POP MUSIC : Headbangers’ Haven : L.A. Plays Host to a New Generation of Glam and Speed-Metal Bands

Jon Williamson, leader of the glam-rock band Sibling Rivalry, takes a deep breath when he thinks about the days back home in Denver when people picked on him because of his appearance on stage.

Even most of the rock fans who saw him in clubs like the Party Place or Shotgun Willie’s in nearby Colorado Springs thought all his pretty, shoulder-length blond hair and eye shadow was not in keeping with their idea of a male pop star. So, you can imagine what some of the people he encountered on the street thought about his rock ‘n’ rouge posture. There were numerous fights with local “cowboys”--and nights spent in jail.

“We had a lot of people who gave us trouble,” Williamson reflects, sitting in his small apartment, just a siren’s cry from Hollywood and Vine. And if the folks in Denver got on his case, Willamson hates to think what would have happened to him in the backwoods areas of the South. “I kinda fear those places,” he says, shaking his head.

But Williamson, 24, feels at home in Los Angeles, where he moved two years ago. This city is a haven for the new glam and speed-metal wings of the heavy-metal movement that is gaining new recruits daily. An army of 100 or more fledgling bands plays regularly at such clubs as the Troubadour in West Hollywood, the Country Club in Reseda and Waters in San Pedro.

They are all hoping some day to join the ranks of the genre’s stars, a galaxy of nationally known bands with such colorful names as Poison (glam-oriented) and Slayer (speed-directed), both of whom have songs showcased in “Less Than Zero,” the film based on Bret Easton Ellis’ best seller about spoiled Westside rich kids.

Lots of glam or speed-metal fans would probably get a chuckle out of the fact that their music is being used in a film about terminally rich preppies. The real audience for this music, these fans will proudly tell you, is more working class than business class--the modern-day headbangers.

The fact that film makers would sprinkle the “Less Than Zero” score with this kind of music--rather than more polite, dance-oriented acts like INXS that are actually cited in the book--suggests a growing acceptance of this aggressive and flamboyant music.

Today, Los Angeles. Tomorrow, the world?

Critics may be seeing red through their horn-rimmed glasses, and smirking cynics may dismiss all the big hair, clenched fists, and pouting lips as the latest phase of gimmick rock, but a new generation of clubgoers and record buyers is helping Los Angeles heavy metal go through an unprecedented resurgence.

Much of this ‘80s heavy metal is a distant and more headbanging cousin to such style-conscious and gender-bending ‘70s rockers as the New York Dolls, T. Rex and Alice Cooper. It’s defining today’s L.A. rock scene in the same way the laid-back singer-songwriter tradition highlighted the mid ‘70s or the post-punk hard-core and power-pop boomlet set the pace for the late ‘70s.

The movement is rather varied, encompassing such sub-genres as glam, speed metal and old-fashioned hard rock.

Glam puts an emphasis on a carefully planned image as well as the music. The inspiration is the tacky, trashy femme stance taken by the New York Dolls in the ‘70s and Motley Crue in the early ‘80s.

Speed metal roars along like an amphetamine-driven marriage of metal and punk. Speed-metal fans decry fashion and instead applaud musicianship and political stances--often of the extreme left-wing or right-wing variety. Speed metal’s appeal cuts across the board to punks, headbangers, skinheads, skateboarders, surfers and even some usually metal-hating critics.

Hard-rock bands, like Great White and Guns N’ Roses, are the most traditional and carry on the blues-based, Aerosmith/Deep Purple vein of ‘70s-style heavy rock. Yet in the competitive L.A. atmosphere, even bands like these have been known to glam it up or speed it up a bit.

The first wave of this movement was triggered in 1983 when Motley Crue, Ratt and Quiet Riot sprang from the Hollywood clubs and into the mainstream of the nation’s sports arenas.

The second--and bigger--wave saw the likes of Poison, Slayer, W.A.S.P., Armored Saint, Great White, Stryper, Keel, Dokken, Megadeth, Guns N’ Roses and Faster Pussycat rack up impressive record sales this year without much initial radio support.

