I've been wanting to write this particular edition of Fizzy's Closet for quite some time now, and finally have the opportunity. Today, we're going to have a gander at some albums that are classics in their own right, but that have also had a profound effect on my life as well. Needless to say, the reviews that follow will be a bit more personal than usual, which is, of course, the point. After all, a couple of these albums are ones everybody and their dear old granny owns, so the object is not to merely review it, but to tell a bit of my own story at the same time.
That being said, however, I don't think the overall ratings are affected too much by the albums' importance to me, if at all. It's probably a safe assumption that any release with a rating of 9.5 or higher is automatically in the Hall of Fame, but there are some special cases, where a high rating just doesn't tell the story. Below are four of those special cases. All are excellent releases, and all occupy a very special place in my heart. All four are "desert island discs," if you will.
GUNS N' ROSES: Appetite for Destruction; 1987 (Geffen)
Rating: 10.0
It's generally the best policy to begin at the beginning, and so here we are, back where it all started: my love affair, some seventeen years and counting, with hard rock and heavy metal. We begin our story in the early fall of 1988. Young Master Fizz, newly eight years old, snaggle-toothed and towheaded, sits in his bedroom, listening to American Top Forty on his brand spankin' new gray and yellow boom-box. That's me. I had just become interested in music that summer, mainly pop. I listened mostly to a local radio station that, today, would be called "adult contemporary," although I sometimes dabbled in the R&B station as well. It was the latter station which carried American Top Forty, hosted then by Shadoe Stevens. Stevens had also been the announcer on Hollywood Squares, you may recall.
Anyway, as August turned into September, I listened as some band called Guns n' Roses climbed the charts with a song called "Sweet Child O' Mine." For some reason, I disliked this song immediately, and never stuck around once that singer guy started warbling. And yet the song continued to climb. One week it was number thirteen, then nine, then two. And then, AAARRGH! The damn thing hit numero uno, and stayed there for a second week. How could this be, when there were songs like "Hands to Heaven" by a group of English wimps called Breathe? But what goes up must come down, as they say, and after two weeks at the top, "Sweet Child" began its slow descent back down the charts. First it fell to nuber two, and then number four. And about that time, I decided what the hell, I'll listen to it all the way through. It's so terrible, I might get a laugh out of it. So while the song was still in the top five, I listened to it all the way through.
That was it. I was hooked from that first complete listen. It was the chorus right before the solo that clinched it. Guns n' Roses and their album Appetite for Destruction were soon on my list of tapes I must get my grubby mitts on. At the time, I had almost no knowledge of the differences between various styles of music, except rap, which I had not yet grown to hate. (Hey, "Parents Just Don't Understand" struck a chord with me too!) When I told my aunt Becky, who was eighteen at the time, that I really, really wanted that Gn'r tape, she tried to explain some harsh realities to me. "Look. Guns n' Roses are hard rock. Not every song is going to be like “Sweet Child O' Mine"'" she said. But I didn't really understand what she meant. Hard rock, I was given to understand, was louder and rougher than other kinds of music, and "loud" and "rough" only intrigued me further.
Two months passed. I continued listening to American Top Forty, as "the Gunners" fell to number seven, then sixteen, then twenty-four, then thirty-five. I paid special attention whenever Shadoe told me that a particular group were hard rock or heavy metal. That fall, those words were used mostly to describe Poison, Def Leppard, Van Halen, Bon Jovi, Cinderella, and the like. Not exactly headbanging fare, as I would come to find out, but hell, it was just a rinky-dink top-forty countdown. And finally, one Saturday in November (either the 12th or the 19th, I can't remember which, alas), I bought the tape. $8.49 at Price's Music, in my hometown. A month's allowance and change. But I was so tickled. Here it was, my first hard rock tape! My mom was repulsed. "They look like they're on drugs!" she groaned. I thought this was hilarious. Of course, they WERE on drugs, but I didn't really know that at the time. I had heard reports of their hellraising escapades, and gloried in them,
although, being so young, I didn't have any real concept of that type of debauchery. They smashed up a hotel room! Ha ha! Axl got arrested! Hee hee!
Of course, I bought the tape during a Saturday full of errands, and it stayed in my shirt pocket until after dinner, when I could finally take it back to my room and listen to it. I popped it into my boom-box on the second side (they were labeled sides G and R rather than One and Two) and rewound through the last three songs, stopping for a brief listen here and there, until I got to the Holy Grail, "Sweet Child O' Mine." To my shock and delight, the version on the tape was a lot longer than the radio edits I had heard up to that point. It was like the prize at the bottom of the Cracker Jacks. I listened mainly to that one song for a day or so, and then began to slowly explore the rest of the album. It was like a whole new world opening up to me, like nothing I'd ever heard before. Sure, Breathe were cool and all, and rap was kinda neat, but this hard rock stuff was where it was at! Plus, everybody in my family really hated it.
Now is where I finally get to talk about the album itself. As everybody knows, Appetite for Destruction was the biggest rock album of the late '80's, if not the entire decade. It was matched in impact and mainstream popularity only by a couple of Def Leppard albums, and maybe Whitesnake's 1987 release. Even to this day, with all of the turmoil and erratic behavior and self-destruction (nay, implosion) that would follow, to say nothing of the changes in the musical landscape as a whole, Appetite for Destruction still casts a towering shadow over the rock world that few bands can match. I didn't learn until later that the record was actually released in the summer of 1987, and "Welcome to the Jungle" received some airplay, but then languished until the runaway success of "Sweet Child O' Mine" almost a full year later.
