The Metal Years

I have a guitar collection. A few years back, when I did a lot of gigs, it was an Arsenal of Rock and Roll, ready to be wielded on stage at a moment’s notice to create music for the masses.

At least I liked to think of it that way.

Recently, though, I haven’t been doing more than a dozen electric shows a year, and must face the fact that it’s now a collection, no matter how I try to rationalize it.

I never wanted to be a collector. Collectors don’t play their guitars; they hang them on walls for people to admire, or hide them away in cases, never to be seen. I do play all of mine, but probably not often enough to justify keeping all of them. Thus, I began the painful process of unlatching guitar cases and exhuming guitars, each time asking the dread question, “Do I really need to keep this one?”

From a battered case, its protective vinyl peeling and plastered with stickers from local radio stations long gone, I removed a scintillating magenta-colored Kramer Focus 6000. Straight from the late-1980’s with an MTV-approved pointy headstock, and known these days as a “shredder,” this axe was stripped down and hot-rodded, built for speed, more and faster being the credo of the hair-sprayed Metal Gods of the 80's.

I purchased it a few years ago with the intention of fixing it up, thinking that it might allow me to finally unleash my inner Edward Van Halen. And I fell in love with the color — who paints guitars magenta (magenta!) anymore?

But I never did get around to fixing it up, and it wasn’t quite usable in its current shape, and if I wasn’t using it, someone else should be, so… on to Craigslist it goes.

Opening the case was akin to peering into a time capsule. The case and the guitar had seen a lot of miles, and most likely, a lot of stages; a tangible piece of history from a time not so long ago, and all but forgotten.

*****

“Hair Metal” bands were ubiquitous in South Jersey and Philadelphia in the late 80’s. Headbangers filled venues like The Galaxy, Bonnie’s Roxx, Dick Lee’s, and The Empire Rock Club to see them.

Some of those bands caught on and were eventually signed by major record labels eager to cash in on the hair metal trend. Some went even further — Cinderella sold millions of records and headlined national arena tours.

Metal fans were everywhere, hanging out at the 7–11’s and infiltrating the malls. They seemed inescapable.

I didn’t like it. Although I was a casual fan when I was 13 or 14, I was already outgrowing metal when I first heard the opening riff on Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Pride and Joy” come thundering out of my clock radio speaker. Shortly thereafter, Bruce Springsteen’s blockbuster “Born in the USA” album turned me into a lifelong fan. Neither of these rockers wore spandex, let alone make up, nor hair-sprayed manes, or played wildly-shaped and colored guitars.

I guess it was that image that I didn’t like. Take skinny stoners, add hair spray, make up, and Spandex… and suddenly they’re bad-ass?

*****

July, 1989

“Sometimes you just gotta tell your parents to… FUCK OFF!” screeched Sebastian Bach.

The sold-out Philadelphia Spectrum roared.

Bach was the front man for Skid Row, straight out of Toms River, NJ. He was — you guessed it — a skinny long haired dude with a don’t-fuck-with-me attitude that belied his stature. He thrashed about the stage, threw punches, and was ready to fight the whole world. The prototype hair metal singer. The girls loved him. I thought he was a poseur.

Skid Row were the openers for Bon Jovi, from Sayreville, NJ, who had already hit the multi-platinum big-time and were cashing in with an arena tour. My girlfriend, and her thirteen-year-old sister and her friend all shrieked delightedly at Bach’s exhortations, while I Muttley-laughed at the thought of them taking his advice. The only reason I was there was because none of them drove yet.

1989 was the Summer of Classic Rock Reunions. Two legendary bands whom everyone had thought had broken up for good — The Who and the Rolling Stones — hit the road that summer with a vengeance. I had just seen The Who twice the week before, and they overwhelmed already high expectations. These guys onstage before me just did not measure up.

Although they had a few good songs, and a loud, aggressive style with heavy guitars and thundering drums, I felt that Skid Row and Bon Jovi were lightweights. I thought that they were more about selling a style, and lacking substance, were more preoccupied with conforming to the accepted Hair Metal Norms than delivering good music.

In a way, despite all their adoring, screaming female fans, I kind of felt sorry for them; there was a lot of talent up on that stage. Maybe if they lasted as long as The Who, they’d find a way to escape those trappings of image and unleash their real potential. Maybe…

*****

Winter, 1992

My first working band, a mish-mash of blues, New Wave, and classic rock that for lack of a better idea was called “The Radials,” practiced diligently every week in a South Philly rehearsal studio called “The Opera House,” a few miles away from the Spectrum. Legend had it that the Stones rehearsed there before they played JFK Stadium in 1981; Led Zeppelin rehearsed there shortly before taking the stage at Live Aid in 1985. We’d haul our instruments in every week, get assigned a room that had a working PA (hopefully), and work on our material for three or four hours.

One night I took a break and wandered out to the lobby to get a soda, and noticed some serious “metal dudes” in full regalia sitting in the lounge. They were sporting acid wash jeans, leather vests, and cowboy boots, with scarves on their heads keeping their elaborately hair sprayed locks in place. One guy was writing on a legal pad while the other was strumming on an acoustic guitar.

