Let’s get this straight from the start: no one called it hair metal back then. The flashy, flamboyant strain of hard rock that emerged from the Sunset Strip clad in fishnet tops and enveloped in an Aquanet fug was widely known at the time as glam metal. It was grunge’s grumbling malcontents who rechristened it, a dig at the fact it was supposedly about image over content. Yeah, cheers for that, Kurt Cobain. Hair metal it is, then.
Whatever you want to call, it provided the soundtrack to the entire decade, particularly the bits that involved stumbling out of nightclubs with names like The Cathouse and Decadence at 3am, clutching the slops of the 18th Jack Daniel’s and coke of the night.