Four of the main West Hollywood rock clubs--the Troubadour, Gazzarri’s, the Roxy and the Whisky--are virtual headquarters for the scene, while the Country Club in Reseda, Waters in San Pedro, Jezebel’s in Anaheim and a variety of other Southland nightspots feature a steady diet of shags, scarves and Spandex.

The movement also has its own publications (Rock City News, Endless Party and the Screamer), radio station (KNAC-FM), and soon it will have its own film. Penelope Spheeris, who explored the local punk milieu in the celebrated 1980 film “The Decline of Western Civilization,” looks into the L.A. metal scene in her new documentary, “The Decline of Western Civilization, Part 2.”

And this could be just the tip of a metallic iceberg. Major-label debuts are due over the next few months from such scene stalwarts as Jetboy, L.A. Guns, Leatherwolf, Roxanne, Delta Rebels (formerly the Rock City Angels) and D’Molls, a band once known for wearing lingerie on stage.

Much anticipated is the initial Warner Bros. album by Jane’s Addiction, the art-metal quartet that has built a fanatical following. EMI-Manhattan has just released the first album by Lions & Ghosts, a quartet whose music--a lush blend of pop and psychedelia--can hardly be described as metal, but which played the same clubs and evolved from the same environment as its more metal-minded brethren.

Even Rhino Records, known primarily for its reissues of classic rock and R&B;, is getting into the act with a new metal label, Rampage, which has as its first release a sampler of 10 local metal acts.

‘Everything Goes’

Yet the question remains as to why the scene is so endemic to Los Angeles and why so much of the movement is dominated by the “pretty boy” or glam-influenced style that is so often sneered at by fans of traditional and speed metal.

Metallica reportedly moved from Los Angeles to their current base of San Francisco because they didn’t like the heavy glam influence on the L.A. circuit, and Megadeth, who also prefer a more stripped-down, jeans and T-shirt approach, have lashed out at the glam-metal scene on several occasions.

But the scene persists and continues to create bands that can move the vinyl. Just about any outsider who scans the local music magazines or stumbles into any number of clubs around town may be left wondering if the entire city will not meet its fate at the hands of the San Andreas but under a sea of Aqua Net and hair extensions.

“I was in New York and a guy would get killed walking around looking like (Poison’s) Bret Michaels. Here, everything goes and is accepted,” laughs Lisa Gladfelter, who handles development and publicity for heavy metal at Enigma Records, the label that gave the world Stryper and Poison and distributes some of the releases from the San Fernando Valley-based Metal Blade label.

“Except for Cinderella, all the glam bands come from L.A. It started with Motley Crue. Van Halen never went for the full-on image. Of course, Aerosmith had a big influence on bands like Motley Crue and Guns N’ Roses. Poison took what Motley Crue were doing and updated it.”

Concurs Vicky Hamilton, who has worked with or managed Poison, Stryper, Motley Crue and Faster Pussycat and who now does independent A&R; for Geffen (where she works with newcomers like Darling Cool and Salty Dog): “When I first came out here, it was punk, European and synthesizer music which was happening. But then Motley Crue came out and the kids were confused but it caught on.”

In fact, Tom Zutaut, the A&R; executive who signed Motley Crue to Elektra and, more recently, Guns N’ Roses to Geffen, admits he passed on Poison because he thought the band was too Crue. “The lead singer uses some of the very same raps that (Crue singer) Vince Neil used six years ago. To me, it was almost frightening,” he recalls. “But 2 million record sales later, you say to yourself, ‘Well, I was just being too cynical.’ ”

Jon Williamson of Sibling Rivalry (which remains unsigned even though they are popular, consistently scoring high in polls conducted by Music Connection magazine) can remember what it was like when he first saw Motley Crue.

