true, though.
13:23 Speaker 03 Yeah, and I got really into the idea of like, all these looks were kind of coming from like Hollywood hookers.
13:28 Yasi Salek? Hundred percent.
13:29 Speaker 03 You know, that it's like Sunset Boulevard.
13:31 Yasi Salek? Trans.
13:32 Speaker 03 Yeah.
13:33 Yasi Salek? Trans Hollywood prostitutes.
13:34 Speaker 03 Yeah, Santa Monica Boulevard.
13:36 Yasi Salek? Yeah, which, you know what, you're right. The beautiful remnants of this exist on Hollywood Boulevard in the stripper stores, which are still there. Recently purchased shoes from one of them. They are.
13:48 Speaker 03 Oh, which one?
13:49 Yasi Salek? I don't remember the name of it, to be honest.
13:51 Speaker 03 There's one that's like, got a sign in the window that's like, the highest heel in town. That I'm always like, this is the culture.
13:57 Yasi Salek? A pleaser is a good shoe, you know, like, you can't go wrong with a pleaser.
14:01 Speaker 03 It's in the name.
14:02 Yasi Salek? It's in the name. Also, what is, what's the iconic lingerie store, Trashy?
14:07 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
14:08 Yasi Salek? Still there, you know? Jetrag has been there since the 80s. It's more of a vintage store, but we'll talk about it when we get into the Guns N' Roses of it all. There's just, there's a lot, there's a lot still happening.
14:20 Speaker 03 There's a lot, and I think it's been done.
14:22 Yasi Salek? Cantor's.
14:23 Speaker 03 Yeah, I love Cantor's. I love that Kroll Show sketch, L.A. Deli, which is about hair metal bands going to Cantor's. It is like, it's been brought back a bunch of times in a sort of campy, like, isn't this goofy way? But I was really just like, let's, let's take it seriously.
14:41 Yasi Salek? Yeah, let's put on our thinking caps.
14:43 Speaker 03 Let's put on our thinking hair metal wig.
14:46 Yasi Salek? Our anthropologist. Yeah, this beautiful wig.
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15:22 Yasi Salek? Okay, so we're gonna break down, we sort, again, I am not an expert. I just want you guys to flat out know, I am not an expert on hair metal by any stretch of the imagination. I have not even really researched most of these bands, short of Motley Crue. So Molly and I putting together this top 10, we're doing our best, babe. But I just want to up top, mention a couple of bands that we're not gonna talk about that are obviously part of the fabric of this and super important. One is Hanoi Rocks. A lot of this wouldn't have happened without Hanoi Rocks. Finnish band who tragically were ended when Nicholas Razzle Dingell was killed in a car accident with Vince Neil at the wheel. Talk about that extensively in the Motley Crue episode. Dokken? Yeah.
16:06 Yasi Salek? South Bay, a South Bay band. The Christian hair metal band that I'm so obsessed with, because in every genre, there is a Christian band. Striper. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Whose big song was "To Hell With The Devil" and his name was an acronym. Salvation Through Redemption Yielding Peace, Encouragement, and Righteousness. And they would throw bibles into the crowd. Wow, I did not know it was a, wow. Yeah. Wasp is very important. We're not gonna really talk about a song by them, but that was Blackie Lawless's band. We talked a bunch about how Blackie Lawless really set the template for what became Motley Crue's shock aesthetic, blood stuff onstage. And also, Blackie Lawless was briefly in the New York Dolls, so it's all kind of connected. LA Guns, big fan.
16:53 Yasi Salek? In theory, I don't really listen to their music. I'm pretty sure Tracy Guns used to be my neighbor. But Tracy Guns, very integral to all of this, especially when we get into the Guns and Roses of it all. And Faster Pussycat, which I actually do want to briefly talk about Faster Pussycat. I'm very obsessed with them. They're a later hair metal band. Tame Down, I think that's how you say his name. He's from Seattle. His real name is Gustav Molvik. He was like really into punk, but also metal. He was kind of one of those people that did populate. The 80s Sunset Strip, which I'm not gonna get too into it, but if you wanna hear more about that, the Jane's Addiction episode talks about it a lot, because all those bands by the mid to
17:34 Yasi Salek? late 80s were really coexisting. Like Guns N' Roses played shows with Red Hot Chili Peppers and Jane's, and like, they were all kind of, there's like, a festival where the Minutemen played with Guns N' Roses. But he was one of those, Duff McKagan was also one of those. He worked at Retail Slut, which was on Melrose. I believe that's where Slash procured his iconic top hat. And his first friend in LA was Izzy Stradlin. He just like, came here and had kind of a charmed, and he was one of those cool scenesters that everyone liked, and he was quintessentially cool. He's the, also the one, this, just became obsessed with this. So there was an iconic club night here called Scream. Do you remember hearing about this?
18:13 Speaker 03 No.
18:13 Yasi Salek? The woman Dale Gloria. It was like a Goth night, right? Kind of Goth-ish, like Suzie and the Banshees, like, stuff like that. That's what they would play. She, she was friends with Tame, because Tame would go there, because he loved that kind of music. And he told her, "You should have live music here. Like, you really need to do that." And the first band she hooked with, Jane's Addiction. And I'm not totally sure if it was that show or not, but I think it was, which Green River opened for them. And, or it might have been a later one. Anyways, the point is, that show caused Green River to break up, because Jeff Amant and Stone Gossett loved Jane's Addiction so much. Like, "This is fucking cool, we wanna do this." And Mark Arm was like, "I fucking hate this. This is disgusting. What are you talking about?" And
18:58 Yasi Salek? then we got Mother Love Bone and Pearl Jam on one hand, and Mud Honey on the other. So...
19:03 Speaker 03 I think I'm on Team Mud Honey, because I have never...
19:07 Yasi Salek? You're not a Jane's girlie. It's not very LA of you, babe.
19:09 Speaker 03 It, I think it is LA of me, because I truly think Jane's Addiction are so lame, and...
19:17 Yasi Salek? Can't get into this with you right now, because I'm so firmly with my heart and soul disagree.
19:21 Speaker 03 No, I mean, it's good to have different opinions. It's like, they're lame, but also important. Because they are kind of like the archaeopteryx of like hair metal into alternative.
19:32 Yasi Salek? Hundred percent.
19:33 Speaker 03 You know, and I think you you brought up before the show Penelope Spira says Decline of Western Civilization, Part Two.
19:39 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
19:40 Speaker 03 Which is a incredible documentary about the sort of the end of the hair metal scene.
19:45 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
19:46 Speaker 03 And it's incredible because nobody in the hair metal scene knows it's going to end. They're just like, we're gonna keep on rockin' forever.
19:54 Yasi Salek? Because it was so huge. Like, why would they think they're they're printing money? They were massive. And the way that it and we're gonna get to it because I and I put these songs in chronological order. I thought that was the most interesting way to present them. Also, it's the only way my brain works. But we're gonna get to them because Warren's Cherry Pie is gonna be the last one we talk about. That's 1990.
20:12 Speaker 03 Yeah, right. So it's like nineteen, it's crazy to think about like, and then like, Nevermind comes out or whatever, and everything is completely different.
20:19 Yasi Salek? Right.
20:20 Speaker 03 After that. But it is like you were saying, there's like, you know, the Chili Peppers. I wrote a thing about the Chili Peppers once, kind of talking about how they were like in this kind of like punk funk scene that was adjacent to the hair metal stuff. And there were kind of these like overlaps between them. But it does feel like in in Decline, Part Two, it's like, everybody's like, and now hair metal's gonna get psychedelic. And it's gonna be the new era of hair metal is like psychedelic hair metal. And they interview some band that's like, we're making, you know, psychedelic hair metal. And like, that's where it's going. And that's kind of, I think, where Jane's Addiction fit in.
20:59 Yasi Salek? I always say, and I get it wrong every time, because there's like eight bands who did this, and I keep saying triangulating, but it's not triangulating because it's like octanogling or whatever. But like, Janes and Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the Butthole Surfers, and Sonic Youth, and The Replacements, these bands were 80s bands who created alternative rock music.
21:17 Speaker 03 Right. Well, it was called like college rock at that time.
21:20 Yasi Salek? R and M, you know, but they're all kind of existing. But you're right, Janes and Red Hot Chili Peppers were like, literally coexisting with hair metal. Like,
21:28 Speaker 03 Right.
21:29 Yasi Salek? Janes and Poison shared, I think, a practice space.
21:32 Speaker 03 And then it's like, it's funny, too, in retrospect, to be like, everybody was like, grunge is so different. And it's like, completely obliterating this old thing that now everybody thinks is lame. But it's like, also very interested in kind of just rockin'.
21:46 Yasi Salek? It was definitely an evolution. And I don't want to like, re-litigate a lot of the stuff we've talked about on some other episodes, but like, Like any genre name, it's kind of a blanket that doesn't apply to all the bands equally. Like Nirvana based their music on like The Beatles, whereas like Soundgarden was like a Hesher Sabbath metal band.
22:06 Speaker 03 But it was like, it was sort of a new generation of like pretty boys with long hair.
22:10 Yasi Salek? Sure, exactly. And who, but no makeup, no artifice.
22:14 Speaker 03 No, but like sometimes like a little femmy, wearing a dress.
22:18 Yasi Salek? Yeah. I guess Kurt wore a little eyeliner.
22:22 Speaker 03 I love when they wore the dresses in that video. It's just a different, a different take.
22:27 Yasi Salek? Yeah, it's every, every generation has their version.
22:30 Speaker 03 Yeah.
22:31 Yasi Salek? We get the one we deserve.
22:33 Speaker 03 Yeah.
22:35 Yasi Salek? Okay, anyways, Faster Pussycat, just to wrap that one up, he started the Cat House, Tame Down with Ricky Rackman.
22:42 Speaker 03 Okay, great.
22:43 Yasi Salek? Iconic club night that was like, they wanted to make a club night but for hard rock. And like, it was Tuesday nights, Axl Rose was there every Tuesday dancing by himself on the dance floor. That's the place where like famously, although no one knows exactly why, Axl got into an altercation with David Bowie and chased him down the street to try to kill him. One of the like craziest and coolest legendary places of the eighties was the Cat House. And like the brat, Keanu Reeves would go there, like all the famous people would go there, would pay so much money to have just one evening.
23:18 Speaker 03 Yeah, not a camera phone in sight.
23:19 Yasi Salek? Not a camera phone in sight. So much cocaine.
23:24 Yasi Salek? So they made the band Faster Pussycat. It's named after the Russ Meyer film. He actually directed their first music video.
23:30 Speaker 03 Wow.
23:31 Yasi Salek? The label got them to do that. It's called Don't Change That Song, Kind of Rips. But the song, the jam of theirs, which this is the only one I'm doing out of order, is Babylon. And that one starts, it has scratching on it. To your point about rap rock being very early, Ricky Rackman is scratching.
23:50 Speaker 03 Wow.
23:50 Yasi Salek? And it's, the song starts like, pussy, pussy, pussy cat. It's an incredible and crazy and weird song.
24:04 Yasi Salek? Okay, but I want to start with Quiet Riot. They really are the reason that any of this happened. Have you fucked with Quiet Riot much?
24:14 Speaker 03 I mean, what was interesting about getting into this was being like, I've heard a lot of the singles from these bands, but like very few of the entire albums.
24:21 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
24:22 Speaker 03 And sometimes you find out why they're a singles band.
24:26 Yasi Salek? Right. Everyone on earth has heard Come On, Feel the Noise.
24:30 Speaker 03 Yes, which is a Slade song.
24:32 Yasi Salek? Slade cover, that's right.
24:35 Yasi Salek? This band was formed in 1973. So some of these bands are really early. Quiet Riot, Twisted Sister and Van Halen. And obviously Aerosmith is, we were gonna talk about Aerosmith in here, but Aerosmith is like, Aerosmith also inspired all these bands. They've been through like eight different decades and versions of being a band. But this band, Quiet Riot, was formed by Randy Rhoads, Kelly Garnie and Kevin Dubrow. Um, I loved this. They had a polka dot theme. That was like Randy Rhoads's thing, like very early from Randy Rhoads all the way to Addison Rae. You can track now this polka dot trend. Um, and he was a crazy incredible guitar player. They, they could not really get signed. This is a trend that we're gonna see early, in the early days of hair metal.
25:19 Yasi Salek? Nobody wanted these bands because it was all about new wave. So they get a contract with Sony where it only releases their albums in Japan. Okay, so they, to this day, I think they've never been put out in the United States. Quiet Riot I, 1977, and then Quiet Riot II, 1978. Kelly Garnie and Kevin Dubrow really start to fucking hate each other during the second uh, album recording. This is just the craziest story I want to tell you because all of these bands have the most insane stories. Garnie got wasted um, after robbing a bar.
25:53 Speaker 03 As you do.
25:54 Yasi Salek? Yeah, stealing all the liquor, going home with Randy Rhoads, being wasted, being like, we need to replace Kevin Dubrow, we need a new singer. They fight. Garnie shoots a gun into the air. They have a brawl, then he hashes a plan that he's gonna drive to the studio where Dubrow is recording and kill him with the gun. Then he decides not to, tries to turn back around to come home, is promptly arrested for drunk driving and goes to jail.
26:24 Yasi Salek? Got a DUI and felony possession of a concealed weapon. Um, they kick him out of the band after that. So he leaves. That's how they get, uh, Rudy Sarzo into the band. Nikki Sixx also auditioned, but he didn't get in or he didn't want to. I don't know. Quiet Riot was already being played on K-Rock. This is important. Rodney on the Rock was already spinning. We know.
26:44 Yasi Salek? Us LA girls know how important Rodney on the Rock.
26:46 Speaker 03 Right. He'd already launched glam.
26:47 Yasi Salek? He'd already, like, he's, he's doing God's work out here, but he's like sticking this, uh, Quiet Riot song, which is called Slick Black Cadillac, in between like the adolescence and the circle jerks, you know, because that's kind of what was going on in his show back then. Randy Rhoads leaves the band to join Ozzy's band famously. Very sad. What happened to Randy Rhoads? He, he died in a, um, plane crash? Plane crash.
27:11 Speaker 03 It's like, it's sad he joined Ozzy's band.
27:13 Yasi Salek? No, that was amazing, but like pretty shortly after, like it wasn't that long. It was like less than three years that he was in the band. Rudy Sarzo also ended up joining Ozzy's band. This ends Quiet Riot for a while, but then, um, Kevin Gubrow's like, okay, I want to get it back together. Couple of years later, he's like, can I use Quiet Riot? Randy Rhoads is like, go off this.
27:36 Yasi Salek? After Randy Rhoads dies, um, Rudy Sarzo, like can't be in Ozzy's band anymore. I was like too distraught. That was his best friend. He eventually asked to be in Quiet Riot, but I just want, okay, that's all the background. The story of this song is insane. Here's what Dee Snider said. Quiet Riot, they don't get enough credit, but I've screamed it from the mountaintops. Quiet Riot should be immortalized. What they did, first of all, they were on the West Coast for years and years, carrying all this glitter rock glam torch, putting out these independent records, going to Japan, doing everything they could. And finally, against all odds, they break through. Here's how they break through. A man named Spencer Proffer, who owned Pasha Records, which had a deal as an imprint with CBS.
28:17 Yasi Salek? He was like a producer guy, apparently very, uh, kooky, like only wore a bathrobe and wouldn't be barefoot in the studio all the time. It's like the original Rick Rubin. He's driving, he hasn't been able to have a hit with CBS. He's driving around only one day and he hears that Slade song on the radio and he was like. Lightbulb, he's like, this is participatory rock. It invites people to participate. And I said, holy shit, if I can get a band to sing this song, then I might be able to get CBS Records to pay attention to me. So I called everyone I knew in town and they said there was a band playing at the country club in Reseda called Dubrow. That's what they were going by at the time. So I went. So he goes and he's like, if you guys will do this song, I will pay for the rest of your album. It's like a deal with the devil because they really did not want to cover Slade's Come On Feel The Noise.
29:02 Yasi Salek? They're like, that's, that's wack. We don't want to do that.
