Twisted & Biblical

 

For Christmas I received several books – which were on my Amazon wishlist.   Two of these I’ve finished:  Twisted Business and Biblical.

Twisted Business:  Lessons From My Live In Rock’n’Roll, by Jay Jay French and Steve Farber.  JJF was the rhythm guitarist for heavy metal band Twisted Sister.   He actually formed it in the early 1970s (March 20, 1973 was their first show), but due to a tragically comic array of circumstances, the band didn’t get its first record,  Under The Blade, out until September 1, 1982.  Then its heyday of albums, tours, and notoriety lasted until its fifth album, Love Is For Suckers, released August 13, 1987.and their last show before breaking up, October 10, 1987, at the Orpheum Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Stay Hungry is by far their most popular album, the one which catapulted them to fame, and contains their best known hits, “I Want A Rock” and “We’re Not Gonna Take It”.   We managed to see them in Paris (4/28/86 at the Casino, the only show we saw at that fairly modest venue), and in Washington, DC at the Warner Theater (9/30/87).  A series of massive miscalculations (more clearly articulated in the book) explain how the band crashed and burned at that time.   JJF had to declare bankruptcy and find some other work to do – which eventually resulted in him producing and managing Sevendust. 

Dee Snider.  From Long Island, New York.  As not only the singer, but also extremely outspoken, Snider served as the de facto “mouth” of the band for much of their peak period, though he was not the original singer; he joined sometime in 1976.  According to JJF, the band members didn’t get along with each other very well, but years after the breakup, somehow managed to patch things up between them.  French himself made certain at an early point in the band’s career to secure the sole rights to the band name.

Drugs.  JJF is quite open about his initial history as not merely a drug user, but dealer.  This contrasts with Twisted Sister, an in-your-face heavy metal band not known for drugs or psychedelia, specifically because JJF abruptly went cold turkey AND insisted on a no drugs or alcohol policy in the band, as his own experiences with drugs, and the impact they had on bands, told him to avoid that.  And of course the band’s demise had nothing to do with drugs.

That being the case, he does have a remarkable array of war stories to tell about his experiences, especially with LSD.  These were interesting in and of themselves.  He found the Grateful Dead to be intolerable as a live band once he quit doing drugs, which is not hard to imagine.  Albums like American Beauty, with short and simple songs, are easy enough to enjoy sober, but a 3+ hour Dead show with extended jams pushes into territory where some form of herbal or chemical enhancement may be necessary to endure, much less enjoy and appreciate. 

Business.  At some point JJF realized that for the band to succeed, someone needed to exercise some form of control and common sense about money.  Although bands have managers for this reason, if all the band members (cough cough, Black Sabbath) are clueless about money, it’s too easy for the manager to either ruin everything or steal their money.  So teaching himself business and taking an active role in managing the band fell into his lap by default and necessity, and he discovered a natural aptitude for it.  In fact, he recognized it as a skill set which applies outside the rock business, and which he reduced to several principles conveniently in the form of T W I S T E D.

Tenacity.   Don’t give up simply because things get tough.

Wisdom.    Don’t be stupid.

Inspiration.  Use your imagination.

Stability.   Keep your act together.

Trust.  You have to be able to trust your business associates (band members).  And above all, you have to earn and keep their trust – it’s a two-way street, which many people don’t seem to realize.

Excellence.   You have to know what you’re doing.  Hone the basic skills which are the substance of your business.  For musicians, this usually means practicing your instrument constantly.

Discipline.  This means keeping yourself and your comrades behaving properly and keeping your eyes on the prize. 

As you can see, these are more philosophical principles than business ideals.  However, they’re pertinent and sensible, a good set for anyone to follow in their daily lives. 

Overall very intriguing, but the gist of it is 25% war stories and behind the scenes backstory on what was going on with Twisted Sister (and why they crashed and burned), and 75% articulation of these principles which he learned the hard way and considers valuable and applicable to people in their daily lives.  Since I only had a vague knowledge about the band outside its peak era, the history part was illuminating in its own right and very much a fun read (especially the acid stories).  Actually I found the music element to be far more interesting than the business element.

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Biblical: Heavy Metal Scriptures, by Rob Halford.  Halford, of course, is the singer for Judas Priest, one of the more popular and famous heavy metal bands, originally from Birmingham, England (though drummer Scott Travis is from Norfolk, Virginia).  His prior book, Confess, was his autobiography, with lots and lots of details about his homosexuality.  Technically he only “came out” after leaving Judas Priest in 1992, but for many fans he was already “out”, and his official acknowledgement was more confirming what everyone – with any discernable “gaydar” – already knew.  Remaining officially in the closet, however, he had to remain discreet about his lifestyle, so all the tricks of remaining in the closet and “cruising” (this business where repressed homosexuals give each other subtle clues to alert that they’re up for slap and tickle) were likewise articulated at length in Confess.   All that was TMI for me.