It just occurred to me now that the labeling of sides G and R of the cassette is actually quite appropriate. The first six songs are the guns, being generally the most aggressive and unlovely of the bunch. The second half is toned down just slightly in music, but a bit more in theme.
The album begins with guns ablaze (Har!) with "Welcome to the Jungle," with its slow-building intro, with first one guitar, then the other, then the slow, descending chords underneath that siren wail, before launching into a nasty groove. Axl Rose snarls and yowls about the seamy side of Hollywood. It's a very unromantic, even ugly, take on life under the bright city lights. This is what immediately set GnR apart from the pouting pretty-boys that were popular at the time. The music was rough and the lyrics were rougher, and the image was roughest yet. They made Poison look and sound like a middle-school cheerleading squad. They took what Motley Crue did in the first half of the decade, and pushed it farther, and made you believe it, all before the first song sputtered to an end. What a gleeful, ruthless bastard Axl sounded like, with his immortal shriek of "You know where you are? You're in the jungle, baby! You're gonna die!"
Most of you reading this probably own this album already, and many of you know it by heart, and there are other things I want to talk about here, so I'll just skim through some of the other highlights of the first side. "Nightrain" hurtles along just like a freight train full of hobos, although the song takes its name from the wine, not the vehicle. Axl uses his higher register to great effect here, and one can't even think about belting this one out without waving a fist. Being a drunk slob has seldom sounded better. "Mr. Brownstone" is a "little ditty about junk," in the words of Izzy Stradlin, containing a bleak tale of addiction wrapped within its loose, funky beat. "Yowza!" Axl growls at song's end, like he's just shot up a good one. Of course, they actually WERE junkies at the time, or at least most of them were, which makes the song all the more plausible. More plausible than, say, "Out Ta Get Me," wherein the band attempts to tackle the subject
of totalitarian rule. It can be looked at as a general anti-authority song as well, and at any rate, Axl is in no less of a spitting rage for living in a free country. Or is it all that free?
The real hidden gem of the first half is "It's So Easy," a truly bruising number. It's like a barroom brawl set to music, with a rhythm that makes you want to pound your fist into something breakable. I find this one to be the most unhinged track on the album, and the reckless energy, coupled with Axl's low sneer and Slash's short, punchy solo, makes it a real treat. Years later, when I was doing college radio, this was the GnR song I tended to play most, partly because, never having been a single, it hasn't been flogged to death by rock radio, and partly because it just flat-out kicks ass. Needless to say, I was flawless in my dumping of the four "fucks" present in the song.
The first half wraps up with another monster hit in the form of "Paradise City." When I first began exploring Side G, this was the one I fell in love with. It's quite the complex song, for the album, with its gentle, angelic intro, before the power chords ease in, and then that crunching riff and wicked verses. I didn't know it then, and still don't really care, but the riff was lifted from Black Sabbath's "Zero the Hero." Just so you know. And just so you know, yes, it did occur to me, even at that tender age, to change the chorus to "Take me down to the paradise city, where the grass is green and the girls have titties." And I especially loved how the song careened out of control for about two minutes at the end. Again, I'd never heard anything like it before. Oh yeah, and check out Slash's playing underneath the "so far away" bridge. Nice!
The other six songs, Side R, are no less powerful, but aren't quite as abrasive. The lyrics are generally aimed at women, many of them quite tender in their own way. We do get the obligatory raging-hard-on anthem in "Anything Goes," and "My Michelle," an ode to a teenage slut, is probably one of the weaker tracks. Love the intro though. "Think About You" was the second song I got into, after "Sweet Child O' Mine," and is another buried treasure, and one of the simpler songs here. The lyrics are totally innocent, especially coming right after "My Michelle." I played the drums in my third-grade talent show, unaccompanied. I hadn't really settled on what song I would play, but just figured to get up and jam. But I got nervous and ended up just playing "Think About You," although I'm sure the other kids had no idea what the hell I was doing.
And then there's "Sweet Child O' Mine." Oh my, yes. Where do I begin with this song? The intro? Instantly recognizable. The solos? Among the all-time greatest. The hooks? Impeccable. If this isn't my favorite song ever, it should be, on its own merits and for the tremendous effect it had on me. And where the hell did all that "Where do we go now?" stuff at the end come from? Ever stop to wonder?
"You're Crazy" would probably fit better on Side G, as it's the fastest song here, and the most pissed-off on the second half. But it's a minor quibble. The album finally concludes with "Rocket Queen,", which is like two separate songs stuck together. The first part is a lurching come-on, directed, one would think, at an older woman. "I might be a little young, but honey, I ain't naive," Axl assures us. The bass groove is the main attraction in this part, though. And then, when you think the song's about over, it switches gears abruptly. The coda is a sweet, gentle declaration of devotion. "All I ever wanted," Axl wails at the end, "was for you to know that I care." He glides down a full octave, and there's one final chord, and that's it.
