Episode #26 - Bring Your Daughters To The Slaughter

Over the years the Sadmen have inflicted their love of all things rock and metal on pretty much anyone who would listen. Whether it was a genuinely expressed interest in the various sub-genres or just polite small talk, the three of them have always been ready with a go-to track that they feel sure will lift the veil of ignorance that has always blinded the unenlightened.

Obviously that near-religious devotion has never taken their roles as missionaries as far as their wives because a) the Sadmen may be zealous but they are not complete idiots, and b) none of their wives have the slightest interest in the fact Philthy Animal Taylor used to go to rehearsals two hours earlier than Lemmy and ‘Fast’ Eddie Clarke in order to master the double bass work that defines the opening to Overkill.

Heathens, all three of them. And since they also have no interest in the Enter Sadmen podcast or this website, we can say that without fear of reprisal.

But other, younger members of their families have long been sponge-like targets for the Sadmen’s giddy enthusiasm, their daughters especially so.

As barely cognisant human life forms, daughters’ fingers may be small, but that doesn’t mean their doting daddies can’t be wrapped around them, and if it means they have to endure a soupçon of Anthrax here, or a drizzle of Priest there, then so be it. A pony lies somewhere beyond that last ringing chord, ready to eat its way through house and home.

Meanwhile, Dads know full well that on the school run and given a choice between the Today programme on Radio 4 or some Def Leppard, Sheffield’s finest will always be the lesser of two evils.

And so it was that for this episode the lads decided that their daughters - Sian, Alice and Holly - should choose the albums they would review for Episode 26. It was hardly surprising, then, that the albums they chose were mass market juggernauts collectively boasting an entire album’s worth of hit singles.

Van Halen - MCMLXXXIV (1984)

Chosen by Sian

As much as metal purists might like to believe that it’s the guitar work on tracks like Eruption that have come to define the genius of the late, great Eddie Van Halen, the simple fact is that most of the world’s population are more likely to think of him as the keyboard player who wrote and played the definitive pop-metal keyboard intro rather than the six-string virtuose who inspired a generation of wildly successful rock guitarists.

More specifically, they’ll know him for the instantly recognisable 15-second keyboard intro that supercharged Van Halen’s commercial success - Jump.

The song that introduces 1984, the band’s final studio album (until an ill-considered reunion 18 years later) with David Lee Roth. And the same song that, as the lead single from the album, sold a million copies in the US alone and gave the band their first Billboard #1.

Three further cuts followed as 7-inchers - Panama, I’ll Wait and Hot For Teacher, helping to propel 1984 to 10 million sales in America and a couple of million more around the globe. With half the album making a nuisance of itself in the Hot 100 over the course of ten months, no one was doubting 1984’s commercial clout - least of all the little-girl-turned-long-suffering-adult who chose it on behalf of her old man for this episode.

But the real question the boys had to answer was: did it live up to the hype?

Def Leppard - Hysteria (1987)

Chosen by Alice

At the start of 1986, no one knew if Def Leppard were about to stage an unlikely Joe Frasier-style comeback or if they had burned up in the supernova of an enforced 3-year hiatus that followed the New Year’s Eve 1984 car crash in which drummer Rick Allen lost his left arm.

Twelve months on from that accident, and as far as anyone knew, Allen was relearning his art using then-pioneering electronic drum technology, and the band was rumoured to be holed up in a castle in Ireland recording a follow-up to 1983’s Pyromania, the album that had opened up America for them in 1983.

In early spring of ‘86 the band’s first post-accident live set was confirmed as part of an all-European line-up for the annual Monsters of Rock festival at Donington Park. Had the 60,000 of us who saw that show been asked beforehand where on the bill a reassembled Leppard might appear, it’s probably fair to say that 59,999 of us would have simply gone ‘Duh!’, and pointed to the headline slot.

That they didn’t, and that they didn’t make it into the coveted ‘Special Guest’ berth either, prompted the unsettling thought that maybe commercial faith in the Lepps’ ability to recapture their mojo and sell a big show after four years out of the game had waned.

Whatever the truth, those of us making the annual pilgrimage to a muddy racetrack in the East Midlands on August 16th that year were going to be the first to see the evidence in the flesh.

The show was, of course, a triumphant return to the stage. The relatively low billing meant a set long enough to show they meant business, and short enough to allow them to go full tilt without fear of ring rust dulling their impact.

New material was limited to two songs - Love and Affection and Run Riot in an otherwise familiar set of tracks from the first three albums, and even the now dreary Love and Affection sounded good that day - though not as good as the noise of 60,000 headbangers roaring their love for the band’s drummer, who promptly did the decent thing and burst into tears behind his kit.

But we had to wait another full year before the new album emerged onto the shelves. We all know it became a monster commercially (12 million sales and counting), and we all know, with the benefit of hindsight, that the real Def Leppard - the Def Leppard that properly rocked - said its farewells on Pyromania.

So was the inaugural release from Def Leppard 2.0 really worthy of the global … um, hysteria it had caused?

Or was it what many people (by which we really mean Mark) thought it was: a befuddled rock emperor wandering stark-bollock-naked around the Meadowhall shopping centre, shouting at people to look at his lovely new clothes?

KISS - Crazy Nights (1987)

Chosen by Holly

So the ‘hottest band in the world’ make their third appearance in the podcast, and if you’ve read those episode blogs but are still sketchy on the chronology of the band, then it’s enough to know that KISS’ career (yes, strictly speaking the band name is all upper case) broadly falls into three epochs: 1974-1982 (with makeup), 1983-1996 (without makeup), and 1996 to the present day (with makeup again).

The most confusing - or perhaps interesting - thing about KISS is that they hit their commercial peak in the non-makeup years, at a time when, artistically, the band was arguably at its lowest ebb. KISS had oft tantalised their adoring public with the prospect of revealing their true identities - most notably on 1980’s Unmasked, but finally removed the greasepaint three years later for Lick It Up.

After the initial press furore surrounding Lick It Up, KISS swirled around an artistic plughole over the next two years as both Animalize and Asylum searched vainly for commercial purchase.

Tears are Falling from the former, and Heaven’s On Fire from the latter offered small glimpses of what might be, but whilst Animalize managed to match the platinum status in the USA of its predecessor, perhaps through the blind loyalty of the band’s fanbase, the game was well and truly up with Asylum, which barely scraped 500,000 units.

A decade after reaching their artistic peak with 1976’s Destroyer, KISS were a band in crisis. They hadn’t exactly taken seats in the Last Chance Saloon - Simmons and Stanley were way too business-savvy for that and KISS was still the biggest music merchandising machine of them all - but there was certainly something rotten in the state of L.A. as the band headed to the City of Angels to record Crazy Nights in 1987.

In truth, the album would fare no better in sales terms than both Lick It Up and Animalize. And it’s always surprising to learn that both the title track (strictly speaking not the title track, given the duplicated Crazy) - an anthem probably known even by lost tribes of Incans - and the follow up power ballad Reason to Live both stalled at 64 in the US Billboard Hot 100.

The difference, though, was that KISS - and more specifically Simmons and Stanley - had rediscovered their happy knack of writing winning, hooky songs that effortlessly captured the zeitgeist and, perhaps more importantly, spawned videos to enrapture the MTV generation.

All of which counts for nothing in the harsh spotlight of a podcast where attitude is moot if the song doesn’t match the swagger.