THE TOP TEN BANDS MOST OFTEN MISCATEGORIZED AS HAIR METAL: #2, GUNS N’ ROSES

Everyone always likes to pretend that one day Motley Crue were all over MTV, and then overnight Nirvana came along and suddenly Cinderella and Enuff Z’Nuff were standing on the unemployment line. Well, I call bullshit. Nirvana may have been the final nail in the coffin for hair metal, but Guns N’ Roses were the first. GN’R had the great fortune and misfortune to be from the same scene as bands like Poison (for whom Slash had once auditioned) — fortune because it only highlighted how different they were from those groups, and misfortune because it allowed all their naysayers to go, “Oh, fuck them, they’re just a glam band.”

Not helping matters was that the members of GN’R had gotten their starts in actual glam bands, like Hollywood Rose, and that some of their former ranks went on to form other glam bands, like L.A. Guns. (In fact, as far as I can tell, Tracii Guns has been making a career reminding everybody he’s the “Guns” in “Guns N’ Roses” for close to twenty-five years. He even hired Gilby Clarke to produce some of the latter-day LAG albums. He’s like Dave Mustaine, without all that genius baggage.)

Also not helping was that in their earliest promo photos, they looked like they were going cruising:

So, yeah. GN’R clearly had one foot in glam. (And still do. As much as Axl has tried to distance himself from that by hiring mostly alt-rock musicians, now he’s got Dj Ashba, who’s as androgynous and L.A. as androgynous and L.A. gets.)

But, hey, guess what? There’s not a goddamn glammy thing about their music. When other Sunset Strip bands wanted to talk about drugs, they did it in the third person, as part of a cautionary tale in which they clearly did not believe (“Dr. Feelgood”); GN’R talked about it in the first person, from the point of view of being addicts (“Mr. Brownstone”), which at least 4/5ths of them were. When other bands wanted to talk about fucking, they did in a Porky’s, all-American, not too threatening to pre-pubescent girls way (“Talk Dirty to Me”); Axl Rose wanted your “panties ’round your knees with your ass in debris, doin’ that grind with the push and squeeze.” (He also fucked Steven Adler’s girlfriend, had the engineer record her moans, and included them as part of “Rocket Queen.” Axl Rose, 1, everybody else, 0.) Poison wrote a PSA starring McGruff the dog (“Fallen Angel”), GN’R made a fucking documentary (“My Michelle”). I don’t think there were any other five white guys in Los Angeles at the time ignorant enough to complain about being harassed by the cops (“Out Ta Get Me”), but then that’s how GN’R ended up touring with Ice-T while Warrant hit the road with Britny Fox.

Guns N’ Roses made rock n’ roll as though it had never occurred to anyone to do so before. Because they were all legitimately nuts (especially a certain ginger front man), and because they drew from musical influences besides Van Halen and Kiss, they were able to expose all the other bands around them for what they were: silly. Axl Rose and a bunch of strangers were able to keep some level of public interest in Chinese Democracy going for years; meanwhile, there hasn’t been a new Cinderella studio album in just as long or longer as CD took to make, and Tom Keifer and anyone could put out a record tomorrow and no one would really give a shit. There’s a reason for that. (And I like Cinderella.)

Does anyone think that Soundgarden or Alice in Chains — both of whom got big before Nirvana — would have been on MTV if not for GN’R? That any label in its right mind would have let Skid Row release Slave to the Grind before Appetite for Destruction? That Ugly Kid Joe’s lead single would have been a song about how much they hate someone?

GN’R weren’t a hair band. Period. In fact, the only reason they’re not #1 on this list because it seems like we’ve finally reached a point where most people seem to get that.

-AR

THE LIST SO FAR:

#3: Queensryche
#4: Def Leppard
#5: Extreme
#6: Bon Jovi
#7: Quiet Riot
#8: Saigon Kick
#9: Van Halen
#10: BulletBoys