Where would I be without this album? Would I have gotten into metal at all were it not for Guns n' Roses? Oh, maybe I would have, but it might have taken a while, and I might have missed out on the late '80's and early '90's, an era whose memory is precious to me, even as limited as my ability to experience it was. And not only did Appetite for Destruction turn me on to metal, but I also learned so much from it. I learned how songs are constructed, how the different elements are arranged, and the different types of songs usually found on hard rock albums. Later, when I was able to appreciate more subtle textures, I learned about Steven Adler's loose, jammy drumming, and how two guitars can work together, and what the bass does, when you can hear it. And of course, Axl. From him I learned the basics of hard rock singing, although, yes, he did get irritating with that whiny voice, and the way he stretched his words out like rubber bands (i.e. "sweet child of mi-yine," or "just a little better
than befaw-waw"). I don't mean to make it sound like these guys invented the wheel or anything, but you have to understand, I knew virtually nothing about music at the time. And I still keep stumbling on things to this day, like my side-labeling epiphany a few paragraphs ago. And another thing: did you ever stop to think about how no less than a third of the songs on Appetite pull this little trick where you think they're about over, and then they shift into another direction entirely?
All right, one more story about this one, and then I have to move on. One day just after New Year's, 1989, I was puttering around in my room, performing what I considered "cleaning up." I had my door open and my boom-box blasting away. And my mom happened to wander by at just the wrong moment, and heard Axl yelling, his''' 'Cuz I got somethin' I've been buildin' up inside, for so fuckin' long!" She stormed in and rewound the tape. Yep, he dropped the F-bomb, all right. This was in the days before parental advisory stickers, although Tipper Gore and her sewing circle had been rattling their knitting needles for a few years by then. I guess Mama Fizz never figured she'd have to worry about it though. And yet here was this abomination in her son's room. What to do? What she did was take the tape away from me, call up Price's, and ask about returning it. Of course, they wouldn't take it back, not after I'd played it more or less nonstop for two months. So she left it lying on
the kitchen counter while she tried to figure out a way to thoroughly destroy it. And I took it back. Yet for years, I lived in fear that she'd happen upon it and take it away again. So I kept it hidden, and it wasn't until I started high school that Appetite for Destruction assumed its rightful place in my collection. But the most ironic thing of all was this: at the time of the whole uproar, I couldn’t understand much of what Axl was yelling anyway, and what’s more, I wasn’t even familiar with the word “fuck” yet. I didn’t learn that one for another year, when I learned it from a kid at school named Glen Nixon.
Best songs: "It's So Easy," "Nightrain," "Sweet Child O' Mine," "Rocket Queen"
Worst Song: "You’re Crazy"
DEF LEPPARD: Hysteria; 1987 (Polygram)
Rating: 10.0
While I was busy immersing myself in Guns n' Roses, there was this other band that was beginning to grab my attention, an English outfit by the name of Def Leppard. I had actually heard of Def Leppard before I heard of GnR, since "Pour Some Sugar On Me" was a massive hit in the summer of 1988. Hell, even the black station played it, because of the rapping. At first, I thought the song was done by somebody named Jeff Leopard, but would soon stand corrected. Anyway, I said earlier that there were two huge hard-rock albums of the late '80's, and this is the other one. Hysteria yielded seven (count 'em, 7, si`ete) singles, over half the album, and most of them became huge hits. For its sheer pop accessibility, Hysteria might even be considered a bigger success than Appetite for Destruction.
The band certainly had a lot to prove on this, their fourth record. It had been four and a half years since the release of the enormously successful Pyromania, and on top of that, they had to cope with drummer Rick Alen losing an arm in a car accident. And so they retreated to the studio with guru producer Mutt Lange, emerging with this highly-polished, fairly inoffensive, radio-ready collection of tunes. More than a few fans of their more stripped-down, hard-edged first two albums would be sorely disappointed by the overtly commercial nature of Hysteria, which took the poppiness of Pyromania one big step further. And I guess I can't blame those fans. Leppard weren't just flirting with the non-metal fan anymore. They sat right down in the non-metal fan's lap and planted a big, juicy smooch right on his (or more frequently her) lips. And more and more, those lips tended to be underage lips. This was about the time the band really started to court the kiddie audience, what
with the streamlined sound and their attempt to project a cleaner image (although we all know they were just as sleazy and debauched as anybody backstage, and the horn-dog lyrics are still very much a factor).
I knew almost nothing of this at the time. Even knowing it all now, I can't find it in me to fault them. We can debate all day whether or not Hysteria is a blatant sellout, but in the end, it doesn't really matter. Why? Because it is a superb album any way you slice it: extremely well-written, impeccably produced, totally catchy and singable. Within about a week of owning it, two at the most, I felt like I had been listening to it my entire life. That, I've found, is one of the marks of a truly great album.
