The only hair metal band Eddie Vedder liked: “At least had some teeth”
What do you think of first when you think of the rock music that was made in the 1980s? Is it the relentless, manic and frantic guitar solos, chugging and churning powerchords and power ballads, or is it the spandex, pyrotechnics, and the hair? KISS may have been among the first to put the hair into hair metal and to play their solos on fire-work firing guitars, or else to drip dye and blood down their kabuki painted faces, but it wasn’t long before all the guitar heroes of the era were turning it up to eleven and rocking out in ever more insane, theatrical and hair-brained ways.
Each of the members of Mötley Crüe and Ratt, Bon Jovi and Whitesnake, Poison and Van Halen were all larger than life figures, interested in pushing both the limits of how loud a guitar could go or how hard you could hit a snare drum, how fast you could play a solo and how much hairspray one person can wear whilst standing next to a pyro-machine without catching light.
Not everyone was impressed, though. The genre was infamously immortalised in the classic and hilarious 1984 musical mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, where all the most absurd excesses of the era and genre were put in the spotlight and on trial. It wasn’t long before quotes from the film such as “these go to eleven”, “It’s like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black” and “there’s too much fucking perspective” were as well known, and likely better regarded, than any of the lyrics from ‘Jump’, ‘Rock You Like a Hurricane’ or ‘Nothing but a Good Time’.
And the cast and crew of Spinal Tap weren’t alone in taking aim at the scene. It’s no secret that the grunge scene of the 1990s grew out of a rejection of all the excess of the 1980s, so it is no surprise that Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder wasn’t a fan of the hair metal rockers, either, though he made one exception. As he told The New York Times in 2022 when the topic came up, “You know, I used to work in San Diego loading gear at a club. I’d end up being at shows that I wouldn’t have chosen to go to from bands that monopolised late-1980s MTV. The metal bands that, I’m trying to be nice, I despised.”
“I hated it”, he continued. “I hated how it made the fellas look. I hated how it made the women look. It felt so vacuous. Guns N’ Roses came out and, thank God, at least had some teeth”.
To some, Guns N’ Roses might be considered the quintessential hair metal band, although at least, with their headbands and top-hats, their accessories could at least occasionally draw your attention away from their long locks just about long enough to focus on their frenetic rock.
In 1993, Axl Rose apparently asked his bands then manager Doug Goldstein to try and put together a package tour featuring the three biggest groups in the world at that time: Guns N’ Roses, U2 and Pearl Jam. U2 were said to be on board with the idea, but it was Pearl Jam who turned the tour down. Eddie Vedder and his band would go on to open four shows for U2 in Italy that summer, though, but Guns N’ Roses were nowhere in sight.
