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

  Humorless Jesus freaks always accused Mötley Crüe of satanism, and mostly because of this record. But—if taken literally (a practice that only seems to happen to rock music when it shouldn’t)—the lyrics actually suggest an anti-Satan sentiment, which means Mötley Crüe released the most popular Christian rock record of the 1980s. They’re not shouting with the devil or for the devil: They’re shouting at the devil. Exactly what they’re shouting remains open to interpretation; a cynic might speculate Tommy Lee was shouting, “In exchange for letting me sleep with some of the sexiest women in television history, I will act like a goddamn moron in every social situation for the rest of my life.” However, I suspect Sixx had more high-minded ideas. In fact, as I reconsider the mood and message of these songs, I’m starting to think he really did intend this to be a concept album, and I’m merely the first person insane enough to notice.

  There are two ways to look at the messages in Shout at the Devil. The first is to say “It’s elementary anti-authority language, like every other rock record that was geared toward a teen audience. Don’t ignore the obvious.” But that kind of dismissive language suggests there’s no reason to look for significance in anything. It’s one thing to realize that something is goofy, but it’s quite another to suggest that goofiness disqualifies its significance. If anything, it expands the significance, because the product becomes accessible to a wider audience (and to the kind of audience who would never look for symbolism on its own). I think it was Brian Eno who said, “Only a thousand people bought the first Velvet Underground album, but every one of them became a musician.” Well, millions of people bought Shout at the Devil, and every single one of them remained a person (excluding the kids who moved on to Judas Priest and decided to shoot themselves in the face).

  Fifteen years later, I am not embarrassed by my boyhood idolization of Mötley Crüe. The fact that I once put a Mötley Crüe bumper sticker on the headboard of my bed seems vaguely endearing. And if I hadn’t been so obsessed with shouting at the devil, the cultural context of heavy metal might not seem as clear (or as real) as it does for me today.

  Through the circumstances of my profession (and without really trying), I’ve ended up interviewing many of the poofy-haired metal stars I used to mimic against the reflection of my old bedroom windows. But in 1983, the idea of talking with Nikki Sixx or Vince Neil wasn’t my dream or even my fantasy—it was something that never crossed my mind. Nikki and Vince did not seem like people you talked to. I was a myopic white kid who had never drank, never had sex, had never seen drugs, and had never even been in a fight. Judging from the content of Shout at the Devil, those were apparently the only things the guys in Mötley Crüe did. As far as I could deduce, getting wasted with strippers and beating up cops was their full-time job, so we really had nothing to talk about.

  March 24, 1984

  Van Halen’s “Jump” holds off “Karma Chameleon” and “99 Luftballoons” for a fifth consecutive week to remain America’s No. 1 single.

  Now, don’t get me wrong—just because I lived in North Dakota doesn’t mean I was some rube who had no idea that something called “heavy metal” existed. Quiet Riot’s “Metal Health (Bang Your Head)” and Van Halen’s “Jump” were hugely popular with my elementary school posse, and everyone knew those hooligans were widely considered to be heavy metal bands. However, they didn’t seem particularly heavy (particularly for those of us who discovered VH via 1984). “Panama” sounded different than most radio fare (sort of), and we could tell it improved when it was played at a higher volume, but it was essentially just a good party song (in as much as sixth-graders “party”). Girls generally liked it, and the video wasn’t threatening at all (actually, it was kind of cute). At this point in their career, Van Halen didn’t sound that far removed from pop life, and I was still too naive to realize rock ’n’ roll is more about genres and categories than it is about how anything actually sounds. In short, I was too stupid to be affected by the greater stupidity of marketing.

  Part of this confusion was probably due to my youthful unwillingness to accept that all of “heavy metal” could be classified under a singular umbrella. Van Halen, Judas Priest, and Slayer were all indisputably metal groups, but I really don’t know if they had anything else in common. I can’t think of any similarity between Warrant and Pantera, except that they used to appear in the same magazines. Since there was so much loud guitar rock in the 1980s, describing a band as metal was about as precise as describing a farm animal as a mammal. For attentive audiences, the more critical modifier was whatever word preceded “metal”—these included adjectives like glam, speed, and death. Those designations became even more important when the original precursor—the word “heavy”—became utterly useless by about 1987.

