Movie stars ride a wave of nostalgia to resurrect iconic characters from the past

The No.1 movie at the box office last weekend was Bad Boys for Life, bringing the cop team-up of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence back to the big screen 25 years after Bad Boys paved the way to stardom for both actors and their director Michael Bay. In June, with Top Gun: Maverick, Tom Cruise returns to his star-making role from 1986. In August, Keanu Reeves returns for a 3^rd Bill and Ted film with co-star Alex Winter, after a gap of 29 years. And finally, in December we’ll get to see Eddie Murphy as King Akeem in Coming 2 America, 32 years after the original.

These are not isolated instances. In the past few years, several actors have returned to play characters that signposted the early stages of their careers. Studios and producers are leveraging the nostalgia factor, targeting the middle-aged movie-going generation that grew up in the 80s and 90s, and hopefully their kids who have heard of the original films or watched them on TV or DVD. For the actor, it’s not an easy decision to make and for those who have taken the plunge already, not all have been successful…

I first noticed this trend with two back-to-back releases at the end of 2015. In December of that year, we saw the long-awaited return of Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford to their iconic Star Wars roles. These characters were back together for the first time since 1983. The movie had the perfect blend of nostalgia and freshness, and was a huge global box office hit, grossing in excess of $2 billion. Just a few weeks earlier, Sylvester Stallone played an ageing (and vulnerable) Rocky Balboa in Creed. This time the ex-champion was not fighting his battles in the ring, but in a health clinic, while also playing mentor to up-and-coming boxer Adonis Creed. In this case, Rocky was returning to the screen after a relatively short gap of 9 years, the previous installment being the well-received Rocky Balboa from 2006. In the hands of rising director Ryan Coogler, the film was technically dazzling as well as a fine character study. If there was a way to bring a beloved character back years later in an age-appropriate and graceful manner, this was how to do it.

The following year, in 2016, Jeff Goldblum came back to save the world again as MIT alumnus David Levinson, in Independence Day: Resurgence, 20 years after he used his brains to foil an extra-terrestrial invasion. The film was an unmitigated critical and commercial disaster. But Mr. Goldblum had another of his stock-in-trade quirky characters up his sleeve. In 2018, he brought back Dr. Ian Malcolm in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, to middling critical reaction, but gonzo box office receipts. So, the next movie in the franchise due out in 2021, will bring back the other 2 characters from the 1993 film – Sam Neill’s Dr. Alan Grant and Laura Dern’s Dr. Ellie Sattler.

Last year, Linda Hamilton came back to the big screen in yet another installment of the Terminator franchise, after a 28-year-long hiatus. Her kick-ass performance as Sarah Connor made her one of the few female action stars of the 80s. This character has been one of my biggest cinematic role models (male or female) over the years and not dissimilar in nature to Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley in Aliens (both films directed by James Cameron). Sadly, in spite of Cameron’s involvement as producer and being touted as a direct sequel to T2, the film sank at the box office and it’s unlikely that Linda Hamilton will be back for an encore.

Meanwhile, on the YouTube Premium streaming service, the comedy-drama series Cobra Kai brought back the rivals from The Karate Kid movies, played by Ralph Macchio and William Zabka, to unexpectedly positive reviews and a renewal into a second season in 2019.

No doubt, money is always a factor and one can be sure there is a hefty paycheck involved in the decision to come back and revisit a beloved character from the past, particularly when the actor also gets a producer credit and gets to ‘manage’ the way the character is portrayed. For stars who have faded away, it must surely be tempting to experience the heady rush of super-stardom again – the press junkets, interviews and talk shows. And because of the nostalgia factor, especially if there’s a big gap between appearances, the anticipation and buzz is huge.

More money and a return to fame is unlikely to be the primary motivation for the 4 actors I talked about at the beginning of this post – Tom Cruise, Will Smith, Keanu Reeves and Eddie Murphy. Unlike Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Linda Hamilton or Ralph Macchio, these 4 have never really gone away from the limelight and have continued to appear in big budget blockbusters regularly – albeit, some of those being of questionable quality and commercial potential.

