bigfootkit wrote:DMR wrote:bigfootkit wrote:The bands were lumped together & marketed as if they were something new & different, but their influences were easy to hear and they made no secret of their love of 70s Heavy Rock & 80s Metal.
There was a great article by Dave Burns (which unfortunately isn't online anymore) detailing how record companies in the early '90s promoted grunge as a sort of metal-lite. There were lots of quotes from band interviews at the time. When Soundgarden was asked what influence metal had on them, they said they weren't into it since they were kids. Kurt Cobain said he kicked out the drummer before Dave Grohl simply for being a metalhead. When asked how he felt about Nirvana being marketed to metalheads, he said "Let them be fooled!" So no, those bands were definitely not metalheads even if they liked the music a little bit.
I take your point but remember, it's the business of new upstart bands to usurp the generation that came before them, so talking them down is nothing new. The Pistols did it with prog rock, Metallica frequently said in their early days that young people were looking for something heavier than old-timers like Nugent & Sabbath & the 'grunge' bands were no exception in that respect.
It came as little surprise that John Lydon later outed himself as a Can & Kate Bush fan, Metallica toured extensively with Ozzy & ushered in the new millenium sharing a stage with the Nuge & much of what the grunge bands said at the time was similarly de-bunked later on.
It wasn't that difficult to see to be honest, just look at some of the bands Soundgarden covered. No-one was handing out cool points to them for recording versions of Sabbath, Hendrix, Spinal Tap & Budgie songs at that time. This was after all a band who signed to SST because that was the label Saint Vitus was on & whose guitarist later jumped at the chance to be involved with the Probot project, not because Dave Grohl was behind it, but because he got to play with King Diamond.
For further examples try playing 2 of the biggest songs of that era against a couple of 70s Hard Rock numbers. Pearl Jam's 'Alive' bears more than a passing resemblance to Kiss's 'Love Theme From Kiss', and they've held their hands up to it numerous times & played 'Black Diamond' live with Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley on several occasions . PJ guitarist Mike McCready was formerly with early 80's Seattle Metallers Shadow for gawd's sake.
Try playing Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' followed by Boston's 'More Than A Feeling' and only Helen Keller could fail to hear the similarity. I never liked Nirvana personally, but for the record, they covered Kiss as well. Punk as fuck eh?
Alice In Chains's sound was clearly inluenced by Sabbath & The Beatles, just like Hard Rock bands Kings X, Galactic Cowboys etc were. Their differences were more to do with their lyrical content than anything in their musical DNA, yet AIC are viewed as 'other' whilst Kings & GC put out their records on Megaforce & Metal Blade. Fuck me, Tom Araya guests on Alice's 'Dirt' album, that should be the end of the debate right there.
In conclusion, i don't think you can say that those bands were "definitely
not metalheads", it clearly played a part to a greater or lesser degree in what they did. Theyjust had additional influences in the mix & a different perspective on how they presented themselves.
Simply put, nothing comes out of nowhere, it always has roots & origins.