(this article surprised me...altough it is so realistic it shows us all the facts and changes that happened in music in the last years.It shows a past that seems like yesterday for me! And you can be sure the best days of this thing called rock n'roll! Peace,Love and Bubblegum......   Keep Rockin my friends!!!!! AnDY )     

SPIN February 1996 by Lynn Snowden

POISON THE SLEAZE GLAM KINGS

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Heavy Metal MTV rejects them, radio ignores them, and the industry
snickers at them. So what's become of that perennial staple of rock'n'roll excess, the metal band? Lynn Snowden hits the road with
her onetime employers Skid Row for a firsthand look at heavy-metal
life in the age of alternative.

The spring of 1992 was about a hundred years ago, and
that was when platinum pop-retalers Skid Row were wrapping up a
triumphant 18-month world tour For one of those months I served as
one of two pyrotechnicians on the road with Skid Row, part of a
nearly 30-person crew. We traveled the country in style, in a convoy of
four tour buses and two semis. Sometimes the crew had the good fortune of staying in the same plush hotel as the band; other times, though,we were forced to stay at a different plush hotel closer to the
stadium or arena.

The year before, Skid Row's Slave to the Grind had debuted at No. 1 on
the charts, eventually selling over two million records. Lead singer
Sebastian Bach, perhaps the last of the genetically gifted frontmen,
smoldered shirtless on the cover of Rolling Stone. MTV was both playing the band's videos and detailing Bach's every bad-boy
exploit. The feeling then was that of a freight train gaining nearly
unstoppable momentum; it was hard to imagine the party ever ending.
But in the summer of '93, their then-manager Scott McGhee, in what
turned out to be a classic understatement, hinted that Skid Row
should take its time before releasing a new album. He would rather, he said, "wait for all this Seattle shit to die down."

sKID fUCKIN'RoW along with Gn'R and Motley Crue are the most important HARD ROCK bands of the decade.

Cut to a hot October 1995 afternoon in Sacramento, California. Skid Row tour manager Mike Amato and I are sitting out in front
of the aggressively average Beverly Garland Hotel, which is
where the band bunked last night. Skid Row's latest album, Subhuman
Race , was released in February of 1995, and while the critics largely praised it, the album has yet to go gold. The band is opening for Van
Halen on this leg of its tour, and its crew, now reduced to a gang of
seven, always sleeps on the tour bus, which is also where the band sleeps some nights.

"There would have been three limos out there in the old
days," sighs Amato, gesturing to the blazing parking lot, awash in
sunlight. "Now we're relying on hotel shuttle buses to take us to the
gig." So what happened? Industry insiders, the ones notoriously quick
to point out births, deaths, and rebirths, gleefully herald that
metal is dead. "Anthrax is touring clubs in a van to try and reconnect," says one record-company executive who asked not to be named. "And they didn't even do the big-hair thing. Megadeth 's last album was a completedog. That formula is dead. We've all walked away from it. Nothing aged worse than that."

Warner Bros. and Columbia Records have phased out their metal
departments, with others following suit. In Los Angeles, where director
Penelope Spheeris made her name with the mousse-and-all
documentary of the late-'80s glam scene, The Decline of
Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years, the formidable
heavy-metal station KNAC, once called the Heavy Metal Capital of the World, is now a Spanish station. Even the leather pants and chaps
hanging in the Rockstar 2000 store on Hollywood Boulevard are
gathering dust. The shop's owner shrugs, theorizing that kids can't afford leather pants anymore and it's not the fashion anyway; T-shirts and baseball caps emblazoned with the names of alternative bands are now his best-sellers. The jangling of chain mail and the squeak
of leather once heard on this ever-tacky boulevard has been replaced by the incessant whir of the automatic cameras wielded by Japanese
tourists. But if they want to photograph dolled-up rockers in their finest
regalia, they'd do better to go back to Tokyo.

METAL EDGE HARD ROCK'S 1st MAGAZINE

Skid Row is filing into their bungalow-style dressing room at Cal Expo in Sacramento; Bach and guitarist Dave "Snake" Sabo tote gym bags, bassist Rachel Bolan carries a cardboard box, guitarist Scott Hill cradles a backpack, and drummer Rob Affuso, easily the most meticulous band member, wheels in a small suitcase like a flight attendant. The band's first tour was called The No Fucking Frills Tour, but it had a few more frills than this. I ask Bach what happened to the pair of leather pants he wore on tour in '92, the low-riding ones slit up the sides and lashed together with cord. "They're rotting in the basement," he says with a laugh.

