Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota

  A slightly more compelling argument (the operative word being “slightly”) is that metal was sexist for “contextual” reasons. The suggestion is that it inevitably placed sex in a context that made women objects or victims (or at the very least secondary to the existence of a man). I suppose this is somewhat true. I slip into that argument when I write about Lita Ford. It’s hard to imagine rock music done any other way, though. That’s the nature of personal art. Liz Phair certainly sings everything through the eyes of a woman, and her narratives sometimes portray men as jerks and manipulators. Chrissie Hynde does that same thing—yet I would never assume the Pretenders were sexist. That’s just the way songwriting works. When I try to think of pop songs that objectively paint both sides of a relationship, the only one I can come up with is that tune from the Human League where the girl was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar.

  But this much is true: There is an undeniable difference between someone like Chrissie Hynde and someone like Jani Lane (despite the fact that they both happen to hail from Akron, Ohio). The difference is simple. Chrissie seems smart, Jani seems stupid. This does not mean that Chrissie is smart or that Jani is stupid; it merely means that it seems that way. So when Warrant sang about sex, they came across as mindlessly horny musk oxen. The reason they were popular is that they fully recognized this perception and used it to their advantage. Like any smart metal band, they marketed their weakness into a strength.

  Just about everyone agrees that sexism is an act of ignorance, or at least that’s what people say if they need to make a public retraction about an indisputably sexist statement. For example, if a public figure does (or says) something so obviously sexist that it’s indefensible, there’s really only one means of spin control: A well-respected ally must come forward and say, “I know [insert name of sexist jerk] as a person, and he is not a sexist jerk. He is simply ignorant about this issue” (Public Enemy’s Chuck D had to make similar statements on behalf of former bandmate Professor Griff whenever Griff mindlessly declared war against the Jews). It’s a necessary form of surrender, but it has a cost; once you’re shackled with the perception of ignorance, you can never again comment on anything controversial without getting nailed by everyone who lacks a sense of humor (or wants to punish you for having one).

  Since metal was so willing to be dumb, it put itself in a position where it had to absorb the insults of its detractors. Everyone knows there’s a difference between “dumb” and “unintelligent.” Unfortunately, heavy metal was perceived as both. And that’s why Warrant’s idea of sex was always going to demand the inclusion of an “ist” at the end. The main explanation for heavy metal’s sexism was its conscious willingness to let itself be burdened with that particular cross.

  Probably the best argument I’ve heard about metal’s sexism is the least verbal one—just look at it. It you’re clever enough, you can make a good argument for anything. You can explain why heavy metal isn’t sexist a thousand different ways. However, it’s hard to stare into the Red Sea and claim it’s not wet. To insist that the video for “Cherry Pie” is not (at the very least) somewhat insulting toward females ignores the most obvious reality in the universe. The same goes for David Lee Roth’s “California Girls,” Y & T’s “Summertime Girls,” Mötley Crüe’s “Girls Girls Girls,” or any video that features girls fucking automobiles. Everything can be debated, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s debatable.

  Okay, fine. Heavy metal was sexist. It’s a judgment call, and I’m making the judgment. But that raises yet another question:

  What’s the big deal?

  Here again, I run the risk of insulting most smart people. However, that’s not always such a bad idea. There is no reason to assume that something that’s generally bad is always bad, and it’s very possible—in fact, pretty likely—that the sexism in glam rock was perfectly fine.

  It seems that people who complain about rock ’n’ roll tend to have a problem with consistency. Half the time they bemoan the content of Judas Priest, and half the time they are insisting that it’s akin to a bad joke. It really can’t be both. If art is stupid, it can’t really be harmful. If it’s not stupid, then it can’t be dismissed as socially irrelevant.

  In order to avoid this problem, I’m going to eliminate both scenarios.

  Let’s start by working under the assumption that metal is stupid. It’s a position widely asserted by critics: Of all the popular genres of rock music over the past fifty years, metal is the least regarded and most maligned. So let’s assume it has no real social consequence.