Tom Cruise has kept the Ethan Hunt character ‘alive’ in 6 installments of Mission: Impossible films from 1996 to 2017, with the last one, Fallout, being one of the best reviewed entries in the series and also the most commercially successful. He is filming the 7^th and 8^th entries in the series back-to-back for release in 2021 and 22. So, Top Gun: Maverick is certainly not a last-gasp attempt to get another moment in the spotlight; it is hopefully being made because there is a story worth telling.

Will Smith on the other hand has had his fair share of duds in recent years, so he must be mightily relieved at the success of Bad Boys for Life (anyone else noticed that the best reviewed of the three Bad Boys films is this one which isn’t directed by Michael Bay?). He missed a chance a few years ago to reprise the role of Capt. Steven Hiller in the sequel to Independence Day, which certainly was a loss for the filmmakers (no way of knowing whether his presence could have made the film better, but director Roland Emmerich has admitted recently that he should have cancelled the project when he failed to get Will Smith signed on). Anyway, it appears a Bad Boy 4 is on the way, so these characters no longer belong to the nostalgia category!

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Keanu Reeves certainly doesn’t need to revive old characters for the money, as his career is seemingly bulletproof. He is able to recover from mediocre or obscure films (and he’s had his share) and bounce back with a new blockbuster franchise every few years. His 3^rd John Wick movie in 2019 was the biggest and best in the series and he also had a memorable voice role as Duke Caboom in Toy Story 4. The scriptwriters for Bill and Ted Face the Music are the same guys who wrote the first two movies, so hopefully they will bring back the old magic and it won’t feel dates. Ted Logan won’t be Keanu Reeves’ only classic character revival though. In May 2021, audiences will be able to see him back as Neo in Matrix 4.

Eddie Murphy has spent about a decade in the wilderness without a hit. And then unexpectedly, he generated rave reviews for his acting in last year’s Netflix biopic of 70s blaxploitation filmmaker Rudy Ray Moore in Dolemite is My Name. Incidentally, this movie’s director Craig Brewer is directing the Coming to America sequel as well, with pretty much the entire cast of the original film returning. Here too, the original film’s writers are doing the screenplay for the sequel.

Two big stars who haven’t felt the need to take a walk down memory lane are Denzel Washington and Tom Hanks. That could be because although both have played several memorable characters, they are not disproportionately equated with any single one.

And let’s raise a toast to Liam Neeson, who doesn’t need to bring back any beloved character because he essentially plays the same character in all his action films! Mr. Neeson gave hope to all ageing actors by kick-starting an action career at the age of 56 with Taken (2008) and since then has appeared in 10 films which are all essentially the same type of movie.

So, here’s hoping that Top Gun: Maverick, Bill and Ted Face the Music and Coming 2 America all enjoy the same level of success as Bad Boys for Life has, in this year of the big screen revivals.

Milestones on a personal journey through rock and metal: Part 4

This is the concluding part of a 4-post series of recollections and reflections about the albums that triggered my interest and in most cases, love for a specific sub-genre of hard rock or heavy metal. The inspiration to write these was the untimely death of beloved rock drummer Neil Peart of the prog rock band Rush earlier this month. These posts are effectively a chronological walk down memory lane.

In Part 1, I talked about how Def Leppard’s Hysteria started it all off for me in 1987 by introducing me to what I referred to as ‘modern’ or ‘contemporary’ hard rock, but was effectively the beginning of ‘hair’ metal. I also covered Jethro Tull’s Aqualung and Black Sabbath’s Paranoid albums.

In Part 2, I moved on to 1988 and Motley Crue’s Girls, Girls, Girls album introducing me to ‘hair’ metal as it was beginning to explode across the world. Thereafter, I got into the ‘real deal’, with Metallica’s seminal thrash metal album …And Justice For All; seminal because they realized (as Black Sabbath had more than a decade earlier) that slowing down the pace could actually make the music heavier. And finally there was Rush’s Power Windows which opened up progressive rock for me.

