Best guitar work on Hair/Glam Metal Bands

[freedom's door]

Cacophony were awesome, but they would have been so much better if they had used a different singer- i still like those albums though!
peace

[Gex]

Originally Posted by whatshisname

Too bad all of those bands suck. You know, not like these new metal bands, that have guys that can actually play and sing. (sarcasm mode OFF)




I love 80's rock above all! Was there a lot of cheese? Sure, but there's a lot in any decade. BUT, unlike now, with some of the 80's stuff that was exactly the point! Good fun rock music then, as opposed to overly serious dumbed down nu-metal. I'll take the former!

Best guitarists? George Lynch, Nuno Bettencourt, Reb Beach, Ty Tabor, the list could be virtualy endless! You guys want to remove the vocalists? Personally, I'd rather hear a tenor, or higher, than most of these tuba blowers that are out nowadays...

BRAVO!! I couldn't agree more!

[fettouhi]

Originally Posted by MehYam

BTW, the hair/glam thing had nothing to do with good guitar playing. CC Deville is living proof of that! It was a coincidence that the guitar woodshedding trend peaked at the same time as the hairspray trend, so they just happen to be associated with each other.

I remember readiing that back in the day when Pison was starting out they were on the search for a new guitarist so they auditioned a bunch of guys and it came down to two CC and .............. Slash (GnR Slash) now guess who got the gig .

Regards

André

[toshiro]

I might be alone in this, but oh well:

John Sykes era Whitesnake blows away "Slip of the Tounge" w/ Vai, IMO. Completely. Totally. Vai might be a virtuoso, but Sykes wrote better riffs/songs, played better rhythm, and did leads that fit the music.

I don't even like hair rock and I think Sykes was/is the man.

[Flobanez]

Originally Posted by fettouhi

Man I can't believe I forgot Def Leppard

Def Leppard - Hysteria
Def Leppard - Adrenalize



Regards

André

Hysteria is great album.

[JESTER700]

Originally Posted by Flobanez

Hysteria is great album.

Pyromania. The one that, more than any other *I* can think of, got the ball a rollin'.

[RCB]

Originally Posted by toshiro

I might be alone in this, but oh well:

John Sykes era Whitesnake blows away "Slip of the Tounge" w/ Vai, IMO. Completely. Totally. Vai might be a virtuoso, but Sykes wrote better riffs/songs, played better rhythm, and did leads that fit the music.

I don't even like hair rock and I think Sykes was/is the man.

Well, even though I liked Vai on Slip of the tongue better than Sykes on 1987, I also loved what sykes did in 1987. Thats why i put it in the list, not in Whitesnake in 1987, but in Blue Murder. So, I guess you are not that alone at all.

His tone vibrato and sense of melody are amazing, and he was a great riffs.

[MehYam]

Originally Posted by RCB

CC devile was replaced by Kotzen and then Blues Saraceno. They could ve picked any other guy with lame skills just lik CC, and they didnt. Why, because Glam was incresingly being asociated with good guitar playing by the end of the 80s. Why did DLR hire Vai and then jason becker? Why did whitesnake hire Vai? This are facts you cant neglect.

They hired those guitar players because 1) you're replacing someone you've been successful with (i.e. CC, EVH), so you want to replace them with the best you can find, and 2) technically proficient guitar players were a dime-a-dozen by the late 80's, easy to find them, especially if you had a decent paying gig ready for them.

Guitar playing evolution had nothing to do with hair/glam, the two trends were just peaking at the same time. Supporting facts:

1) good players were getting gigs with Michael Jackson (Jennifer Batten) and Mick Jagger (Joe Satriani). I don't think they're hair metal.

2) replacing CC with much better players didn't help Poison's popularity. Which means that having crappy guitar players didn't hurt them. Think of all the Poison-alikes at the time with crappy guitar players. Didn't hurt their record sales.

3) Eric Johnson. Steve Morse, Randy Rhoads, Yngwie, Satch, SRV, Kirk Hammet, (yeah, he's controversial, but in the 80's people thought he was god) - no hair metal there.

4) EVH, spawned his own cult of great guitar skills before 80's hair/glam ever came into being

Ask a non-guitarist what they remember about hair metal... guitar proficiency *might* be 10th on the list.

Originally Posted by RCB

Finally, you cant say GNR is better than Winger just because you happen to like it more. Likewise I cant say that Winger is better.... but I can tell you this, the level of techincal proficency of every one in Winger surpases by far their counterpart in GnR.... this is also a fact.

Yes, but the technical proficiency of a MIDI file sped up to 330 bpm beats them all, but I'm still not gonna queue that up on my iPod . Feel free to listen to Winger all you want, I side with the majority of people who hear Winger and instantly recognize it as cheese (that good technical guitar playing won't save) and hear Appetite for Destruction and recognize it as classic (that expands the library of soulful guitar more than yet-another-right-hand-technique).