  If all this is true, how do we perceive AC/DC? They sing songs like “Giving the Dog a Bone” (which is not about dogs), “Inject the Venom” (which is not about venom), and “Big Balls” (which is about balls). When they’re not beating you over the head with monster guitar riffs (most of which were way too good for any “legitimate” musician to come up with), the boys in AC/DC claimed to be fucking your sister. And her best friend. And maybe your mother. And they’re not being real sensitive about it either. In fact, they might even be killing these women when they’re finished, but that’s not totally clear.

  This being the case, we can safely place AC/DC into the “probably sexist” category (and I’m sure they would be very offended if we didn’t). There are many who would denounce Australia’s loudest band for this not-so-chivalrous attitude. These people would say that their music has a negative effect on both men and women, and it turns sexual intercourse into a violent conquest.

  But isn’t this what it’s supposed to do? I mean, heavy metal is universally assumed to be stupid, right? And AC/DC is one of these stupid metal bands, right? So it seems to me it’s almost their job to be sexist. It’s naive and irrational to expect a world where everyone is enlightened (there cannot be light without darkness), so we always need some definitive heroes and villains. Someone has to wear the white hats and someone has to wear the (back in) black hats. If sexism is dumb—and we all seem to agree it is—one would have to assume that the most sexist bands are going to be the dumbest bands. And according to our premise, this would be the metal bands. And who could be more metal than AC/DC?

  As a medium, heavy metal isn’t very adept at swaying public opinion. It’s not protest rock, and it’s not a teaching tool. Tipper Gore hated W.A.S.P.’s “Animal (Fuck Like a Beast),” but she never made a good argument about why it needed to be banned. There’s really no argument to be made. She hated hard rock and she thought it was moronic, but it was like she was screaming into a brick wall. Complaining about “Fuck Like a Beast” was like … well, like complaining about beasts that fuck. The song was brainless and without motive, and there was no “idea” about what it represented. It didn’t affect behavior and it didn’t lead to a new way of thinking. Why? Because—as we stated earlier—metal was stupid. There was no method behind the madness. It was the cultural equivalent of watching a car wreck, and no fourteen-year-old boy could ever avert his eyes from that. That’s as far as it went.

  But—just for the sake of argument—let’s go back and rethink our original idea.

  Let’s assume that metal is not so terribly stupid (a premise that’s probably quite appealing for those of you trying to force your way through a book about heavy metal). Suddenly, we have to rethink the AC/DCs of the world; they are no longer six-foot hormones who don’t know any better. If glam metal is intelligent (even mildly so), the sexism is conscious. It’s either (a) a marketing ploy, or (b) a negative artistic statement.

  Either way, it’s still completely defensible.

  If these groups were making women into whores for the sole purpose of selling records, they are a reflection of society—not the problem that’s poisoning it. The nature of capitalism is to feed on desire. A commercial entity will take on whatever characteristics it needs to move the product. For ’80s rock, that was misogyny. And if you find that concept “irresponsible,” you are naive.

  There used to be a clothing store franchise called The I
d, which I always felt was a brilliant name for a store (even though I’m sure 75 percent of its clientele had no idea what that name meant). “You want this sweater!” the store’s sign seemed to scream at its customers. “Your impulses are telling you to possess more khaki slacks!” For the most part, we don’t need culture; we want it. Culture feels good. And I don’t fault musicians who take advantage of the lowest common denominator to sell their version of culture to the public.

  A band like KISS fed my appetite for sex, but they didn’t create it. Gene Simmons’s depiction of sex seemed like a joke. By the time I was smart enough to consider what the social consequence would be if he was actually serious, I was also smart enough to realize that this is how marketing works. If someone uses sex to sell you a product, they are not changing your mind. They are taking advantage of your mind’s preexisting weakness.

  But what if all this was not just a way to make money? What if Nikki Sixx is operating under the same motivational construct as Bob Dylan, but he’s simply more interested in promoting loveless sex and the quest for power? Is artistic sexism justified?

