Nöthin' but a good time : the uncensored history of the '80s hard rock explosion

Nöthin' but a good time The uncensored history of the '80s hard rock explosion

Tom Beaujour

Book - 2021

"The definitive, no-holds-barred oral history of 1980s hard rock and hair metal. 1980s hard rock was a hedonistic and often intensely creative wellspring of escapism that perfectly encapsulated--and maybe even helped to define--a spectacularly over-the-top decade. Indeed, fist-pumping hits like Twisted Sister's 'We're Not Gonna Take It,' Mötley Crüe's 'Girls, Girls, Girls,' and Guns N' Roses' 'Welcome to the Jungle' are as inextricably linked to the era as Reaganomics, Pac-Man, and E.T. From the do-or-die early days of self-financed recordings and D.I.Y. concert productions that were as flashy as they were foolhardy, to the multi-platinum, MTV-powered glory years of stadium-shaki...ng anthems and chart-topping power ballads, to the ultimate crash when grunge bands like Nirvana forever altered the entire climate of the business, Tom Beaujour and Richard Bienstock's Nothin' But a Good Time captures the energy and excess of the hair metal years in the words of the musicians, managers, producers, engineers, label executives, publicists, stylists, costume designers, photographers, journalists, magazine publishers, video directors, club bookers, roadies, groupies, and hangers-on who lived it. Featuring an impassioned foreword by Slipknot and Stone Sour vocalist and avowed glam metal fanatic Corey Taylor, and drawn from over 200 new interviews with members of Van Halen, Mötley Crüe, Poison, Guns N' Roses, Skid Row, Bon Jovi, Ratt, Twisted Sister, Winger, Warrant, Cinderella, Quiet Riot and others, as well as Ozzy Osbourne, Lita Ford and many more, this is the ultimate, uncensored, and often unhinged chronicle of a time where excess and success walked hand in hand, told by the men and women who created a sound and style that came to define a musical era--one in which the bands and their fans went looking for nothin' but a good time...and found it"--