After being initiated into the heady world of hard rock by Guns n' Roses, I acquired a few more tapes (including, it pains me to report, the single for the Escape Club's "Wild, Wild West"), but Def Leppard was always there, in the back of my mind, as something I most definitely had to get ahold of, sooner or later. It grew and grew in my mind, as "Love Bites" reached number one on the charts, and stayed there for two weeks just as "Sweet Child O' Mine" did a couple months earlier. (Interestingly, even with the mind-boggling success Def Leppard enjoyed during the first half of their career, "Love Bites" would be their only number-one song.) And then along came "Armageddon It." All through that winter, it was all Def Leppard and Guns n' Roses. I remember counting my money, getting down to pennies toward the end, trying to get together the funds to afford the tape. Tapes were $8.39 at Tunes, the other place in town to buy music. (It's still there today, in fact.) I managed
to scrounge up that and three cents more. And finally, I persuaded my dad to take me in town to do the deed. I remember it was in late February of 1989, and we'd just had a big snow the day before, and it was still everywhere, but the roads were pretty much passable. So we got to Tunes, and I asked the girl behind the counter, "Do you have Hysteria?" And she asked, "Def Leppard?" And I said "Yeah." AND she went and fetched it. (In those days, they kept the cassettes behind glass.) And goddamn if that thing didn't cost $8.99! I was fifty-seven cents short. Without a word, my dad put up the difference, something I've always remembered. And off we went, back home, where I proceeded to devour the thing, and it became an instant favorite. Hell, it didn't hardly leave my boom-box for two months, especially since I was now scared to play my GnR tape, for fear of having it confiscated again. Also, I was broke.
The entire first half of Hysteria is made up of six hits in a row. The least of them, airplay-wise, is the first track, "Women." It probably seemed like a strange choice to make the opening cut, with its slow, plodding pace. It's easily the heaviest song here, though, especially when you get to the chorus. Quite grueling, for this record. The ominous verses are a trip as well, and always put me in mind of somebody climbing an old, creaky staircase. After that comes "Rocket," whose title is an obvious play on words once you catch the British Invasion and glitter-rock references in the lyrics. I thought the blast-off intro was the coolest thing around at the time, and Mutt Lange makes a cameo, intoning some urgent-sounding gibberish into a CB radio, pretending to be mission control. Of the seven hits, "Rocket" has always been my least favorite, although the chorus, like all of them, is undeniable. I always thought that long, drawn-out midsection killed the song though. Still
a good enough song, in spite of that. Next up, "Animal" pretty much sums up the whole album: unassailably melodic, with surprisingly complicated guitar work for the type of music it is (something they had been toying with almost from the beginning), and with more hooks than Big Moe's Bait 'n' Tackle. If "Women" didn't totally bowl over the program directors and get the request lines buzzing away at Dial-MTV, this, the second single, certainly did. It was also the first song on Hysteria that I hadn't already heard and became obsessed with. It's still one of my favorites, even with Joe Elliott's comical grunting.
Following right on the heels of "Animal," comes a string of three more megahits, the very ones I bought the tape for in the first place. "Love Bites" is your typical Leppard ballad of the time, being somewhat ominous-sounding and with an edge of despair. They used to be almost as good as Dokken or the Scorpions at this type of song. Mutt Lange takes the mic again for some more garbled mutterings as well. "Pour Some Sugar On Me" had the biggest crossover appeal, since it had that party-ready groove, the dumb lyrics, and yeah, the rapping. I have to admit, infectious as it is, this one sounds very dated, more so than just about anything else on the album. And Joe Elliott's attempt at tough-guy vocals is a bit silly too. Plus, I always liked the intro to the video version better than the one found here. I realize that contradicts the previous sentence, but as usual, I don't care. Side One wraps up with "Armageddon It," another song that tends to get a bad rap, but a song I
fully endorse, despite its being built around an extremely stupid pun. There, I admit it. Doesn't matter though, because the song is pure pop-metal candy. Joe's deeper vocals work much better here too. Remember the radio edit where they took out the entire second verse and chorus, for no apparent reason other than to shorten it up?
The fun is by no means over when you flip the tape over to the second side. (I say “tape” because I still haven't gotten around to replacing mine with a CD. Almost did it a few years ago, but couldn't get behind the idea of buying something I already owned.) We did the hits, and now it's time for the gems. Just like the first half, Side Two starts off comparatively heavy and sinister, with "Gods of War." I guess this was supposed to be taken seriously, some kind of protest or anti-war song, but since the only war going on at the time was one where nobody actually fought, the lyrics were irrelevant at the time. What isn't irrelevant are the melody and guitar work, both of which are outstanding, as usual. The brooding tone of the song also helps set it apart from most of the other songs, which are pretty high-spirited. Get a load of the hilarious ending, with the sounds of machine guns, lasers, zooming jets, and exploding bombs, interspersed with the grim proclamations of
various world leaders of the day, including Ronnie Raygun.
"Don't Shoot Shotgun" and "Run Riot" are both nods to Lef Deppard's harder-rocking early days, and both would've been right at home on 1981's AC/DC-with-vocal-harmonies opus High 'n' Dry, except for the super-slick production. "Excitable" has the guitar crunch as well, but the irresistibly bouncy beat (and the idiotic intro) make it a better fit on Hysteria. This has always been another of my favorites for some reason, even though I know it provokes violent shudders in some folks. And finally, two mellower tracks appear, the title track and "Love and Affection." Both are more than adequate, although "Hysteria" has the upper hand, of course, with that yearning melody and shimmering guitar riff.
Taken as a whole, Hysteria is everything that Def Leppard was at their peak: the big choruses, the layered vocals, the innumerable hooks, the spotless production, the deceptively simple guitar work. Eighteen years later, it does sound dated, no getting around that, and there's also no avoiding the fact that it doesn't rock as hard as their earlier material. But having said that, I think Hysteria is where the band's songwriting reached its peak. And the whole world knew it too. From its release in August of 1987, to the day "Rocket," the seventh and final single dropped off the charts, the album's life spanned almost two full years, which is one hell of an accomplishment. Getting a Diamond award from the RIAA for sales of ten million copies had to be nice too (although I'm not much of one to give a damn how much an album sells, so long as I like it--I'm just trying to illustrate how huge this album was). Leppard's next album wouldn't emerge until the spring of 1992, and
what they did on Adrenalize was to push the formula even further, which ended up being a bit too far. So if Hysteria is indeed a "sellout," it's one of the absolute best out there.
