"Hair Metal"?

[blackjack]

I dislike the term "hair metal." Not only do I dislike the term, but for those who aren't old enough to know, NOBODY called any kind of music "hair metal" back in the 1980's or early 1990's. We called it rock 'n roll, heavy metal, glam metal, pop metal, melodic metal, or hard rock. The term "hair metal" wasn't even invented until after there was no more music of that style being played on any mainstream radio stations anymore. Besides, heavy metal has traditionally always had musicians with long hair. Having a lot of hair wasn't something exclusive to bands like Motley Crue or Whitesnake. Have you seen pictures of Robert Plant's hair when he was the vocalist for Led Zeppelin? Yet nobody calls them "hair metal." I call Zeppelin hard rock.

It's only been in the last 10 or 15 years that we've started to see the majority of the guys in the audience at Iron Maiden or Metallica concerts with short hair. My first concert was Judas Priest in 1984 with Great White opening for them. I had never seen so many guys with long hair in one place in my whole life! Almost every single guy in the audience had long hair and the most popular style of haircut was the Eddie Van Halen style of haircut from Van Halen's early days.

I sensed that when the tide changed somewhere around the year 2000 and we started seeing more guys with short hair than long hair in the audience for heavy metal concerts that it was a bad omen for rock 'n roll and heavy metal in particular. We had long hair because our idols like the guitarists in Priest and Maiden had long hair and we were emulating our idols by growing our hair long as well as sending a very strong statement out to society that said "We are heavy metal kids and we don't want to be like you; we have our own role models." It was a great sacrifice on our part to do this because it made it very hard to find a job since almost every employer had a dress code that included no long hair for men. Besides that, having long hair is a lot more work than having short hair because it takes so much more time to wash it, dry it, comb it, etc. We made this sacrifice because heavy metal meant that much to us that we considered it worth it and we took pride in it.

When the tide changed somewhere around 2000 or maybe even a little earlier, and the guys in the band onstage were almost the only men in the building with long hair I sensed it was a bad omen because it showed that the kids no longer looked up to the musicians as their role models to the same extent as we did. They weren't as rebellious as our generation was. They were willing to conform and have haircuts that their fathers approved of, whereas in my generation, the heavy metal guys all had long hair that our fathers hated! They could not stand our long hair! But as I said, we were rebels and we were definitely giving a middle finger to mainstream society by growing our hair long.

So, when the next generation came along and the guys weren't willing to pay tribute to their heroes by having similar haircuts and dressing in a similar way, when they showed they didn't have the same passion we did for heavy metal not just as a form of music but as a way of life, I knew that heavy metal was in trouble.

And I was right. What did that next generation of kids produce? Our generation created bands like Metallica, Megadeth, Queensryche, Yngwie Malmsteen's Rising Force, Savatage, and Guns 'n Roses. What bands did the next generation form that compared to those legends? Nickelback? Creed? Lamb Of God? It's absolutely pathetic how few truly legendary bands the next generation produced when compared to the likes of Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Rainbow, The Scorpions, Black Sabbath, Ozzy with Randy Rhoads, Judas Priest, Motorhead, Aerosmith, Ted Nugent, Van Halen, Guns 'n Roses, Iron Maiden, Queensryche, Dio, KISS, Metallica, Megadeth, Motley Crue, Ratt, Dokken and any other bands with George Lynch, Slayer, Savatage, Pantera, and Yngwie Malmsteen's Rising Force!

[Erikrt123]