Having gotten all that out in the open, now his goal is to wax poetic about literally every aspect of heavy metal:  album covers, songs, setlists, managers, producers, tours, tour buses, groupies, merchandise, etc.  It’s set up in a quasi-biblical fashion but 100% down to earth and non-spiritual.  70% of this is common knowledge which any Judas Priest fan who has been to a few shows is very much aware of; to the extent he had any deep secrets to reveal, they were in Confess.   In fact, so much of this is straightforward, it’s almost like he’s writing this for a 14 year old kid just learning about Judas Priest and music.  For my part, I found the circumstances behind each album’s creation and studio time were the areas of most interest because they were least obvious or well known.   So despite this business of telling me what I already knew, the reading experience was worthwhile all the same, and most likely of value to any Judas Priest fan of any age and experience. 

Oh, one element which is fairly substantial, and which I did not know, is that Rob Halford hates Spotify with a fierce passion.   As we may know, Spotify pays the artists a tiny percentage of a cent - not even a full cent - each time a song is played.   The result is that the artist can effectively discount Spotify as a direct source of income.  Moreover, many fans seem to use streaming sources as their exclusive means of listening to music, forgoing even downloads.  To that extent, Spotify is severely restricting the ability of musicians to make music.   Halford acknowledges that Judas Priest fans are more likely to use Spotify in addition to, not instead of, traditional formats such as vinyl and CD, but newer bands might not have the same fortune.  I'm one of those old school dinosaurs who still buys CDs; I only use Spotify to listen when I'm in a car without a CD player or on the cardio machine at the gym.  I can say I "feel your pain"/"see your point" without fully agreeing with him, as I do use Spotify myself AND still buy the music, AND see the band in concert.  If I listen to a band on Spotify I'm not familiar with already and like it, I'll tend to buy the CD and see the show.  

Hair Metal

 Woody Metal.  Back at college – the University of Maryland, College Park – in 1988, we had a friend, who we’ll call Woody (yes, his name actually was Woody).  Woody was actually the first friend I had at UMCP; I met him at freshman orientation during the summer of 1986.  Eventually I wound up in his same suite on campus.

            Woody’s preference for music was what is often referred to as “hair metal”, but we called it “Woody metal”.  Bands like Motley Crue, Poison, Twisted Sister, Guns N’Roses.   ‘Sister in fact was his favorite band before Appetite For Destruction came out, at which point Woody then preached the Gospel of Axl to anyone who would listen.

            He also listened to Fates Warning, Queensryche, AC/DC, and other bands which didn’t fit that mold, and he was certainly intelligent enough to articulate his preferences and explain exactly WHY Appetite was the best album ever.  He wasn’t Beavis or Butt-head.

            So I may as well review this type of music.

The way I see it, there were two parallel “metal” movements in the 1980s:  “heavy metal” and “hair metal”.  What I’d call “heavy metal” was Ozzy Osbourne, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Scorpions, Rush, AC/DC, Metallica, Megadeth, who took themselves seriously and wrote about nuclear war, social issues, war, etc. and not merely partying.  Their sounds were heavier, darker, and more disturbing.  I definitely prefer this kind of music.  I also like “stoner rock”, which is essentially 80’s heavy metal with a heavy dose of weirdness and psychedelia, even jamming, but this type of music didn’t emerge until the 1990s at the earliest, with Sleep and Kyuss being the original two stoner rock bands – leaving aside its obvious basis, Black Sabbath.

Music style: Jackson & Charvel guitars in most cases, played through Marshalls, with high speed guitars and shrieking vocals.  The lyrics were deliberately unsophisticated and unpretentious: girls, alcohol, drugs, fast living, partying 24/7, etc.  Though by that standard, AC/DC qualify as a hair metal band.  Anyhow.

Motley Crue.  Arguably the premiere band, though GNR make a good case for competition.  The top albums: Shout At the Devil, Girls, Girls, Girls, and Dr Feelgood.  We saw them on the Theater of Pain tour.  By now drummer Tommy Lee has far eclipsed Nikki Sixx, Mick Mars and Vince Neil as the most famous band member, due to his …famous member.  ‘Crue can be described as mindless party rock, competently executed.

Poison.  Clearly Bret Michaels and his crew were emulating ‘Crue, though with more makeup and hairspray.  Look What The Cat Dragged In is their Dark Side.  It was the first album my brother got for his newly purchased CD player.

Ratt.  This is MY favorite among them.  “Round and Round” is the top hit, from their Dark Side, Out of the Cellar.  We saw them at Donington in 1985.