Best songs: "Animal," "Armageddon It," "Hysteria,” “Excitable”
Worst song: "Rocket"
SKID ROW: Slave To The Grind; 1991 (Atlantic)
Rating: 10.0
Good sweet Christ, what a kick in the ass this record is! Whoooo-ee! Skid Row began as just another pop-metal band of the late '80's. Granted, they were a damn good one, one of the best even, with a 1989 debut album that was something like Dokken with a lot more attitude. It was a big hit, of course, with four big videos, and a couple of top-ten hits. Hell, even my sister, whose taste in music had heretofore been confined to the likes of Whitney Houston and Madonna, claimed to like Skid Row, although that was owing as much to heartthrob singer Sebastian Bach as to the band's music.
But then it was 1991, and a new decade had dawned, and releasing another Dokken-with-attitude album just wasn't going to cut it, although I wasn't astute enough to gauge the changing musical climate at the time. Something different, that's what we needed. And that's exactly what we got. As Baz put it at the time, "The average twelve-year-old girl who's into Nelson isn't going to get it." And he was right. Although my sister was actually fourteen and didn't like Nelson, she didn't get it, although she pretended to like the first single, "Monkey Business," for a while. But I got it all right. I damn sure got it!
It's kind of surprising that I took to Slave to the Grind the way I did. I mean, sure, I fancied myself a metalhead, but I didn't have much experience with anything harder than, say, Guns n' Roses. I bought Metallica's And Justice for All because of "One," but never could get much into the rest of the album. (It’s still my least-favoite among Metallica’s ‘80’s output.) And then along came Slave to the Grind.
With their second album, Skid Row effectively wiped out anything they may have started on their debut, totally eradicated all traces of '80's-ness. You can tell both records are by the same band, but just barely. The music is hard as nails, and in a way that recalls more Cowboys From Hell than Under Lock and Key. The attitude isn't saucy anymore, it's downright belligerent, even violent. Ain't no pop in this metal! What this album did was to successfully weed out, in one savage stroke, the casual fans, my sister included. Of all the albums featured in this edition of Fizzy's Closet, Slave to the Grind is the one that sounds the least dated, the most current and relevant. And yet, somehow, it's still the debut that most people remember. Don't get me wrong, the first album is a great one in its own right, but Slave to the Grind is a whole different animal entirely. It's like putting a flounder in the same tank as a piranha. Sure, fry him up, and the flounder's pretty good
eating, but that piranha will make pretty short work of him.
Lots of bands, when they go into new directions, try to fool the old fans by including one new song that sounds like an old one. The old fans hear it, like it, rush out and buy it, and then hate the other eleven songs, and end up feeling duped. No such chicanery from the Skids. "Monkey Business" starts off the album making no bones about it: these guys aren't here to snap towels. The song has a strange little intro that has little to do with the rest of the track, but soon, Baz reaches the magic word, "bones," and draws it up into a towering scream. That scream, with the song kicking in behind it, ranks right up there as one of the most powerful moments in all metal. Snarling riff, grooving rhythm, odd, clanging cowbell, it's all here and more. The verses are almost rapped, so full of words are they, and you don't even notice until you read the lyrics that they don't make a damn bit of sense. Who cares, when you've got lines like "the freaks come out at nine, and it's
twenty to ten." I don't mind admitting this song completely ruled my world that summer. All over MTV, and even 96 Rock, the quirky local radio station that normally shied away from anything too heavy, played it a lot, but only after seven at night. I mean, until you heard it, it was about the last thing you'd expect from Skid Row, and then once you heard it, it was just what you WANTED to hear. No, there would be no fucking around on this record. These guys meant for it to stick.
And were they ever pissed off! Slave to the Grind is easily one of the angriest non-thrash albums you can find. The title track is this close to thrash though, downtuned and featuring some evil, mewling vocals. The subject here is just general rage at being caught up in the rat race, vowing to escape while knowing that you probably won't. "The Threat" is another vicious blast of defiance, with Baz grunting like he's been gut-punched, and refusing to "smile pretty for the wrecking ball." Definitely one of my favorites, as the music kicks liberal quantities of ass, and the words are something everyone can relate to. Favorite line: "I wasn't put here to be treated like some disease you hoped would go away if left alone."
By this point, all the squeamish ones have long since left the building, heading full-speed for the safety of home and their Enuff Z'Nuff records, but now it's time for the first ballad. That's the funny thing about this album. As hard and heavy as it most assuredly is, it actually has one more slow track than the debut. At any rate, "Quicksand Jesus," is a brooding, religion-questioning song, with excellent vocals, with high notes soaring above the superdistorted power chords.
The rest of the album is bursting with grooving, ham-fisted tracks. "Psycho Love" features a great, tooling bassline and a surprise cool-down section, while stellar backing vocals mark "Living On A Chain Gang," with its monster chorus that not even Baz's sometimes over-the-top screaming can mar too much. "Mudkicker" is a bit slower and more grinding, with another powerhouse chorus and huge riff. "Creepshow," one of the lesser tracks, still manages to stand out, with its "Oh no!" gang-chant and some more cowbell, and the line "Hit me with a shovel 'cuz I can't believe I dug you." Har!
