Fargo Rock City (41 page)

When I started writing
Fargo Rock City
in 1998, it was never my intention to change anyone's mind about the value of heavy metal music. There has never been a moment in my life when I wanted to convince the world about the relative awesomeness of White Lion, nor was there ever a day when I aspired to create the definitive, annotated history of Dokken. I just tried to write the book I had always wanted to find in a bookstore. And I think I did that, sort of. Yet as I look back at how my life has changed—and particularly the way I
perceive
my life—since the release of
Fargo Rock City
in May of 2001, I suddenly feel like I understand how Nikki Sixx must have felt in 1988, minus the money and the heroin and the marathon sex with Vanity. To quote Guns N' Roses (or
Cool Hand Luke
, depending on how you look at it), “Some men you just can't reach.”

Superficially, I feel as though the core premise of
Fargo Rock City
has been totally vindicated; there has certainly been a resurgence of interest in '80s metal over the past few years. Actually,
resurgence
isn't really the right word; what mostly happened is that all the people who secretly loved metal during the 1980s are now too old too worry about being cool. Meanwhile, 17-year-old kids are buying
Appetite for Destruction
because they're too young to know it's unfashionable. When I watched Sum 41 play “Shout at the Devil” and “You Got Another Thing Coming” on MTV's 20th anniversary special, it was oddly reassuring to see a new generation of kids digging the same music I had loved for all the same reasons. Sum 41's affinity for pop metal isn't the least bit surprising, either: There's just no logic
for not liking a Mötley Crüe song if you're the kind of person who aspires to rock.

However, what I've come to realize is that logic has nothing to do with how people look at anything, including this stupid book. That's why I suddenly relate to all the bands I wrote about. It's always been my theory that criticism is really just veiled autobiography; whenever someone writes about a piece of art, they're really just writing about themselves. Upon watching the reaction to
Fargo Rock City
, I'm now certain that theory is empirical truth.

Now, there's obviously a glaring hypocrisy to what I'm about to write, because (a) many of the reviews of this book have been remarkably complimentary, and (b) I work as a newspaper critic
for a living
. So it's not like I have no idea how criticism works; I'm completely aware of how arbitrary it inevitably is. True story: When I was still working in North Dakota, I used to eat lunch with my girlfriend next to a swimming pool (we always enjoyed getting roast beef sandwiches from the Hardees' drive-thru and eating them on the concrete steps next to the public pool in downtown Fargo; for some reason, it always reminded us of eating at Alcatraz). During one such meal, we had a massive fight about the status of our relationship, a status that seemed to change every 18 minutes we were together. I responded to this argument by going back into my office at the newspaper and writing a review of
Balance
by Van Halen, which I referred to as the single worst album ever recorded. Now, granted—
Balance
generally sucks. But it's probably not the worst album ever recorded, or even the worst album of the '90s (that would undoubtedly be something by Dave Matthews). The real reason I hated
Balance
so much is because I thought I was never going to kiss my girlfriend again, which—in truth—didn't have all that much to do with Sammy Hagar's larynx. But this is exactly how newspaper criticism works, and anyone who tells you different is either (a) lying, (b) stupid, or (c) actively employed as a newspaper critic. I'm not suggesting that the subject being reviewed is ignored completely, but
other intangible factors are involved. And unless the media becomes operated by robots, that will always be the case. I am completely aware of this.

Which is why I feel like an idiot.

I feel like an idiot because I was still ridiculously bothered by the criticism of
Fargo Rock City
, even though I knew it was meaningless. Every time I read someone complaining that the title of the book was “deceptive,” I got depressed; this is because I probably hate the title of this book more than anyone else on the planet, and I felt that way from the very beginning. (I wanted to call it
Appetite for Deconstruction
, but everyone talked me out of it.) I was always confused when a writer would accuse me of being too ironic, especially since a few other writers claimed that I wasn't being ironic enough. It was continually frustrating to have people express disappointment over the fact that
Fargo Rock City
wasn't the book they
assumed
it was going to be (i.e. more of a conventional memoir, more of a straightforward rock critique, more of an objective history of hard rock, more of a homage to Twisted Sister's
Stay Hungry
LP, and so on). And it's still hard for me to understand why so many people fixated on the drinking chapter, beyond the fact that that it gave writers something obvious to psychologically analyze.