29:05 Yasi Salek? That's the deal? Okay, fine. He records like five songs with them, including Come On Feel The Noise, flies to New York to play it for CBS Records, for all the executives and stuff, gets a note from one executive that just says, Spencer, we hate this. And he's like, okay. Tries to shop it around to like every label in town. Everyone passes. And finally, he comes back to the chairman of CBS, his name was Walter Yentikoff. And he's like, please, you saw something in me. Like, you believed in me to do something for you. Just let me finish this one album. And the guy's like, okay, fine, go finish the one album. And CBS is like, but they have to change that fucking awful name. So then they go back to Quiet Riot.
29:47 Yasi Salek? The first single off the album is called Bang Your Head. And Spencer Proffrey used all his connections. It's very early MTV times, right? He goes and he's like, please play this video on MTV. And they're like, okay. And it just fucking blows up.
30:03 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, I feel like there must have been, because of what you're talking about, just like, everything was cool. New Wave is cool. Punk is cool. What about the people that are not cool?
30:15 Yasi Salek? Well, and that's right. Because early MTV, when did MTV launch? Was it 82? I can't remember off the top of my head.
30:20 Speaker 03 It's like right, early 80s. But it is just like, yeah, what about all those like 70s meatheads? Who just like shredding? Who don't want necessarily,
30:29 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
30:30 Speaker 03 like a higher end version of that?
30:32 Yasi Salek? They don't want, uh, Video Killed The Radio Star? Or like all the British music they're playing on MTV? Which I think what I found in some of my research, and if this is wrong, I don't want anyone to correct me because I really like this story, which is that because British bands had always had a place to put videos because they had all those TV shows that played music videos, a lot of early MTV programming was British heavy.
30:55 Speaker 03 Yeah. And there's kind of, you can sell England to Americans.
30:59 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
30:59 Speaker 03 They're like, ooh, it's different.
31:01 Yasi Salek? It's different. And yeah, you're right. It was kind of alternative and cool. But they get Bang Your Head on there and the album blows up. It goes gold before Come On Feel Your Noise, or Come On Feel The Noise has even come out. And then Quiet Riot's like, hell yeah, we're on tour with Black Sabbath. And Spencer's like, we're putting out the single for Come On Feel The Noise. Bye. This shit fucking explodes. The single hits number five on the Billboard 100. It's the first heavy metal song to ever crack the Billboard 100. So all this is for me to say is like, without Quiet Riot, none of this other stuff would have been allowed. They wouldn't have been signed or put out, right? Because they showed that this was commercially viable.
31:40 Speaker 03 Right. And once there's one, two's a trend.
31:43 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
31:44 Speaker 03 One, one lights the way. And you were saying too, it's like, once you have this kind of Ricky Rackman, like, spot for people
31:51 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
31:52 Speaker 03 of this sort to gather. It's like the, the Rodney, Rodney's Disco.
31:59 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
31:59 Speaker 03 Which is where like glam really took off. It's just like, once you're like, this is a thing. There is a place, people can go there to be this kind of person.
32:07 Yasi Salek? And even before Cat House, because Cat House is, I think, mid to late eighties, mid eighties probably. Um, there was a Starwood, which was a, was kind of an early punk club. But they had metal bands that played there, like Motley Crue played there and like all these bands would play there and they would just, it would be like one night Black Flag, one night Motley Crue. And then there's also Gazari's very famously. Yeah.
32:32 Speaker 03 Love Gazari's as a concept.
32:34 Yasi Salek? As a concept.
32:35 Speaker 03 It is just like, I did a lot of research into the history of the Sunset Strip for my other podcast, Heidi World.
32:40 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
32:40 Speaker 03 And it was kind of like, there's all these changing of the guards in terms of generations. So it's like, first there was kind of Supper Club, Dean Martin type of stuff on the Sunset Strip.
32:52 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
32:53 Speaker 03 Mafia run clubs. And then when hippie stuff started, they were kind of like, oh, okay. If we, if we have the Byrds be our house band.
33:03 Yasi Salek? Right.
33:03 Speaker 03 We'll get this new type of kid that wants to come out and spend money. If we have the Doors play every week.
33:10 Yasi Salek? Totally.
33:10 Speaker 03 Kids who like the Doors will come.
33:12 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
33:13 Speaker 03 And so then it die, like when that dies, there's kind of a like, well, what now?
33:18 Yasi Salek? Yeah, there was, I think there was there like a bit of a vacuum between these like giants of hard rock. You know, from went from the Doors into like, obviously, um.
33:31 Speaker 03 Led Zeppelin.
33:32 Yasi Salek? Led Zeppelin.
33:33 Speaker 03 Yeah, no, it is like there's a.
33:34 Yasi Salek? I'm such a blind. I'm like, that little band down the stairway.
33:38 Speaker 03 I'm not a big Led Zeppelin person either, but it is like, yeah, there's like a seventies scene and then that kind of.
33:44 Yasi Salek? Groupies and.
33:44 Speaker 03 Comes to an end and then there's definitely like the eighties. Fill it out.
33:50 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
33:50 Speaker 03 Find a thing for it to be.
33:52 Yasi Salek? And it's, and it's pretty early on. Like I think Motley Crue starts playing and becoming kind of like the Whiskey House Band in like eighty two or eighty one.
33:58 Speaker 03 Right. And they were probably aware of like the Doors having been the Whiskey House Band. And if you ever go to the whiskey, it is like the shittiest club you've ever been to in your life.
34:08 Yasi Salek? Shittiest club you've ever been to in your life.
34:09 Speaker 03 So incredibly, no respectfully, but it's like, it's incredible. You're like, wow, this is like historic. So many incredible historic things happened here. And there used to be a cage for go-go dancers.
34:22 Yasi Salek? There's still some gravitas to the Troubadour.
34:25 Speaker 03 There's gravitas to all of those places to me because it is just like.
34:29 Yasi Salek? No, I mean. Seven wonders of the world.
34:31 Speaker 03 Well, it's like you go there and you are like, wow, I can't believe all this incredible stuff happened at this like shitty little club.
34:37 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
34:37 Speaker 03 That's kind of how it is.
34:38 Yasi Salek? Yeah, that's so true. Um, but yeah, all that to say, Quiet Riot blows the fucking doors open. They, their album goes number one. They, they kicked the police's synchronicity off the number one spot like mean jerk. They basically had the fastest selling hard rock album until Guns N' Roses came along. Rick Crim, who is an M phenomenal name, um, an MTV executive at the time, he said, it felt like it was something bigger and broader than an Iron Maiden video. Iron Maiden made some entertaining videos, but it wasn't for the masses and it certainly wasn't for girls. I've got to believe there was a good female audience who liked Come On Feel The Noise and We're Not Going To Take It and a lot of the stuff that was to follow because they were pop songs with heavy guitars.
35:20 Speaker 03 Totally. And it does go from kind of heavy metal being this kind of like guitar wonk.
35:26 Yasi Salek? Yeah, and exclude, pretty exclusionary to women because they're like, we don't care about this.
35:31 Speaker 03 Well, it's also like, it's sort of like,
35:32 Yasi Salek? Hashtag not all women.
35:33 Speaker 03 Hashtag not all women, but also kind of like, it's, it's almost proggy. It's a lot of like medieval.
35:39 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
35:42 Speaker 03 Imagery. And then this is just like having a fun time at the club, which in a way is kind of a throwback to like 50s and 60s rock of just like, we're rocking around the clock.
35:53 Yasi Salek? And it's libidinal.
35:54 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's very horny.
35:55 Yasi Salek? It's horny. Like, you need horny music to like fill the club, babe.
35:59 Speaker 03 It's true. Synchronicity, not horny.
36:01 Yasi Salek? Not horny. I mean, I know my man Sting is very into tantric sex and I love that for him, but.
36:07 Speaker 03 We love the complicated time signatures, but also.
36:10 Yasi Salek? Yeah, so.
36:11 Speaker 03 Come on, feel the noise also. I, I just feel like if you're like a kid and you see it, you're like, they spelled come crazy and they spelled noise crazy.
36:21 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
36:21 Speaker 03 Get out of here.
36:22 Yasi Salek? What is this?
36:22 Speaker 03 This is crazy.
36:23 Yasi Salek? This is insane. I want to be part of this. Participatory.
36:32 Yasi Salek? Um, little, little did they know, it was just gonna become Jock Jams. Um, but that's totally fine. Next in our Hall of Fame, Twisted Sister.
36:41 Speaker 03 Twisted Sister.
36:43 Yasi Salek? We're not gonna take it. Twisted Sister, arguably the oldest band that we're gonna talk about, besides Aerosmith. They were formed in 1972.
36:53 Speaker 03 Wow.
36:53 Yasi Salek? But they were a glam band. They were like called Silver Star and they wanted to be the New York Dolls. They were like a New Jersey band that was like, oh, we want to be the New Jersey, New York Dolls, basically the New Jersey Dolls. It was J.J. French, Eddie Fingers Ojeda, and then later, they have like nine lineups as a glam band before finally, it's like four years later and the band's agent is like, listen, you need to hire Danny Snyder. I don't know what word, what word we, would we use to describe Dee Snider as a lead? Elite man. I was gonna say alluring, that's not correct. Charismatic is also maybe not correct. He is kind of charismatic. He's funny.
37:33 Speaker 03 He's super charismatic and he brings something to hair metal that will be sort of a through line to me in hair metal, which is kind of like, what if a rock band was fronted by like a borscht belt comedian?
37:46 Yasi Salek? Totally.
37:47 Speaker 03 Which is also very Sunset Strip.
37:49 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
37:49 Speaker 03 But that kind of like, which will become like the David Lee Roth.
37:53 Yasi Salek? Yeah, totally.
37:54 Speaker 03 That kind of like, I'm a rocker, but I'm also a guy who hangs out at Cantor's.
37:59 Yasi Salek? Yeah. And also the theater part of it, which, you know, he was a huge Alice Cooper fan. We haven't mentioned Alice Cooper also obviously set a lot of the stage for hair metal with the like theater part of it and the makeup and whatever. So they get him and then they get a drummer called Tony Petrie, who is also really into Sabbath. So the band goes more from glam into like hard and shock rock. And then they got Mark the Animal Mendoza, who I'm obsessed with because he was in the band The Dictators, which was one of the earliest CBGB's bands, punk bands. And they get signed in 82. So 10 years, 10 years after,
38:41 Yasi Salek? and then they put out, two years later, they put out, we're not gonna take it. Which again, is basically a rip off of Come On Field. Not a rip off, that's a rude way to say it, but I think they heard Come On Field, The Noise, and they were like, okay, anthemic, participatory, like, we can do that. And that's basically what We're Not Gonna Take It is.
38:59 Speaker 03 Yeah.
39:08 Speaker 03 I sort of relate to Dee Snider in some way. Anytime I put on makeup, I feel like Dee Snider.
39:13 Yasi Salek? Yes, 100%. Dee Snider, one of the rare, and I say this with all the love, respect and peace in my heart, one of the rare hair metal frontmen not. Playing on his good looks.
39:29 Speaker 03 Yeah, he's of a different.
39:30 Yasi Salek? Capitalizing on.
39:31 Speaker 03 Different sort of.
39:32 Yasi Salek? His beauty.
39:32 Speaker 03 Fellow, but it is like he's magnetic.
39:35 Yasi Salek? So magnetic. The next song we're going to talk about is Round and Round by Rat.
39:40 Speaker 03 Okay, so I've been really.
39:42 Yasi Salek? Deeply into Rat?
39:43 Speaker 03 Just really into Round and Round.
39:45 Yasi Salek? It is a really good song.
39:46 Speaker 03 Um, they do play all of these songs all the time on KLOS because they are kind of like the backbone of Los Angeles rock radio.
39:54 Yasi Salek? So funny because KLOS when we were growing up was full on like 60s and 70s music.
39:58 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, they're, they're up to the 90s and 2000s now. They've been running this ad a lot recently that's like, we play Nirvana now.
40:06 Yasi Salek? KMS.
40:09 Yasi Salek? Going to KMS.
40:10 Speaker 03 They're like, you used to listen to Nirvana on K-Rock and now it's on KLOS.
40:15 Yasi Salek? And now you need to sign up for the AARP and you need to get a colonoscopy.
40:20 Speaker 03 But I do, like Round and Round comes on a lot and I do just like listen to the radio a lot because I don't like to think about what I am going to listen to.
40:28 Yasi Salek? You don't want to have that agency. I understand.
40:30 Speaker 03 There's too many choices. I sort of need someone to tell me.
40:33 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
40:33 Speaker 03 Especially when I'm driving. I can't be thinking about it.
40:35 Yasi Salek? I put on Sirius XM Dave Matthews Band radio.
40:37 Speaker 03 Okay, this is where we part ways.
40:40 Yasi Salek? It's where me and a lot of people part ways and I will stand in my.
40:42 Speaker 03 But I respect it.
40:43 Yasi Salek? Thank you.
40:44 Speaker 03 I, I understand. Dave Matthews seems like a lovely fella. Um, but it is like Round and Round rocks.
40:52 Yasi Salek? Goes so hard.
40:53 Speaker 03 It's a great song and Rat is such a funny name for a band. Rat with two Ts.
40:59 Yasi Salek? Okay, let me tell you where that came from. The, the name of the band was Mickey Rat, which was apparently a cartoon character, a comic cartoon character that was like the bad boy Mickey Mouse.
41:10 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's like an underground comic.
41:12 Yasi Salek? Smoked cigs and like did bad shit.
41:14 Speaker 03 It's like Fritz the Cat.
41:14 Yasi Salek? Exactly. But they added an extra T because they didn't want to get like a copyright infringement. And then eventually they just.
41:21 Speaker 03 I love that they were like, we don't want to get sued by when Mickey Mouse sues Mickey Rat.
41:26 Yasi Salek? Weird named in the lawsuit.
41:29 Speaker 03 We're not over there.
41:30 Yasi Salek? I have grown up with like a maybe more deep interest in Rat than all these other bands because Blobby Blotzer is from Torrance. And I'm almost positive that I went to school with his son Bobby Blotzer.
41:42 Speaker 03 Such a good hair metal name.
41:43 Yasi Salek? Good hair metal name, hair metal name.
41:45 Speaker 03 I thought you were saying Blobby Blotzer.
41:46 Yasi Salek? Blobby Blotzer. And I'm almost positive, but because my brain is addled and full of worms and I have brain damage from doing this podcast and probably perimenopause. Um, I don't remember what his son's name was, but like, we all knew like, oh, like that guy's dad is in Rat.
42:02 Speaker 03 Yeah.
42:02 Yasi Salek? You know, like in the eighties in like elementary school, he was like the cool, like, oh, his dad is in Rat. A lot of hair metal comes from the South Bay, which is no surprise to me as someone having grown up there. Rat is always called an LA or Hollywood band. It's not, like I said, Blobby Blotzer from Torrance, Steven Piercy and best name, in my opinion, in all of rock music, Warren DiMartini. They're from San Diego. They have this band going, you know, they formed in also like seventy-three. So they're like kind of an older band. It's called Fire Dome. Bunch of changing lineups, changing names. Warren DiMartini, my guy, he joins in eighty-two because Jake E. Lee, who is the other guitar player, joins Ozzy's band. Ozzy is really doing a lot of.
42:47 Speaker 03 Yeah, Ozzy's the other kind of like transitional.
42:50 Yasi Salek? Totally. We, we actually are not talking about an Ozzy song here, but we totally could because he obviously charted and had. Well, I don't know. He actually didn't chart back in his, his prime. I think his one song that really did chart was that one with Lita Ford.
43:03 Speaker 03 Oh, great song, Close My Eyes Forever.
43:05 Yasi Salek? Yeah. Um, but anyways, I feel like a lot of his plucking musicians from this scene to join his band. Created these like ripple waves that like gave us new lineups that had this music because Warren DiMartini had the chords for Round and Round.
43:20 Speaker 03 Wow.