Some faster tracks are sprinkled throughout as well. The controversial "Get The Fuck Out" is a gloriously crude, even mean-spirited semi-novelty directed at groupies who don't know their place, which is to "take my tonsil glaze right down your throat." This one aroused a fair amount of outrage, and I suppose I can understand why, as the lyrics were extremely crass by the standards of the day. Not only were Skid Row musical innovators, however, but they were also marketing pioneers. They offered two versions of the album, one with "Get The Fuck Out," and one with an alternate track called "Beggars' Day." "All! The way!" the backing vocals bellow, before Baz shrieks the rest of the chorus. Definitely a good song, not a throwaway at all. I own both versions now, the clean one on cassette and the dirty one on CD, and can't find fault with either song.
Of course, bassist Rachel Bolan (Rachel? The hell?) has never made a secret of his love of punk rock, and so we get "Riot Act," an obvious nod to his roots. I'm not the biggest punk fan, but they metal it up nicely, and it fits perfectly, and adds a bit of a different texture to the album.
Speaking of texture, there are still two ballads left, and they're both killers. "In A Darkened Room" features some of the most beautiful lead guitar ever laid down, and the vocal melodies are just as good, some of Baz's best singing ever, although I'm not at all sure what the topic is supposed to be. I can remember turning the volume all the way up as the song faded out, so I could hear more of the wailing solo, just as it started to mimic the chorus melody. The album closes with "Wasted Time," a bleak, despairing tale of watching a best friend's escalating heroin addiction. Another great solo is featured, one that fairly howls with emotion, and there's a little coda too. "I never thought you'd let it get this far, boy!" Baz rages, before repeating the same line in haunting a capella. A lone power chord (an F) fades up slowly, then out, and the album's done.
Overall, the sound is very "modern," although not in the nu-metal sense. What I'm getting at is that this is most decidedly not "hair-band" music in any way, shape or form. The rhythms pummel and pound, and the riffs are all over the place. The lyrics are generally smart, when they make sense, which is about three-quarters of the time. They range from ranting against authority ("The Threat," "Riot Act") to dealing with societal woes ("Living On A Chain Gang") to blasting our tabloid-talk-show culture ("Creepshow"). Admittedly, the attitude toward women isn't what you might call gentlemanly, but this isn't a gentlemanly record. Meanwhile, the musicianship is superb. Guitarists Dave "Snake" Sabo and Scotti Hill earn their place among metal's top six-string teams. The solos are especially noteworthy; some are ripping and ear-splitting, others are total melody. If the album has a flaw, maybe it's Sebastian Bach. Baz is often hailed, quite rightly I might add, as one of the
all-time great metal vocalists, and he can do just about anything with that voice, but he has a way of sometimes grating on the nerves. Sometimes his screams get a bit excessive, and other times he tries to put more gravel in his voice than he actually possesses. But it's such a minor drawback, I couldn't see fit to knock anything off the rating.
I, of course, first bought the clean version, in July of '91. It was another of those tapes I listened to nearly nonstop. I bought a few more in the next couple months, even including Firehouse's debut and Tesla’s Psychotic Supper (two other favorites of mine--see Fizzy's Closets 1 and 5), but it seems like none of them stayed in my stereo very long before I put in Skid Row again. I took that tape with me to summer camp that year, blasted selected songs by the pool at home, and continued to play it almost daily for months. Naturally, I was curious to hear what the mysterious "Get The Fuck Out" sounded like, especially when Skid Row were banned from playing Wembley after refusing to change the lyrics. But I never knew anybody who had the other version, at least not handy. Years later, I read somewhere that the song had been deleted from the band's catalog, and that the clean version was now the only one available. When I started downloading music off the Internet, "Get The Fuck Out" was among the
first couple dozen songs I got. Finally, earlier this year, since my cassette was beginning to sound a little thin, I broke down and bought a copy of Slave to the Grind on CD. The dirty one. So much for being deleted from the catalog. It was the best twelve bucks I spent all year. The music sounds every bit as fresh and potent as it did when the record first came out. This one hasn't lost a single thing.
Best songs: "Monkey Business," "The Threat," "In A Darkened Room," “Wasted Time”
Worst song: "Creepshow"
JACKYL: Jackyl; 1992 (Geffen)
Rating: 9.5
And the peanut gallery erupts into shrill cries of "Redneck!" "White trash!" "Dirtball!" So be it. I'm a Jackyl fan, and freely admit it. At the same time, I also admit that not all Jackyl albums are created equal. However, the band's 1992 debut is definitely the cream of the crop.
Hailing from Atlanta, Georgia, Jackyl slaved away in the bars all up and down the East Coast for a few years, with a singer named Ronnie Honeycutt, whom they generally don't acknowledge. Their official biography begins in 1990, with the arrival of wild-eyed rebel Jesse James Dupree as lead singer. The band were signed to Geffen by A&R guru John Kalodner, and released their debut in August of 1992, when grunge fever was in full swing. And yet there were a total of five radio hits off of it, and I do mean hits, and the album went double platinum. I shouldn’t have to note what a feat that was, given the musical climate at the time. As a side note, it was produced by Brendan O'Brien, who is more famous for his work with various alternative bands throughout the rest of the decade. His work here results in a crystal-clear sound, with a great drum tone, loud bass, and guitars as crunchy as a can of Pringles under a sledgehammer. The band earned themselves a spot opening for Lynyrd Skynyrd right around that time, but were soon kicked off the tour because their music and pants-dropping, shotgun-blasting
stage antics were deemed just too rowdy for that crowd.
