Episode #13 - Wake Up With Makeup

Back in the day, when men were men and women did the ironing, pasting on the make-up was very definitely a girls-only ritual.

Granted, we were all familiar with that bloke who your mum told you to steer clear of, the weirdo who talked to the daisies, drank cans of Skol and had cheap lippy plastered all over his face, but by and large the rules were pretty clear. Blokes were blokes, ladies wore make-up.

Nowadays, of course, not all men are men – how a kid’s supposed to deal with saying farewell to David for the summer hols only to see ‘him’ re-emerge as Donna six weeks later is not our field of expertise – and don’t even go down the route of an ironing timetable. That ice, friends, is way too thin.

Oh, how times have changed. When the Sadmen went into a chemist in their youth it was for one thing, and one thing only. And never Featherlite. No way, Jose. They were after the brand that would withstand tank warfare. No point in taking chances.

Send lads into a chemist these days and without a trace of embarrassment they head straight for the make-up cabinets.

So to acknowledge the fact that anything goes in liberal Britain, it falls upon Richard, Mark and Steve to celebrate fellas in rock slapping on the slap with a trio of bands who look as good in the mirror as they sound on the turntable.

 Kiss – Kiss (1974)

 And where else would you start other than Kiss, a band who have spent almost five decades painting their faces while simultaneously churning out an absolute barrage of monster songs.

A few dollops of Max Factor was never going to be enough for Paul Stanley (a man who, like the Sadmen, also used to buy those ‘other things’ from the chemist but, unlike our three losers, did so on an industrial scale and was banging down the drug store door 24 hours later for refills, having already banged down pretty much anything else that moved) and his pantomime pals.

And so we got the fantasy names – Starchild, the Demon, Spaceman and Catman – to go with the Broadway-production make-up, a stage show so extravagant it made Starlight Express look like a Chekhov drama and platform heels offensive enough to warrant a place on NYPD’s dangerous weapons list.

What isn’t offensive in any shape or form is the album itself, a platter punctuated with that many classics, they’ll be playing them at the Proms soon.

Mercyful Fate – Melissa (1983)

One man who can very definitely match Paul Stanley when it comes to sheer volume of face paint is King Diamond, the Danish devil worshipper, Satanist and all-round good egg who fronts power metal purveyors Mercyful Fate.

Where they differ is vocally – and we’re not simply talking accents here. The truth is that Stanley’s voice very definitely does not split opinions. The King’s splits concrete.

Not many people remember nights out in St Albans in the early 1980s but Mark does because it was there he had the pleasure and the privilege of watching Mercyful Fate. Admittedly he’s been nursing a headache ever since, but he was impressed enough to bring the Fate’s debut album Melissa to the party for Episode 13, an act which Richard has yet to thank him for.

Hanoi Rocks – Two Steps from the Move (1984)

And so with a hop, a skip and a ton of mascara, we cross Scandinavia, from Denmark to Finland, to complete our preening-in-front-of-the-mirror exercise in the company of Mike Monroe and Hanoi Rocks.

Admittedly there was contention over whether Monroe’s immaculately applied slap met the full-on, panto season make-up brief that was apparently required, but Steve loves Hanoi Rocks so any debate was pointless.

What isn’t pointless is listening to their fifth opus, Two Steps from the Move, an album that stands apart from its four predecessors for the quality of its production and an unnatural obsession with the cockney dialect. No honestly!

We pose the questions, were Hanoi Rocks of this time? Or were they out of time? Or maybe ahead of time? Or how about, get me to the church on time! C’mon me darlings, round the old Joanna, altogever now, I’m getting married in the morning, ding dong the bells, etcetera, etcetera…

Jesus fuckin’ wept, remind us not to do make-up again.