  Taken out of context, “heavy metal” tells us very little. It’s almost redundant; I suppose it indicates that Mötley Crüe doesn’t have anything to do with aluminum. In other subcultures, “heavy” is a drug term constituting anything that requires a great deal of thought. My ex-girlfriend and I used to smoke pot every day we were together, and—at least for us—heavy could mean a lot of different things. Sometimes it referred to the relationship between God and science; sometimes it referred to who would put new batteries in the remote control; all too often, it referred to locating cereal. Regardless of the scenario, whenever we used the word “heavy,” it had something to do with taking a hard look at a perplexing, previously ignored problem. Of course, the only time we ever described something as “heavy” was while we were stoned, which was pretty much all the time, which made for an abundance of perplexing problems (and if I recall correctly, we had a tendency to label every especially unsolvable problem as a “remarkable drag”).

  But what makes metal “heavy”? Good question. It becomes a particularly difficult issue when you consider that rock fans see a huge difference between the word “heavy” and the word “hard.” For example, Led Zeppelin was heavy. To this day, the song “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” is as heavy as weapons-grade plutonium. Black Sabbath was the heaviest of the heavy (although I always seem to remember them being heavier than they actually were; early Soundgarden records are actually heavier than Sab ever was). Meanwhile, a band like Metallica was hard (as they’ve matured, they’ve become less hard and more heavy). Skid Row and the early Crüe were pretty hard. Nirvana’s first record on Sub Pop was heavy, but Nevermind was totally hard, which is undoubtedly why they ended up on MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball (that was the fateful episode where Kurt Cobain wore his dress, thereby providing the final death blow to the metal ideology).

  Clearly, the “hard vs. heavy” argument is an abstract categorization. To some people it’s stupidly obvious, and to other people it’s just stupid. Here again, I think drugs are the best way to understand the difference. Bands who play “heavy” music are inevitably referred to as “stoner friendly.” However, “hard” bands are not. Find some pot smokers and play Faster Pussycat for them—I assure you, they will freak out. It will literally hurt their brain. They’ll start squinting (more so), and they’ll hunch up their shoulders and cower and whine and kind of wave their hands at no one in particular. I nearly killed my aforementioned drug buddy by playing the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” when she was trapped in a coughing fit. Her recovery required a box of Nutter Butter cookies and almost four full hours of Frampton Comes Alive.

  Sociologist and Teenage Wasteland author Donna Gaines described the teen metal audience as a suburban, white, alcoholic subculture, and she’s completely correct. The only drugs that go with “hard” metal are bottles of booze (and cocaine, if you can afford it, which you probably can’t if you spend all your time listening to Who Made Who). Conversely, “heavy” metal meshes perfectly with marijuana, especially if you’re alone and prone to staring at things (such as Christmas lights, the Discovery channel, or pornography).

  It’s tempting to suggest that “heavy” metal came from acid rock (like Iron Butterfly), while “hard” metal came from g
roups who took their influences from punk (that would explain Guns N’ Roses). This seems like a logical connection, but it rarely adds up. A better point of schism is side one of the first Van Halen album, released seven years before we all heard “Jump” on our clock radios.

  Every so often, guitar magazines come out with a list that’s usually titled something like “The 100 Greatest Axe Gods—Ever!” Sometimes Edward Van Halen is number one on the list, and sometimes he’s number two behind Jimi Hendrix. The Eddie-Jimi battle goes back and forth from poll to poll. Ironically, Eddie always seems to fall back to number two anytime Van Halen releases a new record. This is because almost every new Van Halen album is horrifically disappointing. But Eddie still scores very well whenever people are waiting for a new Van Halen LP, because it makes all those young guitar hopefuls hearken back to “Eruption.” (And for those of you who actually care which of these people is the better player, the answer is Hendrix. Van Halen remains the most influential guitar player of all time, but only because nobody can figure out how to rip Hendrix off.)

