The Horrendous Hairy Butterfly or How I Stopped Worrying and Re-Learned To Love Hair Metal

Skeletons.

We all have at least one or two of these bony bastards in our closet. Things about ourselves we don't want other people to know. Things about ourselves we wish we would forget.

One of the most embarrassing skeletons in my closet wears zebra print spandex and has poofy, bleach-blonde hair. It plays loud-ass riffs on a pointy-headstocked guitar through a wall of Marshall amps.

That's right. I'm talking about 80s hair metal.

Hair metal is the sound of my youth. The songs of bands like Ratt and Warrant were the soundtrack of my life back then. I lived through the Great Hair Metal Dying of the early 1990s, when everybody my age grew up and moved on to more "mature" and "substantive" music like grunge. (More on grunge and the bullshit fairy tale surrounding this garbage in a future post.)

I myself moved on, too. Not to grunge, but to thrash. My hand was forced, to a certain extent. Hair metal disappeared in what seemed like an instant and there wasn't a lot of other stuff that appealed to me beyond thrash. I had yet to develop a taste for death metal, didn't know much about what was going on in the European metal scene, and was disappointed when so many bands I loved tried to adapt their sounds to fit in on alternative rock radio.

But I didn't become embarrassed by my love for hair metal until college. My roommate, a big-time straightedge skater punk, came in the room to catch me listening to Ratt. He burst into laughter and teased me. "I thought you said you listened to heavy shit," he said. I was so mortified that, from then on out, I never played any music around him. 

It didn't end there. When I'd meet someone new, I'd tell them I was into old shit like Aerosmith and Van Halen. I started listening to the blues, cuz there's nothing uncool about the blues. While doing so opened up new channels to music I grew to love, I missed kicking back with some Motley Crue or Poison and not giving a shit about whether or not I was cool for doing so.

I also delved into power pop, deeply enough that for about fifteen years or so, Weezer was my favorite band. I grew to love singing along with the tunes blasting from my car stereo, which wasn't something I ever figured out how to do with hair metal. I couldn't keep up with singers like Don Dokken and other guys in bands I like, say Stephen Pearcy in Ratt for example, couldn't really carry a tune that I could recognize. But, by damn, I could sing along with The Sweater Song or Island in the Sun.

I never lost my taste for metal, though, and when I stumbled across articles about bands like Lamb of God and Shadows Fall in guitar magazines, I quickly gravitated to sounds like the New Wave of American Heavy Metal. It did take some time to get used to the screaming vocals of contemporary metal, but I loved the guitar work. 

On I sailed into heavier things, only rarely breaking out the 80s cheese metal when I was in a nostalgic mood and saying stuff like "I only like it cuz it's so shitty" if someone I wanted to keep my love of the stuff from found me out. I pretended that I was ok listening to Def Leppard and proto-party metal like Van Halen because they were more like classic rock and they still held up. 

Then, a few weeks back, I joined a Facebook group called Headbangers Ball. Dedicated to metal and hard rock music of the 70s, 80s, and 90s, I found a whole community of people who loved this hair metal shit as much as I secretly do. Only they were unashamed. They didn't joke that they liked the music ironically. They just let their love flow.

Within a couple of days of joining Headbangers Ball, my enthusiasm for the music I grew up with came back, big time. I was cranking up old albums by the likes of Skid Row and Enuff Z'Nuff. I was perusing YouTube looking for my favorite music videos from back in the day. I was picking up my guitar and trying to learn all the killer riffs from the songs I love. And I was discovering that while hair metal was vapid, brainless and about as deep as a birdbath, it's also fun, energetic and just puts a smile on my face.

I also realized how dumb I'd been for being ashamed of my hair metal roots. Hair metal was my gateway to more extreme, heavier shit. I don't get to Obituary without having fallen in love with Vinnie Vincent Invasion first. This music, like all the other music I love, regardless of genre, is a part of who I am. It's woven into the tapestry of my identity. To be ashamed of my love of hair metal is to be ashamed of myself. Being ashamed of myself is something I absolutely must stop doing.

So thank you to the Headbangers Ball Facebook group and all the cool fuckers who have accepted my goofy ass into that fold. You've helped me to realize that it's ok to like whatever I like. You've helped me grow enough spine to hold up my middle fingers to the world and say, in the words of Tom Keifer, IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, I DON'T CARE. Best of all, you've helped me become a little bit more ok with me. Thanks. Seriously.