Fargo Rock City (12 page)

Bon Jovi's keyboard-saturated
Slippery When Wet
quietly enters the
Billboard
chart at No. 45 and goes on to sell 12 million copies. The following summer, Bon Jovi headlines the Donnington Rock Festival over “serious” metal acts like W.A.S.P., Metallica, and Anthrax.

In an old interview for
Metal Mania
magazine, Anthrax drummer Charlie Benante was asked if Anthrax would ever consider using a keyboard in one of their songs. Benante replied, “That is gay. The only band that ever used keyboards that was good was UFO.”

Benante's commentary undoubtedly sounded like a throwaway quote when he first said it, but a decade later it speaks volumes. In those fifteen words, three different ideals within the metal lifestyle are portrayed, and all of them were virtually universal.

First of all, Benante used “gay” as a negative term, but not really in a homophobic sense. He's not so much attacking gays as he is speaking the lexicon of the time, which—in this case—is actually an opinion on the authenticity of rock music. Late '80s metal artists were the penultimate generation of musicians to use “gay” as a colloquial term; only rappers were still doing this by the mid '90s, and almost no one does today. But the result is that ex-metalheads
will be the last generation of people who won't immediately recoil at words like “faggot.” It's akin to the way the generation that preceded mine is not as affected by the word “nigger” (or at least the Caucasian portion of that generation). Though they completely recognize its degrading connotation and explosive offensiveness, they can still remember a time when saying “nigger” wasn't a complete and utter faux pas. It was part of urban street language, Blaxploitation was omnipresent, and people just assumed you had to accept a little racism now and then. But if you were born after 1970, there was never a moment in your life when “nigger” wasn't among the most volatile, most despised words in the lexicon. For people born after 1980, the same social rules will apply to the word “faggot.” But that has only become the case over the past ten years. When we heard that the seminal rap/metal act the Beastie Boys wanted to title their 1986 debut record
Don't Be a Faggot,
it seemed edgy—but not necessarily unreasonable and even a little funny. Today, that title seems totally unreasonable and completely humorless, unless it was being used self-reflexively by Pansy Division or some other “ironic” gay band. The only places where homophobic language is still used without a specific meaning are in areas that are rural and seriously impoverished (for example, I have a close friend named Mr. Pancake who teaches eighth-grade life science on an Indian reservation in Arizona, and he says junior high students still use “faggot” as a way to taunt teachers, even though it really has nothing to do with attacks on their sexual orientation—they're basically just uncreative).

One could easily argue that the use of antigay language in the metal realm was another clear example of its obsession with power, and the argument could probably be sound. But there's another way to read this. It's a little less obvious, but it might shed a bit more light on the music's popularity.

Rock 'n' roll has always tried to appeal to the outcast teenager. It is the voice of alienation (or at least intends to be), and it usually suggests that being weird is okay. When you listen to artists like the Who, Lou Reed, R.E.M., and the Cure, there is usually
a vague message of support. Whenever I talk to adults who profess a love for these kinds of bands during their teen years, they inevitably remember dealing with a specific set of feelings: They were different from their classmates, and most often it was because they felt more intelligent and less cool. And these bands always indicated that this was okay. Intellectual introspection was painted as positive, and the social uncomfortability that came with it was the consequence of being wise beyond your years. There was an unspoken cultural compliment to listening to
Fables of the Reconstruction.
The record seemed to indicate that you recognized the reality of your teenage life. You were going through the same things that Michael Stipe did, and it was helping you become a more advanced human.

Some social pundits are eager to suggest that heavy metal was the same kind of medium, merely designed for a less intellectual class of people. I disagree with that assertion. I think '80s hard rock served the same purpose, but it worked in the opposite way. Instead of telling an alienated kid that it was okay to be different, metal seemed to say,
“You're not different at all.”
In fact, you're hyper-normal. In fact, you're extremely popular and totally cool. Instead of validating the sad reality of your teenage life, it created a different reality altogether.