Hill pulls on a T-shirt, and I see that while most of the guys are still
rock-star skinny, time does march on: The couple of years spent hanging around the house means a few extra pounds around the middle. Sabo sings while he mixes himself a vodka and cranberry. "This ass was made for crappin'," he croons to the tune of "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'," "And that's what it's gonna do / One of these days this ass is going to crap all over you." He jokes about hisslightly-gone-to-seed appearance.

"Yeah, some Korean journalist said, 'Oh! You don't look like your
pictures!' " As a roadie, I learned to travel light; three years later, Skid Row has dipped below even a roadie's standard of luxury. Aside from Bach's arduous, hour-long vocal exercises, the band's pre-show
preparation consists of a change into outfits more or less identical to their rather benign street clothes. Now stage-ready, Hill helps himself to chips and salsa. "We bought those big cases," he says, referring to the
giant wardrobe trunks complete with makeup mirrors that were wheeled into their dressing rooms in the old days, "and we figured we had to fill
them up with something. But now, we see everything that fit in those
cases fits in this," he says, holding up his knapsack. "And it's
easier to load this onto a truck." While it can be argued that the so-called
heavy-metal sound is still in abundance, metal's philosophy, fashion, and lifestyle are missing in action. A laminate I have from a Mötley Crüe concert in 1988 features a cartoon of a topless blonde in a garter belt and fishnet stockings peering at the viewer over her shoulder as she thrustsout her behind.

    HAPPIER TIMES

This Spinal Tap impairment of being unable to differentiate between
sexy and sexist fit in perfectly with the unchecked hedonism of the
Reagan years. Guns N' Roses were the undisputed kings of rock'n'roll
then, and if they didn't set the standard for bloated behavior, they
dutifully completed the checklist with their preponderance of scandals,
intra-band feuds, drug and alcohol abuse, objectionable lyrics,
melee-filled live shows, and, of course, model girlfriends. The
commercial dominance of Guns N' Roses fueled the success of Skid
Row, Mötley Crüe, Poison , Warrant , L.A. Guns, Faster Pussycat , Ugly
Kid Joe , Mr. Big , and numerous others whose names
blur into a haze of video clips featuring back-lit hair and
bleach-blonde bimbos. But by the time Clinton took office, the country and its youth could no longer afford to be so carefree. The specter of AIDS rendered rock'n'roll's most beloved tropes -- sex and drugs -- dangerous and uncool. Leather pants became recherché when People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals became a hot cause. Young women, no longer satisfied with the roles usually offered to them by rock's establishment,revised and sometimesrewrote the script.

the incredibly band  VAIN one of the last glam bands that made it

MTV finally felt the pressure to differentiate between sexy and sexist. And Nirvana , the very antithesis of the preening and posturing metal band, filled the airwaves with lyrics about personal pain, confusion, and frustration. What was a cucumber-stuffing, mascara-wearing, groupie-chasing shrieker to do? "I didn't expect to be
huge the rest of my life," says Jani Lane, the lead singer of Warrant, one
of the more egregiously flamboyant hair bands of the '80s, "but I did
expect to have a career. I didn't expect to have doors slammed in my
face because of what I wore four years ago." Calling from Florida, Lane,
who shared the spotlight with Bobbie Brown's enormous breasts in the
definitive "Cherry Pie" video, is working on a new Warrant album, in
addition to a solo project, and is now signed with CMC International
Records of Zebulon, North Carolina.

CMC, a small independent label, has provided a new home for such metal bands as Iron Maiden , Mötorhead , and Saigon Kick , among others who have been dumped by the majors. The wardrobe issue is a sensitive one with Lane, who doesn't quite believe that Skid Row favors T-shirts and baggy shorts out of convenience. "It's just not accepted anymore to come out looking glam. It doesn't help get you on the radio. I like the theatricality of costumes, of dressing up, of having a stage wardrobe. Now the whole band struggles with it: Do we try to fit in, or do we do what we did five years ago and never be accepted? I'd like to say I still wear the same clothes onstage, but yeah, I have changed what I wear." He reluctantly answers my next question. "Yeah, I've worn flannel
shirts. I'm almost embarrassed about this." Warrant has just finished a
tour of small clubs in the United States. "Boy, have I come full circle!"
he says ruefully. "When I started playing in clubs, it was to pay the
rent. Now we're hoping to pop a single out, and get to the point where
radio doesn't wear a crucifix and garlic when we come near the
station. We did play 80,000-plus festivals in Europe, but only clubs here."

