Did you know Michael Jackson copied Warrant’s early look for his album “Bad”?
Or that quintessential ’80s bands Quiet Riot and Twister Sister were actually ’70s bands?
Or guitarist Dave “Snake” Sabo, who later found fame with ”Youth Gone Wild” hit-makers Skid Row, was nearly a member of “Nobody’s Fool” rockers Cinderella a few years earlier?
The new book “Nothin’ But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the ’80s Hard Rock Explosion” overflows with those kinds of fascinating details. They’re revealed on nearly every page.
Writers Richard Bienstock and Tom Beaujour conducted more than 200 new interviews for the tome. They spoke with the era’s marquee bands, including Guns N’ Roses, Motley Crue, Whitesnake, Ratt, Bon Jovi and Van Halen. And less-famous bands too, like Trixter, Britny Fox, Kix and Jetboy, just as vital to an accurate depiction of that scene. Interviews with key record producers, label execs, band managers, costume designers, inner-circle pals, video-directors and photographers complete the pentagram. There’s also a blizzard of amazing photos from the period.
Eighties stars like Dee Snider, Stephen Pearcy, Slash, Rudy Sarzo, Bret Michaels and Tracii Guns have excellent war stories. And they’re great at telling them. Bienstock and Beaujour, accomplished scribes for outlets like Rolling Stone, Revolver and SPIN, pull it all together in a compelling way - with their own savvy insights guiding chapters and themes.
The result is the new bible of ’80s hard-rock and glam-metal. Weighing in at a hefty 560 pages, “Nothin’ But a Good Time” is just as essential as Motley’s infamous band memoir “The Dirt.” Maybe even more so, as it’s the arc of an entire musical movement and not just a few superstars.
This being an ’80s-rock oral history, sex and drugs are involved, but Bienstock and Beaujour refreshingly put more emphasis on the bands’ origins, drive, sacrifice and songs that sound-tracked the best years of millions of people’s lives.
The recording industry then was, as is well documented, galactically different than it is now. But the number of ’80s hard-rock/metal bands that scored gold and/or platinum albums, and in many cases multiple gold and platinum albums, is staggering. Especially compared to today’s paltry sales figures for most artists that aren’t Taylor Swift.
Between 1981 to 1990, hard-rock forged from ’70s influences (mostly Aerosmith, AC/DC, Kiss, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Cheap Trick and early Van Halen) ruled the earth. And it was [expletive] fun.
Of course, we all know what happened in 1991. The market became saturated with too many party-time copycats who didn’t push hard-rock forward or add new flavor. Grunge bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, etc. met the moment with punk angst, depressing lyrics and ugly clothes - even if they too, just like many ’80s bands, were mostly cute dudes underneath all that. Musically, some of ’90s grunge wasn’t really that different from the darker, harder side of ’80s rock, although the lyrics and branding certainly were.
But record labels found a new money maker and they shook it. In grunge’s wake, ‘80s rockers became cultural pariahs and were banished from arenas back to clubs. Former stars became the butt of jokes for a decade. And in some cases, much longer.
It’s now the year 2021 though, and ’80 hard-rock has won. Bands like GN’R, Def Leppard, Bon Jovi and Poison do huge tours, whenever the pandemic allows for huge tours to occur. Motley Crue is arguably bigger than ever, thanks in part to Netflix’s biopic adaptation of “The Dirt.” Meanwhile, Pearl Jam is really the only classic grunge band still consistently headlining U.S. arenas. (Unless you lump Foo Fighters into grunge, which is a stretch.) Since the irreplaceable frontmen of most of the massive grunge groups - namely Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and Stone Temple Pilots - are deceased, it’s seems unlikely grunge will enjoy an arena/stadium legacy-act victory-lap, like ’80s rock is in the midst of. (Even though AIC and STP found solid replacement singers.) Actually, after the ’80s giants hang it up, arena-rock may largely be done. But that’s another story for another time.
To the chagrin of some, ’80s glam-metal is now legitimately classic. Turn on your local classic-rock radio station, and you’re just as likely to hear “Dr. Feelgood,” “I Remember You” or “Paradise City” as you are “Stairway to Heaven.” (You’ll hear some Nirvana too.)