You say you don't have a girlfriend? Well, that's because you can't limit yourself to one woman; you're “too fast for love.” You're not part of the popular clique in the lunchroom? Well, those kids aren't
really
popular. You are. You are part of the KISS Army, a unified force that is larger and more powerful than they could ever imagine. In the 1987 song “Crazy, Crazy Nights,” Paul Stanley explained the war you were fighting against the establishment: “They try to tell us that we don't belong, but that's all right, 'cause we're a million strong … and nobody's gonna change me, 'cause that's who I am … ugh.” Those lyrics are an extension of the same inspirational clichés Stanley was saying in almost every interview he gave during the 1980s. “Even if you can't look like us, you can feel like us,” he told
Circus
magazine. “There's a lot of people doing straight jobs where the only thing that gets them by is thinking
they're really hip anyway. We just look the way they feel. We make our own rules, we live our own life, and you can follow us but we won't follow anybody else. KISS is a way of life.”

Heavy metal was not sympathetic music, and its audience didn't want it to be. Executives at record labels may have marketed it toward the unpopular freaks, but the artists never gave that impression. It told the unpopular that they were better than the other kids, and perhaps even at war with them. So when Charlie Benante said a band with keyboards was
gay,
he wasn't so much saying the group was feminine or weak; he was saying they were
weird.
They were a band for the people who weren't with us. Metal told its audience that they were not different—even if they felt that way most of the time. When the stereo was on, you were among friends … at least in theory.

Now, I realize I'm ignoring the fact that some of these metal bands
were
legitimately homophobic, and Anthrax might have been one of them. Skid Row's Sebastian Bach was photographed in 1989 wearing a T-shirt that said “AIDS Kills Fags Dead,” which isn't very subtle (although it should probably be noted Bach did apologize for this, cleverly mentioning that his grandmother had just died from cancer and he would have been really offended by anyone wearing a “Cancer Kills Grandmas Dead” shirt). Maybe I'm trying to make these guys seem more symbolic—and less unlikeable—by turning their gay-bashing language into a metaphor for inclusion. So instead of extending that argument, I'm going to break down the second point of Benante's aforementioned quote: The merits (or lack thereof) of keyboards.

I sometimes wonder how many hours of my life I have wasted bitching about keyboards. The use of keyboards and synthesizers is the
Roe
v.
Wade
of '80s metal. It was—without question—the lamest instrument a band could use. The instrument made a lame sound, and it didn't seem heavy (even when it was making heavy sounds). Kajagoogoo used keyboards. The Thompson Twins and Human League used keyboards. Hell, our high school stage band used keyboards. And the worst part was that the
inclusion of a keyboard player could only mean one thing: This band intended to build its success around a power ballad. Quite simply, a keyboardist could not rock.

Of course, most bands
did
use keyboards (although often surreptitiously). Anthrax didn't, but any group that got on the radio probably did. Tommy Lee played “piano” on Mötley Crüe's “Home Sweet Home,” but it was really just a keyboard. When touring, Warrant hid their keyboard player off-stage, but he played on most of their songs. And the keyboardist was always the third-most important guy in Bon Jovi (after Jon and Richie), although no one ever seems to remember who he was.

Most importantly, Van Halen proved that cool bands could use synthesizers (at least once in a while). That's pretty much all “Jump” was: a synthesizer, crashing cymbals, some stupid vocals, and one obligatory guitar solo to keep diehards from killing themselves. But this decision did not come easy. It took Van Halen five years before they threw caution to the wind and admitted they were a borderline keyboard band. Eddie Van Halen insists “Jump” could have been made in the late 1970s, but David Lee Roth refused to cooperate. Why? Because synthetic music was not hard rock. The crazy thing was that Van Halen was already using synthesizers on 1982's
Diver Down.
Keyboards explain those weird, warped noises at the beginning of “Little Guitars.” The reason Roth was comfortable with “Little Guitars” was because those effects still
sounded
like a guitar. I suppose the wildly misleading song title also helped.