As is the case with David Hasselhoff 's singing career, what is unpopular
here can be massive in Europe or the Far East. I stop by a
newsstand and pick up Metal Hammer, a British zine. In England, the Donington festival, this summer's monster metal event, featuring Metallica , Skid Row, Slash's Snakepit , White Zombie , and Slayer , drew 70,000 (the nearby alternative-music event, the Reading Festival, drew 45,000). There were at least two rather incredulous references in Metal Hammer's Donington coverage to metal being "almost a dirty word in the States." Almost? While MTV's Headbanger's Ball is still going strong in every other market worldwide, the show has been canceled here, and the word "metal" in the music vocabulary might as well be replaced by the word "pedophile." When I mention the M-word to Mötley Crüe's publicist, she hastens to tell me that Mötley Crüe no longer considers itself metal. (I suppose the announcement that they're dropping the umlauts is forthcoming.)

MOTLEY CRUE '98 HARD ROCK IS STILL HUGE WORLDWIDE

Poison declined to be interviewed on the subject. Poison is a band I thought would be happy to talk to anyone about anything.
Riki Rachtman, the former owner of Cathouse, Los Angeles's premier
metal club, and the ex-host of Headbanger's Ball, becomes visibly
agitated at being tagged metal. "I was known as the metal guy, which I
wasn't," he says. "I got labeled. I never picked one video the whole time
I was at MTV! I never said I was metal." Rachtman gave a brief, slightly
overheated interview at KROQ, where he now works as one of the three
hosts of Loveline, a call-in advice show. As I drive away from the
station, I hear Rachtman coach a high-school student that the best way
to talk to a cute girl in science class is to pretend you don't understand
the classwork. Considering his present line of work, I find it strange that
he seems, underneath the considerable anger andtestiness,embarrassed by his past. It shouldn't have surprised me, though, that Rachtman would respond to the charge of once being
metal like a 75-year-old German ex-military man being asked if he
was ever a Nazi. Judging from the industry gossip I was hearing, the
most debilitating rumor that can be spread about a successful band is
that they once were-gasp-metal. " Weezer used to be a hair band," says
Jonathan Gold, a writer for the Los Angeles Times and a rock
journalist. "Then there's Brian Baker. He was in Minor Threat and then
formed a metal band called Junkyard on the coattails of Guns N' Roses.
Now he's in a punk band again, Bad Religion , and there are about six
bands on his résumé." He pauses to tell the dirty little secret.
"Junkyard is not one of them." " Stone Temple Pilots used to be a hair band in the mid-'80s," confides an A&R executive. " Alice in Chains were a hair band before they became dark and gloomy," says Ron Laffitte, senior vice president and general manager of Elektra Records, and former manager of Megadeth. " Pantera was a hair band. They were totally glammed out."

MTV now labels its heavy metal category "Metal/Hard Rock" for its Video Music Awards, and metal radio stations have taken to calling themselves "Aggressive Rock." " 'Metal' was such a derogatory term that we had to come up with a new one," explains Jessica Harley,
senior director of rock promotion at Elektra. "At the Grammys, Soundgarden didn't want to be called a metal band on TV. They didn't want to be in that category. They sent out a loud and clear signal to everyone about metal." "I'm sorry I didn't do heroin when I was pregnant," says Sebastian Bach, sprawled out as much as he can be on the very crowded tour bus en route from Sacramento to Mountain View. Bach's churlish reference to Courtney Love is just one in a litany of complaints, harangues, and grievances he harbors against alternative artists whom he feels neglect their fans and their responsibilities. "No one [in Skid Row] has overdosed on drugs or shot themselves in the head," swipes Bach. "We don't cancel shows in this band." That Eddie Vedder often appears so discontented with his lot in life particularly burnsBach. "You know what?" he says mockingly, holding his forehead. "I feel sick. Can you tell everybody and call Neil [Young ]? It's been too
grueling on tour," Bach whimpers. "We've done eight shows." Another soresubject is MTV, which Bach blames for everything from illiteracy to
America's ever-narrowing scope of what is considered popular
music, and of course, for not playing Skid Row videos. Bach is so
disturbed by "MTV's stranglehold" on the taste of America's youth that he read aloud from Marshall McLuhan's 28-year-old attack on television,
The Medium is the Message, at a recent college radio convention. "We bow at their feet," he says of MTV. "We work for a TV station! I was that
20-year-old flavor-of-the-month, the Eddie Vedder/ Alanis
Morissette thing. And in five years, it'll be someone else." Bach calls the
popularity of alternative music "the revenge of the college people! They hated all of us rockers in high school because we got all the chicks!" he alleges.

sebastian goin solo ( a 98 pic)