People often refer to Jackyl as being a southern AC/DC clone. This is unfair, and not even all that true either, even as they would go on to collaborate with Brian Johnson on two songs some years later. The big power chords and simplistic riffs and song structures are there, to be sure, but Jackyl owes just as much to Black Oak Arkansas as to AC/DC. Dupree in particular owes a considerable debt to Black Oak's "Jim Dandy" Mangrum, one of hard rock's more underrated (and influential) wild-man personas. Dupree fits solidly into that larger-than-life category, and tends to hog the limelight, threatening to overpower the music. Many people compare him to his friend Brian Johnson, and the resemblance is there, to be fair, but he's by no means a dead ringer. One thing I've heard very few people mention, however, is Jackyl's secret weapon: the monster rhythm section of Chris Worley on drums and Tom Bettini on bass. (The guitars are supplied by Chris's brother Jeff, and Jimmy Stiff.)
Literally every song on the debut packs a giant groove that makes it nearly impossible to sit still. The loose, jaunty feel of the songs is a direct product of these two gents, and is only multiplied by the biting riffs and sassy, insouciant lyrics. Dupree's irrepressible personality is the finishing touch, like the class clown with a streak of meanness, pushing and pushing, almost hoping you'll voice an objection so he can beat you up.
The fun begins with the first single, the classic underdog anthem, "I Stand Alone." Not only is it one of the band's best songs ever, I would have to say it's one of my all-time favorite songs. Top five, definitely. Shit, even people who normally hate Jackyl tend to like "I Stand Alone." This is the first song I put on if I'm having a bad day, or to get myself pumped up for something important or unpleasant, or just want to blow off steam. It's that kind of a song. It's "my song," if you will. Meant to be played loud and proud. By the time the chorus ends in that scream, you want to scream along.
Among the other singles, "Down On Me" is the one that tends to get the most airplay these days, and is also mostly responsible for the AC/DC comparisons. Oddly, it's also my least favorite among the hits. Oh, there's nothing really wrong with it. The riff is simple and infectious, and the gang-chorus is even more so, but overall, it's not one of my most favorite Jackyl tunes. The raunchy "Dirty Little Mind" is much better, and I bet is a perennial titty-bar favorite, with that stripper-ready rhythm and endless repeated chants of "Dirty!" The solo is replaced with a brief, campy rap break, followed by some porno sound effects. There have been several live versions of this one released since, each subsequently dirtier than the last.
"When Will It Rain," is more sedate, and is about the closest we get to mellow. It also features the best vocal melody (as opposed to just yelling and carrying on) and some of Dupree's best singing. The lyrics are about the only ones on the record to go beyond the completely literal, with metaphors about drought and blistering heat used to symbolize ……… well, you decide. I can remember this song being popular right around the early summer of 1993, smack in the middle of a hellacious heat wave here on Delmarva, and for the entire region. Having a song like "When Will It Rain," on the radio all the time was just too fitting.
Of course, when you mention the name Jackyl, most people immediately think of chainsaws, and they do that because a chainsaw figures prominently in "The Lumberjack." The second single off the album, it's a standard blues tune with standard A-D-E chord progression, and instead of guiitar solos, it features Dupree cutting up commandeered studio furniture with a chainsaw. The hilarious video, featuring the band crashing a gathering of Atlanta radio bigwigs with chainsaw in tow, helped get the band a lot of attention, as did the sheer novelty of the song. I was all eager to hear it back in the day, because I loved "I Stand Alone." The first time I finally caught it on the radio, I thought "What the fuck is THIS?!" Which was precisely the point. Some novelty songs are so novel, they stop being novelties. As gleefully moronic as "The Lumberjack" is, it became the band's signature track, which is both good and bad. Good, because it definitely set Jackyl apart and made people
remember them. Bad, because they've had a tough time being remembered for anything but being "that chainsaw band." It isn't as though the damn thing gets used more than once per album, after all. Even then, I think they only keep using it because some people expect them to. Anyway, "The Lumberjack" had a two-pronged effect on me: 1) it made me obsessed with taping it off the radio without some deejay yammering over it or running another song into it (one or the other, and often both, happened the vast majority of the time), and 2) I became obsessed with power tools for the next few months.
Those are the five singles. The rest of the album should in no way be dismissed, however, as nearly every other track is a standout in some way. Get an earful of that swinging strut on "Brain Drain" and try not to dislocate anything. Try not to sing along with the chovus on "Back Off Brother." Incidentally, "Back Off Brother" may have been slated to be the sixth single, because there's a video for it, rather hard to find but available somewhere online, and featuring Dupree in an Uncle Sam outfit. Even "Reach For Me," possibly the weakest track, boasts another killer groove and sharp hook.
