It’s easier to make sense of history by placing events into clean boxes. For example, the day Nirvana dropped “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, a bunch of hair metal bands lost their record deals. Grunge and alternative rock were reactions to hair metal and the general excess of the 1980s. Zero contamination between the two. But that’s not exactly how it happened.
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Yes, pop culture shifted dramatically, but Def Leppard’s Adrenalize still sold millions of copies and topped the charts in 1992. And Guns N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion double albums were both massive as well.
Spandex sales in the 90s may have dwindled in favor of flannel, but hair metal and grunge aren’t completely unrelated. Many bands share more than you might remember, as you’ll see below.
Mother Love Bone
Seattle’s Mother Love Bone was the precursor to Pearl Jam, who, with Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Alice In Chains, helped shift rock music’s focus away from the Sunset Strip hair metal bands. Aesthetically, frontman Andrew Wood—from a distance—seemed like a kindred spirit to Poison’s Bret Michaels or Faster Pussycat’s Taime Downe. Perhaps Mother Love Bone would have appealed to Poison fans. But just as Wood’s band was gaining momentum in 1990, he died, following a heroin overdose.
Guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament quickly regrouped. They formed what became Pearl Jam after connecting with Eddie Vedder, who was living in San Diego at the time. Though Vedder despises hair metal, Gossard has mentioned his own early years listening to Mötley Crüe. Check out Mother Love Bone’s “Stargazer”, and notice how easily it sits beside hair metal ballads by L.A. Guns (“The Ballad Of Jayne”) or Faster Pussycat (“House Of Pain”). Also, there’s a Faster Pussycat song from 1992 called “Mr. Lovedog”, written in tribute to Wood.
Alice In Chains
Layne Staley‘s first gig as a singer was in the Seattle-based glam metal band, Sleze. If you were to prompt a glam metal band name generator, Sleze probably tops the list of suggestions. However, the members of Sleze soon changed the name to Alice In Chains, referencing Lewis Caroll’s novel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Then they changed the spelling to Alice N’ Chains, though the band claimed this had nothing to do with Guns N’ Roses. Still, looking at group photographs from 1988, Staley does resemble Axl Rose.
Alice N’ Chains eventually broke up, and Staley joined a funk band. This brings us to another glam-to-grunge connection: funk rock. Eddie Vedder’s San Diego band, Bad Radio, played funk rock. Jane’s Addiction, the pioneers of alternative rock, also had elements of funk rock and metal. So, Staley connected with guitarist Jerry Cantrell and revived his former band’s name, though in its original spelling. By 1991, “Man In The Box” became an MTV hit, and Staley traded his glam background for gloomy grunge. Speaking of the video, there’s quite a bit of hair being flung about.
Skid Row
No, Skid Row isn’t grunge. But the band’s second album, Slave To The Grind, is much heavier and darker than the power ballads that put Sebastian Bach on magazine covers. “I Remember You” and “18 And Life” were inescapable rock ballads in 1989. Then came “Monkey Business” and a Skid Row reinvention. To further prove this band’s connection to grunge, Skid Row brought Soundgarden on tour as an opening act in 1992. If you were at one of those shows, you’ll have witnessed Chris Cornell joining Skid Row onstage for a cover of Aerosmith’s cover of “Train Kept A-Rollin’”.
If “Nothin’ But A Good Time” was glam metal’s mission statement, then Soundgarden’s “Rusty Cage” showed what it sounded like when one grew tired of the party. Meanwhile, Skid Row’s heavier album reached number one on the Billboard 200, which continued the gritty hard rock perfected by Guns N’ Roses on Appetite For Destruction in 1987. If MTV played “Monkey Business” and “Man In The Box” back-to-back, no one watching at home in the early 90s would think anything was amiss.
Photo by Al Seib/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
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