43:21 Yasi Salek? He brought that to the table. Um, also fun fact about Rat is they have a song on the Metal Massacre compilation. Which if you're a Metallica fan, you'll know that that was the first ever recorded piece of Metallica music was on this nineteen eighty-two compilation, Hit the Lights. Iconic, fucking amazing song. Also, Metallica is an album of, at this point is living in LA too, briefly.
43:41 Speaker 03 Right. It's like people come to LA. To try and be in the legit record business.
43:46 Yasi Salek? Make it. Yeah.
43:47 Speaker 03 And then there is a beautiful infrastructure of hair metal.
43:51 Yasi Salek? Well, James Hetfield is from, I'm gonna get it wrong, because you guys, I can't remember everything on earth. I'm a human woman, but I feel like he's from like Downey or something. He's from like Inland.
44:02 Speaker 03 Yeah, there's some kind of.
44:04 Yasi Salek? Because I know they're known as like a San Francisco band, but he's, he's absolutely from down here. Um, beep beep beep, Downey.
44:10 Speaker 03 Yeah, you're right.
44:12 Yasi Salek? Look at that. Can't remember anyone's name that I meet in real life.
44:15 Speaker 03 No, but you can remember where James Hetfield is from.
44:17 Yasi Salek? Downey, babe. Super, super important. Um, the first Rat EP, who's on the cover, Molly, someone that plays an outsized role in the imagery of hair metal and also in the OJ Simpson trial.
44:30 Speaker 03 Oh, Toni Kattan.
44:31 Yasi Salek? Toni Kattan. She was Robin Crosby's girlfriend at the time. Um, they rented rats and put them on her legs.
44:40 Speaker 03 It's a good. It's a great cover.
44:41 Yasi Salek? Yeah. Um, they were also basically baby Motley Crue, like they were besties with Motley. And just like Dee Dee Keel, famous groupie from the Groupies podcast, which you guys should listen to. Producer Dylan hosted that podcast. Um, she kind of turned her groupiedom into being like an, I'll say, under celebrated and under financially compensated girl boss of the Sunset Strip because she worked at the whiskey. And she's the one that gave Motley Crue their club night. She's also the one that picked Rat out and was like, yeah, this Steven Piercy is like gorgeous and like exudes sex and they're gonna make it. Did she make $1 off of that? Probably not, but shout out Dee Dee Keel.
45:24 Yasi Salek? Um, and that's where Round and Round kind of came from. It was written at their, uh, one bedroom apartment off the strip called Rat Mansion West.
45:34 Yasi Salek? Just to give you an idea, because I remember this from my grandfather lived off the Sunset Strip when I was growing up. A one bedroom apartment at that time was about $300.
45:44 Speaker 03 Don't tell us that.
45:46 Yasi Salek? $300.
45:46 Speaker 03 Don't tell everybody.
45:48 Yasi Salek? Isn't that crazy?
45:49 Speaker 03 That is why people miss the 80s.
45:50 Yasi Salek? Yeah, $300. Even with inflation, I'm pretty sure that's like something egregiously low.
45:57 Speaker 03 And just the idea that you could live off the strip and then every night walk down to the strip.
46:01 Yasi Salek? Stumble down. And Motley Crue famously also did. Um, yeah, I ran around a genuine banger that I would like listen to of my own volition.
46:09 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's great.
46:10 Yasi Salek? Yeah. It hit number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100. It came out in 84.
46:22 Yasi Salek? All right. This is where I really need your take. Van Halen's Hoffer Teacher.
46:28 Speaker 03 All right. So I feel like Van Halen, when I came up, when I got up to Hoffer Teacher.
46:32 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
46:33 Speaker 03 I was like, I almost don't even think of Van Halen as a hair metal band.
46:37 Yasi Salek? Well, they kind of weren't, right?
46:39 Speaker 03 Well, it's like.
46:39 Yasi Salek? Or they were.
46:41 Speaker 03 There's bands on this list that are like, this is part of the hair metal singles compilation. And then there's other bands, basically Van Halen and Guns N' Roses, where I'm like, well, these were albums bands.
46:52 Yasi Salek? Yeah, totally.
46:53 Speaker 03 Real bands. These weren't like novelty bands in the way that like Rat.
46:58 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
46:58 Speaker 03 Was more of a novelty band.
46:59 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
47:00 Speaker 03 Um, and Van Halen are doing the original party rock. Van Halen are.
47:05 Yasi Salek? They were a Pasadena backyard party band.
47:07 Speaker 03 Right. Like they, they to me come less out of kind of like the glam metal.
47:12 Yasi Salek? They weren't glam at all. They didn't wear makeup. They had the hair and they, you know, obviously wore kind of tight clothes a little bit, but they, they didn't do glam. They didn't do makeup.
47:19 Speaker 03 Yeah, they kind of seem more like the, like the band that plays at the frat party at Animal House or whatever. That it's like, the idea is just like, you have a party, we're gonna plug in and play and like rock this party.
47:32 Yasi Salek? But they're more in the Aerosmith tradition.
47:35 Speaker 03 Yeah.
47:35 Yasi Salek? Of hard rock.
47:36 Speaker 03 But Hot for Teacher. Unlike unequivocally.
47:41 Yasi Salek? Hair metal.
47:42 Speaker 03 Gotta be hair metal. And it is like, all of these songs, like when I was thinking about like, what makes it hair metal? It's gotta be that you can play it in the strip club.
47:51 Yasi Salek? Totally.
47:51 Speaker 03 And the strip club goes off. And what you were saying earlier about Russ Meyer directing The Choir Riot.
47:57 Yasi Salek? Faster Pussycat.
47:57 Speaker 03 Yeah, Faster Pussycat video. It's like, well, Russ Meyer scouted a lot of the girls for the Russ Meyer videos from the Body Shop, which is the strip club across from like, the whiskey and clubs like that.
48:08 Yasi Salek? Which you guys have, I'm sure, if you've driven down the Sunset Strip, you've seen it. It has the iconic, right? It's the iconic with the silver outlines of the women.
48:15 Speaker 03 Yeah, and it's got these like weird Greek statues.
48:18 Yasi Salek? Yes.
48:19 Speaker 03 And a crazy drawing of a woman whose breasts are so big that they're like, going all over the place. And she's like, ah. But it is like, there's a tradition kind of of like, the the strip club and the fact that the Sunset Strip and Santa Monica Boulevard and Hollywood Boulevard were all famous host roles.
48:38 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
48:38 Speaker 03 As director, John Carpenter once put it to me. Legendary host role. And I was like, so true.
48:43 Yasi Salek? Couldn't be a more perfect term.
48:45 Speaker 03 And he was like, with the most beautiful hookers in the world.
48:47 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
48:47 Speaker 03 Which I was like, also true.
48:49 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
48:49 Speaker 03 So there is this kind of like sex, the sex and drugs and rock and roll of it all. And Hot for Teacher really is kind of like the thing where all those things plug together.
49:01 Yasi Salek? One, you, everything you're saying is one million percent right. Like, I feel like Van Halen, again, very early, 1972, they would play all these like places around California, like Pasadena, San Bernardino, Southern California, Venice, anywhere they could, right? And they built up this big following. I mean, obviously Vince Neil looks like that because David Lee Roth looks like that.
49:21 Speaker 03 Well, David Lee Roth also, the quintessential worst belt comedian.
49:26 Yasi Salek? But also hot.
49:27 Speaker 03 Well, he's hot, but I remember having like, a very confused reaction to him when I saw those videos for the first time.
49:34 Yasi Salek? In your loins?
49:35 Speaker 03 Well, kind of like, I'm like, repulsed but also intrigued.
49:39 Yasi Salek? Which I think is the best indicator of attraction, to be honest.
49:42 Speaker 03 And then like, later being like, oh, I am him.
49:46 Yasi Salek? Which is why you were drawn to him.
49:47 Speaker 03 Yeah, like, I'm drawn to him because I identify as David Lee Roth.
49:52 Yasi Salek? It was your anima.
49:53 Speaker 03 And I do kind of identify, I truly like, that is, that is core to my identity. But yeah, I mean, David Lee Roth. Uh, and the Van Halen brothers, obviously.
50:04 Yasi Salek? Well, yeah.
50:05 Speaker 03 Very video ready.
50:06 Yasi Salek? You can't have one without the other because there would be no Van Halen without Eddie Van Halen being this fucking like insane, like genius level guitar player who like allegedly, I mean, there's some like debate, but like invented the hammer on, again, when I say these things, I'm doing theater, I don't really know what that means, but I know that that's, that's essential to hair metal and glam metal is like hammer on.
50:37 Speaker 03 And they were like trained classically.
50:39 Yasi Salek? Yeah, they were, I mean, incredible musicians. Um, they were scouted by Gene Simmons. Although Kiss's managers famously said that they would never make it. So he wasn't able to do anything, but he did produce their first demo.
50:55 Speaker 03 Where do you fall on Kiss?
50:58 Yasi Salek? Kiss is a band that I have not spent time with, but from my research, I know is like, has an outsized importance to all the music I love. Like it would not, the music I love would not exist without Kiss. Like so many different bands of the night, like down to like Stephen Malkmus of Pavement was like Kiss was my first favorite band. Like Kiss was so integral to like the trajectory of rock music that I have to respect them. But I haven't, again, I haven't like looked at any of the music, them in the declined doc. I was like, oh.
51:32 Speaker 03 Oh, okay. So I hate Kiss.
51:34 Yasi Salek? Just in general?
51:36 Speaker 03 Just in general, the music is bad.
51:38 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
51:38 Speaker 03 The vibes are bad. I walked out of the movie Detroit Rock City.
51:42 Yasi Salek? Okay. What about the makeup?
51:45 Speaker 03 The makeup is stupid. Iconic, but stupid. Um, I did see some teenagers dressed as Kiss on Hollywood Boulevard and took a picture with them. So I'm not totally like.
51:56 Yasi Salek? I mean, Kiss also wouldn't exist without the New York Dolls.
51:59 Speaker 03 Well, that's what I was gonna say. Maybe Kiss are like, if the New York Dolls got.
52:02 Yasi Salek? They literally are. They had the same management.
52:04 Speaker 03 But there's something like really hamfisted about Kiss that it's like when I think of hair metal. They sound like what I think other people think hair metal sounds like.
52:15 Yasi Salek? Right.
52:16 Speaker 03 Which is like ham-fisted, kind of.
52:18 Yasi Salek? Like anthemic.
52:20 Speaker 03 Anthemic, but like, kinda like, like in a stupid.
52:24 Yasi Salek? Yeah, I think, I guess to be, if I'm being generous, and again, I have not researched Kiss, and I only know like, the most top line about them, like, the big songs or whatever.
52:34 Speaker 03 Back in the New York groove is a great song. I like those Ace Frehley songs.
52:37 Yasi Salek? I think they were like, entry level, hard rock scary for young boys.
52:43 Speaker 03 And I think.
52:44 Yasi Salek? And that's important, you know?
52:45 Speaker 03 It's also my coastal bias.
52:47 Yasi Salek? Your coastal elite bias.
52:49 Speaker 03 Yeah, and like, east, they're east coast hair metal, which is lame. They're not a cool sunset strip band.
52:54 Yasi Salek? Yeah. I don't even, would, would they even be considered hair metal?
52:57 Speaker 03 I mean, they've got hair and they're, they play metal.
53:00 Yasi Salek? And they did glam, I guess, but is that metal? I'm not, I'm not a genreologist, so I don't wanna get into it. And I'm gonna get a thousand messages about this, so please educate me.
53:08 Speaker 03 I'm excited for every Kiss fan to send a person strongly worded letter.
53:15 Speaker 03 But Gene Simmons does fit into that borscht belt.
53:18 Yasi Salek? Totally. Comedian.
53:20 Speaker 03 He's funny, he's an asshole. You know, I, I don't, I don't respect it. I don't respect it. That's not. I acknowledge it.
53:29 Yasi Salek? I acknowledge it. Well, he shows up a couple of times within hair metal to like, help people out to make it, so I'll give him that. This is one of the times was with Van Halen. Van Morrison's bandleader, Doug Messenger, saw Van Halen at the Starwood and basically harassed Warner Brothers Records to, please come check them out. Like, I, I really think you would like them. And so, in, in seventy-seven, Mo Austin and Ted Templeman, who was the producer, saw Van Halen at the Starwood, and that was their first night ever playing at the Starwood, because they were a Ghazari's band, and they got signed. And they were the, one of the first bands. To get signed in that milieu, you know?
54:11 Speaker 03 Yeah, and they also like, they're such a, like, people talk about crowd work comedians, you know, like, they're the crowd work band. Like, they hone those skills playing those backyard parties of like, trying to get people's attention at a party where everybody's like, you know, doing keg stands.
54:26 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
54:27 Speaker 03 And they, they do. And so, when you were saying the thing about the kind of like, call and response, like, audience interactive.
54:34 Yasi Salek? Participation.
54:35 Speaker 03 They're the kings of that.
54:36 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
54:37 Speaker 03 In every way. And then you also have just like, incredible musicianship. So it is just like, when Van Halen came up on the playlist, I was like, they're almost, they're almost above.
54:48 Yasi Salek? Like, it's disrespectful for the inclusion to be hot for teacher, but it's because we're talking about hair metal.
54:53 Speaker 03 But it's hot for teacher, and it is like, it immediately conjures like, a girl in a wet teacher contest at Gazari's, in a way, that is foundational, hair metal.
55:02 Yasi Salek? Or, who's the one, who's in the video? I should know this.
55:06 Speaker 03 Oh, I learned this because it came up in Jenna World. It's um, a mod, it's like a Swedish model.
55:12 Yasi Salek? Like, I just think of that, like, that quintessential porn trope of the like, hot teacher in the tight white shirt, like, crawling on the desk or whatever.
55:22 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, it's also like, a lot of the girls who became the video girls.
55:25 Yasi Salek? They were not above that, is what I'm saying. Van Halen was not above that.
55:27 Speaker 03 No, of course not. They were a bunch of cool horny guys. I don't think they thought they were better than hair metal.
55:33 Yasi Salek? They thought they were better than Molly Crew. They had talked about it a lot. They were like, we don't need makeup and you can turn the lights off and our show would still rock. You don't have to look at us.
55:41 Speaker 03 I mean, I was gonna say, I think Molly Crew might be the other band who I think sort of transcend.
55:46 Yasi Salek? It's nice of you.
55:47 Speaker 03 As a good band. I've, I've listened to them a lot recently and been like, Molly Crew are a real band.
55:52 Yasi Salek? It's so interesting.
55:53 Speaker 03 Yeah.
55:54 Yasi Salek? I did not have that reaction.
55:56 Speaker 03 You, you, I mean, anything in, in.
55:58 Yasi Salek? To large doses.
55:59 Speaker 03 Yeah, cuz I was texting you when we were talking about this playlist and I was like, new mental health plan, listening to hair metal. And then after a day of that, I was like, I gotta listen to something else.
56:09 Yasi Salek? Yeah, you're like, new mental health plan, I go to asylum.
56:13 Yasi Salek? But yes, this is Van Halen's inclusion because it is their contribution to the hair metal oeuvre.
56:22 Speaker 03 And they say they're like too good for makeup and you can do it with the lights off or whatever. But they are an incredible music video band and like David Lee Roth, obviously. It's just like, there's a lot of showmanship.
56:33 Yasi Salek? They did everything right.
56:34 Speaker 03 Yeah.
56:35 Yasi Salek? They did everything right.
56:36 Speaker 03 They're funny.
56:37 Yasi Salek? Fifth album. So they've been like pounding the pavement for a while.
56:47 Yasi Salek? Um, weirdly this only hit number 56 on the Billboard charts, which is.
56:50 Speaker 03 That's crazy.
56:52 Yasi Salek? Um, but that's our Van Halen moment of the 1984.
56:57 Speaker 03 It's actually very respectful to women to be hot for teacher. She can teach you something.
57:02 Yasi Salek? Yeah, it's a little Mary, uh, Laterno. Is that her name?
57:09 Speaker 03 Mary Kay Laterno.
57:09 Yasi Salek? Mary Kay Laterno. I've been seeing on X.com, which I try not to go on anymore. Um, but I feel like once a month I see a story that's like, this woman slept with her 12 year old student. Do you not see these? I'm not blaming that on hot for teacher.
