Blabbermouth.net reports:
Motley Crue singer Vince Neil claims that his band “supported” the rise of grunge in the early ’90s and says that Seattle music scene “didn’t seem to kill” Motley Crue the way it affected many of the other so-called “hair-metal” bands who were mega successful in the ’80s.
“We went on [MTV’s] Headbanger’s Ball and we’d had an early pressing of [Nirvana’s] Nevermind,” Neil told Q magazine. “We were talking about a bunch of upcoming bands and told people to check that album out. We supported that whole thing.
I don’t know why people say grunge killed rock. Only people whose careers were on the way out said that. It didn’t seem to kill us.
I was talking to Courtney Love [wife of late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain] one time and she told me that one of Kurt’s favorite records was [Motley Crue’s 1981 album] Too Fast For Love.”
Rob Zombie recently told England’s TeamRock Radio that the American rock scene never recovered from the the ’90s grunge explosion. Zombie explained, “When the grunge rock thing hit, with Nirvana and all that, everybody thought it was cool to be anti-rock star. But in a way they sort of anti-rock starred themselves right out the door, because the rap guys came in and they said, ‘Fuck it. We’ll be the rock stars then, if you guys are going to wear flannel shirts and stare at your feet.’ And in the U.S., truthfully, rock music has never recovered from that.”
Zombie added, “A whole generation of kids thought, ‘Fuck this! Rock music is boring. Let’s go listen to rap music.’ And it’s never recovered.”
additional source: blabbermouth.net
67 Responses
Most of the bands grunge actually “killed” were becoming a joke anyway. People just wanted heavier music with a little more sustance and sometimes darker and deeper and a lot of the 80’s glam and hair bands were a little silly. Seeing bonehead singers doing bad David Lee Roth, Steven Tyler, or Axl Rose impressions had run it’s course. Grunge didn’t kill metal, case and point is that Metallica became the biggest band on earth, Megadeth were selling millions of albums, Pantera was kicking ass, even Anthrax had a top 10 huge album (Sound Of White Noise) and all this happened after the big “clean out”. Still, and unfortunately, a lot of great hard rock bands were eventually and wrongly lumped in with the poofy haired half-assed bands and suffered the same fate and that wasn’t cool. But times change and grunge was the new “in” thing and it eventually got old and died to. Despite all that, some of the best metal albums I’ve ever heard were released during the 90’s, like Trouble’s Manic Frustration, Corrosion Of Conformity’s Deliverance, Danzig’s How The Gods Kill, and all of Pantera’ 90’s albums to name a few.
I hate to say it, but when Warrant, Firehouse and Pretty Boy Floyd came about, that scene deserved to die. When a monster act like Extreme gets lumped in with hair metal, that’s the end.
Joe,
It was an unfortunate title that a lot of talented musicians got lumped under. People needed look past the hair and makeup and really give the music a chance. That isn’t to say there weren’t some fluff bands, but a lot of of really good groups got tagged with label as well.
D 🙂
Extreme, Tesla, Skid Row (second album definitely), Badlands, Blue Murder and lots of truly great hard rock bands were falsely associated with the goofy, makeup wearing, poofy haired bands and it’s sad that happened.
Vince Neil couldn’t hold a note to save his life. I saw Crue in ’84 and he sucked. ’85 and he sucked. ’87 and he sucked. ’90 and he sucked. Back when tickets were 17 bucks it was a night out. But to pay 125 bucks to listen to his 9 year old girl warble? No thanks.
Rob Zombie is 100% right. We killed the “rock star”, but guess what. People still wanted rock stars, and Rap jumped in.
In other countries, rock didn’t die like it did in the US. Europe, SE Asia, S. America, rock and metal have always been huge.
I also blame the demise of Mtv into a reality based piece of shit. Mtv started backing away from playing actual music videos not long after grunge was in full swing.
I do think the grunge was a good thing. Rock needed an enema, we just dropped the ball after we pulled up our pants.
The last two years I’ve seen a lot of so called hair bands playing small clubs. They are hard rocking musicians. Once you remove all the unnecessary facade these guys rock hard. Just saw winger and would put them up against any band musician for musician. And it’s very economic too. I have no desire to see a fat Vince Neil run around winded on stage for $200