Hair Metal Justified #1

Hair metal. It was vapid, soulless party music made to be blasted from car stereos and boom boxes while kids got drunk and fucked each other at keggers. It wasn’t meant to be important. It wasn’t meant to last.

And yet, somehow, some of the music produced by hair bands actually has managed to survive the test of time and even achieve classic status. Beyond that, hair metal was my doorway into real metal. For me, hair metal is kinda like Die Hard, the first R-rated movie I ever saw. It helped form part of the foundation of who I am now.

So, I decided to throw together a new feature highlight the records that, at least for me, justify the entire existence of hair metal as a genre. They make all that other stupid, vapid music worth it.

First up, Tesla’s The Great Radio Controversy.

Hailing from Sacramento, CA, Tesla stood out from their bigger-haired contemporaries like a Flock of Seagulls fan at a Slayer concert. These guys came off as blue jean-clad working class dudes in a world populated by androgenous, big-haired girlie-men. And while they never considered themselves a metal band, their sound was heavier and more bad ass than most of the other hair farmers.

Tesla’s first record, Mechanical Resonance, had quite a few good moments on it. But the band really hit their stride on their second record, The Great Radio Controversy. The record is a hard-hitting, hard-rocking, yet wonderfully varied, effort packed full of well-crafted songs. Let’s investigate.

Great Radio opens with “Hang Tough”. Brian Wheat’s bassline hooks us and pulls us in before the song erupts into a storm of pick scrapes, power chords and Troy Luccketta’s pounding percussion. Axeman Frank Hannon and Tommy Skeoch break into an Iron Maiden-style harmonized lead before the song settles into the verse.

Here, singer Jeff Keith takes over. I love this dude’s voice. It’s gruff and tough-sounding without being harsh or off-putting. The chorus gets spiced up with the requisite gang vocals, and instantly you have an anthem. I can see cranking this song up at the gym to get me pumped up do some bench presses or some shit. If I ever went to the gym.

“Lady Luck” follows, with its more sinister chord progression that tells that not all is right. And it turns out that all is, in fact, not right. Keith has been snowed by a beautiful but dishonest woman. I love the line where Keith asks this devil woman “How do you do”, and she replies “I don’t.”

“Lady Luck” is a perfectly solid tune, but it’s just set-up for “Heaven’s Trail (No Way Out)”. One of Tesla’s best songs, “Heaven’s Trail” pounds along riding a heavy dropped-D riff and some rock-steady drumming from Luccketta. The electric guitars drop out as the pre-chorus builds and then the song explodes into the chorus. It’s hooky, hefty and gets your foot stomping. Don’t stomp along if you live upstairs from someone else. It’s rude.

“Heaven’s Trail” is also one of the tracks on Great Radio that features some tasty slide guitar work. The next tune, “Be a Man” opens with some scorching slide guitar licks before morphing into a sing-along working class anthem. Keith’s lyrics lambast close-minded people who might think that what you look like determines what kind of person you are. Growing up in a predominantly Mormon community where folks were way too focused on the length of your hair and how you dressed, I really appreciated this message.

Tesla keeps the energy up for the next couple songs, and really revs it up for “Yesterdaze Gone”. “The Way it Is” is a big, sweet ballad where Keith extols the virtues of working through personal shit in a relationship. It’s got one of those guitar solos that you can hum after you hear it like twice and gives Wheat a little more space to show off on bass.

Great Radio closes with a really great 1-2-3 punch. “Love Song” is another acoustic guitar-driven ballad that opens softly then builds and builds to a tasty guitar solo and an infectious, sing-along outro. “Love will find a way”, get repeated ad nauseum, but you’re so hooked by then that you don’t care.

The next tune “Paradise” is the best song on the whole record. It opens as a piano ballad that Elton John would be proud to call his own. Again, the song builds, shifting to a double time tempo before Hannon and Skeoch break into tag-team guitar solos a la Judas Priest. The song is so well written that it pulls at the heartstrings and then melts your face, all within less than five minutes. It shows Tesla at their most versatile, capable of sweeping emotion and ass-kicking rock.

The last track, “Party’s Over”, is another stomper, with Luccketta providing a beat that kinda staggers around like a drunk ambling around the parking lot looking for his car. The chorus is huge, Hannon and Skeoch provide more harmonized leads that bury themselves in your brain, and when it’s over, you can’t wait to start the party all over.

Tesla may not have been a hair metal band, but I’m really glad stupid record executives thought they were. They were signed when hair metal was all the rage, and we got The Great Radio Controversy out of that deal. It’s a solid record from top to bottom, perfect for blasting from your car while out on a drive in the country. Hair metal history is lousy with records sucked giant bags of dicks. Thank the Maker, The Great Radio Controversy wasn’t one of them.

Coming soon: Cinderella's bluesy and bitchin' Long Cold Winter!