57:26 Speaker 03 But yeah, it's a lot of, I mean, maybe that's my algo. They're like, oh, you're listening to a lot of Motley Crue.
57:31 Yasi Salek? Would you like this story? Um, okay, the next one. This raises some questions. I'm also not going to get fully into the backstory of this band because we might later do. The bands that we might later do a full episode on, which we might do Van Halen too, but I did broad. I did broad strokes on Van Halen. The next one was Bon Jovi.
57:50 Speaker 03 Yeah, this was also, I was like, does this count?
57:52 Yasi Salek? Does it count? I mean, I think I put it in so that we could have a spirited conversation about it.
57:59 Speaker 03 I think it's fun. Any genre like this where you can spend a lot of time being like, is it, does it count?
58:05 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
58:05 Speaker 03 I don't know if it counts. To me, it has to be Sunset Strip, California.
58:12 Yasi Salek? No, but Cinderella?
58:14 Speaker 03 I know, but that's an outlier.
58:16 Yasi Salek? They didn't move, I guess.
58:17 Speaker 03 To me, Bon Jovi are more.
58:19 Yasi Salek? Aerosmith?
58:20 Speaker 03 Aerosmith are from Boston, but they are.
58:24 Speaker 03 LA scumbags. So
58:26 Yasi Salek? See that you're
58:28 Speaker 03 But
58:29 Yasi Salek? If you look at Bon Jovi's hair in this time period,
58:32 Speaker 03 The hair.
58:33 Yasi Salek? They're
58:34 Speaker 03 They're hair metal. They're pretty boys.
58:36 Yasi Salek? Gorgeous.
58:37 Speaker 03 The songs are about rockin'. But it seems like it's more in the kind of like Springsteen, uh, social issues. Rock, not Heartland Rock, which is the Midwest version, but that kind of like, like, Union Dockworker Rock. Like, I, I was like, this is, this song is about something, which is not the norm necessarily. Although there were a few songs kind of in the hair metal zone that I was like, wow, these songs are about, like, working real hard and then you just want to rock at the end of the day.
59:12 Yasi Salek? Yeah, like, you mean, you're saying like, working class issues?
59:15 Speaker 03 Yeah.
59:15 Yasi Salek? Not the, uh, consideration of hair metal?
59:18 Speaker 03 Well, it's kind of a working class genre in a lot of ways, because it is sort of like, for the common man who just wants to drink a beer when he's done with his job.
59:26 Yasi Salek? Who just wants to slap on some blush,
59:28 Speaker 03 Yeah.
59:29 Yasi Salek? Some six inch heels, aqua nut his hair and drink 20 to 70 beers.
59:34 Speaker 03 Yeah.
59:35 Yasi Salek? And an eight ball of cocaine with his friends.
59:36 Speaker 03 But getting to these kind of like, social issues songs, like, Living on a Prayer, which is the choice here, right?
59:43 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
59:44 Speaker 03 Um,
59:44 Yasi Salek? We're halfway there.
59:45 Speaker 03 I was like, man, country really lapped rock on being the social issues, like, like, we only get it from kind of a right wing mainstream country.
59:56 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
59:57 Speaker 03 Perspective now that you get songs about like, the working man who works all day.
1:00:01 Yasi Salek? Um, you calling this a social issue song is very funny, because it's really just essentially about a guy who works on the docks and he's down on his luck.
1:00:09 Speaker 03 He loses his union job and his girlfriend has to work at the diner to make ends meet. I was like,
1:00:15 Yasi Salek? And that's it. They're living on a prayer.
1:00:26 Speaker 03 They're living on a prayer, but it's kind of like they don't have much, but they have each other.
1:00:29 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:00:30 Speaker 03 It's got a good, it's got a good message.
1:00:31 Yasi Salek? Love songs are very prevalent in hair metal.
1:00:33 Speaker 03 Yeah, it is like the topics of, the topics are part of what makes it hair metal.
1:00:39 Yasi Salek? I think the reason I was like interested in Bon Jovi, well, it was a number one song in eighty six. So I'm like, okay, this is fitting in. They have the hair, but also like, there's a little Venn diagram of Bon Jovi and Guns N' Roses.
1:00:54 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:00:55 Yasi Salek? Do you know what I mean?
1:00:56 Speaker 03 Go on.
1:00:57 Yasi Salek? I can't quite put my finger on it, but it's like Guns N' Roses wasn't glam really, right? At all. Like they had, they were beautiful and they had the hair, but they were also a little like, I'm just thinking about the visual imagery and the like, like motorcycle boots and blue jeans of it all, you know?
1:01:16 Speaker 03 I think.
1:01:17 Yasi Salek? Visually, like they were serving a lightly similar thing. All the Bon Jovi's is like more tepid.
1:01:23 Speaker 03 See, I think Bon Jovi is not glam at all to me because Bon Jovi are like acid washed jeans.
1:01:29 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:01:30 Speaker 03 It's like, they're like jeans rock.
1:01:32 Yasi Salek? Cheekbones on Jon Bon Jovi.
1:01:34 Speaker 03 Yeah, Jon Bon Jovi, Jon Bon Jovi looks, he's like too pretty to even be a rocker pretty boy. He looks like he's like, um, like just a mo, like a male model.
1:01:42 Yasi Salek? He's like a, an A-list actor.
1:01:44 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:01:45 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:01:46 Speaker 03 But Guns N' Roses, like the top hat is so glam. The top hat is like T-Rex.
1:01:52 Yasi Salek? The top hat, axles, bike shorts, like.
1:01:56 Speaker 03 That's.
1:01:57 Yasi Salek? Axles, assless chaps.
1:01:58 Speaker 03 That's glam adjacent to me.
1:02:00 Yasi Salek? With his cog piece. Yeah. Yeah. I think you're right. Again.
1:02:04 Speaker 03 And it's so funny that just like for a genre that prided itself on being so aggressively heterosexual, all of these men were wearing thongs, you know?
1:02:13 Yasi Salek? You couldn't have a panty line in those pants.
1:02:14 Speaker 03 That was also what was so confusing about like David Lee Roth.
1:02:18 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:02:18 Speaker 03 It's just like, what, this man.
1:02:19 Yasi Salek? Banana hammock?
1:02:20 Speaker 03 Yeah. Like he, and he is working it. Like they sort of also have the stripper energy, which I think is part of what makes it glam rock. Or part, sorry, part of what makes it hair metal.
1:02:32 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:02:32 Speaker 03 There has to be a strip club energy.
1:02:34 Yasi Salek? You're right. Living on a prayer is not really a strip club energy.
1:02:36 Speaker 03 Living on a prayer is like roadhouse.
1:02:39 Yasi Salek? It's also not libidinal.
1:02:40 Speaker 03 No.
1:02:41 Yasi Salek? It's not sexual.
1:02:42 Speaker 03 Well, it's romantic.
1:02:43 Yasi Salek? Yeah, but different.
1:02:44 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's got more of a kind of like, blue collar bar at closing time.
1:02:50 Yasi Salek? Yeah. Okay, we're kicking Bon Jovi living on our prayer out of our list. You've convinced me.
1:02:55 Speaker 03 All right. That's just 80s rock to me.
1:02:58 Yasi Salek? Yeah, that's just 80s rock.
1:02:59 Speaker 03 Hair metal's gotta be, there's gotta be some glitter.
1:03:03 Yasi Salek? Whitesnake.
1:03:04 Speaker 03 Okay, Whitesnake, 100%, obviously.
1:03:06 Yasi Salek? Here I go again. Whitesnake is British.
1:03:08 Speaker 03 Yeah, so there's also like, there's British bands who count as hair metal.
1:03:12 Yasi Salek? Okay.
1:03:13 Speaker 03 Because nobody loves The Sunset Strip more than a British guy.
1:03:16 Yasi Salek? So true.
1:03:17 Speaker 03 British people love Los Angeles because it's like the fantasy world they were promised in England.
1:03:24 Yasi Salek? Which is weird because the feeling is so mutual where I'm like, I love the Hampstead Heath.
1:03:28 Speaker 03 Right, because we are like-
1:03:29 Yasi Salek? So I want to be in a Richard Curtis film.
1:03:30 Speaker 03 Right.
1:03:31 Yasi Salek? Please take me away from The Sunset Strip.
1:03:32 Speaker 03 Well, we also are like, I hate when it's 100 degrees and like, I want to be in a little cozy, you know, coat.
1:03:39 Yasi Salek? They've been wearing sweaters there for months, babe.
1:03:42 Speaker 03 I know, right? It's like-
1:03:43 Yasi Salek? We're suffering.
1:03:44 Speaker 03 You've started drizzling, but nobody loves The Sunset Strip more than a British guy. British people move here, they're like, I'm going to the beach, I'm getting an ice cream cone and I'm renting a convertible. Uh, and I don't know if you listened to the Steve Jones show that was on for a long time, Jonesy's Jukebox?
1:04:01 Yasi Salek? Of course.
1:04:01 Speaker 03 Yeah, of course. Like, he to me is the quintessential kind of like-
1:04:04 Yasi Salek? R.I.P.
1:04:05 Speaker 03 British guy.
1:04:06 Yasi Salek? Was it Indy 103? That was a good station.
1:04:08 Speaker 03 Yeah, I was like, don't scare me, he's alive.
1:04:09 Yasi Salek? No, no, R.I.P. Indy 103, the station that had Jonesy.
1:04:11 Speaker 03 It was like the Sex Pistols moving to, you know, people of sort of British punks moving to LA and getting into the hair metal scene.
1:04:17 Yasi Salek? Yeah, yeah.
1:04:18 Speaker 03 Is very-
1:04:19 Yasi Salek? Okay, okay, I'm vibing with you. Well, here I go again. I guess it's sort of, we can group it with Come On Feel The Noise and, uh, the Twisted Sister song. But it's almost like a little different. It's really like a-
1:04:37 Speaker 03 Well, it's, it's almost a power ballad.
1:04:40 Yasi Salek? But not quite, right?
1:04:41 Speaker 03 But not quite, but it is. What I learned about Here, Here I Go Again on my own, the main thing I learned was that the lyric was originally, "Like a hobo, I was born to walk alone."
1:04:52 Yasi Salek? Mm-hmm.
1:04:53 Speaker 03 And they changed it to "drifter" because they were afraid-
1:04:56 Yasi Salek? Because of the hobo community?
1:04:58 Speaker 03 No, because they thought people would hear a gay slur.
1:05:01 Yasi Salek? Oh.
1:05:02 Speaker 03 And think they were gay.
1:05:05 Yasi Salek? Oh, that's so weird.
1:05:07 Speaker 03 I know. It's so aggressively hetero to be like, well, people might mishear it as we're saying something, saying a gay slur and think that it means we're gay.
1:05:21 Speaker 03 Which is crazy because again, all of these people have full beat on.
1:05:28 Speaker 03 Full beat at all times.
1:05:30 Yasi Salek? Apparently it's actually about the breakdown of David Coverdale's first marriage.
1:05:34 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, that makes sense.
1:05:35 Yasi Salek? Which is like, actually, it does sound.
1:05:37 Speaker 03 It sounds like a divorce song.
1:05:38 Yasi Salek? Extremely divorced man.
1:05:39 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:05:40 Yasi Salek? Divorced man energy.
1:05:41 Speaker 03 The video really occupies a lot of space mentally. The video famously Toni Kattan.
1:05:47 Yasi Salek? Who married David Coverdale.
1:05:48 Speaker 03 Who married David Coverdale and then had an affair with OJ Simpson.
1:05:51 Yasi Salek? While he was married to Nicole Brown.
1:05:52 Speaker 03 While he was married to Nicole Brown.
1:05:55 Speaker 03 But Toni Kattan rolling around on the cars.
1:05:57 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:05:57 Speaker 03 Becomes sort of like the quintessential hair metal image. And in my mind.
1:06:01 Yasi Salek? I think that elevated the song. Like, the video was so popular.
1:06:04 Speaker 03 It's a great video. And it is like, in my mind, I imagined they were muscle cars. I was like, they're, it's like a thunderbird.
1:06:12 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:06:13 Speaker 03 But then when I watched the video, it's like BMW or something.
1:06:16 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:06:16 Speaker 03 It's like a fancy, they're two cars and it's like a, like a luxury car. It's so weird.
1:06:22 Yasi Salek? I mean, I guess they don't really have, well, I mean, I'm not even gonna say it, correct me, because you will anyways. Muscle car culture is not British.
1:06:30 Speaker 03 But again, British guys love to come to LA and get a muscle car. It's part of their fantasy.
1:06:36 Yasi Salek? And marry Toni Kattan.
1:06:37 Speaker 03 And marry Toni Kattan. You know who I think has huge Toni Kattan energy? Addison Rae.
1:06:43 Yasi Salek? Oh, I love that. I love Addison Rae.
1:06:46 Speaker 03 Back to the polka dots. I do think.
1:06:47 Yasi Salek? Just like a hot, sweet brunette.
1:06:51 Speaker 03 Yeah, like, and just like hot and fun.
1:06:53 Yasi Salek? Who occupies her body and like a really like.
1:06:55 Speaker 03 Right, like she's horny and she like uses her body hornily, but, but she's like, it's not like just for the male gaze or whatever. It's very campy.
1:07:04 Yasi Salek? I love that. I love Addison Rae.
1:07:06 Speaker 03 Me too. And I think that's what I like about her. She has this kind of like, like Lita Ford, Toni Kattan.
1:07:12 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:07:12 Speaker 03 Like, just a fun party girl.
1:07:14 Yasi Salek? We don't really have that much in pop stars anymore.
1:07:16 Speaker 03 No, it, it, it is.
1:07:17 Yasi Salek? I mean, Charlie fucks for sure, but like, it's a different, that's a different kind of.
1:07:21 Speaker 03 It's different. And a lot of them are kind of like. Not as express, like Addison Rae expresses herself with her body in a way that I'm like, it's very Tawny Katan.
1:07:29 Yasi Salek? I love it. Well, the last thing I needed to say about Whitesnake, which is important, is David Carverdale was in Deep Purple.
1:07:38 Speaker 03 Oh, cool.
1:07:40 Yasi Salek? Helped originate heavy metal music because Deep Purple and Sabbath basically like helped set the stage for metal to even exist. And then kind of was able to like continue on and contribute to it in a new way, which is kind of cool.
1:07:58 Speaker 03 Yeah, there's definitely like a blues rock into hair metal.
1:08:02 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:08:03 Speaker 03 Thing.
1:08:04 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:08:05 Speaker 03 And I do sort of feel like had The Doors continued to exist, we might have gotten.
1:08:09 Yasi Salek? Well, you know, you know, my thing where I think that The Doors are the first punk band.
1:08:13 Speaker 03 I love that.
1:08:14 Yasi Salek? Yeah, because Jim Morrison was like so spiritually punk and, and because Iggy was so inspired by Jim Morrison.
1:08:21 Speaker 03 This is the most.
1:08:22 Yasi Salek? And started The Stooges, which are arguably the first American punk band.
1:08:26 Speaker 03 Yeah. And this is like the most LA thing about both of us is that I do just like, I, I totally went on that journey from like, The Doors are so stupid.
1:08:34 Yasi Salek? Yeah, The Doors are like fucking dorm room poster band.
1:08:37 Speaker 03 Incredible.
1:08:38 Yasi Salek? The Doors are integral to our lives.
1:08:40 Speaker 03 But I think there's something, part of what makes a band like an LA band to me, and a lot of the hair metal bands is there's got to be, and the Chili Peppers, there's got to be something kind of dumb and sexy about it.
1:08:51 Yasi Salek? Yeah. And you reject Jane's Addiction, who also has something dumb and sexy about.
1:08:54 Speaker 03 No, Jane's Addiction are dumb and not sexy. Perry Farrell is like the least sexy person I've ever seen. I can't go with you on this journey.
1:09:03 Yasi Salek? I respect it.
1:09:04 Speaker 03 Perry Farrell's also a bore-spelled comedian. He's not funny. He's like the guy where you're like, ugh.