"Then they took over MTV and it's like, Revenge of the Nerds! No rockers allowed!" He suddenly thinks better of all this vitriol, and sags
back against his seat. "Oh shit," he says wearily. "Just say that I love
everybody, okay?" Andy Schuon, executive vice president of programming at MTV, responds to Bach's charges with the patiently weary tone of a doorman at a exclusive nightclub. "We played Skid Row's 'Breakin' Down' video a couple of times," he says, referring to the band's latest single. "While it wasn't a big hit, we felt it deserved some exposure." As to the suggestion that MTV is out to kill off metal, he
laughs. "We do have an agenda," he admits. "It reflects what is happening in the music scene. As a genre, metal is not dead. But it's not what it once was." Perhaps not, but its fans are still a loyal enough breed that Ozzy Osbourne 's Ozzmosis and AC/DC 's Ballbreaker both debuted on the Billboard charts at No. 4. Metallica, still proudly metal, is certain to continue selling millions. And to argue that no new metal acts have recently broken perhaps misses the point of metal's evolution:
"Alternative" groups like Nine Inch Nails , White Zombie, and Ministry all draw from the sonic architecture of metal, grafting '90s technology onto
'70s posturing. The sound may be revised, but the song remains the same. Bach believes the discussion is purely a matter of semantics. "If
Skid Row is metal," he says, "then you better tell those 20,000 kids out there every night that metal is dead."

As the bus pulls up to our hotel in Mountain View, I see that it is not a hotel, but a Best Western Inn. When we disperse from the small office and wander through the parking lot to find our respective rooms, it occurs to me that not only is there no bar or room service, there's not even a place for groupies to hang out, unless you count the Carl's Jr. hamburger stand across the street. Hootie & the Blowfish recently speculated that it might be better never to make it at all than to make it big and then have to go back to playing in clubs again. "It
teaches you a good lesson in humility," says Jani Lane, who should
know. "People were throwing stuff at us. Getting suitcases of money after a gig. I'm depressed just thinking about it! You take stuff for granted." Rob Affusso barely spoke to me during the '92 tour; whenever I saw him he was either onstage playing drums or backstage on a phone, sorting out a painful breakup. " 'Ninety-two was probably our biggest year," he says, "and I was miserable during most of it
due to my divorce. I hope we get back there again, since it was fun and I
kind of missed it." He adds that the band's formerly grandiose travel
arrangements led to a destructive cliquishness that has since been resolved with the cozier, band-and-crew-together quarters.

"With less success," he says cheerfully, "comes humility." "The industry is way too judgmental," says Tom Lipsky, who, along with Bill Cain, heads up CMC. Lipsky is pointedly disgusted with the way most of his bands have been blackballed. "We cater to an audience that wants what
it wants regardless of trends. You had disco come in and go out,
new wave come in and out, but Judas Priest and Iron Maiden went
through it all and toured all the big venues. Consistently. These bands continue to draw, decade after decade. I think it's just the word
metal that's dead, not the scene or the style. A lot of these bands are
one hit away from being back where they were before." Most of the kids I run into at the Van Halen/ Skid Row shows are far less genre-obsessed than the industry types I interviewed. When asked about their favorite bands, the majority casually reel off names both metal and alternative. Despite the chilly California night, one twentysomething guy braves the concert shirtless, perhaps to show off his pierced belly button, and his straightdark hair recalls Anthony Kiedis. He tells me that he's in a group that plays "good hard rock. I don't like the term 'heavy metal,' " he says. "It's too much like early Judas Priest." He complains that club owners always ask if you play grunge, and if you say you don't they won't book you. "I hate grunge bands, man," he says. When asked why, he screws up hi sface. "Because they smell." While Skid Row's present status may provoke little from pundits besides a collective yawn and perhaps a snicker, the irony is that their fall from grace has turned them into a better band. The slightly harder times have forced their focus away from the frills and more toward the music, and the result is palpable. Tonight's sell-out crowd in Los Angeles voices its
enthusiastic approval for their performance, and Bach and company
triumphantly exit the stage. In the middle of Van Halen's set, before we all board the tour bus, Bach's wife, Maria, helps pack up the bottles of liquor left in the dressing room by the promoter, as specified in the rider. "Were we stupid?" she asks incredulously, holding up a fifth of Stolichnaya. "I can't believe we used to leave this! This is a bottle of vodka a day." She's right. Back in the day, it had never occurred to anyone to take all that carefully negotiated stuff. There always seemed to be plenty more where that came from.

Copyright © SPIN: new music and youth culture http://www.spin.com