Def Leppard.  Emerging from the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, the only band of that genre to successfully sell out; Diamond Head crashed and burned trying to do the same, whereas Iron Maiden and Saxon remained true to their NWOBHM roots.  My favorite album (naturally, pre-sellout) is High N’Dry, but Pyromania and Hysteria probably rank higher as objectively landmark ‘Leppard discs.  We saw them on the Hysteria tour back in 1987.

Cinderella.  By far the most blues-based and musically legitimate band, but I could never get past Tom Keifer’s makeup and the band’s lame name.

Skid Row.  Bitter rivals to ‘Crue thanks to Sebastian Bach, but I do like Bach’s healthy self-deprecation.  I’m less impressed with their hits than their covers album; of their originals, “Monkey Business”, from Slave to the Grind, is my favorite.

Twisted Sister.  How could I forget them?  Nasty transvestites, I suppose:  Dee Snider and Mark Mendoza looked like cross-dressers who’d just as soon kick your ass as kiss it.  “We’re Not Gonna Take It”, and Stay Hungry, remain their top hit and album.  We saw them on the Come Out and Play tour in Paris, and the Love is For Suckers tour in DC.

Guns N’Roses.  By now Slash has eclipsed Axl as a musical force in 2013, because he manages to make albums and tour with some degree of reliability, and doesn’t play the petulant, jaded, immature, spoiled rock star like Axl.  The cursing/stumbling drunk Slash of 1988 has been replaced by a guy who looks exactly the same but actually behaves normally by rock star standards.  Axl took 14 years to give us Chinese Democracy, a mediocre album which doesn’t make up for the time spent making it.  Appetite remains their peak.  The twin Use Your Illusion albums would have been a masterpiece if they simply combined the best of both onto one album, instead of a bloated, uneven, and inconsistent double studio album – but “Estranged” is arguably their best song.  We saw GNR in July 1992 at RFK on their joint tour with Metallica.

Pantera.  I haven’t heard the earlier era Pantera (pre-Phil Anselmo) which was a glam rock version.  Dimebag Darrell was cleanshaven and had his hair all pouffed up.  Firehouse, Warrant, and Bullet Boys were also glam bands.  By the time we saw them at the Ozzfest one year, they were well into their thrash era.
 

Bon Jovi.  Clearly from New Jersey and not L.A.  This band had the sound down cold, but the lyrics were closer to Tesla’s more naïve and innocent type, at least later as they matured: “Bad Medicine” and Slippery When Wet were still “bad boy” type of material.  “Wanted Dead or Alive” was more “cowboys of peace” B.S. but still their best song.  We saw them at Donington in 1985, but I can't remember anything about their set - I was resting on the grass with a headache.

Dokken.  Definitely “hair metal”.  We had a friend, Stam, from Greece, who was convinced that George Lynch was the best guitarist ever.  My brother considered singer Don Dokken to be not quite svelte enough for this type of music.  “Alone Again” is probably their best song, from Tooth & Nail, but we also had Under Lock & Key on vinyl.  We saw them open for Accept in 1986 in Paris.

White Lion.  Mike Tramp on vocals, Vito Bratta on guitar, not particularly original or different than the rest, but no worse either.  Tramp seems to be the only consistent member; according to him, Bratta appears to be the Ritchie Blackmore of the band, a petulant, uncooperative prima donna.   Tramp insists that a White Lion reunion is not going to happen.  We saw them open for AC/DC at Madison Square Garden in 1988.

Whitesnake.  I suppose the ’87 model + Slip of the Tongue qualify as “hair metal” after they ditched the Zeppelin-clone era of Bernie Marsden and Micky Moody – back when they still played Deep Purple Mark III songs in concert.  “Still of the Night” is excellent, and they resurrected some earlier material (“Here I Go Again” and “Crying in the Rain” from Saints & Sinners).   Having Tawny Kitaen in the vids should cement them into this category regardless of the blues orientation of the prior material.  We saw them on the Slip tour in early 1988.

Tesla.  For some reason, probably sheer coincidence of time, this band gets lumped in, but I would argue they are NOT a hair metal band, although they appear resigned to accepting that label.  First off, the lyrics are far too naïve, good-natured, and introspective, and not about partying.  Second, Jeff Keith really doesn’t play the “Steven Tyler” role, and the rest of the band dress more like AC/DC than ‘Crue.  Finally, lead guitarist Frank Hannon owes more to Angus Young than Mick Mars. I've seen them a few times recently, but also back in 1987 opening for Def Leppard.

Grunge.  Recently Dave Grohl, the drummer for Nirvana, was doing a documentary (“Sound City”) on Sound City, a famous L.A. recording studio, Sound City.  Ratt recorded Out of the Cellar there, so he tried to contact the band.  He laughed, because the band were unsure why he, of all persons, would be talking to them.  The general consensus is that hair metal was “killed” by grunge, with Nirvana being the major culprit for hair metal’s demise.