1:09:11 Yasi Salek? What about his?
1:09:11 Speaker 03 Not Perry.
1:09:12 Yasi Salek? What about his, um?
1:09:13 Speaker 03 He's so self-serious.
1:09:15 Yasi Salek? What about his work?
1:09:16 Speaker 03 He's so pretentious.
1:09:18 Yasi Salek? What about his?
1:09:19 Speaker 03 His facial work. I find it upsetting.
1:09:22 Yasi Salek? I do too, actually.
1:09:23 Speaker 03 Cause I'm like, no.
1:09:26 Yasi Salek? No, it's, it is disturbing.
1:09:27 Speaker 03 He's tight.
1:09:28 Yasi Salek? Looks really crazy. Um, here I go again. Minted in our thing.
1:09:32 Speaker 03 Great song.
1:09:39 Speaker 03 Great song, great video.
1:09:41 Yasi Salek? Seventh, seventh album of this band.
1:09:43 Speaker 03 It's also good to be like, can you listen to this song driving down the Sunset Strip?
1:09:47 Yasi Salek? Right.
1:09:47 Speaker 03 With the windows open.
1:09:48 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:09:49 Speaker 03 That's, that's the core credential.
1:09:51 Yasi Salek? I know people think it's corny, but I will say it really does get you going.
1:09:54 Speaker 03 It gets you going and sometimes things are corny because they work.
1:09:57 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:09:57 Speaker 03 Like they're, they're a cliche for a reason.
1:10:00 Yasi Salek? They're a cliche for a reason. This hit number one, no surprise.
1:10:02 Speaker 03 Which we'll get to with Pour Some Sugar On Me also.
1:10:04 Yasi Salek? Oh my god. That one I'm gonna have to, well, I don't wanna get ahead. First, we gotta talk about Cinderella. Nobody's Fool.
1:10:10 Speaker 03 So this was the one I was like the least versed in.
1:10:13 Yasi Salek? I love this song.
1:10:15 Speaker 03 Wow. Okay, I was kinda like, I wonder why she picked this.
1:10:17 Yasi Salek? I was also the least versed on it too. I picked it cause I was like, sort of, I did like a, a crowd thing. Again, this is not my world. So like Producer Rob, who is in a stunning twist of events, even though he's like roughly my age, maybe like a year or two, two years older, is super into hair metal. So he contributed greatly. I also like perused a bunch of like lists online, like Rolling Stone Greatest Hair Metal. And, and from that I called the list. And Cinderella was on a lot of these lists.
1:10:45 Speaker 03 It's just like, you gotta remember that hair metal people hung on for so long after hair metal was like the over.
1:10:53 Yasi Salek? Babe, we talked about it. I wish, I wish we could do a whole side episode where we like talked about the YouTube comments, cause they bring tears to my eyes.
1:10:59 Speaker 03 No, they're beautiful. But it is like even after grunge and alternative came to like stomp this out completely, it did not die.
1:11:05 Yasi Salek? No, and I think that we, we, this came up a little early and I didn't wanna say it then, but.
1:11:12 Yasi Salek? It's a bit of a myth that it was like Nevermind came out.
1:11:16 Speaker 03 Yes, it's like to bring it back to Joan Didion, like when Joan Didion was like, and then the Manson family murders happened and the sixties ended. It's like, that's not what happened.
1:11:24 Yasi Salek? That's not what happened. Yeah, actually, like, we grew up watching MTV, obviously, religiously. When I tell you it was like, Smells Like Teen Spirit, Guns N' Roses, November Rain, like, these things were, Life is a Highway.
1:11:40 Speaker 03 Right, they were always also.
1:11:41 Yasi Salek? People didn't know how much Life is a Highway.
1:11:43 Speaker 03 Life is a highway.
1:11:44 Yasi Salek? I say it to my therapist all the time, she doesn't like it.
1:11:48 Yasi Salek? She says.
1:11:49 Speaker 03 No, it's not a highway.
1:11:50 Yasi Salek? She's like, what, what do you?
1:11:51 Speaker 03 I wanna ride it.
1:11:53 Yasi Salek? And then I go, that's showbiz. And she's like, please just use the words of your experience.
1:11:58 Speaker 03 And you're like, that is showbiz.
1:11:59 Yasi Salek? That is showbiz, baby.
1:12:00 Speaker 03 But it is like, they were also, like, the eighties videos were in such heavy rotation long after the eighties had ended.
1:12:05 Yasi Salek? Yeah. Like, we knew Motley Crue, right? Because they were still sort of eking into like MTV in the early nineties.
1:12:14 Speaker 03 And it was just like, it was what had just been there. And so it's like, things you saw when you were very little, that you were like, this is what adults are like.
1:12:23 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:12:23 Speaker 03 And then by the time you're older, you're like, oh, I guess that's not what adults are like now. But it's like, I do kind of, I do kind of still feel like the eighties is like where I thought adulthood lived, you know?
1:12:36 Yasi Salek? Yeah, okay.
1:12:37 Speaker 03 Like, you get a house in the Hollywood Hills above the Sunset Strip, you go down.
1:12:41 Yasi Salek? Madonna is what I thought adulthood was in the eighties, because she was so prevalent. All right, back to Cinderella. This is not an LA band. This band comes from Clifton Heights, Pennsylvania, which is a suburb of Philadelphia.
1:12:57 Yasi Salek? Tom Kiefer, the lead singer, formed this. Once again, Gene Simmons comes into play. He took an interest in them and tried to get them a deal, didn't happen. And then Jon Bon Jovi saw them play at the Empire Rock Club in Philadelphia. And he got his A and R man, Derek Schulman, to sign them. And their first album, Night Song, peaked at number three. And that's the song, that's the album that this song, Nobody's Fool is off of. This is a power ballad.
1:13:28 Speaker 03 Yeah, this is a, this is like a quintessential power ballad.
1:13:31 Yasi Salek? Yeah. I just, the guy's voice is incredible.
1:13:35 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's incredible. And it is like the, the other side of hair metal is you have party songs and then you have power ballads, which are like earnestly romantic songs.
1:13:55 Yasi Salek? Apparently through my research, Motley Crue essentially invented this as a commercially viable single option with Home Sweet Home. After Home Sweet Home, all of the labels with their new hard, whatever, hair metal or glam metal bands were like, make me a power ballad because Home Sweet Home was so successful. And that's why actually a lot of these bands, if you go and look what their top song is, it's often a power ballad.
1:14:25 Speaker 03 Well, a power ballad also extends your lifespan beyond just being a hair metal band because then you're like a wedding band. You can play a song at a wedding.
1:14:36 Yasi Salek? Yeah. And Nobody's Will is just gorgeous. I think Cinderella probably suffered from their name.
1:14:41 Speaker 03 I think it's a great hair metal band name.
1:14:43 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:14:44 Speaker 03 The video is a little like Cinderella being named also.
1:14:47 Yasi Salek? Um, last fun fact about Cinderella, their drummer Fred Corey and Elliott Persson.
1:14:53 Speaker 03 Cool.
1:14:54 Yasi Salek? Pretty cool. So they have a bit of a sense. They didn't move here.
1:14:57 Speaker 03 Right. It's like, they don't have to be from LA, but they had to have moved to LA to be part of the scene.
1:15:03 Yasi Salek? And get an LA Persian drummer.
1:15:04 Speaker 03 But it does make sense that a lot of these bands are sort of like initially suburban garage rock bands.
1:15:09 Yasi Salek? Sure. Because they're being, you know, inspired by the Aerosmiths and Sabbaths of the world, which is like, that's very much like heavy metal parking lot vibes or whatever. I mean, Nikki Sixx is not from LA. Nikki Sixx is from all over the place, but like largely grew up in like Idaho.
1:15:28 Speaker 03 Nikki Sixx is from different places.
1:15:30 Yasi Salek? Nikki Sixx is from Mars.
1:15:32 Speaker 03 Well, it's also like the kind of kid that like finds, finds solace in music, feels isolated actually, and like listens to music and finds peace. That then will get overtaken by grunge. It's like, this is the music for kids that feel alienated. But it is like, It didn't start as being so dominant hair metal.
1:15:53 Yasi Salek? No.
1:15:53 Speaker 03 It became so dominant that then there had to be a backlash.
1:15:57 Yasi Salek? Yeah, yeah. Def Leppard.
1:16:00 Speaker 03 Def Leppard.
1:16:01 Yasi Salek? Pour some sugar on me. Again, an English rock band from beautiful Sheffield, which is where the Arctic Monkeys are from, formed in 1977.
1:16:08 Speaker 03 Nobody likes American music more than a British person also. Just like, nobody does Americana, rock and roll.
1:16:14 Yasi Salek? Pour some sugar on me is Americana rock and roll.
1:16:16 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:16:16 Yasi Salek? Absolute strip club music.
1:16:17 Speaker 03 That is the strip club song.
1:16:19 Yasi Salek? I hate this song.
1:16:20 Speaker 03 What?
1:16:21 Yasi Salek? I don't know what it is, but I have like a visceral reaction to this song.
1:16:24 Speaker 03 Is it about the idea of someone pouring some sugar on you?
1:16:28 Yasi Salek? None of it has zero percent to do with feminism or stickiness.
1:16:30 Speaker 03 No, no, no. I mean, like, like viscerally, do you not want the feeling of sugar being poured on you? Cause I find that part, the idea that the sugar is hot and sticky sweet, I'm like, are they talking about caramel?
1:16:41 Yasi Salek? Is it syrup?
1:16:43 Speaker 03 That's what I mean. I'm like, they're like, pour some sugar on me. And then when I was listening to it multiple times, getting ready for this, I was like, oh, it's about cocaine.
1:16:52 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:16:52 Speaker 03 Duh.
1:16:52 Yasi Salek? So why would the cocaine be hot? And I guess Coke is wet when it's really good, like, you know, Columbia Coke, but it wouldn't be hot or sticky.
1:17:02 Speaker 03 I think thinking about what this song is about is like fun to me. Every time I hear it, I'm like, what is this song about? Like, it's about pouring some sugar on me from your head down to your feet. But it does kind of like, there's like a dunk tank aspect to it.
1:17:19 Yasi Salek? The lyrics are absolutely Mad Libs. They make no sense. You got the peaches, I got the cream. And you know, they're saying saccharine.
1:17:26 Speaker 03 That's like blues rock. That's blues rock stuff, though. Shaking the peach tree kind of stuff. That's just kind of like sexual metaphor that doesn't make any sense, which I love.
1:17:38 Yasi Salek? Looking like a tramp, like a video man.
1:17:39 Speaker 03 Like a video of him.
1:17:47 Yasi Salek? I don't know. It's nothing to do, again, it's not because the lyrics are stupid. I love plenty of, I just, I have like a weird bodily reaction to this song that I despise it.
1:17:58 Speaker 03 How do you feel about Def Leppard in general?
1:18:01 Yasi Salek? I have no, zero feelings on Def Leppard. All I know is they had a drummer with one arm.
1:18:04 Speaker 03 Yes, they had a drummer with one arm.
1:18:06 Yasi Salek? Which is very cool.
1:18:08 Speaker 03 I saw them play in the lobby of the office when I worked at my first job at Hits Magazine.
1:18:14 Yasi Salek? Oh.
1:18:15 Speaker 03 They brought them in to do, very strange. Def Leppard were cool. But it was like, interesting to be like, when you see a band like that, that's kind of like, pretty far removed from their, their peak, but still, still truckin'. I respected a lot. What do you think about Rock of Ages?
1:18:34 Yasi Salek? I have no thoughts about Rock of Ages.
1:18:36 Speaker 03 Okay, so I, during the pandemic, I got really.
1:18:38 Yasi Salek? Into Rock of Ages?
1:18:39 Speaker 03 Yes, and into the movie Rock of Ages. Have you seen this? Okay, you have to watch it. It's like a completely insane movie that everybody involved with thought was gonna be a huge hit, and then it was a huge flop. But they rebuilt the Sunset Strip on a soundstage in Florida. So it all takes place on the Sunset Strip, which has been like, built in Hollywood, Florida or something. It's a completely, the leads are terrible. It's a jukebox, a hair metal jukebox musical that got really big when there was this kind of like Sunset Strip hair metal revivalism in the late 90s, early 2000s. You know what I'm talking about?
1:19:20 Yasi Salek? Totally.
1:19:20 Speaker 03 When there were all these kind of like cover bands with names that were like, Screamin' Tiger or something, and they were doing like, hey, remember hair metal in a camp way?
1:19:29 Yasi Salek? I think they're still kind of around those bands, and they do really well.
1:19:31 Speaker 03 It's Springs Eternal.
1:19:32 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:19:32 Speaker 03 Um, all the Vanderpump Rules cast probably huge fans.
1:19:36 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:19:36 Speaker 03 But it is like.
1:19:37 Yasi Salek? Totally. Tom, uh, other Tom, what's his name?
1:19:39 Speaker 03 All those guys, you can tell they, they love hair metal. Sandoval.
1:19:43 Yasi Salek? Tom Sandoval, obviously, is wearing like a white glove or whatever.
1:19:47 Speaker 03 Yeah, he's got the white nail polish. He loves hair metal. I can feel it. But Rock of Ages, the movie, is like completely insane and has one incredible performance in it, which is Tom Cruise.
1:20:03 Yasi Salek? I feel like that meme.
1:20:04 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:20:05 Yasi Salek? I don't know anything about, I don't, Def Leppard, massive blind song for me.
1:20:09 Speaker 03 They don't even play the song Rock of Ages in the musical Rock of Ages, but I do think Rock of Ages is a really good song. It's not the Christian song that people might know. It's a different song.
1:20:21 Yasi Salek? Can you hum a few bars? We're just gonna.
1:20:22 Speaker 03 Rock of Ages, keep rollin'. But I got really into listening to the song, because I was kind of like, it was part of my hair metal mental health plan, where I was just like, you know what?
1:20:41 Speaker 03 I was listening to a lot of songs about Roland, where I was like, gotta keep Roland.
1:20:46 Speaker 03 Tom Cruise in Rock of Ages plays a made up hair metal frontman. Yes.
1:20:52 Yasi Salek? Okay.
1:20:52 Speaker 03 Named Stacy Jackson. And he is giving the performance of his life in this movie.
1:21:00 Yasi Salek? You think that's his number one?
1:21:01 Speaker 03 No, but it's like up there. It's crazy because the rest of the movie, it's like, there's nothing you would remember about this movie. Except that Tom Cruise is in it. He plays basically Nicky Six and he's like incredible. And he sings and he's incredible. Where you're just like, oh, he can sing too. But it's just, he's doing like hair metal drag and it's insane. It's very hot.
1:21:25 Yasi Salek? I need to watch this.
1:21:27 Speaker 03 For fans of his performance in Magnolia.
1:21:29 Yasi Salek? Right, I was gonna say like.
1:21:30 Speaker 03 If you like when Tom Cruise plays a dirtbag, which I do.
1:21:33 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:21:34 Speaker 03 It's so, he's so good in it and he really gives it his all.
1:21:37 Yasi Salek? Okay, can't wait to watch it. I've learned something. I'm gonna say something controversial. I, even though Pour Some Sugar On Me is absolutely a strip club song. Something about Def Leppard doesn't ring true to me in hair metal.
1:21:53 Speaker 03 Go on.
1:21:53 Yasi Salek? They feel like interlopers.
1:21:56 Yasi Salek? Does Rock of Ages strike you as a hair metal song? I haven't heard it, so you have to report.
1:22:01 Speaker 03 Yeah, but I think a lot of hair metal era songs, it's like they could be a different type of rock and they are cloaked in hair metal because of the era. And people being like, that's what's in now.
1:22:12 Yasi Salek? That's what I kind of mean.
1:22:13 Speaker 03 Alright. I think they count.
1:22:16 Yasi Salek? Okay.
1:22:17 Speaker 03 I'm counting it.
1:22:17 Yasi Salek? We'll, we'll mention it to the list. Alright, speaking of counting or not counting, or like, does it even belong here, but Aerosmith. Dude looks like a lady. Number one reason why I put it in is it's 1987, so it's kind of like.