In Part 3, listening to Iron Maiden’s Powerslave opened up their back catalog and exposure to bands that formed the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM). By now I had reached the start of the 90’s and the grunge/alt rock wave, which for me was defined by Pearl Jam’s Ten. And finally I started delving into the world of guitar virtuosos via Steve Vai’s Passion and Warfare.

I pick up the story now many years later in the mid-2000s, and I myself am amazed as I write this that for a period of 10 years I didn’t discover or explore any new sub-genres of rock or metal. Part of this is because I sat out the entire grunge/alternative rock wave through the latter half of the 90s and partly it was because I was so caught up with work that I didn’t have the time or the energy to do much else. All this changed when I moved to Vietnam in late 2006 and found myself with a lot more quality time at the end of the day. And literally in the space of a few weeks of arrival, I was browsing local music stores and picking up new CDs to listen to. Many of these were outside of the metal genre so I won’t list them here, but there were two albums that I listened to that opened up a whole new discography for me which remains a big part of my listening repertoire to this day.

Dream Theater’s Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, released January 2002

2006, introduction to progressive metal via Dream Theater’s 2002 album, Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence: I was well aware of Dream Theater since the early 90s as a group that was similar to Rush in terms of musicianship and overall sound. I had listened to a few songs from their 1994 album Awake while visiting a friend’s house but wasn’t really able to pay attention in the middle of all our chatter and never revisited the group…it didn’t help that Dream Theater albums were not stocked by any Indian record stores that I visited. This double-disc concept album filled with themes about mental health however, was a revelation! As had been the case with Metallica and Rush, I felt like the ground was shifting beneath my feet. I just played this album again and again over the next few days and weeks. Every track is perfection in terms of lyrics, James LaBrie’s vocals, the musicianship and production values. Clearly what had evolved since the early albums like Awake was the melodic structure…many of these were songs would sound good even if they were performed unplugged. Particularly About to Crash and Solitary Shell on Disc 2 ranks alongside Metallica’s Fade to Black from their Ride the Lightning album as my favourite ‘anguish’ songs. A few weeks later, I found a copy of their preceding release from 1999, also a concept album called Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory and was blown away all over again. This album narrates the story of a man who has been put into a hypnotic trance to unlock what he believes are memories from a past life. The songs piece together his recollections and effectively unravel a murder mystery. Amazing concept, but more importantly, the songs are genuinely great standalone rock tracks. It was a ‘dream’ come true for me to see them live in concert in 2017 as part of their world tour to commemorate the 25th anniversary of their album Images and Words. I guess I’ll have to wait till 2024 for a Scenes from a Memory 25th anniversary tour!

These two albums also led me to reflect on three other amazing concept albums – Rush’s 2112 Queensryche’s Operation: Mindcrime and Extreme’s 1992 album III Sides to Every Story. Dream Theater also led me to look for other prog metal bands and now with the full power of Google Search available to me, I was able to read about and listen to bands like Symphony X, Opeth and Fates Warning as well as the supergroups featuring various members of Dream Theater – Transatlantic, Liquid Tension Experiment and Office of Strategic Influence. As with the virtuoso guitarists, my issue with some of these groups is that while the music could be appreciated for its intricacy and complexity, it didn’t really come together in the form of enjoyable songs. But all the albums from the three supergroups featuring Dream Theater members contain some really good songs.

Coheed and Cambria’s Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume Two: No World for Tomorrow released October 2007

In late 2007, while browsing metacritic.com and looking for new hard rock/heavy metal albums, I saw favourable reviews of a band I had never heard of – Coheed and Cambria, specifically their new release Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume Two: No World for Tomorrow, which apparently was the sequel to their 2005 album Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness. I’m a sucker for album titles like these and the fact that they were concept albums. I found a music video for a song called The Suffering on YouTube (still a relatively new concept at that time) and I loved the sound. It took me a while but by 2009 I had accessed their entire back catalogue and had fallen in love all over again. The group was like a metal version of Rush and the scope of their albums if anything, were even more ambitious than that of Dream Theater’s. In fact, 8 of the 9 albums they have released since they began in 2002, are concept albums and together, they form a single epic narrative that is tied to a series of sci-fi/space opera graphic novels that are written and published by brand frontman Claudio Sanchez through his own publishing company Evil Ink Comics. The lyrics are sometimes disturbingly violent, but the music and vocal package is astonishing in terms of how it triggers something primal in the brain. I don’t necessarily have a favourite album, but there are typically 4-5 songs from each album that I could easily play at any time on a playlist and because I approach their music that way, I have to admit that I can’t necessarily remember which song is from which album, in the way that I can for Rush or Metallica. I did a real fanboy thing in 2010, attending a C&C concert in Kuala Lumpur on a Sunday night, then flying to Singapore the next day and attending a Slash concert in Singapore where C&C were the supporting act.