  In a now-ancient MTV special about hair bands, Kurt Loder credits Van Halen with introducing a “faster, less heavy” version of metal that pulled it out of the underground. On this issue, Kurt is absolutely correct. Edward’s pyrotechnic fret hammering splintered the stereotype of who listened to heavy metal. He gave hard rock musical credibility. He made college girls like it, because you could certainly shake your ass to all the good Van Halen songs (there’s never been better summer music than “Dance the Night Away”). But it was still metal. It was still long-haired, drunken, show-us-your-tits rock ’n’ roll.

  However, Van Halen’s philosophy did sacrifice one element of the classic metal equation: the sludge. For reasons no one will ever understand, Van Halen took the majority of their influences from Grand Funk Railroad. This is not to say that Grand Funk wasn’t a decent group; it merely means they didn’t seem to influence anybody else (with the possible exception of Autograph, who covered the Railroad’s “We’re an American Band”). And—apparently—this is too bad, because there are about a kajillion horrible bands who claim they were influenced by Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin. Maybe Grand Funk Railroad knew something everyone else missed (although Autograph completely sucked, so I guess nothing is certain in this world).

  Over the past two decades, Eddie Van Halen has taken to citing Eric Clapton as the man who made him want to become a guitar player. This is probably true. Of course, it’s almost impossible to hear Clapton’s influence in Van Halen’s music. I’ve searched for it, and it’s not there. On “House of Pain,” the last cut on 1984, Eddie opens with a delicious guitar intro, and at the very end (just before the lyrics start), there is a certain bluesy quality to how he finishes the riff. That’s about as Claptonesque as Van Halen gets.

  This, of course, is a good thing. Eddie and Eric are certainly among the greatest rock guitarists who ever lived, but for totally different reasons. Listening to Clapton is like getting a sensual massage from a woman you’ve loved for the past ten years; listening to Van Halen is like having the best sex of your life with three foxy nursing students you met at a Tastee Freez. This is why rock historians and intellectuals feel comfortable lionizing Eric Clapton, even though every credible guy in the world will play Van Halen tapes when his wife isn’t around.

  A lot of that credit must go to David Lee Roth. Roth is not exactly a “musician,” but he always understood the bottom line: If Eddie had decided to become Pete Townshend, David Lee Roth would never have become David Lee Roth. And—as is so often the case—one man’s selfishness ultimately worked to the benefit of everybody. Roth demanded that Van Halen had to be about a lifestyle, specifically his lifestyle (or even more specifically, a lifestyle where you tried to have sex with anything in heels). Philosophically, his sophomoric antics limited Eddie; Mr. Van Halen really couldn’t develop his classical virtuosity when his frontman was trying to hump the mic stand and scream like Tarzan. But in tangible terms, it made Eddie better. Instead of being an artist trying to make art, Eddie was forced to become an artist trying to make noise—and the end result was stunning. Within the stark simplicity of “Jamie’s Cryin’,” you can hear the shackled complexity of a genius. It has more artistic power than anything he could have done consciously. And that was obvious to just about everyone, including drug-addled teenagers. It’s no coincidence that the Circus magazine readers’ poll cited Van Halen as “Disappointment of the Year” in 1985, ’86, ’87, and ’88 (the four years following Roth’s departure).

  So there you have it: a hard rock band that wasn’t ponderous and trippy (like Vanilla Fudge) or poppy and sloppy (like the Ramones). Instead of the Hammer of Thor, it was an assault from a thousand guerrilla warriors, all consumed with getting laid. Though the term wasn’t yet applicable, those first two Van Halen albums created a future where metal would be “glamorous,” both visually and musically. Marc Bolan knew how glam rock was supposed to look, but Eddie Van Halen invented how it was supposed to sound.

  December 31, 1984

  Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen loses his left arm in a car accident.

  Speaking of Marc Bolan, aren’t car accidents weird? I mean, they’re obviously bad, but every car accident I’ve experienced has been more memorable for how totally bizarre it seemed.