1:22:32 Speaker 03 Late period.
1:22:33 Yasi Salek? Late, well, they have so many periods, right?
1:22:36 Speaker 03 Late period hair metal, not late period Aerosmith.
1:22:39 Yasi Salek? Yeah, exactly.
1:22:40 Speaker 03 Kind of mid-period Aerosmith, because then they have a whole 90s.
1:22:43 Yasi Salek? Exactly. There's that in the dirt. The most insane and possibly greatest rock book ever written.
1:22:51 Speaker 03 Yeah, co-written with Neil Strauss, who also co-wrote Jenna Damison's book.
1:22:54 Yasi Salek? Who also did The Game.
1:22:57 Speaker 03 Yes.
1:22:58 Yasi Salek? About the pick-up artist.
1:22:59 Speaker 03 Yes.
1:22:59 Yasi Salek? He has this thing called the cog theory. Do you remember this at all?
1:23:03 Speaker 03 No.
1:23:03 Yasi Salek? It's actually really interesting. It's basically like, not like Neil Tennant's imperial phase, where a band has one imperial phase where they're at the height of their powers and that's it. It's this theory that like, each artist is a cog and like, maybe you get jumped up on the machine once, and then maybe twice or whatever, and you get to the top. And at the top, you inevitably get chewed up and spit out, but it is possible to get back to the top. And I feel like Aerosmith did kind of get to the top, like, three times.
1:23:34 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:23:35 Yasi Salek? You know, because like, Cryin' and, uh, what was the other 90's song that they were always playing the videos for that we loved?
1:23:41 Speaker 03 Um, Cryin', Crazy.
1:23:44 Yasi Salek? Crazy.
1:23:45 Speaker 03 It was a trilogy.
1:23:46 Yasi Salek? Again, speaking of Nirvana not murdering all of the rock dinosaurs, like, those were Steven Dorff, honey?
1:23:53 Speaker 03 I'm sorry, Amazing. It's the third in the trilogy. I had to think about it. That's the one with the cybersex.
1:23:58 Yasi Salek? Right alongside all the brunch.
1:24:00 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, they were very, they did a super smart thing, which was to sort of phase themselves out of their own music videos in favor of young people. Like, so their video, that 90's.
1:24:12 Yasi Salek? Alicia Silverstone.
1:24:13 Speaker 03 Yeah, they just.
1:24:13 Yasi Salek? Liv Tyler.
1:24:14 Speaker 03 So another thing I learned for Jenna World is that that concept of kind of the music video girl was invented by Randy Newman's, I think it's his cousin, Tim Newman.
1:24:25 Yasi Salek? I knew that you would somehow work Randy Newman. The way that I worked Dave Matthews in, I knew that you would somehow work Randy Newman.
1:24:31 Speaker 03 You knew I'd make sure we talked about Randy Newman. But it is like, he directed, Tim Newman directed the video for I Love LA, which has a redhead music video girl in the video. And then he directed all the ZZ Top videos.
1:24:43 Yasi Salek? Okay, yeah.
1:24:44 Speaker 03 Um, which really pioneered the idea of like, okay, we got this old guy band, these like, you know, who are cool and a great band, but maybe they're not like MTV ready, so we're gonna like, put them in the video, but the focus of the video is gonna be a bunch of Playboy models. And so, that is what Aerosmith really picked up the baton there. And we're like, great, we'll put Alicia Silverstone in our video.
1:25:06 Yasi Salek? Right.
1:25:07 Speaker 03 And everyone will listen to Aerosmith. That's the most weird thing ever, that is like, put my daughter in the video and she's stripping.
1:25:14 Yasi Salek? But it worked.
1:25:16 Speaker 03 It worked amazing.
1:25:17 Yasi Salek? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, again, I'm of two minds. Like Dude Looks Like a Lady is about Vince Neil. Is what I learned. That's what, that's what Nikki Sixx says.
1:25:27 Speaker 03 I always thought it was like a self-tell about Steven Tyler. I thought Steven Tyler was thinking about himself.
1:25:33 Yasi Salek? There's so many different interpretations. Nikki Sixx wears up and down, then it's about Vince Neil.
1:25:40 Speaker 03 They're all passing the buck. They're like, it's about this person.
1:25:43 Yasi Salek? Someone else on Reddit said that it's about Bon Jovi. Jon Bon Jovi, which I can also see in beautiful cheekbones.
1:25:51 Speaker 03 I've also, like, I always thought it was pro the dude looking like a lady. Like, I understand that maybe it can be read as homophobic, transphobic, et cetera. But in my lived experience, every time I've heard dude looks like a lady, it's like, and it rocks.
1:26:10 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:26:11 Speaker 03 Like dude looks like a lady and what a beautiful lady.
1:26:15 Yasi Salek? Well, okay, so now I'm, well, I didn't do this before, but I am in balls deep in a Huffington Post article from 2014, who, that literally actually says that the producer, Desmond Child, songwriter, said that Steven Tyler had walked into a strip club and seen Vince Neil and thought it was like a large woman and turned around and was like, oh my God. And then they started being like, that dude looks like a lady, that dude looks like a lady. And the songwriter was like, that's the title of the song. And apparently Joe Perry said, I don't want to insult the gay community.
1:26:59 Speaker 03 Wow, King Joe Perry.
1:27:01 Yasi Salek? And the songwriter, who was a gay man, who is a gay man, was like, well, I'm gay and I'm not insulted. Let's write this song. So perhaps if we're to believe Desmond Child.
1:27:12 Speaker 03 It's actually an empowering anthem about gender fluidity.
1:27:16 Yasi Salek? Exactly.
1:27:25 Speaker 03 I think Aerosmith, it's like the thing that stops them, like I don't think of them as hair metal because they had so many eras.
1:27:31 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:27:32 Speaker 03 Honking on Bobo, but to me, they're kind of like a blues rock band who stayed blues rock throughout.
1:27:38 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:27:40 Speaker 03 Shifted the styling to reflect whatever was happening.
1:27:43 Yasi Salek? Yeah, and I think that's true. I needed to bring them up because I did, I just think they're important in the landscape of the eighties.
1:27:49 Speaker 03 Yeah, like Living on the Edge is very adjacent to Living on a Prayer in my mind, where it is just kind of like there's these sort of end of your rope songs.
1:27:57 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:27:58 Speaker 03 That are very good and inspiring.
1:28:00 Yasi Salek? Also.
1:28:00 Speaker 03 Oh, Living on the Edge, I learned actually is about the LA riots.
1:28:03 Yasi Salek? Really?
1:28:04 Speaker 03 In my mind, yeah.
1:28:06 Yasi Salek? Damn, I didn't know that.
1:28:07 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:28:07 Yasi Salek? Which we lived through.
1:28:08 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:28:10 Yasi Salek? Hold that.
1:28:10 Speaker 03 Which you would not know from listening to the song necessarily.
1:28:13 Yasi Salek? No.
1:28:13 Speaker 03 But then you go back and you're like.
1:28:15 Yasi Salek? Social issue rock.
1:28:16 Speaker 03 Something wrong with the world today.
1:28:17 Yasi Salek? Something wrong with the world today, and I don't know what it is.
1:28:19 Speaker 03 No, I don't know.
1:28:22 Yasi Salek? Maybe one of the most important.
1:28:24 Speaker 03 Jane has got a gun, also a social issue song. Great.
1:28:26 Yasi Salek? What a fucking finger.
1:28:27 Speaker 03 That's the most, see, that's the most hair metal to me. I think the most, I like, love Aerosmith, kind of.
1:28:34 Yasi Salek? I love Aerosmith.
1:28:35 Speaker 03 I have like.
1:28:36 Yasi Salek? Are you kidding? I will fucking lay down, Dream On.
1:28:39 Speaker 03 Yeah, Dream On.
1:28:40 Yasi Salek? Goodbye.
1:28:41 Speaker 03 And I like a band who kind of outlives their usefulness and comes back from the dead like several times over.
1:28:47 Yasi Salek? Right, because like, they didn't outlive their usefulness. We still needed them.
1:28:50 Speaker 03 Right, and nobody was betting on them, but they were.
1:28:53 Yasi Salek? Love it. Didn't they, they just were, played the VMAs?
1:28:58 Yasi Salek? With Young Blood to a pay homage to Ozzy Osbourne, so they're still fucking ticking. Also, I think it's, it goes, it's important to mention that they ostensibly got the first, some of the first rap onto the radio.
1:29:17 Speaker 03 Yeah, absolutely.
1:29:17 Yasi Salek? With Walk This Way.
1:29:18 Speaker 03 I know, I'm starting to see.
1:29:21 Speaker 03 Why, every music documentary in history is like, here's a segment about Walk This Way, like, did you know?
1:29:27 Yasi Salek? I know. It's a really boring fun fact. The other one is that Blondie's Rapture was the first rap song on the radio.
1:29:35 Yasi Salek? We'll never know. I mean, we could know, but it's not pertinent to this conversation. Um, okay. So Aerosmith out of our top, our Hall of Fame. They don't count as hair metal.
1:29:43 Speaker 03 I don't think it counts as hair metal. I don't think Dude Looks Like a Lady is hair metal. It's like something else and it's got like horns in it, which to me are not very hair metal.
1:29:55 Yasi Salek? But it does.
1:29:55 Speaker 03 Tandrock.
1:29:56 Yasi Salek? It's tangentially related because it tangentially, that's not even a word.
1:29:59 Speaker 03 Tangentially.
1:30:00 Yasi Salek? Tangentially.
1:30:01 Speaker 03 Blobby blobby.
1:30:02 Yasi Salek? Blobby blobs are sad. No, the Vince Neil of it. I just thought I'd throw that in. Okay. Poison.
1:30:09 Speaker 03 Yeah, a hundred percent.
1:30:10 Yasi Salek? Nothing but a good time.
1:30:12 Speaker 03 This might be the quintessential.
1:30:14 Yasi Salek? They're the most glam hair metal, I think, besides Motley Crue, who minted and invented the genre in a way, as far as I'm concerned.
1:30:22 Speaker 03 Yeah. Poison, Motley Crue, that's the winner's circle.
1:30:27 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:30:27 Speaker 03 Hair metal winner's circle. Van Halen or somewhere else above.
1:30:30 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:30:31 Speaker 03 Guns N' Roses somewhere else above.
1:30:32 Yasi Salek? Yeah, yeah.
1:30:33 Speaker 03 But.
1:30:34 Yasi Salek? These are, this is the cream of the crop of, um, nothing but a good time. Can't.
1:30:39 Speaker 03 Don't need nothing but a good time. It just makes you have a good time even thinking about it.
1:30:45 Yasi Salek? April 6, 1988. Um, Poison, also from Pennsylvania, Mechanicsburg.
1:30:51 Speaker 03 Wow.
1:30:52 Yasi Salek? Bret Michaels, Bobby Doll and Ricky Rocket. Okay.
1:30:54 Speaker 03 Pennsylvania, the Sunset Strip of the East.
1:30:56 Yasi Salek? Of the Sunset. Mechanicsburg, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. Um, and now I'm just picturing, do you watch Task?
1:31:05 Speaker 03 No, but I was gonna be like Delco.
1:31:07 Yasi Salek? Yeah, like do, do, do they talk, do you think they used to talk like that? Like Bobby Doll talked like that?
1:31:13 Speaker 03 I do think Philadelphia has great rock and roll energy.
1:31:15 Yasi Salek? A hundred percent. Still to this day.
1:31:17 Speaker 03 I think any kind of like second tier city is like, that's where the real rockin' comes from.
1:31:23 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:31:23 Speaker 03 Definitely true in England also.
1:31:25 Yasi Salek? Minneapolis.
1:31:26 Speaker 03 Yeah, like factory towns.
1:31:27 Yasi Salek? Yeah, yeah.
1:31:28 Speaker 03 That's who needs to rock.
1:31:29 Yasi Salek? Manchester.
1:31:30 Speaker 03 Right. It's the Manchester of the America.
1:31:33 Yasi Salek? Of America.
1:31:34 Speaker 03 But it is just like, yeah, you're making, you're making music for the, yeah.
1:31:38 Yasi Salek? Seattle.
1:31:39 Speaker 03 Aren't, aren't Kiss from New York?
1:31:41 Yasi Salek? I don't know, baby. I told you, I don't know anything about Kiss.
1:31:43 Speaker 03 But I think it's about playing Detroit, not being from Detroit.
1:31:49 Yasi Salek? Would never know, because I don't know anything about.
1:31:51 Speaker 03 Are the MC5 proto hair metal.
1:31:54 Yasi Salek? Okay, now you're getting into my doors.
1:31:55 Speaker 03 Kick out the jams.
1:31:56 Yasi Salek? Doors were punk.
1:31:56 Speaker 03 Yeah. The Doors are punk, I'm with you.
1:31:59 Yasi Salek? Doors are punk.
1:32:00 Speaker 03 Jim Morrison, total Borst Bell comedian energy.
1:32:03 Yasi Salek? Interesting, but like.
1:32:05 Speaker 03 Riding the snake to the crystal lake.
1:32:07 Yasi Salek? But so self-serious and poet.
1:32:09 Speaker 03 But funny.
1:32:10 Yasi Salek? Yeah, okay.
1:32:11 Speaker 03 Funny and hot.
1:32:12 Yasi Salek? Perhaps he embodied all things, which is why.
1:32:16 Speaker 03 He also, I feel like other LA bands hated them.
1:32:19 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:32:20 Speaker 03 Because they were like, he's hot and that's why people like it.
1:32:24 Yasi Salek? Okay, jealous.
1:32:25 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:32:26 Yasi Salek? Okay, David Crosby is jealous. I know. Well, he is known to be a jealous man.
1:32:32 Speaker 03 He said, I love when a man is a bitch.
1:32:34 Yasi Salek? I know, me too.
1:32:35 Speaker 03 Especially in rock music.
1:32:37 Yasi Salek? And then when they're still like, committed to doing it, like on the internet, in their like 80s or whatever.
1:32:42 Speaker 03 Yeah, and they're like, oh, that rivalry from 60 years ago, it's as if it were yesterday.
1:32:48 Yasi Salek? I've not moved on. Poison doesn't have like, a terribly interesting story, except for the fact that they moved to LA. Their first guitarist, who was like, kind of like the musical engine of the band. And also prior to that guy leaving, his name was Matt Smith, I think, they were very much like, Aerosmith, Van Halen kind of band. And then they started auditioning people and Slash auditioned. And they basically were like, we hate how you dress, do you have other shoes? Like, what is this look? Because he was wearing like, moccasins. And then right after Stacy Deville showed up in like, stiletto heels and pink lipstick, and they were like, yes.
1:33:32 Yasi Salek? This, and then according to Tracy Guns, they became less Van Halen meets Aerosmith and more New York Dolls meets Lady Claro.
1:33:41 Speaker 03 Imagine being like, Slash isn't cool enough.
1:33:44 Yasi Salek? I mean, he couldn't be in Poison. Could you picture Slash being in Poison?
1:33:48 Speaker 03 It is true. It's like, he's sort of from the future.
1:33:51 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:33:52 Speaker 03 You know?
1:33:52 Yasi Salek? He was too cool. Like, he was, that was not, that was not the fate that Slash was to befall, to be in Poison. He was gonna elevate the entire musical rock world with Guns N' Roses. Here's what Gunner Nelson, you know, famously of Nelson, which we're not mentioning here either, but I guess.
1:34:10 Speaker 03 I thought they might come up in the "We're Not Talking About."
1:34:13 Yasi Salek? Yes, Nelson, "Extreme," "More Than Words." There's another one that's like my favorite karaoke song, but I already, okay, here's what Gunner Nelson said. "Molly Crew would try to go after all the hot chicks, but Poison intentionally paid extra attention and were extra kind to the ugly fat chicks, who were actually way more ardent fans. Those were the girls that you just treat them with a little bit of respect, make them beautiful, and they're loyal like you wouldn't believe. Those girls were an army for Poison. It was the smartest marketing plan I've ever seen in my career."
