‘Glorified G’ – Pearl Jam

No one coming up in the age of grunge was looking to live up to the standard rockstar stereotype. Although there were a lot of rockstar cliches that went into the realm of misogyny and mindless violence, hearing people like Eddie Vedder sing about the struggles that women face was a breath of fresh air. So when that kind of emasculated behaviour started showing up in his own band, he wasn’t about to roll over and take it on the chin.

While Pearl Jam has had almost the same number of drummers as Spinal Tap, Dave Abbruzzese didn’t make the best first impression when he joined in the early 1990s. Despite being a fairly competent drummer, Vedder took issue with his firm stance on gun regulations, especially when he was seen bragging to the rest of the band that he had two guns at home that were glorified versions of pellet guns.

Taking his words verbatim from that conversation, Vedder turned that little nugget into a massive attack on the kind of people who fetishise gun culture, claiming that they feel incredibly manly whenever they have a gun in their hand and are trying to kill everything in sight. The jury’s still out as to whether Vedder thought Abbruzzese was that far gone, but considering he would be out of the band after only one more album, it was clear that whatever chemistry they had offstage fizzled out pretty quickly.

‘Right Next Door to Hell’ – Guns N’ Roses

Living with any member of Guns N’ Roses throughout their rise to the top sounds like it would have been a virtual nightmare. This band had climbed directly out of the seediest streets of Los Angeles, so it’s not like they were prepared to become one of the biggest names in music once Appetite for Destruction hit it big. If they were going to bring their unique brand of chaos to the other side of Los Angeles, Axl Rose had to end up fending himself off from a few too many neighbours when writing the band’s follow-up.

While ‘Right Next Door To Hell’ is a fairly badass album opener, the whole story originated from Rose getting into an altercation with one of his neighbours in an apartment complex who had complained of noise issues. Although the issue was eventually settled out of court, Rose lays into his accuser on this track, eventually culminating in one of the most cathartic bits of anger in their discography where he spends over half the bridge screaming ‘FUCK YOU’.

In fact, having something this punky as the album opener may have been too disorienting considering ‘November Rain’ was coming up later, but it served to send a message more than anything. Sure, the band could buy more expensive guitars and live it up like lavish rockstars if they wanted, but don’t any of you think for a second that they would lose any of their hard edges.

‘My Iron Lung’ – Radiohead

The one-hit wonder will forever be the kind of curse that every musician lives in fear of. The idea of getting one song off the ground feels like a minor miracle at times, but when everyone starts knowing them by only one song, they have a fundamental misunderstanding of what they’re actually about. And while Radiohead were dangerously close to one-hit wonder territory for a while, ‘My Iron Lung’ is probably the best way for someone to let out their feelings about being pigeonholed.

There had already been rumblings among their label to see if they had another ‘Creep’ in them, and while ‘My Iron Lung’ does have a few of those trademarks like the scratchy guitar, this is practically an anti-version of their biggest hit. Whereas their first try was a sad look at someone too scared to speak to a girl, this is Thom Yorke screaming about how every shallow record executive only wants them for their first song rather than anything more cutting-edge than their old work.

And considering how many times their label ended up dropping the ball when it came to expectations, it’s not like the band weren’t vindicated in the long run. This is the same label that was convinced that OK Computer would be a massive flop and readjusted their sales figures for the record before it came out, so it was clear that they were the furthest thing from true musical connoisseurs. 

‘Go Your Own Way’ – Fleetwood Mac

There was always bound to be a fair amount of pain throughout every second of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. No one ends up falling out with the love of their life and decides to shrug it off like it’s nothing, and every single song is practically another chapter in every songwriter’s heartbreak. It would be one thing to leave all of their hangups at the door, but Lindsey Buckingham really needed to go the extra mile when talking about how badly Stevie Nicks hurt him.

Whereas ‘Dreams’ is a far more contemplative track that sees Nicks letting Buckingham down easy, the guitarist is seething with anger on ‘Go Your Own Way’, claiming that his partner wanted to do nothing more than shack up with the first person she sees. ‘Second Hand News’ was already pretty heavy-handed regarding the details of their relationship, but since Buckingham is coming into this song with zero proof, it’s hard to see him as anything more than someone who got jilted a little too hard.

And since Buckingham’s anger would be the focal point of many of his later songs, Nicks needed to be the softer touch on many of the later Mac projects. The greatest albums always operate off of a certain balance, but if we had nothing but a more jaded form of Brian Wilson’s productions every time a Fleetwood Mac album came out, it would have been much harder for people to stomach.

‘Steel and Glass’ – John Lennon

The entire process of detangling The Beatles’ legal troubles isn’t something one should wish on their worst enemy. They had talked about the unifying love that brings people together, but as soon as Allen Klein was brought into the mix, the band had the kind of scoundrel who was more than willing to pull them apart if he could make a quick buck off of it. The non-McCartney members may have fallen for it for a while, but when John Lennon came to, he was out for blood with the man who split up his old mates.

Despite Klein having a hand in bad-mouthing Macca to Lennon, ‘Steel and Glass’ is one long swipe back at his old manager. By this point, Yoko had been put in charge of his finances, and coming after tearing into McCartney on ‘How Do You Sleep’, hearing Lennon use the same riff on this song is almost like he’s trying to take some of the anger out of his original tune and redirect it somewhere else. 

That wasn’t even the last McCartney throwback on that album, with some of the riffs on the rest of the record sounding like something that could have come from Band on the Run. ‘The Nerk Twins’ may have grown apart over the years and were not ready to kiss and make up just yet, but they were more than willing to take aim at the person who put them in this whole mess to begin with.

