Who ended Hair Band craze?

[Red81]

mtv made it famous, mtv killed it.

[skibob]

 

Interesting perspective. Garths live shows were HUGE eighties style arena extravaganzas and were a continuation of everything that was already going on in the eighties. I'm sure you are right that at least some of the eighties rock crowd went that direction. Garth was one of the biggest country musicians to ever live during the nineties having tons more sales than any country artist had ever seen before. All those new fans had to come from somewhere. Nowadays, when my country band plays live, and I see all those dolled up hot ass country girls out there line dancing, they remind me of all the hot little mammas that used to crowd the stages at our hair metal shows. Same girls, they are just wearing different clothes.

 

 

Yup.

 

I remember the scene in my high school before Garth Brooks was everyone was into Kiss, M

[Danhedonia]

People may wish to reflect upon this: Garth Brooks' ascendancy (and the recognition of New Country's sales might) was due to the launch of SoundScan. This is simple history; check the album charts the weeks prior to SS's launch, and then after.

 

As for the Nirvana stuff ... I knew Kurt (the K still seems affected) and Dave a bit; I worked at Sub Pop "back in the day." Every time some piker says nasty {censored} about Nirvana, I love thinking about how utterly jackassed they'd feel saying the same thing in front of the band. Because they truly would have laughed.

 

One reason grunge "killed off" hair metal was not simply that labels needed a new cash cow to milk (though whomever wrote about the posters being changed overnight is so spot-on ... I could tell you stories about guys at Reprise yelling into a phone "they have to have LONG HAIR .... no, no hairspray ... and they have to BE FROM SEATTLE") ....

 

No, grunge killed hair metal *on purpose.* If you saw Mark Arm's stage patter in 1989, or listened to Kurt ramble about indie rock in the interviews set up around the release of "Nevermind," those guys despised hair metal culture. Despised it the way punks hated Jethro Tull. So even though Perry was doing some amazing things with Jane's and the world loved "Nothing's Shocking," think about it: does Dave Navarro REALLY look like the anti-Warrant? Their cultural stance - for whatever reason(s) - didn't get so specifically defined.

 

Don't forget Kurt's baiting of Gn'R from time to time in the press (a genuine pain in the ass for many who worked with John Silva on their management team) ... as they say, "the hate was real."

 

Nirvana were certainly marketed in ways they did not care for (Dave, now quite powerful, has a legendary distaste for ALL marketing types), but at the core was a true desire to beat that music out of popular culture. Which happened, which is sort of amazing.

 

I'm going from memory here, but I believe Nevermind and Gish were released within six weeks of one another in 1991 - each of them absolutely packed with singles, each of them with Butch Vig's fingerprints all over them. It was a watershed moment for music - led directly to the Mays' family buying up listenership through Clear Channel, which led to Randy Michaels, which led to Selector and the death of Commercial Radio. People like to blame file sharing, and that had an impact, but Music Inc. had already started nailing their own coffin shut.

 

Hair metal is highly dependent on a major-label type system for it's success (forget falling way out of cultural fashion) -- it's an *expensive* genre from a start-up POV.

[Kap'n]

 

Don't forget Kurt's baiting of Gn'R from time to time in the press (a genuine pain in the ass for many who worked with John Silva on their management team) ... as they say, "the hate was real."

 

 

Yep. And while people might split hairs and say G&R wasn't hair metal, it was. At least in the eyes of everybody who despised it. Which was really all that mattered.

[AxAxSxS]

I was really into thrash at the time and was overjoyed when nirvana came out cause finally something heavy was getting airplay. That changed to hate when most of the bands I was into never got any attention payed to them because they weren't "grunge". It was nirvana. If you think otherwise you are in denial.

[Northstar]

You're kidding yourself if you think hair craze had ended. Alongside every style of music comes a stupid style of hair. Elvis, the Beatles, big afros of the early 70s, Bee Gees, Motley Crue, bald heads of the '00s, Justin Bieber...

 

It's always crazy hair.

[etawful]

Much like the fall of the Soviet Union, Hair Metal collapsed under the weight of its own hubris. The collapse was credited by some to a single individual (or band), but that's far too simplistic an explanation for a long term decline in power and popularity resulting in its demise.

 

Also much like the Soviet Union, you see occasional last gasps of the dying empire (reunion tours, poor attempts by Moscow to exert power) trying to convince people that there is still something of worth to be seen.

[wagdog]

More importantly, what happened to MY hair???

[bsman]

More importantly, what happened to MY hair???

 

Have you checked your brush and the drain in your shower?

[Northstar]

 

Much like the fall of the Soviet Union, Hair Metal collapsed under the weight of its own hubris. The collapse was credited by some to a single individual (or band), but that's far too simplistic an explanation for a long term decline in power and popularity resulting in its demise. Also much like the Soviet Union, you see occasional last gasps of the dying empire (reunion tours, poor attempts by Moscow to exert power) trying to convince people that there is still something of worth to be seen.

 

 

Chernobyl is responsible both for the demise of the Soviet Union and follicle loss.

[DaveAronow]

 

More importantly, what happened to MY hair???

 

 

The dingo are your hair

[Arr0wHead]

 

So even though Perry was doing some amazing things with Jane's and the world loved "Nothing's Shocking," think about it: does Dave Navarro REALLY look like the anti-Warrant?

 

 

Again, as a highschool freshman at the time, it wasn't the bands in particular that created the change - it was US, the underage kids. Hair metal was made for partying, drinking, and 21+ shows. Us highschool kids were sick of it. The Chili Peppers, Metallica, Pearl Jam, Janes Addiction not only pushed different SOUNDS into the mainstream, they also pushed a culture of arena festivals (Lollapalooza debuted the same year Nevermind did), all ages shows, and accessibility for kids that had been left with no scene of their own other than hardcore and other DIY shows.

