Fargo Rock City by Chuck Klosterman Read Free Book Online Page A

Right to Rock,” and its opening lyrics were akin to Mel Gibson’s rah-rah speech from Braveheart : “All our life we’ve been fighting / For the right to take a stand.” And Halford’s thesis that “metal is power” was completely true for his band, Judas Priest: Both lyrically and musically, Priest was only about power. Insipid PMRC spokesmodel Tipper Gore hated Priest, specifically for one song that had a lyric that even disturbed me: “I’m going to force you at gun point to eat me alive.” Even to me, that clearly seemed like a song about violence against women, and—as we all learned from St. Elsewhere —rape is not a “sex crime,” it’s a “power crime.” Of course, Halford recently revealed that he’s homosexual and always has been, so the song takes on a new, mind-blowing dimension. I suppose it actually validates Halford’s longtime argument that the tune was purely a metaphor, but it’s more intriguing to imagine thousands of homophobic teens singing along with a narrative about Halford demanding a blow job from another guy.
    ANYWAY, I suppose it all comes down to what you define as “power” (which means we have to mosh through another wall of semantic bullshit). For example: Was Ratt about “power”? You could argue they were. The first cut off their hugely successful debut LP Out of the Cellar was “Wanted Man,” which implied that vocalist Stephen Pearcy was some kind of dangerous cowboy; according to my friend Greg’s father, most tracks off Invasion of Your Privacy glorified prostitution. Yet Ratt never came across as threatening. They had the usual songs about sex and girls, but—if anything—Ratt seemed to be involved in relationships that didn’t work, and there wasn’t much they could do about it. “What comes around goes around,” crooned Pearcy. Well, yeah—I guess that’s true. But what the fuck does that have to do with power? On “Back for More,” a girl is warned that if she keeps hanging around with her boyfriend, he’ll screw her over … but she’s obviously not dating anyone from Ratt. It’s almost whiny; Pearcy’s like a nerdtelling the prom queen she shouldn’t date the quarterback because he likes to beat up freshmen. Philosophically, “Back for More” belongs on a Weezer record. My all-time favorite Ratt song is “You Think You’re Tough,” but that was a sentiment the band members wouldn’t have even applied to one another.
    â€œ[The term] heavy metal has become such a wide label,” Ratt bassist Juan Croucier said as early as 1985. “I remember when Blue Oyster Cult used that term in 1976, and I thought, ‘Okay, BOC is heavy metal and heavy metal is just the really hard stuff.’ I would consider Ratt, more or less, to be fashion rock, FM-oriented, yet it’s not as hard as Iron Maiden or Saxon … we feel that there could be more fashion in rock, outside of spikes and the dark leather look. I don’t want to say that it should be more GQ, but it could be more colorful and up to date.”
    Sometimes the power issue is elastic, even within the same group. KISS has always been driven by two forces, Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons. Whenever they’re caked in face paint, Paul’s character is the Star Child (sometimes referred to as the Lover), while Gene is the Demon. In real life, Simmons has slept with literally thousands of women and consumed vaginas like they were Pop-Tarts; meanwhile, Stanley spent two decades searching for Miss Right and had his heart broken by Donna Dixon, a costar from the sitcom Bosom Buddies. Granted, Paul physically interviewed every other candidate along the way, but it always seemed like his heart was in the right place.
    Their songwriting style followed suit. Stanley sings songs like “Strutter,” “I Want You,”