re: The death of rock n roll

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I've pretty much moved on to alt. country. The stuff I hear now has similar quitar work to what I hear on Connells albums from long ago.

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Never thought about that, but now that you say it....and have really liked both in different stages of my life. Nice comparison.

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A big part of the appeal of grunge was the anti-rock star mentality of these bands.

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Absolutely agree. Hair metal turned me off of mainstream hard rock for a while, and "grunge" resurrected it for me. I loathed hair metal for the most part, though a few songs were catchy and enjoyable.

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I'm not exactly sure what you are getting at here.

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Mainly that hair bands were the peak of Rock popularity. In the late 80's and early 90's 80% of the new songs or videos were hair bands. Like them or not, that was the peak of popularity of rock. Aerosmith (while not a hair band) really had the last good album form this generation with Get a Grip.

I'm going to call it Grunge because that is what everyone else was calling it back then. When Grunge hit the scene, it killed hair bands. But between drugs, suicides, bands not having enough staying power past their first couple of albums, they had kind of petered out by 96 or so.

This left a vacuum in rock in the late 90's. Barenaked Ladies, Fastball, Matchbox 20, Ben Folds Five were all considered Alternative Rock. While they played good music, they certainly weren't Guns and Roses or Stone Temple Pilots.

It wasn't until 2000-2001 when rock really took of again with bands like System of a Down, Godsmack and I'm going to say it...Nickelback.

However, rock in the 2000's will never reach the mass popularity that it was in the late 80's/early 90's.

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I'm going to call it Grunge because that is what everyone else was calling it back then. When Grunge hit the scene, it killed hair bands. But between drugs, suicides, bands not having enough staying power past their first couple of albums, they had kind of petered out by 96 or so.

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I will say it's amazing how unstable each of the Seattle bands were. All of them spectacularly flamed out except Pearl Jam, which settled into a niche band and maybe Mudhoney, who was never all that popular to begin with.

But hair metal was gonna die regardless because it was so lazy and formulaic. It really was like the death throes of the Roman Empire. Rock took its market advantage and totally squandered it, while everyone else was doing exciting stuff. And the rock bands who were pushing boundaries did it steadfastly outside of the mainstream. Rock, in the 80s, became a nostalgia show. Which is why it had to die (at least in that form).

I do think a big problem in the late 90s were the bands which came in the wake of grunge, to use another line from a different Hyden article, took all of the worst things from grunge (self-seriousness, hunger dunger dang sound) and got rid of the rest. Then some marketing exec came up with combining rap and metal and... well, here we are. It took about five years to kill "grunge". There's also the fact that none of the grunge bands were the least bit interested in advancing "grunge" as a genre.

Limp Bizkit did as much to kill mainstream rock as Nickelback. Also, from reading the oral history of grunge (fun book, BTW), I got the impression that a person's happiness was inversely proportional to how successful their band was commercially (PJ excepted). The bands were happier being underground and obscure, and took every opportunity to go back to obscurity.

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Mainly that hair bands were the peak of Rock popularity. In the late 80's and early 90's 80% of the new songs or videos were hair bands. Like them or not, that was the peak of popularity of rock.

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OK, I don't really agree with that. I think the peak of rock popularity was the late 70's early 80's. AOR (Album Orented Rock) was the dominant radio format. Most cities had 2 or 3 AOR stations. The old TV show WKRP in Cincinnati was about an AOR station. That was the peak IMHO. By the mid to late 80's when hair metal was peaking, rock was already declining. Grunge brought life back to rock. I'd also argue Guns and Roses helped kill hair metal as much as Nirvana.

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But between drugs, suicides, bands not having enough staying power past their first couple of albums, they had kind of petered out by 96 or so. This left a vacuum in rock in the late 90's.

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If you really look at it, most muscial trends like that burn out in about 5-7 years. Relatively few bands have staying power beyond a couple of albums. How many Hair Metal bands stuck around longer than an album or 2?

Another turning point i think was Dr Dre's The Chronic which blew up in 1993 at the height of Grunge. The videos got a lot of play on MTV and really took rap to the mainstream (ie suburban white kids). Those kids 10 years earlier were buying metal.

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I'd also argue Guns and Roses helped kill hair metal as much as Nirvana.

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Absolutely agree. Axl even championed Nirvana, and they treated him with nothing but contempt. And then Axl decided he wanted to be Elton John.

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Another turning point i think was Dr Dre's The Chronic which blew up in 1993 at the height of Grunge. The videos got a lot of play on MTV and really took rap to the mainstream (ie suburban white kids). Those kids 10 years earlier were buying metal.

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No question about this. Dr. Dre did as much for Rap as Elvis did for Rock.

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I think the peak of rock popularity was the late 70's early 80's

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I guess since I was a youngster I don't recall this so much. I remeber british new wave and pop dominating in the early to mid 80's. But Def Leppard, Poison, Tesla, Extreme, Motley Crue and the like dominating for 87-91.

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I don't recall this so much. I remeber british new wave and pop dominating in the early to mid 80's. But Def Leppard, Poison, Tesla, Extreme, Motley Crue and the like dominating for 87-91.

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Maybe I'm using a more expansive definition of rock than you, because I include bands like Boston, REO ect, not just metal or hard rock. But in the late 70's early 80's a lot of rock wasn't necessarily on the Billboard singles or album charts, but that's because their formula for calculating those was horrible. Just as for example, AC/DC's You Shock Me All Night Long barely cracked the top 40, but trust me in 1981, it was everywhere. Or take a band like Baloo's favorite, Rush. They didn't really have top 40 hits, Tom Sawyer may have cracked the top 40, but that's about it. but they sold out arena's across the country, sometimes for 2-3 nights at places like the Summitt in Houston. Van Halen is another exmple. Mainstays on AOR for years, but didn't have a hit song until the abortion known as Jump.

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But in the late 70's early 80's a lot of rock wasn't necessarily on the Billboard singles or album charts

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Well that's what I mean by popularity. Top 40 and MTV. When I read that article I thought that was what the author was getting at.


That's pretty much all I listened to until I was 14 or so and started to really form my own likes and dislikes.

It just so happened that hair bands were dominating the charts from when I was 11 to about 15.

But I get what you are saying about AC/DC and other bands. There is a reason Back in Black goes platinum every 5 years or so. So a shite load of people knew about them, but they weren't getting the airplay representative to the size of followers they had.


And stop dissing Def Leppard. Don't even try and front like you weren't rocking out to Pyromania and Hysteria with your mullett.

I wore the sleeveless Union Jack shirt with Sunbritches to the arcade.