In a clever move, ”Nothin’ But a Good Time,” named after the1988 Poison hit, ends not with glam-metal’s early ’90s downfall, but with its recent resurgence. But you don’t have to be a Warren DiMartini superfan to appreciate this book. Anyone interested in how an art-form rises, shapes culture, falls, crawls and rises again, will find somethin’ in “”Nothin’.”
Published March 16 via St. Martin’s Press, “Nothin’ But a Good Time” crashed the New York Times nonfiction best-sellers list. More info on the book is avaiable at us.macmillan.com and you can purchase copies via Amazon and beyond. On a recent afternoon, I connected with Bienstock and Beaujour for an extensive phone interview. An oral history of their oral history, if you will. Edited excerpts are below.
Cover art for the book “Nothin’ But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the ’80s Hard Rock Explosion.” (Courtesy St. Martin's Press)
Tom and Rich, how long did you work on “Nothin’ But A Good Time”?
Beaujour: We talked about it for about 10 years. But work in earnest we broke ground about four years ago, when we started assembling the sample chapters and doing interviews for what would become the book proposal. And some artists were kind enough to talk to us before we had a deal, which was awesome because if not we would have been a little bit stuck.
Who are some of those artists who did interviews before you had your book deal?
Bienstock: We spoke to (Ratt singer) Stephen Pearcy, (Dokken singer) Don Dokken and (Dokken guitarist) George Lynch came on early as well. I think the first day I did (former Ratt manager) Marshall Berle, and probably (Quiet Riot record producer) Spencer Proffer was part of the sample chapters as well.
Beaujour: A lot of producers. I spoke to Tom Werman (Motley Crue, L.A. Guns, Poison, Kix, Twister Sister, etc.) before we had a deal. I spoke to Michael Wagener as well, who did Skid Row and White Lion and so many records. When you’re doing an oral history, you can’t only talk to the artists, you need other perspectives. I believe I also spoke to Derek Schulman who signed Bon Jovi to Mercury Records, and signed Cinderella as well. Anywhere where we had one degree of separation, and we could get an introduction and pull a small favor, we did.
Bienstock: If we happened to be interviewing someone for an article, we would just grab a couple of quotes from them.
Doing an oral history, some quotes will naturally work together, or if it’s the same subject you’re going back and forth between subjects and kind of fact checking. But what’s the most interesting thing about how you put it all together?
Beaujour: The one thing about the oral history is for any given occurrence or event that you want to include in your book, or hope to include in your book, you have to have multiple witnesses, and multiple perspectives in order to create this conversation between characters. Actually, that’s the most challenging thing. If you want to describe the car crash that occurred, or all the bands flying to Moscow for the Moscow Music Peace Festival, you need to get multiple voices.
And that can be incredibly fun, because you’re getting all of these different perspectives on an event, but it can also mean that sometimes you don’t get to include something, because you’re just not getting enough people to talk about it. Certain details open themselves up to you end up covering that you didn’t think you were going to, because you get all these people talking about something that you didn’t even know about. It really is a living organism made up of hundreds of other living organisms.
For fans or even other writers who’ve covered this music a bit, there are some stories we already know. The Guns N’ Roses origin story. Motley Crue’s debauchery. But one of many things I love about the book is how many new details you turned up. What’s one of those nuggets you were particularly psyched to find?
Bienstock: Thank you for what you said. I think that was something that we talked about a lot is like, you know, some of these bigger bands, your Guns N’ Roses, your Motleys, these are stories that have been told. So it’s like, how can we tell these stories, but try to come at least a little bit from a different perspective. And tell it a little bit differently. So that was sort of a goal with some of those bands.
But then as far as some of these little nuggets, one would be talking to Jerry Cantrell (guitarist with ’90s grunge stars Alice in Chains) about playing in a band with Vinnie Chas from (minor ’80s glam-metal band) Pretty Boy Floyd, which was not something I’d necessarily known before. And it was actually something when I when I brought it up to Jerry, he just laughed it first because it was clearly something he had not thought about in a long time. And maybe never even been asked about.