1:34:43 Speaker 03 See, that's awesome.
1:34:46 Yasi Salek? That is the dark side of the eighties, I think, in a way.
1:34:51 Speaker 03 What, the groupie culture?
1:34:55 Yasi Salek? Groupie culture, I don't really have a problem with. As you know, I'm a seventh-wave feminist. But it's more that like, it gets, it gets really ugly, the way that they, they.
1:35:07 Speaker 03 Treat the groupies well in the dirt, obviously.
1:35:10 Yasi Salek? Dirt, all over, you know?
1:35:11 Speaker 03 I think it goes from being kind of like, I mean, listen to Dylan's groupies podcasts, everybody. But it does kind of go from the groupies being these kind of self-actualized, a lot of them musicians themselves, who want to start bands, being like, I'm in the rock scene and I'm part of the rock scene,
1:35:27 Yasi Salek? Right.
1:35:27 Speaker 03 to this kind of like, absolute hero worship.
1:35:30 Yasi Salek? Yeah, it goes from being like a muse, like kind of occupying a muse-like position and contributing artistically through things that are not music, like.
1:35:42 Yasi Salek? Aesthetic and whatever to, I mean, again, you, you seven, my seventh wave feminism, which I'm gonna get hate for is like, I'm like, these women also had agency. They also made their own choices, like.
1:35:51 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, if this girl's backstage account that I'm gonna send you, it's like all the people who send in photos are like, this was the best night of my life.
1:35:59 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:35:59 Speaker 03 I hung out with Poison.
1:36:01 Yasi Salek? I'm pretty sure they were eyes wide open that this wasn't gonna be their husband, you know, like, so.
1:36:05 Speaker 03 Well, that's what I also is kinda like, there's something so, like, fascinating to me about, like, the women of the Sunset Strip who were, like, going there to try and fuck rock stars.
1:36:16 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:36:17 Speaker 03 And to be the Gazzaris girls. And there's a lot of them in Decline of Western Civilization, Part Two.
1:36:23 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:36:23 Speaker 03 She, like, talks to the girls, because Penelope Sperris is a person.
1:36:26 Yasi Salek? Sure.
1:36:27 Speaker 03 Who knows women have agency. And they are kinda like, this rocks, like, I'm doing it because it's fun. And then I found out that Christina Applegate, I interviewed her for a magazine once, and she told me that she had seen an early screening of Decline of Western Civilization, Part Two, and that she totally based Kelly Bundy on those girls. Because she was like, I'm a hippie. I don't really.
1:36:49 Yasi Salek? Yeah, I don't know.
1:36:49 Speaker 03 That's not what I'm like at all, but I thought those girls were, like, so funny and interesting. And so I totally just, like, made up this character based on this kind of, like, Gazzaris girls.
1:37:00 Yasi Salek? Yeah. This is like where it's so interesting to me, like, how, how hair metal is like, in some ways rooted in punk as much as it's rooted in hardcore with, like, the shock and the, and the blood.
1:37:15 Speaker 03 It's very visceral.
1:37:16 Yasi Salek? But they didn't carry any of the politics.
1:37:19 Speaker 03 No, I mean, except for these, like, couple of social issues songs.
1:37:23 Yasi Salek? Right.
1:37:23 Speaker 03 But it is like, there's some, there is a politics to it of just kind of, like, so many of the videos are about, like, your parents don't want you to rock.
1:37:33 Yasi Salek? Yeah, right.
1:37:34 Speaker 03 And you have to rock.
1:37:35 Yasi Salek? It's libertarian music.
1:37:37 Speaker 03 I mean, that's very California.
1:37:40 Yasi Salek? A hundred percent.
1:37:40 Speaker 03 That is what makes it.
1:37:42 Yasi Salek? Um, another thing about Poison, which I'll, I mean, is there anything else to say about the song? It's pretty fucking straightforward. Nothing but a good time.
1:37:49 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's fine. It's nothing but a good time.
1:37:51 Yasi Salek? Nothing but a good time.
1:37:59 Yasi Salek? The, a big thing with the eighties hair metal bands was flyering. They were like constantly trying to out flyer each other. It was like a huge thing. If you flyer'd over someone, they would threaten to fucking kill you like. And C.C. Deville's dad owned a printing shop.
1:38:15 Speaker 03 Wow.
1:38:15 Yasi Salek? So they always had way more flyers. Friend of the pod, Alex Ross Perry, was upset that my Guns N' Roses inclusion was Sweet Child O' Mine. And I'm not, I'm, I want to talk about it because I don't, it's not that I'm here asserting that Sweet Child O' Mine is the best Guns N' Roses song. Cause it's obviously not. I just picked it because it was the first breakthrough hit of theirs. And it is the most streamed song on that album. But yeah, you could, I mean, you could point to Paradise City.
1:38:50 Speaker 03 Yeah, Paradise City is much more hair metal adjacent to me. I definitely don't think Sweet Child O' Mine.
1:38:56 Yasi Salek? Bluesy and like.
1:38:57 Speaker 03 It's so, it's, it's really its own thing in a way.
1:39:01 Yasi Salek? I've, all, all I've ever been able to say about Guns N' Roses is that it's, it's like, it occupies, they occupy their own space in music. And you can't really genrefy them because they're so interesting.
1:39:13 Speaker 03 They're so interesting. Uh, I found out Axl was a big fan of the Pet Shop Boys.
1:39:18 Yasi Salek? Totally true. Axl had incredible, tasty music. Axl's also a genius, like a musical genius.
1:39:22 Speaker 03 Slash is a genius.
1:39:24 Yasi Salek? Doug McKagan is one of the coolest people alive who brought, who was in like five to 10 punk bands, like back in Seattle. And was friends with all like the people that went on to make grunge and brought his punk sensibility to the table. Which is why Guns N' Roses has an actual punk feel.
1:39:40 Speaker 03 Like the idea that like the, the placement of Guns N' Roses and Nirvana as being in opposition to each other.
1:39:47 Yasi Salek? Right.
1:39:47 Speaker 03 Which was a big story at that time.
1:39:49 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:39:50 Speaker 03 It never felt right because it is like, no, they are kind of on the same side of history.
1:39:54 Yasi Salek? They are and they aren't, right? It's like, in some ways, it's just so much overlap, but then so much difference. Like Guns N' Roses was like a hedonistic, they're still eighties spiritually because they were like.
1:40:06 Speaker 03 Eighties spiritually, November Rain, I think is where I would put in the hair metal playlist. Cause to me, November Rain is a hair metal video.
1:40:14 Yasi Salek? The most
1:40:15 Speaker 03 The most terrible video and like incredible song, incredible video.
1:40:20 Yasi Salek? Have you ever seen the photos from Tommy Lee's wedding to Heather Locklear?
1:40:25 Speaker 03 No.
1:40:25 Yasi Salek? It's giving November rain.
1:40:26 Speaker 03 Right. It's like, that's to me, like, that was the fantasy. It's like, and that, again, is like, where Jenna Jameson came into culture. It's like, that was, girls like her were like, I'm gonna get famous and marry a rock star and be like Toni Kattan and be like these girls.
1:40:42 Yasi Salek? Which is what Toni Kattan did too. I think, I don't remember what band it was, but she herself in the seventies, saw some band and saw how the wife or the girlfriend of the lead singer got treated so well. And then she was like, that's my goal. I want to be the wife or the girlfriend of a rock star.
1:40:56 Speaker 03 Came back on TikTok, like recently, this, there's like a rock star girlfriend thing where people are like, that's a look. Like, that's a trend. It's like, looking like a rock star girlfriend. And they kind of mean more like, oh, you're like Alexa Chung.
1:41:10 Yasi Salek? Alexa Chung, I was gonna say.
1:41:11 Speaker 03 Guy from the Arctic Monkeys. But I do think this kind of idea of like, the concubine to genius rock men. The version of it from the eighties is like, that's, that's it to me.
1:41:23 Yasi Salek? Yeah. It feels super precarious.
1:41:26 Speaker 03 Yeah, absolutely. It's a terrible idea.
1:41:29 Yasi Salek? November rain will include for our Guns N' Roses. Although, I kind of want to go with Paradise City because I feel like that's the strip club song.
1:41:36 Speaker 03 Paradise City, I think it's a strip club song. I was just gonna say, I don't think you could strip to November rain unless it was like a really complicated.
1:41:42 Yasi Salek? Probably could.
1:41:43 Speaker 03 I mean, if it was so, you could do like art, artsy stripping to November rain, but you could, Paradise City will get, get the club going.
1:42:00 Yasi Salek? We're not going to go into any of Guns N' Roses because we did a whole episode with Ricky Ackman on it. You should go listen to it. It's real fun. But Guns N' Roses.
1:42:09 Speaker 03 Yeah, I do think it's not a coincidence that the two bands, Guns N' Roses and Van Halen, that are sort of like above the rest of the other bands.
1:42:18 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:42:20 Speaker 03 Are the bands that have like POC members.
1:42:25 Speaker 03 Which I also think is sort of like
1:42:27 Yasi Salek? So true.
1:42:28 Speaker 03 Like, the spiritual successor to hair metal is nu metal. Because it's also very like
1:42:35 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:42:36 Speaker 03 Suburban California kids.
1:42:38 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:42:39 Speaker 03 Although, like, weirdly, well,
1:42:43 Yasi Salek? I was gonna say nu metal is less sexual, but there's different versions.
1:42:47 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:42:48 Yasi Salek? But porn is quite sexual.
1:42:49 Speaker 03 Hated by critics.
1:42:51 Yasi Salek? Right.
1:42:52 Speaker 03 And loved by normal people.
1:42:54 Yasi Salek? Yeah, yeah, that's true. And kind of like
1:42:57 Speaker 03 And like secretly diverse.
1:42:59 Yasi Salek? Traff- very diverse. Way more diverse than all the rock genres that came from them. The death tones are like one of the most diverse bands.
1:43:06 Speaker 03 And of the sort of California like fusion.
1:43:09 Yasi Salek? Yeah. And, and trafficking in and profiting off of shock.
1:43:13 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:43:14 Yasi Salek? Like, your parents will hate this.
1:43:15 Speaker 03 Right, exactly. We put a censor sticker on it.
1:43:17 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:43:18 Speaker 03 You gotta have it. But yeah, I do think Slash and Axl both show up in Jenna World. Slash and Axl both dated a porn star named Savannah, who there's an episode about. And, uh, listen to the podcast, you'll probably know what happened.
1:43:36 Yasi Salek? Check it out, October 27th. And listen to the Guns N' Roses episode. We, that one, we had fun on that one. We learned a lot.
1:43:43 Speaker 03 Yeah, Guns N' Roses, unequivocally a great band.
1:43:46 Yasi Salek? Just a great band through and through. I want to talk about Skid Row next.
1:43:50 Speaker 03 All right.
1:43:51 Yasi Salek? I don't know if you know this about me, but I'm obsessed with Sebastian Bach.
1:43:54 Speaker 03 You told me this right before we recorded. You were like, can't stop learning about Sebastian Bach. Tell me.
1:43:59 Yasi Salek? Okay, well, the song is Eighteen in Life.
1:44:01 Speaker 03 Great song.
1:44:02 Yasi Salek? Honestly goes so hard.
1:44:03 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:44:03 Yasi Salek? Fucking great song.
1:44:04 Speaker 03 This is a social issues song.
1:44:15 Yasi Salek? It's, it's true, but
1:44:16 Speaker 03 I came away being like, we need to reclaim this from country music and make it like left wing again.
1:44:20 Yasi Salek? Make it hair metal.
1:44:22 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:44:22 Yasi Salek? Make social issues hair metal.
1:44:23 Speaker 03 Or just like make social issues songs that are like in the form of something very listenable. Instead of just like music that's aggressively like, this is for smart people.
1:44:34 Yasi Salek? Right, right. Yes.
1:44:36 Speaker 03 There's nothing I love more than like a, like a smart thing shoehorned into something really dumb and listenable.
1:44:42 Yasi Salek? Trojan horse then, totally.
1:44:45 Speaker 03 That's how you get people.
1:44:47 Yasi Salek? Skid Row, also not from LA.
1:44:49 Speaker 03 Yeah, where are they from?
1:44:50 Yasi Salek? Toms River, New Jersey.
1:44:52 Speaker 03 Wow, there's a real, like, New Jersey, Pennsylvania.
1:44:55 Yasi Salek? Tri-state area.
1:44:56 Speaker 03 That makes sense to me. It's kind of like, like, outside of New York.
1:44:59 Yasi Salek? Yeah, exactly, because it's suburban, kind of.
1:45:02 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:45:02 Yasi Salek? The way Sebastian Bach got into this band is just an incredible story. So it's formed by Rachel Bolan and Dave Sabo. And Sebastian Bach, who was born in the Bahamas, but is Canadian, and is from Peterborough, Ontario. He was, for some reason, I don't know why, 18 years old, singing at the rock photographer Mark Weiss's wedding. And who spotted him there? Jon Bon Jovi's parents.
1:45:34 Speaker 03 Wow.
1:45:34 Yasi Salek? And Jon Bon Jovi's parents came up to him and were like, hey, son, you should get in touch with our son's friend, Dave Sabo, because Bon Jovi and Dave Sabo were like childhood best friends. He's looking for a lead singer for his new band. And that is how he got into Skid Row.
1:45:53 Speaker 03 So Bon Jovi and Gene Simmons.
1:45:56 Yasi Salek? They play a spiritual role.
1:45:57 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:45:58 Yasi Salek? Because it was very cute. These teenage friends, Sabo and Bon Jovi, had made a pact that if one of them made it in the music business before the other, they would help the other one out. And so Bon Jovi got their manager, Doc McGee, who was also, used to be Molly Keough's manager, to get, uh, Skid Row a deal. Quick, just like a, sorry, a really quick Sebastian Bach sidebar. I know we're tracking for two hours already here. His life post-Skid Row is just so deeply fascinating. And I, I think he's a joyful and wonderful person. In 1996, he joined a supergroup called The Last Hardmen. You know who's in this band? Kelly Deal from The Breeders.
1:46:43 Yasi Salek? Jimmy Flemian from The Frogs and Smashing Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlain.
1:46:49 Speaker 03 They put out albums.
1:46:51 Yasi Salek? Then, in the year 2000, he's like, I'm gonna start doing Broadway. And he made his debut in Jekyll and Hyde, and he was also riffraff in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
1:47:01 Speaker 03 I remember when he was in Jekyll and Hyde.
1:47:03 Yasi Salek? First, he tried out for Velvet Revolver, but he didn't get it, because Slash said it was too much, like, skid roses, which I thought was funny. Then, in 2003 to 2007, he had a recurring role on one of my most beloved and favorite TV programs of all time, Gilmore Girls. Did you know this?
1:47:19 Speaker 03 No, I'm not a Gilmore Girls person.
1:47:21 Yasi Salek? Oh babe, he plays a man named Gil.
1:47:25 Speaker 03 That's why it's called Gilmore Girls.
1:47:26 Yasi Salek? It's all actually based on him.
1:47:28 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:47:28 Yasi Salek? Um, who was the lead guitarist in Rory's best friend Lane Kim's band, Hep Alien. Yeah.
1:47:37 Speaker 03 Okay, are they a ska band? Hep sounds.
1:47:40 Yasi Salek? I know, they're, they're alternative. I don't totally remember what they sounded like. All I remember is Lane Kim had like one of the worst storylines on Gilmore Girls where like she gets pregnant. And like,
1:47:52 Yasi Salek? kind of doesn't go on to do anything because she has a baby.
1:47:56 Speaker 03 I just don't like how they all talk in the same voice on that show.
1:47:59 Yasi Salek? I love it so much.
1:47:59 Speaker 03 I don't like shows where they're all written in the same character voice.
1:48:02 Yasi Salek? I find it so soothing. Oh, so you don't like, so you don't like the West Wing?
1:48:06 Speaker 03 Don't like the West Wing.
1:48:07 Yasi Salek? Oh, I love, that's like kind of my favorite kind of show.