“We really liked their earlier albums,” he says. “When we started seeing Nikki Sixx’s hair, it was kind of a trip for us. We said, ‘Whoa! They could do that with us!’ ”

Motley Crue was so influential in 1983 because, for kids too young to know much about the stacked heels, feather boas and lip gloss of the ‘70s glam era, the sexually ambiguous yet guitar-driven image was seen as being refreshingly different from the artful poses of punk and new wave dance music, the two other main rock ‘n’ roll youth subcultures of the day.

“When a new look hits this town, fashion is always a big part of it, whether it’s punk, the Knack or Motley Crue,” observes Bruce Duff, a longtime scene-watcher and writer for Music Connection and also bassist for the witty metal band, Jesters of Destiny. “When something hits, the audiences are always really into it. It doesn’t happen as much on the East Coast. There, they just want to be entertained, they don’t want to go through a big metamorphosis themselves.”

Of course, with the success of Motley Crue, they weren’t going to have the scene to themselves and--in true supply and demand fashion--clubs sprouted as a forum for the style. “There are a number of venues where you can get off the ground very easily,” observes Peter Philbin, the West Coast A&R; vice-president at Elektra who signed Faster Pussycat.

“If you’re doing A&R; in L.A. and you care about performing bands, you should be at the Troubadour, Whisky, Gazzarri’s. You will see a lot of bands in this fashion. It’s a breeding ground for it and good bands come out of it. It’s all evolved and escalating rapidly. Bands that admitted to copying Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin have had some success and now people are copying them.

“I signed Faster Pussycat and they’re certainly a fashion band. But I didn’t sign them because they are a fashion band. They were getting better live, getting a following, and they wrote a song (“Got Your Number Off the Bathroom Wall”) that was believable. It didn’t say a lot to my life, but I believed them. It painted a picture. They’re part of a trend, but they’re a viable act, trend or not. We’re at a little over 100,000 LPs with no radio and only word of mouth. Guns N’ Roses are the same way.”

‘L.A.’s the Place’

News of the action in Los Angeles spread like a seismic wave to all points north and east. Poison and D’Molls came from Pennsylvania and Illinois respectively while the members of Faster Pussycat came from various parts of the country. “They’re not born in Hollywood and raised in the Valley,” says film maker Penelope Spheeris of these bands. “Sixty to 70% come from the rest of the country, mostly the heartland. They all come here to make it and they come here because this is where the record companies are. If you want to be a movie star, you don’t move to Omaha and, if you want to be a rock ‘n’ roll star, you don’t move to Tallahassee.”

By the same reasoning, New York should have an equally vibrant scene. “It’s so funny, because New York thinks of itself as the hub of the universe and I think they’ve been up in the clouds for so long that they’ve been missing out on what’s going on on the ground,” continues Spheeris. “Punk rock is just starting to thrive in New York, whereas here it was happening eight years ago. There are quite a few glam bands in New York but L.A.’s the place. I mean, doesn’t glamour equal Hollywood? You have to remember that.”

“In New York, there aren’t that many venues where you can play,” adds Elektra’s Philbin. “The Cat Club has a heavy-metal night and there’s L’Amour in Brooklyn. Here, success breeds success.”

Troubadour talent coordinator Bobby Dean, who shares the booking responsibilities at the West Hollywood club with Gina Barsamian, says of the metal situation in other cities, “They’re four to six years behind L.A. They pick up on it too. But when I was on the East Coast, the bands that were wearing makeup and dyeing their hair for the stage didn’t want me to see them like that when they were offstage.”

But the appeal of the music goes deeper than sheer freedom of expression. Ann Arbor-based writer Chuck Eddy, a heavy-metal enthusiast whose work has appeared in the Village Voice and recently wrote an essay titled “Why Heavy Metal Matters” for a Minneapolis magazine, chalks it up to the songs themselves, which he maintains are of high quality.

It should be noted that Eddy’s opinions fly in the face of current critical thought, which maintains that metal is pre-packaged outrage and corporate-orchestrated aggression that plays to the basest instincts of teen-agers while simultaneously enriching the coffers of multinational record companies.