‘In Bloom’ – Nirvana

Kurt Cobain never seemed to have any idea what lay ahead of him in the early 1990s. Anyone dreams of being a big rock and roll band when they’re a kid, but as soon as Cobain got a taste for fame, he didn’t realise the kind of baggage that came with being a rockstar, let alone how much it would affect his relationships with everyone else. He did know a fair bit about the fans that he didn’t want, and he figured that he could get some of the guys who used to beat him up in high school out of his fanbase before he reached the top of the charts.

While they had only been an indie band before Nevermind, ‘In Bloom’ was one of the first times people heard the kind of hooks Cobain was working with. A lot of the verses may have seemed like gibberish half the time, but once they reach the chorus, the frontman had a very specific type of person in mind, making fun of the dumb jock types who listen to this kind of music while they polish their guns and don’t bother listening to the lyrics.

But perhaps the funniest part of this entire argument is that many of these bullies probably didn’t put it together that they were being made fun of. And don’t worry, because those people haven’t gone anywhere. No, they have grown up to find out that their favourite songs had something to say and are usually the ones that are yelling at artists to stick to the music instead of speaking their minds in the modern age.

‘Everybody’s Rockin’ – Neil Young

Rule number one about dealing with Neil Young: Never question Neil Young. From day one, ol’ Uncle Neil knew exactly what he wanted his music to sound like, and there was no paycheck big enough for him to roll over and deliver another version of Harvest or After the Gold Rush. Every one of his albums needed to be authentic, and when someone genuinely pissed him off, he made sure that they were getting the purest form of spite that he could muster when they asked for an album.

While it’s understandable why Geffen Records would have wanted an album from Young with some rock and roll energy, they had a very poor choice of words once Everybody’s Rockin’ came out. The label did get their wish, but Young was determined to make this album as out of touch as possible, throwing things back to the old days of recording when everything was centred around making the same kind of rockabilly tune for ten tracks in a row and calling it an album.

Even though the whole thing was clearly meant as a joke, it’s easy to respect the pettiness of this kind of career move. Young was dangerously close to losing a contract if he didn’t come through with a rock and roll project, but judging by the sound of his voice and how criminally short this song is, he could have really cared less. 

‘Blood From a Clone’ – George Harrison

There’s no use in any label trying to tell a Beatle how to run one of their albums. Like it or not, they created the blueprint for what every pop band was supposed to be, so there’s no reason to question their judgment whenever they put out a record. While George Harrison’s career admittedly took some hits by the start of the 1980s, asking him to channel his inner party animal was the last thing anyone needed to hear.

After Harrison’s record was rejected by his label, he was told to go back to the drawing board and come back with the kind of love song that would get teenagers humming along. But Harrison never bothered with that kind of primitive version of songwriting, and while ‘Teardrops’ was his way of fulfilling their wishes, ‘Blood From A Clone’ is a massive middle finger to Warner Bros for forcing him to go back into the studio.

Admittedly, the first version of Somewhere in England was never going to be one of his best albums, but it at least had a tone that it was going for. ‘Blood From A Clone’ does start the album off sounding incredibly cynical, but that’s commonly not the mood that one should be going for on an album that also has something like ‘All Those Years Ago’ amongst its track list.

‘Bring It On Down’ – Oasis

As the Britpop explosion was first starting, no one expected Oasis to kick out the jams all that often. They usually talked up their punk rock credentials, but there are only a handful of tunes in their catalogue that managed to have the same kind of punch as anything that Sex Pistols put out during their tenure. While ‘Bring It On Down’ is the lone exception by being the one actual punk song on Definitely Maybe, the whole reason why it works came from Tony McCarroll being furious with Noel Gallagher.

The entire drum track is far from easy, but since McCarroll was always on the firing line, this tune was where everyone started having a go at him. It’s easy to take those kind of remarks in stride, but the minute that Noel suggested that a session drummer be brought in to play it properly, McCarroll had had enough, eventually getting a pep talk from one of the members of the Real People before tearing his kit to shreds, resulting in the performance that we are still listening to to this day.

Although he did mellow out after the fact, it would be somewhat frustrating for Noel to see him nail a drum track this quickly. Most of McCarroll’s drumming on the rest of Definitely Maybe is fairly rudimentary on tracks like ‘Supersonic’, so if he had this kind of demon hiding inside of him, why did he have to be pushed to the absolute brink for it to come out?

‘The Rain Song’ – Led Zeppelin

Some of the greatest songwriters always like a bit more of a challenge whenever they are in the studio. No one likes the idea of making the same song over again, and by the mid-1970s, Jimmy Page wasn’t going to spend his time playing the same blues covers that he had played when Led Zeppelin formed. What he did needed to be more musical, and a little bit of trash talk from George Harrison was precisely what he needed to finish up ‘The Rain Song’.

While Zeppelin already had their fair share of slower moments in their catalogue, this song originated from a dare when Harrison said that the band didn’t have any true ballads in their catalogue. But if Page was going to write something slow, he was going to make it as strange as possible, playing the whole thing in an alternate tuning and eventually sprinkling in the kind of riffs that sound like they would be a decent soundtrack to the ominous section of a horror movie.

And as if to rub salt into the wound, the main motif of the song does seem to borrow a fair bit of its musicality from Harrison, quoting the classic track ‘Something’ over Robert Plant’s melody. This kind of song was all meant as good, clean fun between two rock legends, but rarely has anyone made something this beautiful all to prove somebody wrong.