Deep Cuts

Music writing for the long play

Tag

hair metal

  1. After the Hit: Tuff, Stevie Rachelle, and the Singer Who Became the Historian

    In 1991, a Phoenix-by-way-of-Hollywood glam band had a power ballad that reached number three on Dial MTV, landing between Metallica and Guns N' Roses. Within eighteen months, Atlantic had dropped them, and the genre that defined their commercial existence was effectively over. The lead singer spent the next twenty-eight years doing something stranger and more lasting than the band's brief commercial moment: he became, from the inside, the single most consistent chronicler of the scene he had briefly belonged to. The first installment of One and Done.

    By Deep Cuts · Issue 03 · · 15 min read

  2. Cut from the Same Cloth: Rough Cutt and the Bands That Outgrew Them

    Mentored by Dio, managed by his wife, signed to Warner Bros., opening arenas for the biggest metal acts in America. Rough Cutt had every advantage a 1980s Los Angeles hard rock band could have, and almost none of the success. By the time the band dissolved in 1987, the catalog of musicians who had passed through their ranks read like a list of who actually made it in mid-1980s metal. A retrospective on a band whose history is mostly the history of the bands that emerged from it.

    By Deep Cuts · Issue 02 · · 14 min read

  3. Their Heaviest Mistake: The Story of Mötley Crüe's Self-Titled Album

    In 1994, the biggest glam metal band in America fired their lead singer, hired a stranger with a different voice, and made the most ambitious record of their career. It debuted at number seven on the Billboard 200 and was certified gold within seven weeks. Then the audience walked away, the tour collapsed into half-filled clubs, and within three years the experiment was over. A long play on the album that was supposed to save Mötley Crüe and instead got quietly written out of their own history.

    By Deep Cuts · Issue 02 · · 18 min read

  4. What Warrant Did After the Party Ended

    Most hair metal bands of their tier released two or three albums in the 1990s and then disappeared. Warrant released eight, played every genre the decade offered, fought constantly, and produced one of the strangest discographies of any band that came out of the Sunset Strip. A retrospective on the post-Cherry Pie decade — and on three studio records that deserve to be heard for what they actually are, rather than for what their commercial trajectory suggested.

    By Deep Cuts · Issue 02 · · 31 min read

  5. Lillian Axe and the Long Pursuit of a Hit

    They had Ratt's manager. They had Ratt's guitarist as their producer. They were nearly fronted by Warrant's Jani Lane. For seven years across four albums, Lillian Axe were the band the industry kept handing the right introductions to, and the audience kept walking past.

    By Deep Cuts · Issue 01 · · 18 min read

  6. The Cockroach Problem: How Danger Danger Lost Five Years to a Lawsuit

    A gold debut, a respectable follow-up, and then the strangest stretch of legal and creative chaos in late hair metal. A retrospective on a band who recorded their third album twice, released the wrong version of it, and missed the only window they had left.

    By Deep Cuts · Issue 01 · · 16 min read

  7. Vain Saw It Coming: A Band Watching the Door Close in Real Time

    They had the songs, the look, the magazine covers, and a debut album that critics still call a lost classic. Then their label collapsed, an ex-Guns N' Roses drummer walked into the picture, and the 1990s happened. A retrospective on a San Francisco band who kept making records nobody was listening for.

    By Deep Cuts · Issue 01 · · 16 min read