 

It was apparent in ALL music. Not just hair-metal. Look at the swing in Boston hardcore, with bands like Sam Black Church and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones bringing new styles into the genre. Look at the thrash scene, and the start of the whole crossover thing in the late 80's early 90's. Almost every genre was seeing the same shift from music as bar entertainment for the 21+ crowd to music being recaptured by the teens.

 

Also, let's not forget that Nirvana/grunge was only delivering a killing blow, they didn't fight the fight. Last I looked, I was watching pop, rap, and hip hop beat the absolute {censored} out of hair metal right alongside grunge.

 

My "alternative" music collection was easily outpacing my hair rock collection by the time Nirvana came around. Yes, I was a huge Nirvana fan, but again they were one of dozens of bands all hitting the stores at the same time. Remember - Nirvana started rallying against hair-rock in the 1980's. It wasn't until David Geffen released their record to t.v. and radio play that they became a household name.

 

One last thing - another contributing factor to the rise of "alternative" music in my area was the rise in skateboarding culture. In fact, the skaters pre-dated Nirvana by a bit, and it was my skater friends who first introduced me to Nirvana by lending me a copied cassette tape before the album even landed in stores (nevermind). They also introduced me to grindcore. That's the thing with skaters - they liked ANYTHING with an edge to it.

[Mel Cooley]

 

This sums it up:   It was 1990 give or take I don't remember when the news of revolution hit the air The girls hadn't even started taking down our posters when the boys started cutting off their hair The radio stations all decided angst was finally old enough it ought to have a proper home Dead fat or rich nobody

[Alex_SF]

 

It is hard to imagine any single band being hated and blamed for the death of hair metal than Warrant. If there is a band even more hated and to blame, I am not aware of it.

 

 

Warrant was definitely up there. I saw Warrant on their first big tour in '89, when they were booked as an opener for Queensryche on its "Operation Mindcrime" tour. The Queensryche fans did not like Warrant at all, and more than one of my friends commented afterward on how much that "cheese-metal / poseur / glam-f@g" opening act sucked. There were scattered boos during their set, and Jani was doing everything he could to try and win over the crowd but the crowd wasn't having it. I didn't like them either but I actually felt a little sad for them watching them bomb so badly. I've since read that they got booed off the stage after about 3 songs at another stop on that tour.

 

(It's a little ironic in hindsight that Queensryche fans rejected Warrant for the reasons they did, given what happened to Queensryche after 1989. I guess even the "glam" potshots were kind of ironic given the band photos on the "Rage for Order" album sleeve.)

 

Warrant went on to huge success until grunge took over. But they as much as anybody symbolized the watering-down and mainstreaming of the hard rock scene that eventually disgusted the headbangers, who never considered "hair metal" to be metal in the first place. The kids who would have been into metal in the mid-80s were driven to other forms of music that retained the aggression and power (and dangerous image) that was missing from what passed for "metal" by the early 90s. Grunge and gangsta rap got huge; punk got massively more popular. Metal survived, but with a few exceptions it mostly went more underground and got heavier and more inaccessible to the mainstream.

[Grantus]

There were a lot of factors, several mentioned in this thread. The rise of grunge and pop country certainly had a lot to do with it.

 

I'm not sure I agree that Warrant caused it. I don't think they were particularly more crappy than many of the hair metal bands that came before them. Warrant, to me, weren't any better or worse than Poison or Ratt or Winger.

 

And, no, Dave, some of us were actually running to grunge as much as we were running away from '80s hair metal and pop. Early grunge, to me, represented a more honest form of expression than many of the highly packaged late '80s bands. Of course, the record labels began packaging grunge soon enough.

 

If I had to name Public Enemy No. 1 to hair metal, it was Kurt Cobain.

[grunge782]

I did.

[Pope on a Rope]

Big guts and baldness.

[docjeffrey]

It was natural selection. They all got hepatitis, chlamydia, herpes and other social diseases from having sex with Pamela Anderson...and each other.

[benzem]

 

Big guts and baldness.

 

 

This.

[AVisme]

A contributing factor no one has brought up yet is that a lot of the major bands started sucking. There were hair band records released post-1991, it's just that they didn't deliver.

[Kap'n]

 

A contributing factor no one has brought up yet is that a lot of the major bands sucked.

 

 

Fixed.

[docjeffrey]

 

A contributing factor no one has brought up yet is that a lot of the major bands started sucking. There were hair band records released post-1991, it's just that they didn't deliver.

 

 

Personally, I hated them from the start. The songwriting was atrocious, the stage antics were juvenile, and AC/DC, Megadeth, Metallica, Tom Petty, David Bowie, ZZ Top, the Replacements, Slayer, Yes, Talking Heads, RUSH!, Dire Straits and Michael Jackson (yeah, you read that correctly) were soooo much better than any of those talent challenged hair bands that I had no time for them. Even Springsteen was infinitely cooler than any hair band, ever.

[Kap'n]

 

Even Springsteen was infinitely cooler than any hair band, ever.

 

 

Yep, he didn't really suck until hair metal was dead.

[jpnyc]

 

A contributing factor no one has brought up yet is that a lot of the major bands started sucking. There were hair band records released post-1991, it's just that they didn't deliver.

 

 

Most of them never did more than churn out sloppy filler tracks in between generic power ballads and party anthems. Aside from Dr. Feelgood I can

[Danhedonia]

So, Kim Thayil and Tad Thorstensen both worked at Muzak -- and loved AC DC.

 

Kurt hated not hair metal per se, but the asininity behind so much of that stance. He'd have been the first to say that your rig and effects pedals didn't define you. See: their cover of Kiss' "Do You Love Me."