Mastodon’s Blood Mountain released September 2006

2007, introduction to sludge metal via Mastodon’s 2006 album, Blood Mountain: Every year, I read through the Grammy nominees for Best Hard Rock and Best Metal looking for new bands or albums that I can listen to. In the 2007 nominations I came across a new name, Mastodon nominated for the song Colony of Birchmen. Checking back on Metacritic, I saw that the album this track came from, Blood Mountain, had a very high score of 82. It took me a while, but eventually I was able to get hold of the album, and this introduced me to a new sound, that of sludge metal. The underlying musical structure of these songs was very close to that of classic hard rock/thrash metal, but it was delivered with the vocal growl and fast-paced drumming of doom metal and the distorted guitar sound from grunge. Sludge metal as a genre has evolved to encompass a wide range of styles, but Mastodon sits on the progressive metal side of the spectrum, with most albums revolving around a specific theme or concept, which is what makes their music appealing to me. I soon got hold of their preceding album Leviathan, a concept album loosely based on the Moby Dick story, which also had some great songs like Blood and Thunder and the epic 13 minute track Hearts Alive. I have kept track of this band ever since and their music just keep getting more sophisticated as they explore variations in style and composition. Every album has stand out tracks – Oblivion from 2009’s Crack the Skye, the delightful Octopus Has no Friends and poignant Creature Lives from 2011’s The Hunter, the title track from 2014’s Once More ‘Round the Sun. I haven’t really spent enough time listening to their last album, Emperor of Sand from 2017.

I’ve found a couple of other sludge metal that consistently produces a similar quality of work. One is Baroness, whose music also sits at the progressive end of sludge metal. Baroness has interestingly named their albums Red Album, Blue Record, Yellow & Green, Purple and Gold & Grey. All the albums feature amazing cover art created by lead vocalist John Dyer Baizley. My favourite songs are Shock Me from Purple and the epic Rays on Pinion from Red Album. The other band is Kylesa, but I’ve only listened to one of their albums, Ultraviolet (2013). I hadn’t realized it until I wrote this post, but all three of these sludge metal groups are based in Georgia, USA (one in Savannah and one in Atlanta).

And so, I come to conclusion of this series of posts, which started off with me making the leap from pop to classic/contemporary hard rock in the late 80s and has me more than 30 years later listening to a very wide range of rock and metal from the 60s to the 2010s. While this genre no longer enjoys the kind of mainstream popularity it did in the early 70s and again in the mid- to late 80s, it’s cool that all the sub-genres are alive and well, constantly evolving and still producing songs that showcase incredible musical compositions, outstanding technical prowess and stimulating songwriting. Some of the fun and thrill of discovering bands and hunting down their albums has disappeared in this era of instant access and portable music. Perhaps because of that I am less focused when I sit down to listen to a new album, because it was so easy to get hold off and I have a feeling that I can always listen to it at any time. Perhaps if I listen to new music as attentively as I used to, I will continue to discover other albums that will create the kind of seismic shifts that Rush, Metallica, Iron Maiden, Dream Theater and Coheed & Cambria did for me in the past.