But then he starts talking about it, and yeah, they were friends down in Dallas and the Alice in Chains guys a few years later actually did know the Pretty Boy Floyd guys. And that’s not really a hang you could imagine otherwise. So that was a cool little nugget.
Another was talking to the designer Fleur Thiemeyer, about making Motley Crue’s “Shout at the Devil” costumes, which are these costumes that everybody has seared into their brain. And to hear the origin story of those, the four guys in Motley coming over to her apartment in Santa Monica and sitting on the floor with colored pencils, and coloring in sketches of these outfits and writing little notes about what they want on the outfits ... It’s a really bizarre thing to think about. How these cool like, “Road Warrior” type, post-apocalyptic costumes came about, with colored pencils on the floor of an apartment in Santa Monica.
Beaujour: For me, having seen the Twisted Sister documentary and read Dee Snyder’s book preparing to interview them, you know that he was a confrontational performer. And he would like sort of yell at people in the audience to exhort them to get more into it. And then interviewing (guitarist) Vito Bratta from White Lion and Vito being like, “Dude, I was totally one of those guys that Dee singled out one night.” and this is something Vito Bratta still remembers, like 35, 40 years later, and then even Dee remembers that. Vito Bratta even said like, “That night motivated me to like work hard,” Things like that. The weird coincidences and crossings of paths of people are really what make it fun.
“Nothin’ But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the ’80s Hard Rock Explosion” co-author Richard Bienstock. (Courtesy Maria McKenna)
What were some of your biggest “gets” as far as musician interviews go?
Beaujour: Vito for me was like the magic moment, because I really didn’t think we were going to get him. But also (Skid Row singer) Sebastian Bach took 18 months to actually lock down an interview, so that was a big get because we really needed him. Like we would have discussions late at night like, “Dude, what happens if we don’t get Sebastian?” So when that email finally came through of like, “He’ll do it next week,” I was so relieved.
And then the original guitar player from Poison, Matt Smith, who I don’t think anyone’s ever really interviewed at length before. He’s the guy that when they move from Pennsylvania to California to L.A., and who C.C. DeVille then replaces. But I really wanted to hear his perspective, because he was really there for a lot. He was almost there until they got signed, and then bugged out.
I was sort of relieved that he seems actually very at peace with certain decisions that he made. And you know, it’s not clear, you can’t say, “Well, he would have been in Poison and they would have gotten signed.” Maybe. Without C.C. Deville, it’s possible that we would never he wouldn’t even be talking about Poison or naming a book after them.
But tracking him down was incredibly difficult. Because Matt Smith, that’s not a name where it’s like, “Oh, yeah, I’ll just find that guy. Pennsylvania. It’s gonna be no problem.” Dude, google “Matt Smith” and “Mechanicsburg” and it’s just like infinite.
Ultimately, all thanks to (Kix guitarist) Brian Forsythe, who I was talking to, who was like, “I think I know a dude who knows that dude.” That was sort of the magical thing that happens when you’re doing a book like this. Within 48 hours, Brian Forsythe has produced with an email and a phone number for Matt Smith. And there it is. Lucking into stuff like that, it’s sort of like those days where you went fishing and really, like, filled your boat.
Something I hope people to get from this book – besides these are fun songs with great guitars and there’s a reason so many people like them - is the musicians’ willingness to live in poverty to pursue a dream. To be that laser focused. Like, “I’ll live in a closet so I can have a Marshall amp.”
Bienstock: That was one of the aspects of the story that we were pretty focused in on right from the beginning, and we knew we wanted to get across. I mean, in the beginning of the book, (Motley Crue guitarist) Mick Mars is living in some dump and basically making his bedroom out of the corner of a room by like walling it off with Marshall stacks. That’s a great image in all, but I think with a band like Motley Crue, people actually sort of expect that a little bit.
But when even when you get to a band like Poison, Poison is living in filth, in a warehouse in the super sketchy part of town. I mean, it’s super dangerous. There’s a lot of crime and violence going on, right in their area. And that’s one of the reasons why Matt Smith leaves - like, he just can’t hang.