However, these are all personal issues. These are just examples of me being oversensitive, and it's probably sort of pathetic for me to write an epilogue just to strike back at my faceless critics. But I have at least one issue of complaint that I think is valid, and it has nothing to do with me: Generally, people reacted to
Fargo Rock City
not as a book, but as a philosophical extension of the music I wrote about. There is a certain class of people who refuse to accept that heavy metal was important, or even mildly interesting. In fact, the mere suggestion appears to make them mad.

The same summer
Fargo Rock City
was released in hardcover, two other books about loud '80s music arrived in bookstores. The first was
The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious
Rock Band
by Neil Strauss, and the second was
Our Band Could Be Your Life
by Michael Azerrad. Both of these books are way, way better than mine. However, they both make for interesting comparisons to
Fargo Rock City
, and I think these comparisons prove my point.
The Dirt
was about the escapades of Mötley Crüe, the first and last band mentioned in
Fargo Rock City
. To the surprise of no one, the group's stories are relentlessly entertaining:
The Dirt
is like
Hammer of the Gods
, amplified by 11, minus the music. And the key is that “minus the music” part. I don't think the oral history of any band has ever been so exhaustively documented without really talking about the group's music
at all
. On the rare occasions when the Crüe's songs are mentioned, they're immediately dismissed; even Nikki Sixx and Vince Neil admit that two of the Crüe's biggest albums (
Theater of Pain
and
Girls, Girls, Girls
) were more or less shit. It's sort of sad, really; even the guys in the band have convinced themselves that their music was appalling.

So … are Nikki and Vince right? I don't know. Maybe. I like both of those albums, but I'm certainly not going to try and convince anyone that
Theatre of Pain
is Carole King's
Tapestry
. I'm not a Mötley Crüe apologist.
^A
But how can music that was the soundtrack to the lives of so many teenagers not be culturally important, even if it was overproduced and derivative? The one thing I wanted to show with
Fargo Rock City
is that pop music doesn't matter for what it is; it matters for what it does. The greatest thing about rock 'n' roll is that it's an art form where the audience is more important than the art itself. Whether or not “Home Sweet Home” was terrific is almost irrelevant; the fact that a million future adults
believed
it was terrific is what counts.

That brings me to the subject of
Our Band Could Be Your Life
, a brilliantly written book that serves as the perfect antithesis for
Fargo Rock City
. Michael Azerrad wrote about 13 indie bands from the 1980s that comprised the musical underground:
The Minutemen, Mission of Burma, Sonic Youth, Big Black, et al. Essentially, Azerrad writes about the artists whose art was a direct response to Def Leppard and Tesla and Bon Jovi, and the insights are fascinating. But even as I found myself loving the book, I found myself hating most of the artists he wrote about. In fact, they reminded me of why I loved Poison in the first place. Bret Michaels was important because he never tried to be; he just wanted to be cool, which was once the single biggest goal in my life. Too many of those indie bands were consumed with the misguided belief that their destiny was to recalibrate the American mind; they tried too hard to seem significant. Despite all their espoused organic passion, everything they did was calculated: They knew precisely how unwilling revolutionaries were supposed to act. There will always be this bizarre consensus that sporadically interesting, consciously under-produced music is inherently transcendent, mainly because almost no one appreciates it. And that defines the concept of elitism.