1:48:09 Speaker 03 No, I hate it. I don't like when, when you can't tell the characters apart because they're all clever in the same way. I'm like, no, some of them are stupid.
1:48:15 Yasi Salek? Well, Gil.
1:48:16 Speaker 03 Buffy, that was like a big thing in the nineties, was everybody was like, well, on this.
1:48:21 Yasi Salek? Gil is not clever in the same way as the rest of them.
1:48:24 Speaker 03 Is Sebastian Bach like your ultimate hair metal man? I'm just, I'm curious why.
1:48:29 Yasi Salek? It's Nicky Six. I, no, I just find Sebastian Bach, like, as a human being, so interesting because what, this resume is insane.
1:48:36 Speaker 03 I feel the way about Bret Michaels.
1:48:37 Yasi Salek? Yeah, Bret Michaels, similar, you know?
1:48:39 Speaker 03 Like, has a sense of humor about.
1:48:41 Yasi Salek? Has a sense of humor.
1:48:42 Speaker 03 The role he plays in culture.
1:48:43 Yasi Salek? Did a lot of reality television shows. They actually kind of look alike.
1:48:46 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:48:46 Yasi Salek? Yeah. There was a big vogue for blonde men.
1:48:50 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:48:51 Yasi Salek? That.
1:48:52 Speaker 03 I think it's Fallen by the Wayside.
1:48:53 Yasi Salek? It's Fallen by the Wayside.
1:48:54 Speaker 03 I once saw like, a tweet that was like, it's embar, like, why are you as a man blonde? Which I thought was really funny. I, I feel like people's weird prejudice about, about blonde men, I strike me as weird.
1:49:07 Yasi Salek? The most normal and basic thing.
1:49:09 Speaker 03 Well, cause it's almost, it becomes homophobic. It's like, why do you look like a beautiful woman? It's like, because it's all made up. It's not, but it's like, people are the same about redheaded men. It's like, why aren't you, um, like a-
1:49:23 Yasi Salek? Oh, so you think that that's considered femme?
1:49:25 Speaker 03 Yeah, exactly. Considered femme.
1:49:27 Yasi Salek? Like, you're supposed to be swarthy?
1:49:29 Speaker 03 You're supposed to be swarthy. Yeah. You're like, you're too, why are you so pretty?
1:49:32 Yasi Salek? Interesting.
1:49:33 Speaker 03 And that's what I think is fun about hair metal too, is that it is so many boys that are pretty.
1:49:36 Yasi Salek? Totally.
1:49:37 Speaker 03 Because, um, and I think again, is like, if I, I don't know that I ever would have been a hair metal person in the right generation. But I do feel like I had a similar experience with like Britpop.
1:49:49 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:49:49 Speaker 03 You know, it was like the pretty boys of Britpop.
1:49:52 Yasi Salek? Yeah, beautiful men.
1:49:52 Speaker 03 Very much the same thing. Just like Damon Albarn, just Sebastian Bach in a different outfit.
1:49:57 Yasi Salek? And a feel attracts it. Um, my last Sebastian Bach, I'm promising I'm gonna move on. He was also on The Masked Singer.
1:50:07 Speaker 03 Great show.
1:50:08 Yasi Salek? As Tiki. He was eliminated, um, alongside Genuine.
1:50:12 Speaker 03 How could anyone not recognize Genuine? Legendary.
1:50:17 Yasi Salek? Um, the next song on our, we're almost done, I swear, we only have two more. Motley Crue, Kick Start My Heart. Do you have another, Dr. Feelgood?
1:50:28 Speaker 03 No, I think, I think this is-
1:50:30 Yasi Salek? Girls, girls, girls.
1:50:31 Speaker 03 Girls, girls, girls is probably the hair metal hall of fame.
1:50:35 Yasi Salek? Right. It's the most strip club one, but I don't know if it's, it's the most hair metal.
1:50:39 Speaker 03 My heart, I have been like, having, similar to Round and Round, it's like, when it comes on the radio, I never change the station. Because I'm just like, this is a, this song is awesome. And the part where they're like, we had a dream, we'd kick some ass. Years have passed and we're still kicking ass is like the funniest, coolest thing I've ever heard.
1:51:04 Yasi Salek? Do you, do you like it better when you imagine that Nikki Sixx was reading William Burroughs and Jim Carroll? And then that's what came out in his lyricism?
1:51:12 Speaker 03 Yeah, absolutely. It's a little bit.
1:51:15 Yasi Salek? It's not where you take it from, it's where you take it to.
1:51:17 Speaker 03 Look, if there's one thing hair metal and grunge have in common, it's heroin.
1:51:20 Yasi Salek? It's heroin. It's, that's the through line. Okay, last but not least.
1:51:26 Speaker 03 Bringing it, bringing the energy up.
1:51:27 Yasi Salek? Bringing the energy up from heroin. Warrant cherry pie.
1:51:31 Speaker 03 This is almost like the most hair metal song. It's the most hair metal. If you saw this as a young person, as I did, it truly just like unlocked something in your brain.
1:51:43 Yasi Salek? Cause it was 1990.
1:51:45 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:51:45 Yasi Salek? And it was very much on MTV for a while.
1:51:47 Speaker 03 Yeah. And it was like, that's, that's probably the last one, right?
1:51:52 Yasi Salek? I think, I think it was, I mean, I'm not totally sure, but if I had to guess, I think this is why the last hit, hair metal hit that charted and did well. And, you know, because then anything else was coming into a post Nevermind world and was.
1:52:05 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:52:05 Yasi Salek? Unless Guns N' Roses made it, which that came out, I believe, the same day or same month or whatever is Nevermind. Like it wasn't gonna be.
1:52:13 Speaker 03 The slice of cherry pie falling out of the sky into the girl's lap is so crazy.
1:52:19 Yasi Salek? So insane.
1:52:19 Speaker 03 Um, and if you saw this video before you really understood anything about sex, it did still give you the feeling of like, there's a whole world out there that I don't know anything about.
1:52:29 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:52:29 Speaker 03 That adults are participating in. And the girl in the video, her name is Bobby Brown with an I.
1:52:34 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:52:35 Speaker 03 Not the makeup artist, not Bobby Brown.
1:52:37 Yasi Salek? I have her book.
1:52:37 Speaker 03 Of New Edition.
1:52:38 Yasi Salek? She wrote a, she wrote a book.
1:52:39 Speaker 03 But yeah, she's a great, she's a real, I love the books of all these kind of like hair metal.
1:52:44 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:52:44 Speaker 03 Wives and girlfriends.
1:52:46 Yasi Salek? She married Janie Lane.
1:52:47 Speaker 03 Yeah, she married Janie Lane. I love that they were like, found a muse and put them in the video.
1:52:53 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:52:53 Speaker 03 But she looks just like Janie Lane.
1:52:57 Yasi Salek? It's, it's giving Genesis Briar Purge and, you know.
1:53:01 Speaker 03 Yeah, totally.
1:53:02 Yasi Salek? Psychic TV moment.
1:53:04 Speaker 03 Honestly, you know who else is, is Perry Farrell.
1:53:06 Yasi Salek? Yeah, well now, for sure. Um, I just wanted to tell you about Warrant is that they are named after Warren DiMartini.
1:53:14 Speaker 03 Wow. I thought it was just, there's a Warren out for their arrest.
1:53:18 Yasi Salek? They loved.
1:53:19 Speaker 03 Cause they're rocking too hard.
1:53:20 Yasi Salek? Warren DiMartini.
1:53:22 Speaker 03 Great name.
1:53:22 Yasi Salek? We love you so much. We're naming our band Warren after you. Their slogan, I think you'll enjoy this, was horniest band in LA. And that's what was written all over their flyers. They would. Plaster up.
1:53:33 Speaker 03 It's also like when you get to the Baroque era of a genre, that's what I love. Like, somebody said to me.
1:53:39 Yasi Salek? The wheels are falling off.
1:53:40 Speaker 03 Yeah, they were like, Molly, why do you always like the ends of eras? Like, most people like the beginning or the middle, but you like the end when everything's about to, like, fall apart.
1:53:49 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:53:50 Speaker 03 And I'm like, yeah, cuz that's.
1:53:51 Yasi Salek? It's really where it gets interesting.
1:53:52 Speaker 03 And that's Los Angeles.
1:53:54 Yasi Salek? And we are so in our Baroque era in Los Angeles. Like, God needs to strike us off California in a second.
1:54:01 Speaker 03 Things come here to end sometimes, you know? It's like a genre.
1:54:06 Yasi Salek? Manifest destiny into the end of the world.
1:54:08 Speaker 03 When it's finally over.
1:54:09 Yasi Salek? That's where you resurrect.
1:54:11 Speaker 03 That's where you're like, okay, the, the golden era is over, the glory days are over.
1:54:15 Yasi Salek? I'm gonna do a revival show.
1:54:17 Speaker 03 Yeah, exactly. And you move it to Las Vegas.
1:54:19 Yasi Salek? Um.
1:54:20 Speaker 03 But I, Cherry Pie is a pretty good song.
1:54:23 Yasi Salek? Yeah, I mean, I prefer it over Pour Some Sugar. I'm gonna tell you one crazy story.
1:54:27 Speaker 03 It's very much like the spiritual twin of Pour Some Sugar.
1:54:30 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:54:30 Speaker 03 It's another song about dessert, but it's better.
1:54:39 Yasi Salek? Prince was involved in Lawrence's story.
1:54:42 Speaker 03 Go on.
1:54:43 Yasi Salek? That's right. So they had an ad in BAM magazine with Jerry Dixon of the band leaning up against a telephone pole, flipping off the camera, like, wearing a leather jacket, like, looking super hot.
1:54:54 Speaker 03 Prince was like, who's that beautiful woman?
1:54:56 Yasi Salek? Well, Jamie Shoup, who worked for his management team, saw it and contacted them because Prince, at the time, was looking for a young, white, long-haired rock guy to mold into his, like, own thing, like he did with, like, Apollonia.
1:55:09 Speaker 03 A male protege?
1:55:10 Yasi Salek? Yeah, or Vanity Six, like, that was what he was interested in. So they, Prince paid for them to go into the studio and record a demo cuz he wanted to do that. And then he, like, basically was like, I don't want you guys, like, you're not what I was looking for. But they used that demo to get signed.
1:55:26 Speaker 03 Wow.
1:55:26 Yasi Salek? So, thank you, Prince. They also are on the soundtrack of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.
1:55:29 Speaker 03 Wow.
1:55:30 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:55:31 Speaker 03 Some of those soundtracks, too, really, you can see, like, the changing of the guard in the soundtracks.
1:55:37 Yasi Salek? Yeah, because there's some 80s and then all the 90s coming in.
1:55:40 Speaker 03 Yeah, you can see what's about to happen.
1:55:42 Yasi Salek? As you may or may not know, Vanity dated Nikki Sixx for a long time.
1:55:45 Speaker 03 That makes sense. I was gonna say, I wonder what, I was like, I wonder what Prince thinks about hair metal as a. A beautiful man who can tread, you know?
1:55:54 Yasi Salek? I don't, I never got into it. I mean, he might have been upset about Vanity and Nikki Sixx, but.
1:55:58 Speaker 03 Like, I wonder if he wanted to get in the mix at all.
1:56:00 Yasi Salek? I doubt it. I think he's above that.
1:56:02 Speaker 03 Yeah, he's, he's all, he's on his own planet.
1:56:04 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:56:05 Speaker 03 Um, and I said this to you before and you were like, bring it up on the show, but I've been having like a dissociative fantasy about Taylor Swift having a hair metal era.
1:56:19 Speaker 03 Because I ju- as soon as I thought of it, I was just like, what if all these songs on this new album were just hair metal? It would be awesome. She really has that lead a Ford capacity within her. And I was just like,
1:56:35 Yasi Salek? Does she?
1:56:36 Speaker 03 I would like her to strap on the guitar and for it to be an electric guitar.
1:56:39 Yasi Salek? Yeah.
1:56:40 Speaker 03 Just like she's run out of ideas, I think. But I was just like, you know what?
1:56:44 Yasi Salek? A new era like that could be cool. I can't see her doing it, but
1:56:51 Yasi Salek? I'd welcome it over whatever this was.
1:56:53 Speaker 03 Do you think we will get a hair metal revival anytime soon?
1:56:57 Yasi Salek? I, listen, that Instagram account of those two lads and some other signs, I mean.
1:57:05 Speaker 03 It's on the way.
1:57:05 Yasi Salek? I think it's not out of the realm of possibility.
1:57:08 Speaker 03 I agree. I also think there was a lot of hair metal in SoundCloud rap. Because.
1:57:14 Yasi Salek? Gone.
1:57:14 Speaker 03 Gone. You made such a good face. No, like when you mentioned Young Blood earlier, I was like.
1:57:21 Yasi Salek? Is Young Blood SoundCloud?
1:57:22 Speaker 03 No, it's like this kind of like emo rap.
1:57:24 Yasi Salek? Right.
1:57:24 Speaker 03 Little peep and stuff like that. It's very like a pretty boy with makeup on.
1:57:29 Yasi Salek? Okay, I'm picking up where you're picking up.
1:57:30 Speaker 03 You know, and it's very like, there's like a big female audience of like, only I understand.
1:57:35 Yasi Salek? Yeah. Listen, I would be so down if like any rock revival happened.
1:57:43 Speaker 03 Yeah. You think guitars will be back ever? I'm afraid we're just gonna get fucking Strokes revival again, which I'm like, count me out.
1:57:51 Yasi Salek? We did though already.
1:57:52 Speaker 03 But it's happening like now.
1:57:53 Yasi Salek? It's happening again.
1:57:55 Speaker 03 Um, now that's oldies.
1:57:57 Yasi Salek? Well, you guys.
1:57:59 Speaker 03 Get into Warrent, guys.
1:58:01 Yasi Salek? Get into fucking Warrent, you guys. Like, put on the Quiet Riot album, dig deep into the Motley Crue discography and make a band. Put on some high heels, tease your hair.
1:58:14 Yasi Salek? Let's fucking go.
1:58:15 Speaker 03 Let's fucking go.
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1:59:18 Speaker 03 Thank you for joining us, Molly, on this beautiful episode. Oh my god, thank you so much for having me. And I'll just plug Jenna World one more time. Everybody, check it out. Look into the camera to sell it. Also, fun fact, I do play a role in Jenna World. Fun fact, Yasi plays Ginger Lynn Allen, famous porn star Ginger Lynn Allen, original vivid girl, and she also played Ginger Lynn Allen in my other podcast, Heidi World. So it's a continuing character. The universes of my two podcasts are connected by Yasi. I contain multitudes. And yeah, it's just like, if you like stuff like this, if you like girls who want
1:59:58 Speaker 03 to have fun and get fucked up and make some money, you gotta check out Jenna World: The Jenna Jameson Story, vivid video in the valley. Launching October 27th. And yeah, I'll be back, I'm sure, to talk about Randy Newman again or something. Doing another Randy Newman. But you will be back. Thank you, Molly. Come back next week for a new episode of Bands Plan.
2:00:24 Yasi Salek? If you liked what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Bandplain. Our guest today was Molly Lambert. This episode was produced by Rob Sunderland and edited by Adrian Bridges with help from Justin Sales. Video animation and graphics are by John Richter and video production is by Ashley Smith. Executive producers for Bandplain are Gina Delvec and me, Yasi Salek. Our gorgeous and catchy theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Cosentino and Jennifer Clavon and graciously recorded by Carlos de la Garza in Los Angeles, California. Special thanks to our producer emeritus, Producer Dylan, aka Dylan Tupper Rupert, and also Sean Fennessy, Michael Hardman, Casey Simonson, Robert Adler, Leah Edwards, David McDonough, Dana Myerson, Jessica Hopper, and Red Bull.
2:01:07 Yasi Salek? Come back every Thursday for a new episode of Bandplain on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.
2:01:19 Speaker 03 I do think so many of the fans of Hair Metal are women.
2:01:22 Yasi Salek? Sure, so many of the fans of emo music are women.
2:01:25 Speaker 03 Yeah, I can't go with you there, I think.
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