  Certainly.

  If we’re going to give metal credence as an art form, we have to give it the same benefit of the doubt we’d give Piss Christ or Robert Mapplethorpe or anything else that’s controversial. We have to live with the (sometimes uncomfortable) idea that it serves a benefit merely by its existence. The music creates discourse. It’s an idea. And if you’re willing to believe that something that’s often absurd can be occasionally insightful, there are ideas in the sleaziest trenches of glam metal.

  Growing up, I used to have lots of dreams where I lost my teeth. Sometimes they would get knocked out in these dreams, but usually they just fell out. Often, I dreamt that they were ripped out of their sockets while I brushed in front of the mirror. It was basically the only “nightmare” (if you can call it that) I ever had as a teenager.

  When I reached my sophomore year of college, I stopped having these dreams. A few months later, I found out that this particular type of dream is pretty common, and dream analysts almost always characterize its symbolic value with the same diagnosis: This is a sign of sexual frustration. And in retrospect, I would say that was frighteningly accurate. It’s not just that I didn’t have sex until I was twenty—I hadn’t even masturbated (Catholicism is more powerful than any teenage lust). At the age of twenty, I had never had an orgasm while I was awake. The only sexual outlet in my entire life was rock music. And that may explain why I was so drawn to the one-dimensional sexuality of heavy metal. To be honest, even that level of sexual insight was probably a little too deep for me to mentally manage.

  There is a value to art that appeals to visceral idiocy; there is an intellectual aspect to negative ideas. The problem is that people who comment on culture always feel an obligation to point out the obvious, lest they might be perceived as unqualified for their job. Pointing out that Mötley Crüe’s “Ten Seconds to Love” is a sexist song about a cheap fuck in an elevator proves nothing, beyond the fact that you managed to listen to the lyrics and recognize that some people might find the premise unappealing.

  But is there a deeper meaning to “Ten Seconds to Love”?

  According to the band, not really. When I asked Crüe guitarist Mick Mars about misogyny in their early music, he said, “Some people probably find it sexist, and that’s fine. You can overanalyze anything if you try hard enough.” But Mick’s argument is weak. Mars is basically doing the same thing that rock critics do: He doesn’t want to inject complexity into the Mötley message, so he declares there is no message whatsoever. Music writers don’t want a message to be there either; that would latently give a band like Mötley Crüe too much credit. Critics need to show that heavy metal is stupid in order to validate their own intelligence (if you’re going to insist that P J Harvey and Yo La Tengo are brilliant, the opposite has to suck). They are expected to perpetuate the herd mentality that drives rock journalism. It’s like The Boys on the Bus, except the drugs are better and you get free CDs.

  The result is that both sides of the equation will insist that “Ten Seconds to Love” means nothing. When the band says that, they mean it in a good way; when pundits say it, it’s supposed to be bad. But the reality is that the people in the middle—the 3 million kids who bought the record—don’t care. They like it, and it’s going to matter to them. They create the meaning, and their creation is absolutely valid.

  What’s great about rock music (and specifically heavy metal) is that the consumer is more important than the product itself. Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins once said that Van Halen is infinitely better than an “important” band like Sonic Youth because Van Halen’s music was for everybody. No one was excluded from the party. When you apply Corgan’s philosophy to a song like Van Halen’s “Feel Your Love Tonight,” it says a lot about what it meant to be a teenager in 1979 (Corgan would try to personally recapture a similar emotion in the song “1979,” which—somewhat ironically—sounded a lot like a slowed-down Sonic Youth single). Van Halen’s vibe was directed at everybody, and a huge chunk of that everybody liked it. It made sense, and it was embraced. The universal acceptance of Van Halen helps us understand the culture that spawned it. Without trying, it has more social and intellectual value than anything Thurston Moore ever tried to teach us.