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Subjects
Rock music > 1981-1990 > Anecdotes.
Rock music > 1981-1990 > History and criticism.
Heavy metal (Music) > Anecdotes.
Glam metal (Music) > Anecdotes.
Rock musicians > Anecdotes.
Rock musicians > Interviews.
Anecdotes.
Interviews.
Genres
Anecdotes
Interviews
Published
New York : St. Martin's Press 2021.
Language
English
Main Author
Tom Beaujour (Interviewer)
Other Authors
Richard Bienstock (Interviewer)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
xix, 535 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 25 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN
9781250195753
  • Foreword
  • Cast of Characters
  • Introduction
  • Part I. Everybody Wants Some!!
  • 1. "The Pussy-Plucking-Posse Pocket of Hollywood"
  • 2. "Dinosaur Music"
  • 3. Interview: Michael Anthony of Van Halen
  • 4. "Just Because Someone Says You Suck Doesn't Mean You Don't Suck"
  • 5. "Rhymes with Rockin'!"
  • 6. "Blue-Black Hair and High Heels"
  • 7. Ratt 'N' Roll
  • 8. "Don't Just Tackle the Quarterback-Break His Arms and Legs, Too!"
  • 9. The Yellow and Black Attack!
  • 10. "It's Male Dominating. Macho-ism or Whatever"
  • 11. "We Prayed in the Limo, Sure"
  • 12. "We Know What We're Doing, Fuck You!"
  • 13. "Okay, Where's the Knives?"
  • Part II. Feel the Noize
  • 14. "Anthem Participatory Rock"
  • 15. "This Is Gonna Go"
  • 16. "Then I Got the Ozzy Gig ..."
  • 17. "When You've Got Nothin', You've Got Nothin' to Lose"
  • 18. "I'm Not Running Any Fucking Circus!"
  • 19. "You've Gotta Meet My Friend Axl"
  • 20. "We Just Made It a Friggin' Party"
  • 21. "It's Hard to Believe, but at That Time Jani Was Really Kind of Shy"
  • 22. "Everybody Would Be Throwing Up, Passing Out, Hallucinating, or Banging Outside"
  • 23. "Pop Songs with Heavy Guitars"
  • 24. "I Broke Nikki's Nose. I Broke Tommy's Nose. I Punched Poor Mick Just for the Heck of It"
  • 25. "I Believe Our Bus Got Crabbed Out"
  • 26. "George and Don Hated Each Other ... Really Hated Each Other"
  • 27. "Guns and Rose"
  • 28. "For One Thing, We Never Wore Any Fucking Lipstick!"
  • 29. "The Poison Thing"
  • Part III. Knock 'Em Dead, Kid
  • 30. "What? A Chick in Our Band?"
  • 31. "The Girls Were Just, Like, Melting"
  • 32. "People Didn't Know Whether to Fuck Us or Fight Us"
  • 33. "How Do I Get a Record Deal?"
  • 34. "Our Hero Is Gonna Fucking Split His Brains Open in Front of Us Right Now!"
  • 35. Interview: Alan Niven, Guns N' Roses and Great White Manager
  • 36. "And We've Got the Pictures to Prove It"
  • 37. "The Horniest Band in L.A."
  • 38. Flyer Wars
  • 39. "If They Had Cameras Back Then, That Whole Scene Would Be in Jail"
  • 40. "It Felt Like Beatlemania"
  • 41. Garden State Music
  • 42. Interview: Dave "Snake" Sabo of Skid Row
  • 43. "You Mean Slash Coulda Played the Chris Holmes Part?"
  • 44. "We Never Even Knew We Had Money in Our Bank Accounts"
  • Part IV. Youth Gone Wild
  • 45. "You Just Signed Kip Winger!"
  • 46. "Michael Jackson Saw the Value in Poison"
  • 47. "If You Put Tits on Him, He Could Run for Miss Texas"
  • 48. "If You Look at the Clothing, It's All Pretty Outrageous, Innit?"
  • 49. "Saving Whales Doesn't Sell Albums; Leather Pants Do"
  • 50. "Send the Check for the Nelsons-They're Ready"
  • 51. Interview: Rick Krim, MTV Executive
  • 52. "We Call Them, Uh, 'Panty Wetters'"
  • 53. "Flicked if I'm Gonna Do This Every Night"
  • 54. "Tommy Lee Came to Our Room with a Plate. And He Had Shit on It"
  • 55. "Bon Jovi, Jr."
  • 56. "It Was Like Being on a Plane with Two Hundred Gremlins"
  • Part V. The Last Mile
  • 57. "Is It a Gun Problem or a Bat Problem?"
  • 58. Interview: Steve Brown of Trixter
  • 59. "The Scorpions Wanted Us Off the Tour After the First Night"
  • 60. "Cherry Pie Guy"
  • 61. Interview: Brian Baker of Junkyard
  • 62. What Comes Around Goes Around
  • 63. "It Was a Total Scene Out of Gunslinger or Something"
  • 64. "The Girlfriends and Wives Didn't Want Us There"
  • 65. "Chachi's Bumming Everybody Out"
  • 66. "It Was Like, 'fa-an-nu-no-nu-sh-abba-abba'"
  • 67. "You're Gonna Lose Half Your Audience"
  • Part VI. Shut Up, Beavis
  • 68. "38 Guns N' Roses, 20 Ratts, 14 Warrants ..."
  • 69. "We Said, 'Fuck It,' and Hung It Up"
  • 70. "I Don't Think Nirvana Ever Wanted to Kill Anyone's Career"
  • 71. "All of a Sudden You Were Radioactive"
  • Part VII. Epilogue
  • 72. "This Is What We Do"
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
Review by Booklist Review

