As luck would have it I had a hair metal fanatic roommate when Jani Lane gave the VH1 Cherry Pie interview.

As the writer of "Cherry Pie,"  Lane expressed misgivings about the song in a 2006 VH1 interview. "I hate that song,"  he said. "My legacy is ‘Cherry Pie.’ Everything about me is ‘Cherry Pie.’ I’m the ‘Cherry Pie’ guy. I could shoot myself in the fucking head for writing that song."  Lane later backed off those comments, telling metal website Blabbermouth that VH1 "caught me on a bad day."  But whether Lane was caught in a moment of candor or grumpiness, there’s a lot truth to the assertion that Lane in life (and probably in death) will be summed up by that one song, for good or for ill.

Last edited by alz (8/12/2011 2:53 pm)

Someone asked me about this today and I told him that if Poison was the beginning of the end for Hair Metal, Warrant was the middle, and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was the funeral dirge.
More later ...

I believe he was sincere. Chuck Klosterman talks about seeing Lane do a concert in 1996 when he promised he would play all the old songs he hated if people just sat through the new songs he was passionate about.

You're right on about bands like Warrant and what happens when the popularity wanes. No other decade has casualties like the 80s metal scene.

"Consider this: in 2000, Garth Brooks sold over two million copies of that ridiculous "Chris Gaines" rock album he did. Two million. If an artist sells two million albums in 2011, that's considered one of the top-sellers of the year. The way all the record companies consolidated, the closing of the mega CD stores (Virgin, FYE, etc.) and the emergence of iTunes, the music business is the wrong place to be in."

I didn't really how much it had changed until I saw that Crossroads episode with Def Leppard and Taylor Swift, and Rick Allen started fawning over Swifty because she sold four million albums the previous year. I think Def Leppard has three albums that sold at least seven million, including that horrible Hysteria record that sold something like 20 million.
Then I wondered where I would go if I wanted to by a CD.  The entire Strawberries chain, which once had more than 100 stores in New England and New York, went out of business at least a decade ago. The FYE in the mall closed. Tower across the street from the mall is an Applebee's.

alz wrote:

artie_fufkin wrote:

I think Def Leppard has three albums that sold at least seven million, including that horrible Hysteria record that sold something like 20 million.

I will stab you, I LIKED Hysteria.

Rocket, Love Bites, Pour some Sugar on me, Armageddon it?!?!?

How dare you???

Well, Hysteria is better than any of the crap that came after it, I'll give you that.
Def Leppard ended for me about halfway through Pyromania, and I had already seen them six times before then. They were MY band. As much as they've tried to distance themselves from it, On Through the Night is one of the best debut hard rock albums, and High N Dry is one of the genre's best ever, period.
I understand the poor, starving but principled artist thing gets old quickly, and they were limited in what they could do musically after Rick Allen's injury, but changing your entire image and songwriting style to appeal commercially is just bad form. They weren't even hard rock anymore. As much as Pete Willis had to go, at least he gave them a pair of balls.