Rock of Ages.  Although I never saw the Broadway musical, I did catch the film version with Tom Cruise as Staycee Jaxx.  It’s truly a celebration of hair metal at its best/worst.  I can’t comment as to whether it “captures the scene”, as I only got to L.A. and the Strip in 2010, long after the scene was dead.  It certainly catches the music and the spirit.  For anyone even vaguely interested in that type of music – or even vaguely nostalgic – by all means, watch it.

Summer of '84

It’s summer of 2007, as hot and humid as any other I can remember, and by now I’ve gone through almost 40.  But a few special summers stick out in my memory, and none more than this one: 1984.

 I had just finished sophomore year in high school in Paris, and most of my friends, including my best friend Phil, somehow chose that particular summer to have their families move away from Paris.  Fortunately we got home leave that summer, so we were able to spend about 6 weeks in the US, which for us was like heaven.  The night before the flight home was as exciting and difficult to sleep through as Christmas Eve.

 With our own house rented out, finding a place to stay was a challenge each time we returned.  This time we traded spaces with a family in DC, who had a small house off McArthur Blvd.  I was 15, my brother 14, and my sister was 9, but we were all much larger than the young children this family had, so the beds were all a bit on the small side.  Their “kitchen table” consisted of a booth from a subway car, about as large as the kiddie section of a McDonalds and way too cramped for a normal sized teenager.   They also had air conditioning, but with a huge Chinese bed on the ground floor (!) with really no practical purpose other than to block airflow through the ground floor of the house, the A/C didn’t work too well.   The kitchen had no glasses, only coffee mugs.  Finally, this was one of these Foreign Service families who had travelled all over the world and wanted EVERYONE who entered their tiny Bag End hovel to know it.  They decorated it like a travel museum – “this is where we’ve been!! aren’t we great??” – including the afore-mentioned bed in the living room.  With all the way-too-small crap of the entire house (built for hobbits!) what they really needed was a large, circular door to complete the Middle Earth connection.  Damn travel snobs.  Our own apartment in Paris was 3 times larger – these people clearly got the better end of the swap.  Returning to Paris and our own place was a rescue from claustrophobia. 

 The 1984 Olympics were going on in Los Angeles, and our relatives lived in McLean – in a normal sized house with properly functioning air conditioning and no Chinese bed – so we spent a considerable amount of time there.  We also watched lots of “Mork & Mindy” for some reason (don’t ask me why).  I didn’t pay a great deal of attention to the Olympics, even Mary Lou Retton’s perfect 10, as much because I generally don’t care for the Olympics anyway as for the absence of the Soviet Bloc because of their boycott. Interesting – Romania did NOT join the boycott, but Retton won anyway.  The Romanian women’s team did win the gold for the team competition, whereas the US men’s team won the gold.  For being smart enough to buck the trend (“80 percent of success is showing up” - Woody Allen), Ceaucescu’s gang cleaned up with 53 models, #2 after the US with 174.  The overall consensus even among Americans was that our stellar performance was only because so many countries who usually compete heavily with us (e.g. the USSR and East Germany) were absent.

 Reagan was President, Bush Sr. was Vice-President, and the upcoming November election would feature Walter Mondale & Geraldine Ferraro getting hosed big time (keep that in perspective when we see Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers!). 

 I got my first contact lenses, and had a devil of a time learning to take them out and put them in, but it was worth the effort.

 The trip started with a stay at the Howard Johnson’s hotel in Crystal City, where I got a massive sunburn, with the resulting days of unbearable itchiness.  D’oh!

 We met up with Phil, whose family was living in Greenbelt while they were waiting for their sea shipment to arrive from France; they would eventually move to Sterling.  This was notable as it was the first time we’d ever met any of the people we had originally met in Paris, in the US.  The place they were staying in had a VERY OLD black & white TV with a distorted picture tube.  More “dark brown and yellow” than black & white, and anything round, like an aspirin, looked more like an egg.  (“How do you remember this stuff??”)

 I was also doing lots of reading, in particular devouring, for the first time, H.P. Lovecraft (horror) and Michael Moorcock (fantasy).  We were also heavily into role-playing games at that time, so we got Stormbringer, which was Chaosium’s RPG for the Elric books.  I had bought Judas Priest’s albums Sad Wings of Destiny and Sin After Sin at the PX in Belgium prior to the trip, and Black Sabbath Master of Reality at Henderson Hall here in the US, so those three albums served as a musical backdrop for the horror stories and Elric saga.  Twisted Sister were big at this time, particularly their hit “We’re Not Gonna Take It” with the classic video featuring Niedermeyer from “Animal House” as the nasty father.  More magic, listening to that, reading that, in this stupid little hobbit house. 

 It was a great summer – and I STILL listen to those albums fairly often.  At least NOW I can drive....