Like disco before it and nü-metal after, the glam metal of the 1980s enjoyed a brief stint in the spotlight before being banished to the basements of embarrassed former fans. But time (and Mötley Crüe's The Dirt) have occasioned a reappraisal of those old hairspray days. Beaujour and Bienstock compile quotes from all the big names of stateside hair metal, weaving the oral history into a comprehensive document of the rise and fall of the scene. Beginning with the early days of Quiet Riot and Van Halen, the book takes the reader through glam's ascent from L.A. clubs to arenas everywhere, spending equal time on Crüe-style debauchery and the behind-the-scenes business that made these bands superstars, through the arrival of Nirvana, which turned the hair metal craze into poison overnight. The book's focus on the U.S., and Los Angeles in particular, means bands like Europe or scenes like Japan's visual kei pretty much go unmentioned. Still, it's hard to deny that this feels like the final word on the glam scene, much as Please Kill Me and American Hardcore were for their variants of punk. Existing fans will encounter names and stories they'd long forgotten, while novices might find a new appreciation for long-maligned hair bands like Cinderella.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Revolver cofounder Beaujour and former Guitar World editor Bienstock (Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck) give heavy metal a flamboyant retrospective in this raucous oral history. The pair interview dozens of figures from the glam-metal eruption of the 1980s, including Ozzy Osbourne and David Lee Roth; the members of Quiet Riot, Twisted Sister, Guns N' Roses, Vixen, Winger, Ratt, and Poison; and sound engineers, record company execs, roadies, security guards, and costume designers (spandex pants, readers learn, became ubiquitous because they wouldn't split at the crotch during acrobatic dance routines). Accounts of recording session tantrums, trashed hotel rooms, guitar-virtuoso rivalries, and the inter-band arms race toward ever-bigger hairdos and ever-crazier shows--"e started making the fire sign and the torture rack and the raw meat box," recalls W.A.S.P. stage designer Al Bane--and pure debauchery ("I would wake up out of a binge and there'd be naked people and drugs everywhere," Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx remembers. "I'd have blood all over my hands and my feet and not know what happened") round out this irreverent and fun narrative. Metalheads and those with a fondness for the over-the-top antics that marked the genre and era are in for a treat. (Mar.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Wilco's Jeff Tweedy famously observed in the song "Heavy Metal Drummer" that metal music fans seemed to be having a better time than anyone else. The genre's lyrical content--largely devoted to parties, drinking, and sex--bears that out. However, though stories of debauchery abound in this oral history by Revolver cofounder Beaujour and Bienstock (coauthor, Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck), the book revolves mostly around the drive to make it big--constant touring and performing, mastering instruments, and honing songwriting skills. Artists such as Bret Michaels, Nikki Sixx, Don Dokken, and Sebastian Bach thoughtfully detail the inner workings of the music business, especially getting gigs and signing recording contracts. One entertaining chapter focuses on flyer distribution--a seemingly mundane task that was taken as seriously as rehearsing. Nevertheless, readers looking for sex, drugs, and rock and roll will be satisfied, too. The authors note that many accounts reflect outdated, sexist attitudes and emphasize that those "hoping for an outpouring of regret or a litany of mea culpas" will be disappointed; their objective was "to uncover what really happened from the people who lived it, not to make them apologize for it." VERDICT Rock music fans will be banging their heads to this book.--Brett Rohlwing, Milwaukee P.L.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

An oral history of the guitar-shredding rise and sleazy, druggy fall of 1980s hair metal. In this lively, comprehensive saga of the much-maligned genre, Beaujour and Bienstock deliver plenty of the sordid tales of sex and hard living that the music often celebrated--e.g., Motley Crüe's orgies, a drug-addled Ozzy Osbourne snorting ants, Guns N' Roses in heroin-steeped disarray--while also showing how many of the musicians were hard workers dedicated to their craft. Guitarists playing the clubs on LA's Sunset Strip all aspired to Eddie Van Halen's greatness; acts engaged in full-scale "flyer wars" to get attention for their gigs; and they labored diligently on songs to land lucrative record deals. The hairspray and spandex, by the bands' lights, were just part of the necessary promotion and evidence of the effort they were putting in. "People are lazy [now]," says designer Al Bane, who outfitted a host of acts, lamenting the end of flashpots and assless chaps. The atmosphere was thick with casual misogyny toward disposable roadies and video models; Poison cynically pursued "ugly fat chicks" to attend shows as a point of differentiation. Throughout, the anecdotes are copious and irresistible: Great White singer Jack Russell's going to jail after a PCP bender, Axl Rose's chasing David Bowie out of a club for looking at his girlfriend the wrong way, Skid Row's Sebastian Bach's "inhaling beers" and getting into a drunken fistfight his first night with the band. Conventional wisdom dictates that Nirvana and grunge killed hair metal, but the musicians argue that oversaturation of bands was the real culprit. Regardless, the best-known acts now do brisk business on the nostalgia circuit. "The older fans are slightly larger now," says L.A. Guns' Tracii Guns, "so it makes the room look even fuller." An engrossing deep dive into a lurid, free-wheeling moment in pop music. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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