Smoking Something In The BoardroomThe memory is still fresh in my mind like it was just yesterday. It was right before summer break of my 7th grade year. I walked into my history class and saw my friend Rob with a look on his face like someone had died. I asked him what was wrong and he sneered and tossed a metal magazine at me and exclaimed, "They look like pansies!" 

I looked down at the full color photo spread in the mag (Circus or Hit Parader) and there was Motley Crue in pink, white and black outfits and make-up that made them look like skinny bikers in drag. It was a bit shocking to see. My initial thought was that it was some kind of gag. I tried to reassure Rob that it had to be a joke and he looked desperate enough to believe that since Motley Crue was his absolute favorite band. I was proven wrong a short time later when the video for "Smoking in the Boys Room" came out and they had those silly drag queen outfits on.

Music isn't all about image, so I told Rob to hang tight. Surely Motley Crue wouldn't change their music drastically on their new album. Sure, "Boys Room" was a far cry from "Looks That Kill," but it still kinda rocked..... in a song to try-and-win-your-girlfriend-over-to-a-band-you-like kind of way. 

Soon the other shoe dropped when Theater of Pain came out. Poor Rob was devastated. Not only had the band gone with a pansy image, but the music pretty much matched the look. Mick may have tried, in vain, to add some blues licks here and there to at least give it some rock feel, but it was the sound of a band selling out in a huge way. 

Then the ultimate insult to Rob's past devotion came and it was the straw that broke the camel's back for him. He was thru with the Crue! That insult was the second single from the album and the video that accompanied it, "Home Sweet Home". The pink and white was back, but with a ballad complete with Vince running around in assless pants with a pink bandana covering up only enough to make the video safe for viewing on MTV. And did MTV ever play it. It was on ad nausem and helped take Motley Crue from being a popular band in the metal scene to a mainstream pop band. They had gone from the power chords of "Shout at the Devil" to Tommy playing a piano on "Home Sweet Home." A short time later I remember watching an interview with Vince where he claimed they were always more glam then metal, because metal was too punk. He still hasn't gained back my respect.

The success of Motley's sellout was a large mark on the wall of what was soon to happen to metal. It was in the midst of a seismic shift that would send the genre off into two totally different directions. Pretty soon the heavy weights of the metal mainstream at the time were going soft in sound and dressing like drag queens. Even Ozzy got into the glammed up image with the release of The Ultimate Sin in early 1996. It was complete with a MTV friendly video for the radio friendly song "Shot in the Dark," which gave us the Prince of Darkness decked out in sequins with a Tammy Faye Bakker perm and makeup. 

Even Judas Priest was pulled down this dark path. For their album Turbo, they replaced most of the guitars with guitar synthesizers, and ended up sounding like a little heavier edged Duran Duran. Rob Halford's mullet from the period is still pretty comical. Then Poison appeared on the scene and it was all over. Metal had gone pop in a big way. 

Fade to BlackWhen I started back to school the next fall, Rob was over the Crue sell out. A new band had caught his attention over the summer. In fact, the band had caught the attention of a lot of the older metalheads in our town, which is where Rob heard about them. It was band of thrashy upstarts from San Francisco that didn't give a damn about image or dressing up and played a bit faster and a bit heavier then the metal we were used to at the time. The heaviness of the music made "Shout at the Devil" sound like "Home Sweet Home" in comparison. The band even refused to make a video(unheard of in 1985). The band was Metallica and once their sophomore album Ride the Lightning was re-released on Elektra, they moved out of the deep metal underground (where those of us in jr. high had yet to travel) and they began slowly getting exposure among a wider metal audience. 

Ride The Lightning was new to us, but it wasn't a new album. It had come out in 1984, but by the time it started catching on in wider metal circles, the timing was perfect. With the exception of Iron Maiden, it appeared that all of the big metal bands had gone soft and taken a trip down the slippery slope that Motley help lay out. Metal fans, being fans of metal, wanted some real metal... not Ozzy harping like Jane Fonda about nukes. He was starting to look like a heavier Jane Fonda as well. 

