Fargo Rock City by Chuck Klosterman Read Free Book Online

had actually become a savvy business move for some bands to pitch themselves as having no visual appeal whatsoever, because those groups fostered their own niche audience. Somehow, there was a working-class credibility in ugliness. The Scorpions were never dismissed as glammy, and neither were the equally unattractive guys in Krokus or the blues-loving idiots in Great White. AC/DC wasn’t either. By lacking visual flair, they were granted street cred.
    Even today, I don’t consider Def Leppard a “glam” metal band, primarily for two reasons (neither of which is homeliness). The first is that they were already somewhat famous when makeup and hairspray became in vogue, so Lep kind of predates this period (when they released On Through the Night in 1980, they were a remarkably young teen quartet; in a lot of ways, they were pop metal’s Silverchair). However, the main reason I don’t call them glam is that I can barely remember how they dressed or how they looked. I once interviewed Theodore Gracyk, the author of an incredibly well researched and painfully dull book titled Rhythm and Noise: An Aesthetics of Rock. The only insightful point he made during our entire discussion was when he flippantly referred to Def Leppard as “the most imageless band who ever lived.” Def Lep was actually just a harder-rockin’ version of faceless AOR bands like Journey and Boston. You never sawthem, except on MTV—and then you really only saw Joe Elliott. The other four guys blended together and were essentially interchangeable (except for Phil Collen, who sort of resembled an underfed frat boy). In and of itself, that wasn’t too uncommon; 90 percent of metal nonvocalists all looked like the same guy. The difference was that Def Lep was incredibly popular—way too popular to be anonymous. There’s no explanation as to why they were so nondescript. Prior to working on this book, I don’t even know if I could have matched all five names to all five faces (or all seven faces, if you count the guy they kicked out for boozing and the guy who drank himself to death).
    Clearly, the definition of heavy metal is a purely semantic issue. That being the case, let’s get as semantic as possible.
    Metal is a visceral word. Standing alone, it doesn’t really have a consistent connotation. If you’re trying to protect something, keeping it in a “metal box” is good; if your tap water tastes “metallic,” that’s bad. It’s completely situational, but we can safely assume it’s usually masculine, uncomfortable, and—by its very nature—manufactured.
    In the opening pages of his book Running with the Devil: Power, Gender and Madness in Heavy Metal Music, Robert Walser talks about the dictionary definition of metal, and he prefers to portray metal music as a metaphor for power (in fact, the manuscript’s first line is a quote from Rob Halford stating “metal is power”). That’s a valuable insight, but it doesn’t really get us any closer to understanding what makes a band a “metal band.” Walser’s statement would indicate that either (a) metal bands are always about power, or (b) powerful bands are metal bands.
    Certainly, we know the second statement is false. Patti Smith was pretty goddamn powerful, and no one’s going to say Smith was her generation’s Lita Ford. The same goes for Madonna and Liz Phair. Bruce Springsteen is a powerful character, as was John Lennon. So being a “powerful” artist obviously doesn’t automatically make you a “metal artist.”
    However, the first statement is a little more debatable. It does seem like performing heavy metal often illustrates the possessionof power. Mötley Crüe and W.A.S.P. literally wore metal on their bodies, almost like the way Hannibal dressed up his war elephants before kicking ass in the Alps. Keel’s signature song was “The