Milestones on a personal journey through rock and metal: Part 3

In the second part of my series of posts about the albums that kicked off my love for specific sub-genres of hard rock or metal, I talked about how transformational Metallica was in opening up the thrash metal genre, as opposed to the lighter ‘hair’ or pop-metal that I had been consuming since 1988, which itself was triggered by Def Leppard’s Hysteria. Through 1989 and 1990, I was scouring the rooms of college friends for metal albums. At this time, most of these albums were still not being released officially in India, so we had to rely on vinyl to tape transfers (very high quality), done by professional recording shops located in the big Indian cities (complete with a photocopy of the album sleeve). The other problem was that in the days before the internet or even FM Radio, there was no way of knowing what albums a group had released, except through word-of-mouth or through a reference found in a dog-eared copy of Kerrang! magazine that someone may have purchased on an international trip during semester break. It would sometimes take weeks, months or even years to piece together the discography of a particular band. It is indeed amazing that with all these limitations, I discovered as many groups and albums as I did.

Iron Maiden’s Powerslave, released in September 1984

1989/90, introduction to NWOBHM via Iron Maiden’s 1984 album, Powerslave: I didn’t know about the NWOBHM (New Wave of British Heavy Metal) ‘movement’ until well into the 90s, which featured the rise of bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Def Leppard, who later ‘sold out’ and crossed over into more accessible hard rock and hair metal. Powerslave was the album that got me hooked onto Iron Maiden, a relatively more accessible album compared to their breakout albums The Number of the Beast from 1982. It was the right level of ‘heaviness’ for me to get into the genre and I quickly fell in love with Bruce Dickinson’s soaring vocals and bassist (and primary songwriter) Steve Harris’ distinctive ‘gallop’ style of playing. Iron Maiden were the full package – lyrics tinged with elements of the supernatural, fast-paced and intricately interwoven music, the zombie-like mascot Eddie integrated into the cover art of all their albums and their high-energy live shows (which sadly I’ve never been to), they built up a larger-than-life image. As I write this, I’m reflecting on the fact that all I own is their 2002 greatest hits compilation Edward the Great, whereas I would be happy to own their 3 albums from the mid-80s, Powerslave, Somewhere in Time and Seventh Son of a Seventh Son.

Budgie’s Nightflight, released October 1981

As much as I love Iron Maiden, I never really warmed up to any of the other NWOBHM bands such as Judas Priest, Motorhead or Saxon, though I did very much like Bruce Dickinson’s 1990 solo album Tattooed Millionaire, which is really mainstream hard rock and not a NWOBHM sound. There is however, one cult band I love, which both preceded and defined this era…and that is Budgie. I came across a tape of their 1981 album Nightflight in a small record store in Kerala in 1990 and picked it up because it looked so ridiculous. The music was surprisingly good and I only discovered many years later that they had been around since 1971 and influenced many other musicians, without ever having achieved mainstream success. Described as a cross between Rush and Black Sabbath (with elements of tongue-in-cheek humour, as evidenced by their album covers and songs with names like Nude Disintegrating Parachutist Woman), it’s easy to understand why their music would appeal to me. When Metallica included two of their songs – Breadfan and Crash Course in Brain Surgery – on their 1998 Garage Inc. compilation/tribute album of cover songs of their favourite bands, I truly started to appreciate the extent of their influence and started reading about them on the rock websites that were popping up on the internet in the late 90s. Sadly, their music is not easy to get hold of, with even the selection on Spotify quite limited.

Pearl Jam’s Ten, released August 1991

1992, introduction to grunge via Pearl Jam’s 1991 album, Ten: 1991 was a big year for rock and metal. In August, Metallica jolted the music world with the release of their untitled ‘black album’ and one month later, Guns ‘n’ Roses cemented their status as the biggest band in the world with the simultaneous release of their twin albums Use Your Illusion I and II. In between these two events, an unknown band from Seattle that less than a year earlier had called themselves Mookie Blaylock but then changed their name to Pearl Jam, released their debut album and over the next few months helped put Seattle on the world music map and popularized the grunge sound along with bands like Nirvana. The album started breaking through only about a year later and when I picked it up in 1992 I just couldn’t believe my ears. How could every song be so good, so visceral? Even today, 28 years and 11 studio albums later, this is the album that defines the group for me. The songs are characterized not so much by the musicianship, as was the case with the rock and metal bands of the 60s, 70s and 80s, but by Eddie Vedder’s vocals and the dark songwriting, best exemplified by their hit single Jeremy. Sadly, this focus away from musical virtuosity spelled the end of the hard rock/heavy metal era, as everyone started gravitating towards the punk-influenced, distortion-laden, fuzzy, sludgy sound of grunge and alternative rock.

