Soundtrack of Our Youth: History of Hair Metal Music

by Brad Groghan

More than 450 pages celebrating the history of the hair metal / sleaze rock music era. Book includes more than 50 interviews with superstar musicians like Billy Sheehan and members of bands from Warrant, Twisted Sister, Winger, White Lion, L.A. Guns, Dokken, Danger Danger, Tora Tora, Junkyard, Dangerous Toys, Autograph, Pretty Boy Floyd and several others. We've done an extensive year-by-year breakdown of each year between 1981-2017. Also included are rankings of the top 1,000 songs of all time and the top 350 albums of all time. As well as several other features stories on the hair metal / hair band genre.

Genres: Nonfiction

459 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 15, 2018

Reviews

[Marshall · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Hair metal" is the stupidest name for a music genre, a derogatory term used by people who hate it. It says nothing about the music and everything about how they looked. As if anyone over 50 doesn't have pictures showcasing their embarrassing fashion sense when they were young! Why did actual fans adopt this silly name? Probably because it stuck, but I think it's also because these artists and fans have always had a self-deprecating sense of humor. This was obvious from their music videos and lyrics. They weren't exactly trying to be subtle. They knew they looked ridiculous, so they just tried to look even more ridiculous.

I was 13 and I loved it all. It truly was the soundtrack of my youth. It was so fun, and I thought they looked cool. Okay, Poison's cover art for Look What the Cat Dragged In was pure camp, but watch the video for Winger's Seventeen. They totally rocked and looked really good doing it. I expanded my tastes as I aged, but unlike most fans from that era, I never felt embarrassed about my love for hair metal. These bands were really starting to mature just when grunge came and destroyed it.

Consider The Beatles' early career. They were essentially a bubble gum pop boy band. The music was decent but unsophisticated and incredibly cheesy. It was all about image. Sound familiar? And yet, they were obviously talented, so give them another five years and look where they took it. Warrant is not exactly The Beatles, but look at the leap they took from Cherry Pie to Dog Eat Dog. Tragically, by that time nobody was listening anymore. Kip Winger has gone from singing about flirting with under-age girls to composing renowned classical music and musicals. These people were talented, damn it. Couldn't anyone hear that, or did all that hair spray get in their ears?

The truth that few seemed to notice is that the fun hair and lyrics were just window dressing. I didn't care much about it because what interested me was what was inside: DAMN GOOD MUSIC. Fun, upbeat, melodic, sometimes mellow but usually rocked your ass off. They always took a moment to put down their electric guitars and serenade you with a ballad or two before the fist pumping started back up. This was music for every mood, but it always ended up making you feel better. That's what good music should do, and hair metal was better at it than most genres.

So I guess I remained faithful, but this book made me realize I gave up on this music more than I thought. The impression I had was that hair metal was dead, a fashion of the day that came and went quickly, like disco. This book's author is a true fan and never gave up on it. Hair metal didn't come and go, but just had a brief slump in the 1990's before re-surging. Many of the bands I loved kept releasing great music, and new bands continued to emerge. Sure, it's not as good as the top songs from the early years, but it stands head and shoulders with most of the rest.

This book looks at the entire genre, not just its hey day. I got a lot out of it for that reason, even though it was not well-written. It has three sections: a complete history of hair metal from its birth until today, rankings of the best songs and albums, and interviews. Reading the history felt like watching one of my favorite movies followed by a bunch of sequels that I didn't know existed. The rankings were incredibly thorough. It's a hopelessly subjective task, but he aggregated many sources to make it objectively reflect what most fans would agree with. The interviews were mildly interesting, extremely long but worth skimming through.

I read through the song rankings and realized half of them came out after I stopped paying attention to hair metal. So I got an idea. I made a playlist of all the hair metal that I missed out on in all my years of ignoring it. You can listen to it on Spotify or YouTube by searching for "Hair Metal 1995-2018" I have been really enjoying listening to this playlist.

[Armand Rosamilia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of good information but, to be honest, the lists got redundant with the same bands over and over. Don't get me wrong, I love 80's metal bands. It's just there could've been more interviews instead, and maybe a bigger breakdown of each year besides just lists. Overall a fun read.

[Giglio Casanova · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just ok

Lots of rankings and not enough content...lots of interviews with memebers of the bands from that era , some of them very obscure though.

[Gina Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great memories

Author spends a lot of time with rankings and interviews, but not enough in-depth analysis of the music itself. Could have been so much more.

[D'Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is clearly a passion project and the author is very into this subject (and I'm not actually sure who the author is. Here on Goodreads it says Hall Laurel, but on the Kindle edition, which I read, it says Brad Groghan). I'm a big fan of hair metal/heavy metal and clearly so is this author, even more so. I'm fascinated with this ear of music and like that this book starts in the 80's and continues on through 2018. A lot of bands/artists that were popular in the hair metal heyday are still making music. But I also have to say that this book is very poorly written. So many typos. The interviews are mildly interesting, but again there are so many errors it's distracting. At times the answers that follow the questions don't seem to match up. I found it ironic that the author takes Bobby Blotzer to task for the many typos in his book Tales Of A RATT (and I've read it. There are SO many). The author wonders why Blotzer doesn't have an editor, but it doesn't seem like this book did, either. That said, I'm enjoying the playlists the author created and discovering new bands I'd either never heard before or bands that I never really gave a chance.

[Brian Head · Rating 1 out of 5]

Crap

Don't waste your time or money. Not even a book. First half is just lists. Second half is just crappy interviews with nobodies.