Metallica was still a bit too heavy for a lot of my metal friends. While it seems tame now in comparison to today's metal, at the time it was really heavy when heard against the backdrop of the big metal bands of the day. There was one song on Ride The Lightning that was just mellow enough to open the door for those that found Metallica a bit too heavy. It was the track "Fade To Black," and it's easy to see how it became an instant classic. It has the power of Metallica but was more accessible. Whereas a "Fight Fire With Fire" might send an unsuspecting metalhead (of the time) running off to the hills screaming, "that's too punk!" When they heard "Fade To Black" they were usually sold and over time, songs like "Fight Fire with Fire" would gain a foothold as well. Metalheads absolutely hated punk and punkers at the time. So a band that was thought to be too punk wasn't given a fair shake. And the punk comparisons were heard loud in clear in my circle of friends during the fall of 1985. That would soon change. Thanks in part to Ozzy and Priest going pop, but also in Southern California where I grew up, it was largely thanks to a little underpowered radio station out of Long Beach.

January of 1986 didn't just bring a new year, it brought a new era for metal and like almost all trends, it usually starts in California. Seemingly out of nowhere a small radio station we had never heard of down in Orange County, changed formats from alternative rock to 24 hours of metal. The call letters were KNAC and their tagline was "Pure Rock". At last metalheads in Los Angeles and Orange County had an outlet to discover new music and high on the list of new bands gaining instant fans was Metallica. "Fade To Black" was played all the time, as were a few other tracks from Ride the Lightning. KNAC had only been on the air for a few weeks when Metallica's Master of Puppets was released and aided by the triple assault of "Battery," the title track, and "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)," there was a new heavy hitter in metal town and they were taking metal in a lot heavier direction than last year's heavy hitters; who were going soft. 

By late spring Metallica was the favorite band of almost all metalheads in my town. You could even tune into KNAC every night for a block of songs from the band during "Mandatory Metallica." The band had claimed Los Angeles and Orange County. The irony is when they first started out in L.A., they couldn't get arrested in that music scene. Ozzy (or more likely Sharon) were paying attention to these upstart thrashers and invited Metallica to support Ozz on the Ultimate Sin Tour. Metallica were about to go national. 

That tour exposed them to metalheads across the U.S. and they often had no problem using their high energy thrash to blow Ozzy (and his new poppier music) off the stage each night. Friends didn't ask you if you were going to the Ozzy concert, the question was "are you going to see Metallica!?!" 

Talk Dirty To Me At the time when Metallica was winning over the diehard metal crowd in 1986 and 87, other metal bands were going after the MTV audience. And many of them did succeed. The new glammed out Motley Crue were all over MTV. For the first time Ozzy was getting healthy MTV play as well, which helped land "The Ultimate Sin" and the single "Shot in the Dark" in the Top 10 on the album and single charts. The synthesized Judas Priest was also riding high on the video wave with the goofy videos for "Locked In" and "Turbo". The album cracked the Top 20 and the first single went Top 40. 

But if anyone had any doubt that metal had split into two totally different directions, those doubts were smashed when the cat dragged in Poison during August of 1986. The band took the Crue's glammed out image to the extreme and ultimately upstaged the Crue on the charts when their debut hit No. 3, where Motley's Theater of Pain peaked at No. 7. (though the Crue ultimately sold a million more copies in the U.S., proving that selling out does pay!)

Poison's first single tanked, but a silly video, filmed for an even sillier song, caught the attention of the image conscience MTV and soon you couldn't turn on the video channel without hearing Poison's anthem "Talk Dirty To Me," which helped the band's debut go triple platinum. 

You Give Love A Bad Name While the diehard metal fans were discovering other heavy bands like Slayer, Anthrax, Megadeth and Exodus in the wake of Metallica, the pop mainstream was primed for an avalanche of pop-metal. In the second half of 1986 and in 1987 they got it. A band that had once been jeered while opening for KISS, came out of New Jersey and exploded on the scene and took it to another height of success. 