2000? A little off on that one I believe. I graduated in 93' By then the scene was all Seattle/grunge which really screwed my plans up of moving to LA and being apart of the music scene. Very much why I am so bitter toward Nirvana. They kinda lead that whole scene and by the time I was "free" to go try and catch my break... which I had been working for since I was 13... grunge had taken over. It was during the Grunge era.. Allot of the guys at least that I seen started cutting their hair. Chris Cornell cut his hair around 93/94... I am not sure who started it.. but, that one kinda stood out to me.. cause I actually liked Bad Motor Finger.. Chris had some serious chops on that album.. anyway. When the grunge guys started cutting their hair... so did allot of people. Even Metallica fell pray to it eventually. I think that has more to do with the hair cuts then being "less rebellious" or not looking up to musicians. The "musicians" if grunge people can even be called that had cut their hair. Flannel was all the rage. Leather was traded in for that whole look. Much cheaper... but, still the days of Denim and Leather were gone... Kids are still rebellious man. Same as they always have been. Hell some of them still pull the same crap we did back when... I have a teen and I hear about it. But there are also different methods of rebellion as well. Many more ways to be a bully... an less consequences.. cause god forbid you take someone out back and give them the what for like we used to do... someone might be recording it... everyone is sue happy... therapy happy... blame happy... whatever else. But there are still the little pot heads... drug addicts.. kids sneaking alcohol into school.. having pre martial sex... thou from my understanding it is allot easier to get these days... cigs in trade... ha ha I would have been a one happy fellow had it been that easy, lmao! But, prob less of a guitar player, lol! Teens will always be teens man.. rebellion will always be there... and some of it is abit more extreme these days... cause a parent can't spank some respect into the kid... and guns with 5 mins of fame seems to be more popular. Which is lame cause a 2 yr. old can pull a trigger... Fighting it out... everyone gets to go home but they make it almost impossible to work things that way. Hell, I made some decent friends back in the day after I pounded them a few times, lol! Anyway all the rebellion is still there man.. just expressed differently. More tattoos and piercings...a little more hidden... cause everyone has a freakin' camera and video... so where we could do something and be like ya prove it... they have to worry about it being out on the net and it being proven.. but, it still survives... Thankfully my kid is a good kid and I don't have to worry. The mistakes of others are seen and dad is just cool enough to hang out with... but I hear... allot of the same stuff is still going on.

[blackjack]

Feb 12, 2015 16:51:35 GMT -6 Erikrt123 said:

2000? A little off on that one I believe. I graduated in 93' By then the scene was all Seattle/grunge which really screwed my plans up of moving to LA and being apart of the music scene. Very much why I am so bitter toward Nirvana. They kinda lead that whole scene and by the time I was "free" to go try and catch my break... which I had been working for since I was 13... grunge had taken over. It was during the Grunge era.. Allot of the guys at least that I seen started cutting their hair. Chris Cornell cut his hair around 93/94... I am not sure who started it.. but, that one kinda stood out to me.. cause I actually liked Bad Motor Finger.. Chris had some serious chops on that album.. anyway. When the grunge guys started cutting their hair... so did allot of people. Even Metallica fell pray to it eventually. I think that has more to do with the hair cuts then being "less rebellious" or not looking up to musicians. The "musicians" if grunge people can even be called that had cut their hair. Flannel was all the rage. Leather was traded in for that whole look. Much cheaper... but, still the days of Denim and Leather were gone... Kids are still rebellious man. Same as they always have been. Hell some of them still pull the same crap we did back when... I have a teen and I hear about it. But there are also different methods of rebellion as well. Many more ways to be a bully... an less consequences.. cause god forbid you take someone out back and give them the what for like we used to do... someone might be recording it... everyone is sue happy... therapy happy... blame happy... whatever else. But there are still the little pot heads... drug addicts.. kids sneaking alcohol into school.. having pre martial sex... thou from my understanding it is allot easier to get these days... cigs in trade... ha ha I would have been a one happy fellow had it been that easy, lmao! But, prob less of a guitar player, lol! Teens will always be teens man.. rebellion will always be there... and some of it is abit more extreme these days... cause a parent can't spank some respect into the kid... and guns with 5 mins of fame seems to be more popular. Which is lame cause a 2 yr. old can pull a trigger... Fighting it out... everyone gets to go home but they make it almost impossible to work things that way. Hell, I made some decent friends back in the day after I pounded them a few times, lol! Anyway all the rebellion is still there man.. just expressed differently. More tattoos and piercings...a little more hidden... cause everyone has a freakin' camera and video... so where we could do something and be like ya prove it... they have to worry about it being out on the net and it being proven.. but, it still survives... Thankfully my kid is a good kid and I don't have to worry. The mistakes of others are seen and dad is just cool enough to hang out with... but I hear... allot of the same stuff is still going on.

You make some good points but I don't hear it in their music. What little music they do have Many kids these days listen to their parents music. We never would have done that. We wanted our own heroes, our own look. What I hear now from what few new metal bands there are is very generic. Even their look is so generic. Have you noticed how popular the skinhead look is? What's cool about a hairstyle where they have no hair, where they look like they just got out of chemotherapy?