On paper, this debate seems like complete nonsense. But it's a crystal-clear example of why every true metal fan in the world took Roth's side when he split with the rest of Van Halen. Dave didn't think like a musician; he thought like a rock guy. He understood the vile depravity of keyboard metal.

This, however, causes a problem.

I cannot remember what this vile depravity was.

Oh, I assure you: I
used
to know. If I could be fifteen again, I could have written this entire book on why keyboards are gay (and I wouldn't have needed Charlie Benante's philosophical
support). But today, I can't think of even one justification for why I (or—for that matter—“we”) hated keyboards, besides the fact that they didn't “rock.”

And that says a lot about metal culture.

The Keyboard Issue was like a secret handshake. People took it seriously (and sometimes to unjustified extremes), but disliking the concept of keyboards wasn't really about the bands or the music. It was actually about the fans. It was a sign of credibility for someone in the metal subculture. It separated “metal fans” from people who were along for the ride. Keyboards strayed outside the metal ethic, just as long hair and self-indulgent guitar soloing were unacceptable in the punk and hardcore scene.

What's especially strange is that—at least metaphorically—synthesizers made perfect sense as glam instruments. Glam was about a false reality, and synthesizers epitomize a false instrument (they can mimic any sound the musician wants). In theory, the keyboard should have been the premier machine of the glam age. But the problem was that it defied hard rock tradition. Weird as it seems, hairspray metal was a staunchly traditional genre. Nothing was really new. Both visually and musically, glam metal was always an extension of what had come before it. Therefore, only three instruments were acceptable: guitar, bass, drums. Dogmatically, the combination of those three sounds is how you make heavy metal music.

Proof of that traditional thesis can be spotted in the last part of Benante's statement: After blasting the use of keyboards in rock, Charlie feels obligated to make UFO a specific exception to this rule. Though the bread and butter of metal was an anti-authority message, there was a bizarre, undying respect for old-school heroes. UFO is best known for their 1977 LP
Lights Out.
Outside of metal circles, UFO is completely forgotten; even most '80s metal fans weren't familiar with the band's work. But the drummer from Anthrax felt they were important enough to mention in a statement that—quite frankly—had absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the interview.

This is the third thing we learn from Benante's off-the-cuff quote: It was important to recognize where you came from. Here again, we see a principle that goes against the way teen culture is usually described. We usually assume kids want to tear down the past and kill old idols; sometimes that seemed to be the
only
force driving punk. But metal always suggested otherwise, even if its fans didn't care. Personally, I didn't give a damn about Zep or Sabbath or the Stones when I was in junior high. It wasn't my music, and it sounded painfully archaic (far, far more than it does now). But I would never have said that to anyone I hung around with. We had an unspoken respect for all those groups, even though we never listened to any of them. Those cues were mostly aped from the artists we liked (such as Helix). In the 1980s, you did not see bands attack their influences.

Perhaps that was what made Guns N' Roses seem so fresh. GNR was the first metal band that didn't seem to care about the past. It wasn't so much that they attacked people either—they just seemed like a band who fell out of a hole in the sky (or at least they did initially—over time, they would evolve into the world's most expensive cover band, and Axl would credit every artist who existed, including the Skyliners).

To use a sports analogy, it's kind of like the behavior of Allen Iverson, a guard for the Philadelphia 76ers. Iverson, a boundlessly talented gangsta playmaker, was constantly discredited in his rookie season for not “showing respect” to the veteran players (and—by association—the entire game of basketball). The irony is that Iverson never overtly criticized anyone; he never suggested he was a more explosive scorer than Michael Jordan, and he never declared that he could have made Oscar Robertson his bitch. But his demeanor and posture was deliciously transparent: You could tell he did not care about the past establishment. He felt no obligation to pay homage to anyone; their achievements did not apply to him. And this made him seem very, very dangerous. A sportswriter for
Sports Illustrated
once asked Iverson why he wore cornrows in his hair, and Iverson said he did it to scare white people.