I didn’t care for this sound as it moved away from the melodies and vocal harmonies that made me fall in love with the genre in the first place, but I did have a few favourite groups from this era. By 1992/93, with MTV available as a programming block on Indian state-owned TV, I was able to watch videos of emerging grunge bands and pick the sounds that appealed to me. I gravitated mostly towards Alice in Chains, specifically their 1992 Dirt album which contains one of my all-time favourite rock songs, Would? which first appeared in the soundtrack of the 1992 movie Singles. My other favourite grunge band was Stone Temple Pilots, triggered by their single Plush from the 1992 album Core which was on heavy rotation on MTV. On their 1994 album Purple, I really liked Vasoline and Interstate Love Song. And last but not least from this genre and era was Soundgarden, specifically their mainstream hit album Superunknown with hits like Black Hole Sun, Fell on Black Days and Spoonman.

1993/94, introduction to guitar virtuosos via Steve Vai’s 1990 album, Passion and Warfare: This is a bit of a cheat entry, for me to say that I was “introduced” to guitar virtuosos in the early 90s. As a rock and metal fan, one of the major elements of a rock track is that guitar solo and for years, fans have worshipped at the feet of virtuosos like Ritchie Blackmore, Jimmie Page and Eddie Van Halen, with even Michael Jackson bringing in Van Halen and Steve Stevens for solos in Beat It and Dirty Diana respectively. But listening to a cool solo as part of a song is one thing and listening to a whole album of intricate guitar playing (which may not necessarily be melodic nor accompanied by good vocals) is another. In the late 80s in college, we started hearing about neoclassical guitarists like Yngwie Malmsteen and Joe Satriani, with the latter having trained some of the rock guitarists of the era and who had released their own solo albums. I listened to a couple of tracks from Satriani’s but didn’t care much for the songs. Meanwhile, I started to really love Steve Vai’s guitar playing on Van Halen vocalist David Lee Roth’s solo album Skyscraper and Whitesnake’s 1989 album Slip of the Tongue. So when I got a chance to purchase a vinyl to tape recording of his 1990 solo album Passion and Warfare, I felt it was a low risk decision. Sure enough, I wasn’t disappointed, with tracks like For the Love of God and my favourite track Sisters. I’m forever grateful that I got to watch Steve Vai live in concert in Malaysia in 2014.

In the late 90s, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani and Eric Johnson organized a series of tours under the banner of G3 and I picked the first of these recordings G3: Live in Concert. But I have never really gone back to this genre in a big way, much preferring to listen to guitarists play as part of a rock group, or preferring guitar-driven instrumentals like Orion and Call of the Kthulu from Metallica or YYZ from Rush.

I’m pretty much done with this highly enjoyable look back in time. In my final post, I’ll talk about the albums that got me into prog metal and sludge metal.

Milestones on a personal journey through rock and metal: Part 2

In the first part of my series of posts about the albums that signposted my journey to becoming a rock and metal fan starting from the late 80s, I covered Def Leppard’s Hysteria, Jethro Tull’s Aqualung and Black Sabbath’s Paranoid as albums that got me hooked into modern hard rock, classic rock and classic heavy metal (all my personal terms…these sub-genres may equate to different groups for other music fans). In this second post, I cover three more albums that introduced me to other sub-genres of rock and metal.

Motley Crue’s Girls, Girls, Girls released May 1987

1988, introduction to ‘hair’ metal via Motley Crue’s 1987 album, Girls, Girls, Girls: As a teenage male, what was there not to like about the title track from the bad boys of metal? Frankly, these songs were not particularly heavy and probably shouldn’t have even been termed as metal, except for the screechy vocals and ‘big hair’ that gave these bands an aura of ‘danger’! This is actually what KISS had done in the 70s with a combination of scary make-up and surprisingly accessible stadium rock lyrics, and now Motley Crue was reinventing the approach for a new generation, with slightly raunchier lyrics in keeping with the times. The music in this album felt like it had an element of southern boogie thrown in as well (like ZZ Top on steroids). Songs like Wild Side and Sumthin’ For Suthin’, as well as the title track are my favourites. The band repeated the formula 2 years later to even greater success with Dr. Feelgood. In 1994 they returned with a new vocalist and a much heavier, thrash metal sound that mimicked Alice in Chains, but the album sank pretty quickly (although I quite like most of the songs).