In November of 1986, a new sensation was born when Bon Jovi's first single from Slippery When Wet, hit the top of the singles chart. "You Give Love A Bad Name," was tailor made for MTV and radio. Sometimes derisively referred to as happy metal, Bon Jovi's looks and pop hooks took the world by storm and helped the album sell over 12 million copies in the U.S.. Though it had very little to do with metal, the pop in pop-metal became the dominate popular music form in 1986 and 87, making pop metal officially the new pop.

Pour Some Sugar On Me By 1987 you couldn't escape Bon Jovi on radio or MTV (or even on a t-shirt adorned by your high school cheerleader). Def Leppard's smash success back in 1983 was a distant memory. The band had taken too long to release a new album and fell off of most people's radar while metal was going through its massive split during those five years. 

After the band's 83 album Pyromania became a megaseller (second only to Michael Jackson's Thriller that year), the band or their label decided that their 1981 album High 'n' Dry deserved a second chance. So they rerecorded the album's ballad and a brand new track and reissued the album. While the new version of the ballad was basically the original with keyboards added, the new song "Me and My Wine" gave the world the impression that the band was heading into a new heavier and more punk direction. 

Known for their melodic hard rock, Def Leppard had two roads to choose from with their new album. They could continue down the road started with "Me and My Wine" or turn their melodic hard rock into pop. They decided to go pop... completely. 

Hysteria landed on American record store shelves and languished. No one was interested in Def Leppard. It was all about the Bon Jovis, Motley Crues and Poisons. The first single "Women" topped out at No. 80 on the charts. The second single "Animal," gained a little more traction and received some MTV play, but it just barely broke the top 20. Then the title track finally landed them at No 10 on the charts and set the ball in motion. 

By this point the album was selling relatively well, but it needed to be a smash hit to earn back the massive amount spent on its production. America was hungry for pop metal, and Def Leppard was giving them pop. So for their next U.S. single they decided to go with a song that did well when issued in the UK. They tossed together a quick video with footage from an upcoming concert promo film and gave it to MTV. "Pour Some Sugar On Me" had just the right amount of pop and just the right amount of rock to win over MTV executives who put the video into heavy "Bon Jovi" like rotation. It exploded at radio, and shot to No. 2 on the charts. The floodgates were open and Def Leppard gave Bon Jovi a run for their money when Hysteria also went on to sell over 12 million copies in the U.S. (20 million copies worldwide) and topped the U.S. album charts.

Welcome To The Jungle As pop metal was being consumed by the millions, a ragtag group of misfits in Los Angles were about to turn the music world on it's axis. Vulgar, loud, aggressive, and unapologetically born from the streets, Guns N' Roses had about as much in common with Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, Poison or Def Leppard as Paris Hilton has to a Nobel Prize winner. As the chart toppers were producing happy sing-along songs with mostly insipid lyrics, Guns N' Roses introduced themselves with the line, "You know where you? You're in the jungle baby... you're gonna die!" It was a battle cry and a challenge to a generation. And unlike Motley Crue, these guys weren't posing; they lived it.

Like most rock and roll success stories, it was a long way to the top for Guns N' Roses. Their first single, "Welcome To Jungle," didn't go anywhere upon release. It took them almost a year to find their "overnight success," aided largely by David Geffen's plea to MTV to give them a chance. The video channel finally played the "Welcome To Jungle" video early one morning, but that was enough. The fans that saw it, loved it, and barraged MTV with requests. That must have been pretty shocking to the execs at the channel who were overdosing America on Bon Jovi. But heavy rock fans were hungry for something that they hadn't had yet and Guns N' Roses delivered just that. GNR found a magic middle-ground between the pop-metalers and the thrashers. While Bon Jovi and Def Leppard sold 12 million copies of their radio friendly albums, the debut album from the not ready for primetime players in Guns N' Roses went on to sell 15 million copies in the U.S. (the same as Springsteen's Born in the USA). 

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