You don’t think of Poison as that type of band, but actually, they were that type of band. And that’s what it took in order to succeed. You had to be OK with that. And even more than that, you had to be to thrive in that sort of surrounding.
So that combined with the fact that, which we go through a lot in the early part of the book, how not-wanted this music was by the major labels. Which is I think it’s something that people don’t necessarily think about, because they think of it as this very corporate, overproduced, slick thing. Tom and I to a certain extent, we were a little bit surprised that how out of fashion this music was in ’79, ’80, ’81, when all these labels only wanted new wave and punk and all that type of thing.
It’s just a super DIY world, the same way punk was, the same way indie rock was. This music doesn’t get the credit for actually having those sort of like real grassroots beginnings - and it does, as much as any other music. And honestly, in my opinion, more than most of these musicians, because these bands were not wanted by anyone. They had to figure it all out on their own.
Beaujour: And even for bands that aren’t living in squalor, they are tirelessly refining, not just their musical craft, but also the stage show. (Cinderella singer/guitarist) Tom Keifer on the East Coast at the same time is like, busting his butt, dropping off photos at a photomat and picking them up, and that’s his day job. And then going and rehearsing every single night - and they’re not even playing shows, they’re just working on writing songs.
Skid Row are tirelessly refining not only their lineup but a batch of songs that end up being basically a perfect album, the first Skid Row album. That didn’t happen by them just sort of like throwing a bunch of songs together. They demoed, re-demoed.
The amount of effort and elbow grease that all of these bands put into succeeding is so much more than one thinks before one starts talking about them. The number of shows Kix or Twister Sister plays as a cover band. These guys were tireless, and they didn’t have a backup plan. These were not people who were like, “I’m going to try and do this for a couple years.”
“Nothin’ But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the ’80s Hard Rock Explosion” co-author Richard Bienstock. (Courtesy Carla Fredericks)
Just for your own origin stories, back in the day what was the first of these bands you obsessed over from this era?
Bienstock: For me it was the obvious, Motley Crue. I think I was 7 when I saw the “Looks That Kill” video, a video as an adult I look back on as problematic in many ways. But to a 7-year-old, I saw nothing but these four dudes in these costumes, and it just blew my mind. They were like superheroes. I loved the way they looked, how heavy the guitars were. I loved everything about it, and from that moment on I just went right down the rabbit hole.
I’ve told that story to many people over the years and also met a lot of people that video was the sort of first instance for them as well. (Slipknot singer) Corey Taylor wrote the foreword to our book, and that’s the first thing he writes about - first paragraph is basically the “Looks That Kill” video.
So there was certainly something about this video. And that comes up in the book as well. Not just shooting the video, but how important they knew these outfits were going to be to their career. And, you know, Nikki (Sixx, Motley Crue bassist/songwriter) is usually right about this stuff. And he was right again, in this case.
Beaujour: For me it was definitely Def Leppard (the album) “Pyromania.” I distinctly remember seeing the “Photograph” video. That was the first record that I bought that could qualify as commercial hard rock, and where I was like, “Oh, this is how I’m going to spend my life.” And I still think “Photograph” is one of the most unbeatable songs of the era, even though it was very early-on.
And how did you two first meet?
Beaujour: We met at Guitar World in 1996. I was the managing editor and Rich was a couple of years younger and he came on as an intern, and we’ve been friends ever since.
The white whale interview for this era of rock is Axl Rose. If you guys could have asked him a question or two, or for his perspective on something for this book, what would you have asked Axl?
Bienstock: Well, that’s a good question. I actually have interviewed Axl in the past, but I think that we knew for this situation it wasn’t going to be something that would come to fruition. So we may have made an attempt to do it. But I’m not sure even if we took it that far.
But as far as what I would ask him, one of the things I would be really curious about is his experience in L.A. Guns, because I found that part of the book just super interesting.
And then, leading up to that conversation that Tracii Guns (guitarist L.A. Guns, Guns N’ Roses) outlines in the book about them actually just sitting down one day and kind of shooting the shit and just deciding they’re going to do this side project, a supergroup of local guys. And Tracii being like, “Let’s call it Guns and Rose.” And then Axl’s like, “Let’s call it Guns N’ Roses,” and then there you are. So I think it’d be great to get his perspective on that actual formative moment.