  Like all North Dakota farm kids, I started driving in fifth grade. People from urban (or even semiurban) areas are always amazed—and sometimes terrified—when I tell them this, but it still seems perfectly normal to me. North Dakota farm kids are expected to work like adults, so they start driving trucks and tractors long before junior high (I was driving to school in eighth grade). And even though I was a majestically appalling farmhand who spent most of his youth trying to avoid dirt at all costs, I was still granted the obligatory opportunity to start driving at the age of eleven: My dad put me in a Chevy Silverado 4x4 and told me to drive across an empty field of recently harvested barley. I must have done okay, because I was driving on actual roads six weeks later. Of course, ten months after that I put our Silverado in the ditch for the first time, thereby starting a long career of absolutely catastrophic highway destruction.

  This may sound trite, but things really do slow down when you’re about to have an auto wreck. There’s that little moment of clarity where you remain spookily calm and find yourself thinking something ridiculously understated, such as, “Gosh, this is going to be problematic.” But as soon as your paws instinctively clutch the steering wheel with nature’s biological death grip, everything kicks into overdrive: The vehicle suddenly moves in three different directions at once, there is a horrific metallic sound coming from somewhere, and every fabric of your existence is pushing the brake pedal into the floorboard. The impact happens in half a moment. And then—just as suddenly—everything stops. And then you freak out. That’s when it feels like your heart is going to explode, and you feel your hand shake as you inexplicably turn off the radio (which, for some reason, is always the first thing I do whenever I crash). The scariest part of any car accident is the first thirty seconds (when you realize you’re not dead).

  However, I’m guessing this might not be true if the seat belt lops off your arm at the shoulder, which is what happened when Def Lep skinbeater Rick Allen rolled his black Corvette Stingray on New Year’s Eve in 1984. I’m guessing he probably just went into shock, which would explain why he was found wandering around the Sheffield countryside, searching for the severed appendage that had once pumped out the fills for “Rock of Ages.”

  At this point, I am tempted to say something highly stylized and sensational, such as “News of Allen’s tragic mishap crossed the Atlantic with supersonic immediacy.” However, that would not be accurate. Oh, I suppose it technically did (I’m sure I could locate an Allen snippet on the AP wire from 1-1-85 if I looked hard enough), but this incident never seemed like “breaking news” to anyone I knew—and I knew a lot of Def Leppard fans. It was more like a weird rumor that was almost crazy eno
ugh to be true, and—of course—it was.

  To be honest, I remember a lot more conversation about the wreck Vince Neil had caused three weeks earlier, which killed Hanoi Rocks drummer Razzle Dingley (I’ll discuss that fiasco at length when we get to 1991, and—I assure you—my decision to place this event six years in the future will make sense when we get there). I suppose Allen’s situation made me wonder what would happen with Def Lep’s next release, although the concept of Allen staying in the group never seemed remotely possible. And the fact that he eventually did overcome such overwhelming, unbelievable adversity should have blown my mind; it should have made me think that Def Leppard was the greatest fucking band in the world. However, this did not happen. What I mostly remember about Allen’s stunning recovery is that I immediately started to hate Def Leppard, because I felt they had quit making heavy metal.

  I’m guessing that most readers are now asking some fairly reasonable questions: “Huh? Wazzuh?” This leads to a whole new battery of abstract inquiries: Here again, what exactly are we referring to when I say “heavy” metal? Moreover, what qualifies a band as metallic? What makes a metal band “glam”? Can a “glam metal” band also be a “speed metal” band? Is a “death metal” band always a “speed metal” band? And—perhaps most importantly—is there a difference between being a “rock” band and being a “metal” band (because musicians certainly seem to think so)?

  Few people understand the magnitude of these debates. Back in little old Wyndmere, there were four hot-button issues that could never be settled without someone getting shoved: Chevy vs. Ford, Case-IH vs. John Deere (that’s right, an argument about tractors, if you can fucking believe it), whether or not the Minnesota Vikings sucked, and whether or not Def Leppard was a “metal” band or a “rock” band (the latter term being an insult). Looking back, the answer seems completely obvious: Of course Def Leppard was a metal band. If an alien landed on earth tomorrow and asked me what heavy metal sounded like, I’d probably play “Let It Go” off High N’ Dry. “Let It Go” is not my favorite song (or even my favorite track off that album), but the main riff has the indisputable (yet completely intangible) “feel” of what heavy metal is. Moreover, Joe Elliott’s voice epitomizes the strain of melodic arena rock, which is probably the best synonym for prototypical heavy metal.