The streets and clubs of the 1980s, Los Angeles in particular, were headquarters for a new type of band and music that lassoed the excess of the decade and blew everyone away with their big hair and even bigger and louder hard rock/metal music.
And while looking at the hair metal bands from the outside, it seemed like it was all fun, sex, booze and drugs, the level of dedication and sacrifice these musicians put out is nothing short of amazing.
The men and women worked their spandex-clad butts off to hit the big time – some made it, some went back home and some are still onstage and making records. And when their music fell from grace – and the charts – they were ridiculed and the effect their music had on future bands was totally downplayed as tastes changed in the 1990s.
Now, they’re getting the recognition they deserve.
Part of that is in the form of a new book: “Nöthin’ But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the ’80s Hard Rock Explosion,” by Tom Beaujour and Richard Bienstock. It’s an oral history of the scene and features more than 200 interviews with the people who were there, including members of Poison, Mötley Crüe, Cinderella, Winger, Warrant and Ozzy Osbourne.
Bienstock, who lives in Boulder, is a journalist whose writing has appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Billboard, Spin and other publications. He is a former senior editor of Guitar World magazine and executive editor of Guitar Aficionado magazine. He has written and co-written several books, including “Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck.”
Beaujour is a journalist and co-founder and former editor-in-chief of Revolver. He has produced and mixed albums by Nada Surf, Guided by Voices, the Juliana Hatfield Three and others.
“Nöthin’ But a Good Time” took about four years to complete, the two said, but, as longtime fans, Beaujour added, “The research was a lifetime.”
Beaujour: “Probably by people you wouldn’t think. For me, Vito Bratta from White Lion because he was my favorite guitar player of the era, and I’m a guitar player, and he’s done so little press. That was for me a huge deal. And I think I would definitely say Rikki Rockett from Poison because I’m a huge Poison fan. Those are the ones where I was really talking to someone who I’d imagined that it’d be really to cool to talk to when I was 16 years old.”
Bienstock: “I don’t know if anyone comes to mind in terms of being starstruck – a lot of these people, Tom and I as journalists have talked to in the past. I mean, him talking to Vito was definitely one of those things where we were both like, ‘Whoa, can’t believe that happened.’ I guess if I had to point to someone, I’d probably say Ozzy, just because he’s Ozzy. I’ve spoken to Ozzy before, but I think one of the things that was great was he actually really wanted to do an interview for the book because we had spoken to Sharon Osbourne before that and Ozzy had heard her doing the interview and his interest was piqued. So it was cool to get him on record talking about this stuff because it seemed like it’s not a part of his past that he really spends that much time being interviewed about – he’s either talking about the present or, most likely, he’s talking about Black Sabbath and maybe the ‘Blizzard of Ozz’ record, those first few Ozzy records, but to talk more about the ’80s as a whole is probably not something he gets questions about that much.”
Q: Were there any surprises?Beaujour: “A big-picture surprise for me, but it’s really something I wasn’t aware of was how, when you’re 13, or actually, I guess, I was 12, to see Quiet Riot on MTV doing ‘Cum on Feel the Noize’ and then Twisted Sister, you’re not aware how long these bands have been working. And you’re not aware even that they’ve been around since the ’70s. And I certainly, before we started this book, did not understand how uncool this music was in 1980, ’81, that all of these bands, the record labels didn’t want them, they wanted the next Elvis Costello, the next Knack, the next Go-Go’s. For some reason, as a kid who received this music from MTV, it had never even, and in 30 years of doing music journalism ... it had never been presented to me – and it was presented to us over and over by every single person we spoke to – George Lynch, you know, obviously, we didn’t speak to Kevin Dubrow (Dubrow died in 2007), but all of the people who were around at that time, this story emerges of these bands right after the signing of Van Halen in ’76, ’77, struggling to get the attention of the major labels and being regarded as really just a holdover from the ’70s and not worth paying attention to.
And so the importance of Quiet Riot’s ‘Cum on Feel the Noize’ video and that really creating the opening for all of these bands to run through, had not really ever occurred to me because in my mind, Quiet Riot was the band that had a hit and then they kind of went away. I hadn’t really understood that they were ground zero for all of the music that would end up being in this book. So that was an actual surprise for me – I think we both learned how the story began together while we were doing these interviews.”
Bienstock: “I think that builds on what Tom was just saying about how these bands broke through. Another thing that I think we both sort of knew but also came into much greater focus while we were doing this was the sort of DIY aspect of the bands, particularly in the early days, but it really actually extends throughout the ’80s. But these bands, especially when you’re looking at the Sunset Strip in ’80, ’81, ’82 or the East Coast with Twisted Sister, and at the same time even in the ’70s, these are bands that had no prospects, really, as Tom was saying, the major labels weren’t interested. No labels were interested. There’s no such thing as MTV, and MTV wasn’t interested in the early years anyway.
