FORMER TNT FRONTMAN, TONY HARNELL, SAYS GRUNGE MUSIC WAS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE TERMINATION OF THE ’80S METAL SCENE
Former TNT singer, Tony Harnell, states that he does not believe that the ’90s Grunge movement was responsible for the dissolution of the ’80s glam metal scene.
“I remember seeing the Nirvana video on MTV, and I instantly knew,” Harnell told the Cobras & Fire podcast (transcribed via blabbermouth.net). “I think the first time I saw it, I just was, like, ‘Yeah, this is gonna change things for everybody.'”
“A lot of my peers and a lot of the fans are, like, ‘Oh, I hate that shit. Grunge killed our music,'” Harnell said. “I don’t see it that way at all. I think the labels started signing way too many bands that looked and sounded like other bands. And there was never really a rock era that was like that before. Because if you think about the ’70s, you had a lot of different styles of big hard rock bands. On one side, you had Led Zeppelin, you had Deep Purple — they were very different from each other. You had Aerosmith — they were different. You had KISS, you had Judas Priest, you had Black Sabbath. You had all these different bands that were very, very not like each other at all, but they were all hard rock. And they looked a little different, they had their own image. And then, all of a sudden, in the ’80s, everybody wanted the same clothes, the same hair, the same guys, the same producers, the same songwriters.”
He continued, “If anything, when Nirvana and Soundgarden and these bands came out, all it did is it shined a really harsh light on how boring and repetitive everything got. Because it would have made more sense to take the bands that were already established — big and medium — and develop them more rather than to get all these other bands that sounded like other bands… Like I said, it was the same look, the same songwriters, the same producers, and it just started to be… Nobody was offering anything… Don’t get me wrong, there were a few that got in there that were interesting and different, but, for the most part, they were all just sort of rehashes, slightly, of other bands.”
Harnell has been in and out of TNT several times, most recently in 2016 and 2017. He was also briefly the singer for Skid Row in 2015. He is currently promoting Dysphoria, the third album from his Starbreaker collaborative project with Primal Fear guitarist Magnus Karlsson. It will be released on January 25th through Frontiers Music Srl.
Of course, this all a matter of personal opinion, and I do not happen to agree with Harnell. I do believe it was partially responsible for aiding in the collapse of the ’80s metal scene.
MTV, radio and the record labels that sought to promote Grunge, by saying it was the “latest thing,” were also responsible. If they felt more money was to be made by pushing the ’80 sound, Grunge would have been a peripheral rock movement.
Again, it is all subjective, and while I can appreciate some of the Grunge music, I would take a secondary, or tertiary ’80s band, over any Grunge band.
Outside of STP, whom I really do not consider Grunge, per se, I hardly ever listen to any of my older Grunge records.
I have to really be in the mood to be depressed to put on AIC, Soundgarden, etc.
To each their own, but I would rather listen to Priest, Van Halen, Ratt, Whitesnake, Tesla etc., any day over sludgy guitars and depressing lyrics, I have Sabbath for that, and they do it way better. 😉
D 🙂
I agree Dana.
I pretty much see grunge as emo without the black makeup.
Tyger,
That is an excellent description, well done. 🙂
D 🙂
What a great post ! I happen to agree with both of you ! “Hair bands “ were never my thing guys dressing like women and trying to act tough and cool at the same time with guitarists who tried to play so fast it became foolish- was ridiculous to me ! And grunge did shine a bright light on how overblown and repetitive that style of music got- also Dana your reply I believe is right on the money – I think it was a perfect storm of record company stupidity combined with greed – and then the record companies signed even more copy cat bands – the music became so diluted – most bands if they were lucky might have one decent single… people got sick of buying shitty albums – I think that set the stage perfectly for file sharing
You’re right, Dana,
Depressed is the right word, I hated the 90s. Priest and Maiden didn’t have Halford or Dickinson.
I respect Nervana, and I did really like AIC, but hated Pearl Jam and I felt abandoned by music, all I had left was Ozzy, AC⚡️DC, Overkill and Motörhead.
I never really liked “Load” and “Reload,” to me, it was like load and reload of crap. I was also not too fond of the Anthrax Bush years. Even Kiss, was selling out with Carnival of Souls (Though I did like the song Childhoods end from that album) I spent most of the ’90s picking up albums I never had chance to buy in 80s
I really missed the ’70s and ’80s music and found nothing wrong with it. I feel that a bunch of bands wanted to spread the dreariness of Seattle around. It was weird that only thing I liked out of Seattle was Queensryche, now all we have are morons who think they’re Metal, and believe Halford is a false God. Video May have killed the radio star, but Grunge just knocked metal unconscious for a bit. I would feel better just throwing Justine Bieber under a Motley Crue bus.
Charles,
Again, we are in simpatico, I was depressed during the Grunge era, too. From both the music itself, and what it replaced.
D 🙂
A dark depressing decade, thanks to the likes of Darth Vedder
A lot of music that came out at the time, one album be real great, the next sucks. Things got better for me, when Halford and Dickinson, returned to their respective bands. Besides, I really don’t like to watch bands play in flannel staring at the floor while they play…Boring!
Darth Vedder-LOL!!
