British Rock vs American Rock.

[MindGoneHaywire]

Julian B:

UK rock bands traditionally display a substance over style attitude (which is not to say they're actually any better musically than US rock bands) whilst US rock bands tend to favour a balance of both or go all out in the style department.

Smokey:

There is alot of truth to that, especially during late 80s. American bands you mentioned such as Winger, Motly Crue, Poison, Warrant, Zebra, Whitesnake, etc., were more about style than music.

Disagree. For every hair metal band there was a Replacements, a Minutemen, a Husker Du, a Sonic Youth, a Soul Asylum, a Meat Puppets, and most especially R.E.M. With the exception of the Minutemen, by the end of the decade, every single one of these bands was on a major label, so it's not like I'm talking about bands that were only pressing 100 copies of their records. This is another example of these generalizations being easy to refute, Smokey. Like I said, if they work for you, that's great. If I want to create an aesthetic divide by listing 5 U.S. bands & 5 U.K. bands & identifying specific characteristics to strengthen the generalization, it's not that hard. But if I want to shred the argument, in most cases, it's not that difficult to do, either. There's a lot of this stuff in this thread that I just don't buy; there are certainly bits & pieces of truth in some of them, but by & large they remain simple generalizations. Jim was right when he called it weak. No offense--I don't think it's really that big a deal. But there's just so much cross-pollenization that I don't think the generalities hold up.

Julian B:

The look of bands such as Twisted Sister, WASP, Poison, Ratt, Motley Crue is also much more of an American rock image

It's straight out of the New York Dolls, a late incarnation of whom WASP's Blackie Lawless actually played in. Some might say Aerosmith or KISS, but if you look at the late 80s hair metal bands, most of whom were American, you'll see that the look they're going for first & foremost had already been captured by Hanoi Rocks...who conveniently shared the trait with the Dolls of having been heard by very few people in the U.S. There was a band that was, to my ears, qualified to continue the legacy of the Dolls, and it wasn't Hanoi Rocks, it was Guns N' Roses. For one album, anyway. If anyone wants to lump them in with the hair metal bands, be my guest. I respectfully disagree.

[Julian B]

American bands you mentioned such as... Whitesnake, etc., were more about style than music. We used to call them "hair bands"

Now there's a very interesting one... Whitesnake started life as a poor man's Led Zepplin and were very much a UK band and very much not a glam band

They then mutated into the archetypal 80s hair band, although I believe the members were still mainly British. You would be forgiven for thinking they were a US band though - which I'm sure was Coverdale's intention.

While I agree with MindGoneHaywire that for every Pretty Boy Floyd there was a Sonic Youth, it was the drag queens that ruled the charts and MTV during the late 80s and early 90s. Even in the UK those bands were huge whilst the more underground bands you mention only really caught people's attention once Nirvana hit big.

As for Guns N Roses, one of the best shows I've ever been to was at the Bristol Colston Hall in October 1987, when they were virrtually unknown here. I agree, they were most definitely not a typical glam/hair band. Their energy was absolutely incredible. Faster Pussycat supported and they weren't half bad either.