What’s an album you think deserves more love from this era?
Beaujour: I would say maybe Love/Hate “Blackout in the Red Room.” That first Love/Hate albums is awesome, and they never got to tour, they never got that moment. They were sleazy-L.A. and almost a little bit grungy. I think they were a band that actually had a lot to offer and had really strong tunes and a great stage show. They should be five notches above where they are in everybody’s mind. And they’re one of the band’s we apologize in the book, because Rich did a big interview with (Love/Hate singer) Jizzy Pearl and we just weren’t able to work it in.
Another band I have to mention, because I sometimes neglect to, is the Killer Dwarfs, who I constantly listen to and enjoy. (The 1990 album) “Dirty Weapons,” man. That band didn’t get their fair shake. I love the guitar sounds on those records. I think all those records are amazingly well-produced. And maybe the singer just wasn’t middle-America’s cup of tea or whatever because he was a little bit shrill, but I love Killer Dwarfs. I thought that they were truly an outstanding band of the era.
Bienstock: The Love/Hate record is great. I’m not going to say Faster Pussycat because that’s always my answer and Tom is probably sick of hearing me talk about the (self-titled debut) Faster Pussycat record, which is a great record. At this point in time, I’d probably point to something like the Pretty Boy Floyd record (”Leather Boyz With Electric Toyz”). Look, it certainly has its limitations in terms of the sound and even just kind of the style and all that, but it works almost better today, in a way of a time capsule of that period, than maybe it did at the time.
It came out in 1989 right when there were a billion bands like this on MTV and everywhere else, and they just didn’t really have any shot because of that. But when we were when we were doing this book, I actually really enjoyed listening to it in a way I didn’t back in ’89, ’90.
What’s your next project, without giving away too much?
Beaujour: I wish we knew. At the moment we’ve been optioned for a documentary (based on”Nothin’ But A Good Time”), so hopefully we get to keep working on this book for a while.
Bienstock: And as far as continuing on with this book, we’re batting around the idea of a podcast from it, which looks like it’ll probably happen. And we’re starting to have some conversations on what comes next.
What’s something new young bands today, who are mostly on the outside of mainstream culture, could learn from these ’80s bands, who were at the center of mainstream culture?
Bienstock: You see kind of two things nowadays: You either see these bands that are 100 percent trying to replicate what happened - the look, the sound and all that - and you see bands on the heavier end, like Avenged Sevenfold, and they incorporated a little bit into the look of what they do.
I think a band could really benefit from trying … There’s something about a lot of this music, this sort of youthfulness, just how sort of naïve it is in some ways. In the sense that it’s these people like just kind of going for it and just trying to figure out what that is along the way, especially in the early ’80s stuff, that I think is missing from what you hear now.
You see the bands looking like Poison or Motley and all that stuff, but maybe don’t necessarily sound like the Motley of “Too Fast For Love” or the Poison of “Look What The Cat Dragged In.” Where it’s just this super raw, in-the-moment thing. And I think maybe that’s the part that if people grabbed onto - and also pulled in the great sort of hokey songwriting these bands were able to do early in their career - you might have something that feels a little bit fresher.
Beaujour: And I would add probably, stop trying to be friends with your audience. I think one of the things that makes it more difficult today is the obligation of bands to be on an even footing with their fans. They’re interacting with their fans and trying to be like friends with their fans on the internet and stuff.
When I was into this music when I was a kid, these people were superheroes. I think that was a really important thing. Like when I saw the “Take Dirty To Me” video for the first time and C.C. DeVille had all the guitars lined up and he throws that first guitar, he was like an otherworldly person leading my aspirational best-life I probably would never have.
I think that fantasy is very difficult to achieve when you’re Instagramming your breakfast. The division between performer and audience in many ways is important, because it allows the audience to fantasize about a better existence. That’s something these bands really provided their fans with a window into.
And maybe it was totally untrue. Maybe these bands were traveling on a bus where the toilet was backed up, they hadn’t slept and they hate each other. But in your mind, they’re riding rocket ships around the United States and playing arenas. What could possibly be better than that?