About the only time since his departure that Jackyl acknowledges former singer Ronnie Honeycutt is to give him a writing credit on the concert favorite "Redneck Punk." It sounds like what you might expect from a song with that title: fast but twangy, aggressive but somehow bouncy. The guitars plunk away on that low E, and Dupree dares you to make something of it. "I got a hard enough time just doin' without," he rails, "and nobody ever better run their fuckin' mouth!" It's not quite as universal declaration of underdogness as "I Stand Alone," but it's not far off.
And then, lurking near album's end, we're treated to the glorious "Just Like A Devil." One of the more AC/DC-like tracks, it still packs a major wallop, with a nasty-ass riff and yet another big chorus. The lyrics take a bit of a different perspective on a friends-with-benefits relationship of convenience. "You only like me because I scratch your itch," Dupree sneers, although it's clear he's not too fond of her either. "I should give you up and walk away, I know I should," he sings later, "but the fact still remains, you're finger-lickin' good!" After that, the only song left is a snappy little number called "She Loves My Cock." I don't guess I need to elaborate on that. Suffice it to say that, as totally crude and chauvinistic as it undoubtedly is, it still manages to retain some kind of warped, bedraggled charm, and is typical (if a bit more explicit) of Jackyl's style of bawdy sex-comedy lyrics. Of course Wal-Mart and KMart didn't see it that way, and both chains
refused to stock the record. So Jackyl set up in a KMart parking lot in Marietta, Georgia, for an impromptu jam session. The result was the video for "I Stand Alone" and a trip to jail for the band. Eventually, however, Geffen struck a deal with both stores, and a clean version was released, differing from the original only in the absence of the last track.
And it was that version that I first got on cassette. My sister got it for me for my birthday in 1996. I had always liked Jackyl, but had just never gotten around to buying it. I made up for lost time in a hurry, as Jackyl's music was such a blessed relief from the dreary modern-rock crap I was trying hard to force myself to like at the time. It didn't really bother me too much that I had a censored version, since I didn't know the full details of the thing, and you can't miss a song you've never heard anyway, right? Anyway, "I Stand Alone" quickly became an after-school favorite on bad days, and I secretly wished it could be the official song of the Seaford High Class of '98. (Despite my nomination, the winner was Green Day's godawful "Time of Your Life.") Then I went off to college, and Jackyl could be heard frequently emanating from my dorm room that lonely first year. (My roommate, a guy from Jersey named Seth, whose favorite band was 311, didn’t know what to think.) And then it became a party favorite, once I started partying, and various songs got regular airplay on
my various radio shows. And when I started downloading tunes, Jackyl's debut was the first full CD I got. "She Loves My Cock" included.
There was always something about Jackyl that appealed to me. The exuberant, cocky attitude, the barely-contained glee, the sense of scrappy, battle-hardened pride, the idea of doing what YOU want, and not caring what other people might think. If other people don't like it, that only strengthens your resolve.
And lots of people don't like Jackyl, dismiss them as "hillbilly white-trash music," something Jaackyl (mainly Jesse) haven't exactly worked to disprove. In 1993, he proudly proclaimed, "We're America's band. We're the pink flamingo in front of the lime-green mobile-home trailer of rock!" Some consider Jackyl a "hair-band," which is ridiculous, but these are the types of people who would slap the same tag on Anthrax or Iron Maiden. But behind all the exaggerated, chest-puffing posturing, resides a very canny knack for playing to their strengths. And some very well-crafted and rockin' tunes, too. It's fun music, meant to be played loud and enjoyed and not taken too
seriously.
Final notes: some non-album tracks exist from the O'Brien sessions that are worth tracking down. "Mister, Can You Spare A Dime," with it's countrified intro, turned up on the 1998 contractual-obligation hits collection Choice Cuts. "Mental Masturbation" wound up on the 1993 smash compilation The Beavis and Butt-Head Experience, alongside hits by Megadeth and Aerosmith. "Walkin' Change" is easily the best of the bunch, and should have been on the record for sure, but was just the B-side of the "When Will It Rain" single, and can now be found only in the outer reaches of cyberspace.
Meanwhile, Jackyl continues to tour incessantly, now with Roman Glick (ex-Brother Cane) on bass, and Dupree himself taking over second-guitar duties, replacing Tom Bettini and Jimmy Stiff, who “got religion” in 1999. However, their recorded output is a bit spotty, with each album decreasing in quality and consistency through the remainder of the ’90’s. They've maintained rabid fanbase, and possess a positive genius for getting attention, whether it be appearing at Woodstock ’94, setting a world record for performing a hundred shows in fifty days in the fall of 1998, to being among the first artists of any genre to offer a musical response
to the terror attacks of 2001, to the collaborations with Brian Johnson. Along the way, Jesse's vocals have gotten raspier and his lyrics more and more belligerent, almost bitter, with particular regard to the music industry. That's understandable, since the industry has pretty much left Jackyl for dead once it became clear alternative music wasn't just a fad.
What I'm getting at here is, if you're going to own just one Jackyl album, it absolutely must be the 1992 self-titled debut. 1994's Push Comes to Shove is pretty good, despite some lackluster production from the late Bruce "Slippery When Wet" Fairbairn, and even managed to go gold. 2002's Relentless is even better, but the 1992 release is still the standard by which all other Jackyl records must be measured. Play it loud and proud, and remember, "whether you like it or whether you don't ……… that's the way we like it!"
Best Songs: "I Stand Alone," "Dirty Little Mind," "When Will It Rain," "Just Like A Devil"
Worst Song: "Reach For Me," "Brain Drain"