Obviously, Azerrad disagrees with me on this issue, and his argument is that a band like Fugazi never overtly said “we're important,” nor did they ever technically demand anyone to live in the manner they embraced.
But that sentiment was there
. It's almost always riding shotgun with the music rock critics tend to adore. I eventually interviewed Azerrad about his book, and I asked him to speculate on the differences between a kid who went to a Black Flag show at a Moose Lodge in 1981 and a kid who went to a Van Halen show at The Forum on the very same night. This is what he said:

“Obviously, the kid at the Black Flag show is a bit of an independent, investigative thinker. He or she probably had to read about Black Flag in a fanzine, and he or she can look past glossy production to see the gist of a band. That takes a certain independence of thought and a leap of imagination. Someone who makes their way to a Black Flag concert in 1981 is obviously different then the kind of kid who's at Van Halen, because the Van Halen kid only reads mainstream publication
and listens to the radio, so that's all he knows. For the person who goes to the Black Flag show, music is probably more important to them. But that's not a value judgment about them as a human being.”

Wrong. That
is
a value judgment. What it says is that the kid who likes Black Flag is a
better
music fan than the kid who likes Van Halen. And that's ridiculous. It's possible these two hypothetical kids like Black Flag and Van Halen for diametrically different reasons, but its just as possible they like them for the exact same reason (“Man, these guys fucking
rock
!”). The true difference is that—20 years later—loving Black Flag meant you understood the unbridled intensity of the raging underclass. Loving Van Halen meant you liked to party. Consequently, loving Van Halen meant your adolescence meant almost nothing.

Azerrad thinks my feelings about the exclusionary aspects of Black Flag and Sonic Youth is a product of my own insecurity; I don't know, perhaps there's a grain of truth to that assertion. There is a paradox to the fact that—though I honestly love '80s metal—I almost never listen to it anymore, beyond Guns N' Roses
^A
and Vinnie Vincent Invasion. But maybe that's why I can suddenly understand what it must have been like to be Nikki Sixx, back when he was writing music that normal people loved and intellectuals loathed, even though neither faction was really paying attention to the songs; they merely loved or loathed what they wanted those songs to represent. I'm sure Nikki spent more than one night in the studio thinking, “Man, this record is crap …
but this crap is who I am
.”

In the introduction to
Fargo Rock City
, I stated that I was
going to show why all that “poofy, sexist, shallow glam rock was important.” There are some who claim I failed at this attempt, which is fine. Part of me doesn't even care anymore. But part of me still does, so I want to give it one last shot. …

Try to look at it like this: I love Radiohead. I've slowly come to the conclusion that Radiohead is the best working band I've experienced since I started listening to music 18 years ago. And even though they get bushels of positive press coverage, I think they're still slightly underrated; people don't seem to realize they've made the best record in the world during three different years (1995, 1997, and 2000). Sometimes, Thom Yorke is perfect. We are watching a band that's at least as good as The Who. But you know what? I could never love Radiohead as much as I loved Mötley Crüe. I could never love Radiohead as much as Mötley Crüe because I'll never be 15 again. I can certainly
appreciate
Radiohead, but they're not an extension of my life. No rock band ever will be again. For 99 percent of the populace (myself included), that kind of mystical connection can only happen during those terrible, magical years when you somehow convince yourself that a guy like Nikki Sixx understands you. And it didn't matter if Nikki didn't write with the poetic prowess of Paul Westerberg; for me, he may as well have been Paul McCartney. It's all about timing, you know?

In 1996, I went to a concert headlined by Vince Neil (this was during his ill-fated “solo” period) that also featured Slaughter and Warrant. All three acts were at the lowest points in their career. But something happened at this show that I will always remember: After his first song, Warrant's Jani Lane promised the crowd he would sing “Cherry Pie” and “Heaven” and all the other songs he knew everyone had paid to hear, but he just asked that we sit through a half dozen of the new (and—to be honest—horrible) songs he had recorded on the unsuccessful
Dog Eat Dog
record. And he didn't ask this in a self-conscious, self-deprecating way; he was almost begging. Basically, he agreed to deliver all the old songs he hated if we would politely listen to the new stuff he cared about.