This story is bullsh-t! First of all, the 80’s were never boring! Pearl Jam, Nirvana, now that’s f–king boring!! Not every 80’s band got buried in the grunge era, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, even Van Halen survived through the “grunge era,” – they just couldn’t survive each other! And if bands like Motley Crue and Ratt focused more on the music and less on the drugs, they could’ve been just as big and relevant in the 90’s as they were in the 80’s!
Hu is this Harnell guy anyway?
LOL!!
Singer of TNT, you know them: Everyone’s A Star, !0,000 Lovers, Inutution. Good band, great guitar player (Ronnie Le Tekrø).
You make a good point, but Grunge did bury a lot of great bands, such as Tora Tora, who would have been bigger, had that genre not hit.
D
Honestly, I never heard of TNT, except of course for AC/DC! I guess they slipped under my radar. It’s a shame though that bands like Warrant, Slaughter, and Trixter never really had a chance to prove what they were really capable of, due to the fact that they came to the party a little too late. Thanks to the “powers that be” grunge got in the way.
Except for Alice In Chains, STP (who were never really that grungy anyway) and Soundgarden, grunge sucked! I blame the demise of the 80’s scene more on drugs than anything else, and of course the execs at the record labels.
Honestly,
While I can say, I appreciate some AIC songs. and their vocal harmonies, I find them to be depressing and a bit too much like Seattle’s hipster answer to Sabbath.
As for Soundgarden, although Cornell was a strong vocalist, I also found them to be morose, which is made only clearer by Cornell’s suicide.
Regarding Pearl Jam, while I know Mike McCready is a huge UFO fan, I always found them to be super overrated. Nirvana? Nevermind (get it?).
As I said, in my opinion, the 70’s/’80’s rock bands are far superior to, and for the most part, far lighter fare, than that ’90s gloom, masquerading as rock.
Kudos to Tyger, who summed it up best, emo minus the makeup. Stop whining (said in by best Schwarzenegger voice), LOL!
D 🙂
As far as Alice In Chains go, I don’t why I love them so much, but I do! I hate doomy boring depressing music as well, but for some reason, their music really gets to me, in a good way. Maybe because they’re just so damn good at doing what they do? Jerry Cantrell is such a great guitarist, and vocalist, most of the time I don’t even pay that much attention to the lyrics, unless it’s a great song like “No Excuses.”
Overall though, I hate grunge, 95% of everything I listen to comes from the 60’s, 70’s, and of course, the great 80’s!!! 🙂
Funny, No Excuses, is probably one of my favorite, if not my favorite, AIC song.
But yes, we all seem to agree, Grunge, does not hold up. I felt forced to listen to it back in the ’90s, because that was all the radio, and MTV, would play. As for now, those grunge albums/CDs that I own, could be used as frisbees and coasters.
LOL! Frisbees and coasters! 😉 One of these days, when I’m not so tired, I have to post a Alice In Chains top 20 list! (If I haven’t already) honestly, I Can’t Remember! 😉
IMO, the 80’s glam metal scene was simply a “flash in the pan” that didn’t have “staying power” and killed itself from oversaturation of “pretty” bands that sucked. Grunge was just the excuse…
No Grunge killed Tora Tora, they were not a pretty boy band 🙂 There were others like them, that caught in the fray, as well.
Dana, I really enjoy Tora Tora. And thank you for bringing them to my attention. There were ALOT of terrible “hair” bands that helped kill their “genre”. (i.e. Dirty Blonde, Dirty Looks, Fifth Angel, Seduce, etc…). Grunge was just a new rock “genre” in the 90s just like Thrash was a new genre in the 80s. During the so called Grunge decade of the 90s, Pantera was at the top of their game in popularity, KI$$ released one of their best albums, “Revenge”, Metallica released their commercially successful “Bland Album”, etc….
I never considered Alice in Chains a grunge band, just a rock band. I saw them on the Clash of the Titans tour with Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax. Great show! Megadeth at their peak touring for their Rust In Peace album, IMO the best thrash album ever made. But I found it comical when Megadeth started to wear flannel during the 90s while touring for their Youthanasia album. Really??? Mustaine “inspired” by Eddie Vedder and Kurt Cobain??????
As soon as I heard AIC, they sounded very sludgy to me, and reminded me a great deal of Black Sabbath. While their vocal harmonies may set them apart from Sabbath, I just assume listen to the lads from Birmingham.
As far as metal goes, for every generic band that came out, I still found ones that were good, like Tora Tora. I know I am going to get slammed for this, but Danger Danger came out in the ’90s, and I thought they were a decent band. Their guitar player, Andy Timmons is uber talented. Some people liked Dangerous Toys, Jackyl, Shotgun Messiah, etc.
D
Grunge sucks and that guy looks like the cowardly lion.
I think the album THE REAL THING by FAITH NO MORE (1989) was really the start of grunge. That was a terrific record. Very original. The band’s musical and personal styles were closer to PEARL JAM than to WHITESNAKE. TESLA’S FIVE MAN ACOUSTICAL JAM(1990) also combines metal with the GREATFUL DEAD, the BEATLES, CCR and TESLA’S own great catalogue of music. Sort of AT FILMORE EAST meets UNLEASHED IN THE EAST. Those 2 albums were both commercially successful and really set the tone for where rock music went in the 1990s.