“At first, the makeup bothered me,” Eddy admits of his feelings toward the L.A. bands. “It’s not revolutionary anymore like when Little Richard or Alice Cooper did it. I don’t know why they do it; it’s been done before. But after a while you forget about that. It doesn’t help the music but it doesn’t hurt it either. I think Poison are a great bubble-gum band. What bothers me is when bands try to be something they aren’t. Guns N’ Roses are offensive, but these guys seem as if they really are that way. Motley Crue, on the other hand, probably aren’t misogynist enough . They’re just misogynist enough to get on the radio.”

Spheeris feels that much of the appeal is due to the burgeoning sexuality on the part of the teen-age and young adult fans. “As far as the girl fans, what I can see is that a guy in makeup and fishnets, whether they be on his legs or arms, is a lot less intimidating sexually to a teen-age girl than your basic jock football player image.

“That’s kind of frightening on a lot of levels,” states Spheeris. “Then the guys go there because the girls are there. The interesting thing about this metal and glam movement, which is quite different from the punk movement, is that it is centered around sex.”

Zutaut agrees. “I think the actual cuteness factor has a lot more to do with it than the actual (wearing of) lingerie, but there’s no doubt that some girls would find some jock with big biceps and a crew cut threatening and overpowering. Maybe at some level, maybe girls do feel less threatened by guys who give off feminine energy. But if you put four ugly guys up there in lingerie, it wouldn’t mean a thing.”

Kevin Williamson, the manager of Sibling Rivalry, sees the music more as working-class release. “What it comes down to is, that the kids are working 9 to 5, they’re working their rear ends off and, at the end of the week, they want to see something different. They want to see something they could never do. Everybody wants to go out and see the weirdest and the best sound. So, the look has a lot to do with it. It’s a way of escapism from the 9 to 5.”

Younger brother Jon Williamson believes the kids are just trying to find an identity and have fun. “When you go out to the clubs around here, they are always packed with beautiful women and it seems most of them are going for the real long-haired guys. I don’t know what tendency that brings out in them,” he trails off and laughs.

Some kids, he adds, “have gone into a few different areas of music and looks, from hard-core punk to heavy metal just to attain an image for themselves, and I suppose it helps them along a little bit. If they feel better doing that and they feel better about themselves, then it’s fine.”

‘Glam Is Stagnant’

Yet there are signs that the movement is, if not faltering, at least slightly rearranging its makeup. MTV has announced that it’s cutting back on the number of metal clips it airs, a move that no doubt will affect the new L.A. bands being released over the coming months. Motley Crue have dropped their glam image in favor of a more down-to-earth, street-oriented look, and some feel this is the wave of the near-future. Now that Poison and Stryper are being accepted in the heartland, some locals want to move on to something else.

“It seemed before that everyone had big hair and lots of makeup,” notes Jamie Brown, lead singer for Roxanne, a band that recently signed with CBS/Scotti Brothers. “That’s leveled off a bit.”

“Glam is still going on but it’s stagnant,” offers Vicky Hamilton. “I’m looking for something else to happen. I see it breaking off into funk-glam or punk-glam. Lions & Ghosts and (Britain’s) Gene Loves Jezebel have a glam style but it’s not as hard. And Guns N’ Roses aren’t really glam--well, biker glam. Maybe that’s the next thing. There will always be a certain amount of glamour in rock but a lot of bands now, like Whitesnake, are going for a much more masculine image.”

D’Molls have discarded their lingerie, and Sibling Rivalry have altered their appearance. “When we got out here, we expected every band to be completely blown-out glam,” admits Jon Williamson. “So we came out here with the glam image and we wore everything the whole glam thing stands for: a lot of jewelry, a lot of makeup, a lot of big hair. (But) we wanted to look a little tougher to the audience and we started toning it down a bit.”

“The bands won’t go away, but it will evolve,” insists Enigma’s Lisa Gladfelter. “Guns N’ Roses and Faster Pussycat aren’t as pretty as the bands before them were. But it won’t become extinct.”

She laughs. “You see kids in 7-Eleven with full-on makeup. It’s just Hollywood.”