Metallica was the metal band that could put more people in the seats in the 80's than any other and now, 30 years later, nobody has come along who have been able to knock them off the top of the heavy metal mountain. The other metal bands that are capable of putting tens of thousands of people in the seats are Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath - bands even older than Metallica. The younger generation has failed to continue to evolve heavy metal in any truly significant way such as was happening in the 70s, 80's and early 90's. From Black Sabbath in the 70's to Pantera in the early 90's the creativity was there. Now it's not even close to the same level of creativity and there's a lack of post-Pantera metal bands capable of putting people in the seats the way the legendary metal bands could.

Regarding teen rebellion and fighting, you're right, the internet has offered different ways of fighting with someone and not facing the same kinds of consequences our generation had to face. That's exactly the problem. Kids aren't learning to take personal accountability for their actions because they do it anonymously behind a computer keyboard. Learning personal accountability for one's words and actions is vital. The internet has made so that kids don't have to learn that lesson. Kids today can say whatever they want and not have any consequences. The internet is raising a generation of cowards!

As for look, I don't see any correlation between grunge bands having shorter hair than metal bands causing metal kids to cut their hair. If your favorite music was grunge you would, but if your favorite music was metal you wouldn't cut your hair, get rid of your leather, and stop playing guitar solos just because Kurt Cobain couldn't play a decent guitar solo and had no guitar technique to speak of. You're right that seeing kids at Iron Maiden or Megadeth concerts with short hair started befoe 2000. It was a few years earlier, maybe as early as 1993. That generation of kids coming up then did not have the same lyalty to metal that we did. They would say metal was their favorite music and then a week later say grunge was their favorite. But the grunge philosophy was diametrically opposed to the metal philosophy. Metal musicians strived to become the best musicians they could. Grunge musicians largely avoided guitar solos and even instrumental sections because they considered solos to be "self indulgent." Well if you can't be a little self indulgent in rock 'n roll, where can you be? Rock 'n roll is about being over the top. Metal is about putting on a show for the kids both musically and visually. The grunge guys didn't bother with that; it was too much work to learn how to play guitar solos or put on a show where you actually looked and sounded like a rock band. The grunge bands would go on stage in their pajamas. No wonder grunge was a short lived fad that burned out in less than 5 years. As quickly as the kids were getting tired of bands not putting on a show and not knowing how to play their instruments, the grunge musicians were too busy self destructing to bother. Several of the biggest grunge rock "stars" didn't live past the 90's because they choice to stick needles in their arms and/or blow their brains out with a bullet to the head. What kind of "heroes" were they to look up to?

Meanwhile bands such as Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, KISS, Van Halen, Metallica, Megadeth, and Yngwie Malmsteen were alive and well. The problem was, nobody was coming along worthy of passing the torch to! The younger generation still had the laziness of the grunge ethic instead of the work ethic that made so many metal bands legendary because of all out dedication to becoming as proficient as possible on their instruments and relentless touring was not present in the next generation. There were exceptions, but far too few to keep metal a thriving and evolving art form and so it was relegated to the underground while mainstream music became worse than ever. 2014 was the first year since the invention of the platinum album that NOBODY earned a platinum album in the entire year. It didn't help any that not only was the internet raising a generation of cowards; it was also raising a generation of thieves - parasites who felt entitled to steal the fruits of the hard labor of the creators, destroying the incentive to form new bands as it beccame well known that priacy and bootlegging had reached levels that even established bands were barley earning a decent living. For new bands that were not yet established, there was no incentive to try because they would not be able to even make enough money to live on. Playing music is fun but it takes money to live. Yngwie Malmsteen said "New bands have no chance of becoming rock stars." Eddie Van Halen said when questioned about the new Van Halen album: "If the kids don't like it they'll say we s*ck. If they like it they'll just download it." Gene Simmons declared "Rock music is dead. They've finally killed it." So where is the incentive to dedicate one's life to being a rock musician, forming a band, and touring relentlessly, sleeping in a van and existing on peanut butter sandwiches while they know how incredibly small their chances are to become successful bands that can earn a decent living or even earn a living at all?