They couldn’t really get played on the radio, so they’re just doing whatever they can, and a lot of that has to do with the stage show, which winds up helping them in other ways going forward, especially when MTV comes into the picture. But it’s just doing the most outrageous, over-the-top things that they could, going to these small clubs, putting on a show as if they’re playing Madison Square Garden or what have you. They do these big arena shows in tiny little clubs; they dress outrageously; they have props and they have fire and they have all types of things – if they’re W.A.S.P., they have raw meat, whatever you can do.
But then on the musical side of it, they’re all putting out their own records, they’re starting their own labels or they’re signing to these really small labels. They’re figuring out ways to get their songs on local radio stations, and they’re just pushing and pushing and pushing with zero money and zero prospects with nothing really but their own imaginations and creativity. The other thing is they won’t stop, no matter what.
We say in the intro to the book, none of these guys stumbled into this. And they didn’t have backup plans. And that’s all true, these guys were not just like, ‘Ah, I’ll try this and then if it doesn’t work out, I’ll go to grad school.’ This is what they were going to do, and they were going to make it happen one way or another.”
Beaujour: “You even see people getting weeded out because they just can’t – there’s nothing wrong with not being able to withstand sort of the full immersion that these bands underwent, particularly out in LA. People drop by the wayside, because, like Matt Smith, who’s the original guitar player from Poison, who we tracked down, he goes home because he can’t – maybe because he’s actually a more well-adjusted human being. He doesn’t want to live in a warehouse anymore; he needs to go back to normal life, it was really, I think, a very specific psychographic of people who can withstand the amount of commitment and sort of uncertainty that it took to break through in this genre.”
Bienstock: “Yeah. I think, at the very least I feel very thankful that I experienced it while it was happening, even if it was through my stereo and through my TV. For me, and for Tom as well, speaking for myself, none of this is something that happened that I learned about through research. I was listening to this stuff almost from the beginning, like from 1983. And then even as a child just fully, fully immersed in it. With every new record that came out, I was following along with the magazines and on TV, so it does feel like, in a way, I was there, even if I wasn’t at the show or on the Strip.”
Beaujour: “I’m a couple of years older than Rich, so I guess I was 18 in ’89 when I went to college, and part of me was like, ‘I should just go to LA,’ because I was in bands trying to get signed. After having written this book, I feel I would have lasted like six weeks, but I would have loved to have seen – I know some people who saw Poison at the Country Club and stuff like that. It was great. So I do wish that I had experienced the scene out there. I mean, growing up on the East Coast, you got to see some cool stuff, too, but it wasn’t this sort of total culture that seemed to exist around the music like it did in Los Angeles.”
Bienstock: “My favorite bands from that era, certainly Mötley Crüe was the band that opened that door for me. And they remained probably one of my top bands throughout the ’80s along with Guns N’ Roses, certainly Poison and certainly Skid Row later on. As far as the less obvious ones, I was heavily into Faster Pussycat, I love a lot of W.A.S.P. stuff, those were sort of the bands I gravitated more toward in that era.”
Beaujour: For me, the ‘Talk Dirty to Me’ video is the thing that completely melted my brain. There is something about the joyfulness of it and C.C. DeVille to me was like, I was already aware of Cheap Trick, so he was like the reboot of Rick Nielsen to me. And there was something about that video that made me a lifelong Poison fan. It’s a controversial position to hold sometimes, because that band is sort of a lightning rod because I think they were so successful. So for me, Poison’s first two records in particular are things I still listen to.
I’m also really fond of, and they get some play in the book, but I wish there had been more room, I love Kix. I find that Kix’s ‘Midnite Dynamite’ and ‘Blow My Fuse’ are some of the finest records of that era; they were just a wonderfully wonderful live band to see then, and actually, if you go see Kix now, you’re going to be like, ‘This is awesome.’
The only thing I would really add is all of these bands are out, it’s kind of wonderful they’re all, except when there’s COVID, before that and hopefully after that, they’re out touring to multigenerational crowds. ... And these bands that were so sort of discounted for a period when grunge came out, actually assumed their proper place as new members of the classic rock scene. It’s become – their place in culture has been sort of assured and like their period in the desert is done, which is I think is a great thing.”
katie@durangoherald.com
Buy the book
“Nöthin’ But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the ‘80s Hard Rock Explaosion” will be released March 16 and is available for preorder at Maria’s Bookshop, 960 Main Ave.
For more information, visit
https://bit.ly/2PAdc2h
or call 247-1438.