  Those sex-saturated metal anthems of the 1980s were not autonomous creations. They are reflections of the time and place from where they came. Clever people always want to imply that life imitates art, mostly because it makes the artists seem as important as we wish they were. Everyone with common sense knows the opposite is true: Life makes art. Life makes heavy metal. To attack the sexism in the latter is no different from pretending it doesn’t exist in the former.

  June 18, 1988

  For the sixth consecutive week, George Michael has the No. 1 album in America, holding off GNR, Poison, Van Halen, and the Scorpions.

  I could lie about my heavy metal past if I wanted to. If I needed a sudden injection of retrospective coolness, I could easily fake myself into coming off as an ex-goth. I know how Bauhaus fans view their youth; I could pretend to smile knowingly whenever I hear “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” and I could describe my junior high bedroom as “sepulchral.” I could just as easily claim I spent my formative years listening to R.E.M.’s Document and all those stupid XTC records, and I could swear that I used to imagine I was Bono at Red Rock whenever I’d see my breath while window-shopping for Christmas presents in the December air of downtown Fargo. I know enough about music to make people think I was one of the smart kids who was thinking about social alienation when everyone else was thinking about fucking.

  However, this masquerade would crumble under scrutiny. Inevitably, I would stumble into a contradiction that would ultimately blow my cover. This has happened before. I remember going to a party in 1992 when someone played “Come On Eileen” by Dexy’s Midnight Runners, and I thought it was a brand-new song. That was tough to explain.

  You see, metal kids did not listen to Top 40 radio. It wasn’t allowed. Every morning, my clock radio was set to buzz, never to music. If your car didn’t have a cassette player, you kept a boom box in the backseat. The goal was not just to hate pop singles, but to deny (or at least ignore) that they even existed. I went to amazing lengths to avoid whatever teenage girls supported. It was at least 1995 before I listened to an entire Depeche Mode song.

  Still, there were a few bands that—somehow—were not included in the non-metal embargo. There was rarely much explanation for what slipped under (or in this case, over) our hard rock radar. Sometimes it was just that one of our respected metal peers would declare that it “rocked,” and we’d all inexplicably agree.

  The one artist who particularly sticks in my mind was John Cougar Mellencamp. In this case, there was a logical reason for his popularity among North Dakota metalheads. Mellencamp probably does not realize how important his music was to kids who grew up in rural areas. In fact, I didn’t
even realize how much until I had moved away.

  I can clearly remember driving around on abandoned gravel roads in a pickup with two of my friends, drinking rootbeer schnapps and Old Milwaukee. The pickup belonged to my friend Cliff; it was a gray Dodge, but the second lowercase “d” on the hood logo had fallen off. His truck was thereby referred to as the “Doggie.” Cliff was the five-foot-eight-inch point guard on our basketball team and had been nicknamed after Metallica bassist Cliff Burton (even though he didn’t play bass, didn’t resemble Burton in any notable way, and had never been in a catastrophic bus accident). He was just about the toughest kid I’ve ever met. As a seven-year-old, he had been trampled by a herd of cattle, crushing part of his spine. He only had one kidney, which may have been caused by the cows but might have been caused by God. Five years after the ministampede, he flipped a Honda three-wheeler and needed eighteen pins placed in his left shoulder. His shoulder recovered completely, but it forever carried a two-hundred-ton chip of pure maleficence; to this day, I’ve never known anyone meaner than Cliff as a sixteen-year-old. He actually kind of scared me, and I admired that.A The other kid in the truck was nicknamed Duke; he had been my best friend since we were five, even though I always got the impression he didn’t like me very much. He was probably the best athlete in our school, but (of course) he despised sports. He was also among the smartest, but (of course) he was so remarkably lazy that he barely got Bs. By the time he was a senior, he was so accustomed to being an academic underachiever that people started to actually believe he was legitimately average. He never applied himself to anything, except the act of being charming; mostly, he smoked Basic cigarettes and acted like Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke, even though he’d never seen the movie and probably still hasn’t. Obviously, Duke was the most popular kid in our school and would eventually be elected homecoming king.