By 1988, rude dudeness (tattoos included) was an established fact of life on Sunset Strip. What had begun a few years before as the scum also rising in sleazy Hollywood flea havens like the Starwood and Gazzarri’s was now the mainstream. Millions were being made out of what these days is called hair-metal. Living a block away, at the time, from where the twin meccas of the scene – the Rainbow and the Roxy – sat side-by-side on the boulevard, I assure you, ‘hair-metal’ was not a term used by anyone back then. We simply revelled in it as shameless LA-style rock with a capital ‘R’, into which the terms glam-metal, popmetal, punk-metal and – much later – hair-metal, fitted snugly.
This was make-up and metal, built on the gleefully recycled meet-cute riffs of original English glam-rockers like Sweet, Slade, David Bowie and T.Rex, delivered with a thumping-headache Gary Glitter beat and full-fat chorus of mascaraed males in silvery space-boots. The exemplars appeared like hastily chopped rails of coke on a toilet seat at The Whisky: Quiet Riot, Mötley Crüe, Ratt, Poison, Guns N’ Roses.
