It’s funny you should bring that up. A few weeks ago I was watching an episode of an old TV show from the 80s with a girl I know who also went to high school in the 80s and liked that show as well. She was commenting on the size of the shoulder pads one of the female characters was wearing and I said to her: “I don’t know what the point was for women to wear shoulder pads. 've never been attracted to a woman because of her big shoulders” and she laughed. Then she said she thought it was probably an attempt to make their waists look small. Their shoulders looking so broad might have the effect of making their waists look smaller than they were in comparison to the wide shoulders.
That might be it. If it was the point, then no wonder I never got into the glam look. I had long hair, but every heavy metal musician except Rob Halford had long hair back then! There was no way I was going to give the finger to the jock look of sports guys because while I wasn’t a big sports guy, I was well known in my high school for being heavily into lifting weights since I’d started training with weights at 10 years old. I always loved the look of a muscular physique and one of my favorite movies was Conan The Barbarian starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. it was his first movie to become that successful and remained his biggest hit movie until The Terminator, which I also loved! Conan, however had the look I wanted to emulate - a long haired, very powerful looking guy. Of course, I liked wearing a motorcycle jacket just like The Terminator did, so I guess my look was an attempt at a combination of Conan and The Terminator. I’m not over six feet tall like Arnold, and I’m not even close to six feet tall. I was pretty strong for my size though.
So, if your theory is correct it’s no wonder I never got into the glam metal look. I would have been giving myself the finger! I never had the slightest desire to appear androgynous and I’ve never understood why any man would desire that look. I do understand that for whatever reason, there were quite a few girls who particularly liked the look of the glam metal bands. The glam and the pop metal bands attracted a hell of a lot more women to the metal scene than the other new style of metal that appeared in the 80s - the thrash bands like Slayer and Anthrax.
While the thrash metal guys would insult the glam metal bands and call them posers, I tried to avoid doing that, although that sometimes became difficult in extreme cases such as the look Vinnie Vincent had during the time period when he was featured in Guitar For The Practicing Musician’s poster one month. He looked like he was dressed in something he found at Victoria’s Secret. In general while I only listened to a little bit of glam, the reason I never resented them was because unlike the thrash bands like Slayer and Anthrax which was the new 80s trend at the opposite side of the spectrum from Motley Crue and Ratt, glam bands attracted a ton of hot women in miniskirts and high heels to the hard rock and metal nightclubs which were only patronized by men when a band like Slayer or Anthrax played. Whether you liked the music or not, you had to appreciate that sorely needed influx of hot women into the metal scene that glam bands were largely responsible for along with pop metal bands like Def Leppard and Whitesnake.
Some of the women had never before listened to any music with loud guitars until they got into a
band like Motley Crue. But after they grew to like the crunch of a loud, heavily distorted guitar, some of those women got into bands with more musical integrity like Dio, Queensryche and
Judas Priest. Those were my favorite bands so I though glam bands were great for the business. Nobody could force you to listen to a type of heavy metal or hard rock you didn’t want to listen to, and I rarely listened to bands like Motley Crue but I certainly appreciated being able to go to a show and hear music with a heavy guitar sound while being in a club that had hot girls wearing leather miniskirts and high heels.
I went to thrash shows too and I saw Slayer at the Tampa Fairgrounds when they were touring on their South Of Heaven tour. They put on a great show but I think just about the only girl in the whole place came there with my friends and I. One of my friends had the slightly evil idea of bringing his new girlfriend along, a girl from France who I don’t think had ever heard heavy metal before to see Slayer with us! Overkill played first, then Motorhead, and finally Slayer… After the final Slayer encore, she asked us: “Why did they have the other two bands? Why didn’t they have Slayer play three times longer instead”? What a great thing for her to say!!!