We weren’t used to seeing musicians wearing stage clothes at the rehearsal studio. I snorted to myself (poseurs), and stopped in the office to get the story. Shawn, the guy who ran the place at night, was a metal dude too. He was practicing scales at warp speed on his pointy guitar, trying to keep his long hair from getting tangled in the strings, and looked up when I entered.

“That’s Britny Fox,” he offered excitedly. “They’re getting ready to go out on tour.”

Shawn was usually stoned to the gills and kept his hair back in a ponytail. He didn’t get excited. He must’ve sensed an opportunity somewhere tonight.

In 1988, Britny Fox’s debut album sold over a million copies. Their videos were in regular rotation on MTV, and they toured extensively. They had made it — they were Rock Stars, baby.

I snuck another look in to the lounge on my way back to our room. The Rock Stars were tense, quiet; there was a palpable sense of frustration and loss in the air. They didn’t look like they were having the kind of fun Rock Stars are supposed to have.

The writing was on the wall. None of us in the Opera House that night knew it, but the end of the era had already arrived. Nirvana’s Nevermind album had gone to Number One at the end of January, driving a stake right through the heart of Hair Metal and scattering all those bands back to obscurity.

Britny Fox broke up later that year. The party was over.

*****

Carteret, NJ — September, 2015

It was mid-afternoon, and a brutally hot sun was beating down on the stage when we finished our soundcheck. We were the headliners for this free outdoor township summer series concert, and as such had to set up first. As we wandered offstage members of the opening act, a Bon Jovi tribute band, took the stage and began setting up.

They were friendly, and seemed like normal guys, guys just like us, getting ready to go to work — except for the singer. There was something about him, maybe his reticence to engage with my band as we passed each other on the stairs — maybe he resented that his band wasn’t headlining — reminded me of someone else…

A few hours later, I watched their set from the hospitality tent. They were great, played Bon Jovi’s hits old and new, but still there was something about the singer…

It wasn’t the look so much as the attitude that provoked that old memory. Even though he was pushing 45, he was still skinny, still rocked the long hair 80’s style… but it was that old metal attitude oozing from his body language. Long haired, skinny kid, bad-ass. Throwing punches in the air, visibly angry that their set was over so soon.

Where has this guy been all these years? Did he miss Nirvana, Pearl Jam, miss the whole “Grunge Era,” when the metal guys retreated, left the malls, traded in their Spandex for flannel, cut their hair, grew up? Was he a True Believer? Was he working a day job all this time to make ends meet while waiting for his big break, for The Era of Glam Metal to return?

And if so, how did he keep the flame burning for all those years?

That’s what I really wanted to know. How did you hold on to that passion?

I wanted to talk to him, and hear his story, but by the time we finished, he was long gone.

*****

As things turned out, Bon Jovi was one of the few, and arguably the most successful 80’s metal band to survive the Grunge Era, actually thriving as a viable recording band, not just a touring nostalgia act like so many of their old peers had become. Somehow they were able to produce new music that veered away from their Glam days without alienating their huge fan base. In 2015, as I watched the tribute band preparing to perform their songs, Bon Jovi had been around longer than The Who had been back when I saw them in that summer of 1989.

Skid Row wasn’t quite so blessed. Neither were the clubs; The Galaxy, Bonnie’s Roxx, Dick Lee’s, and The Empire Rock Club, all vanished quickly after riding the wave.

And over time, those old Hair Metal songs became, for me, a guilty pleasure.

iTunes made it so easy, so guilt-free. First it was a song or two from Poison, then a greatest hits compilation from Ratt, then a few classic Motley Crue records and, I couldn’t deny it. I missed it.

Music since then has become too serious, too introspective, too complicated. Without the image, the songs were simple, but catchy. Songs about good times, fast cars, hot chicks, trying on a bad-ass pose, and especially, an expectation, a belief, that the fun times would never end.

My favorite one is by Skid Row. These days when I hear “I Remember You” on the radio, I don’t picture some poseurs from New Jersey latching on to the Hair Metal trend; I hear guys who wrote about what they knew, with as much sincerity as they could muster; who poured everything they had into making a hit record that they could hear on the radio and see on MTV, and play full houses throughout the world while the girls screamed for more. Just like they did at the Philadelphia Spectrum back in 1989.

Guys who gave it all to realize their dream. I can’t fault them for that.

*****

He was close to my age, maybe a few years older, and had driven inland from the Jersey Shore to meet me. He gently removed the guitar from the case, and lifted it out to inspect it as if he’d handled it before. The sun flashed brilliantly off the glossy magenta finish like a spotlight on a hot stage.

“Would you take $200 for it? I’m on a tight budget, but my son’s birthday is coming up, and all he wants is an old 80’s Kramer. He’s obsessed with that old 80’s stuff.” He laughed, a little self-consciously.

He couldn’t put it down.

“Absolutely.” We shook hands. “I hope he enjoys it.”