Meanwhile, in the late 80s, there were a number of clones of the Motley Crue style and they were all really good. In some cases, these were existing bands that decided to restyle themselves to latch onto this wave. My favourites were Cinderella, Poison and Ratt. Cinderella’s debut album Night Songs could really be classified as true heavy metal, but to capitalize on the hair metal craze, the band was given a ‘glam’ positioning by its label. I really loved the slow, heavy sound of Night Songs and Nobody’s Fool. Their follow-up album Long Cold Winter had an even better collection of songs, some a bit more bluesy. The title track, Gypsy Road and Don’t Know What You’ve Got are fantastic, under-rated metal songs from this era. Poison hit the airwaves around the same time and I’m sure everyone remembers their power ballad Every Rose Has Its Thorn from their album Open Up and Say…Ahh!. Ratt was less well known although they had been around much longer, but I only discovered them when they glamourized themselves and released Reach for the Sky in 1988, with great songs like City to City and I Want a Woman…admittedly rather juvenile when you listen to them now, but still very catchy.

Metallica’s …And Justice for All, released August 1988

1989, introduction to thrash metal via Metallica’s 1988 album, …And Justice for All: I can remember exactly how I got hooked onto Metallica through this album. I played the tape and the music made absolutely no sense to me…no melody, no rhythm, just some guy growling with lots of noise in the background (I guess I must have been listening to Blackened, the first song on Side A). It was a sunny afternoon, so I dozed off with the tape still playing. Luckily, it was one of those tape players that automatically switched sides, so when I woke up a short while later the album was still playing and I was amazed to hear the most inventive, music delivered with such raw brutality that it seemed to speak to my very soul. I couldn’t believe it was the same music that I had dissed half an hour earlier. I think this was Harvester of Sorrow (which is actually my favourite song from the album). I just listened to the album again and again. It took me quite some time to get hold of Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets albums and it was only several years later that I got a vinyl-to-tape transfer of their debut album Kill ‘Em All. By then of course, they had become the biggest band in the world, by virtue of their ‘black album’ released in 1991. For me, …And Justice for All will remain the album that changed my life in so many ways and the release that showcases the true DNA of the band. I think of it as Metallica’s equivalent of Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List – the work that probably will define the artist in years to come. Every song is fantastic. Oh, I could say that about every album upto 1987’s Reload! I am so lucky that I got to see them in concert in Malaysia in 2013…the stadium went wild and everyone sang along with every song!

Metallica led to me seek out the thrash metal genre, which at that time was defined by the quartet of Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax and Megadeth. I only ever really warmed up to Megadeth (but that was a few years later in the early 90s, when they released the outstanding Countdown to Extinction). Meanwhile, thrash metal was evolving, with bands like Alice in Chains, System of a Down and Pantera all redefining and pushing the boundaries of musicianship and songwriting in the context of heavy metal. I could go on and on about all these bands and their albums (maybe in a new series at a later date).

Rush’s Power Windows, released October 1985

1989, introduction to progressive rock via Rush’s 1985 album, Power Windows: In fact, the first song I heard from Rush was The Temples of Syrinx, from their seminal 1976 album 2112. I was a pre-teen and this song represented the big bad world of hard rock (as I thought of it at that time in the late 70s); I was so fascinated with the sound but in those days there was no SoundHound and no way to know what I was listening to. It was only in the late 80s that I realized the song was by Rush, who were as far removed from the bad boys of rock and metal as it was possible to be. I am sure I had listened to other Rush songs in college in 1987/88, but it wasn’t until 1989 that I sat down and listened to an entire album from this group and was really hooked by Neil Peart’s astonishing time signatures…not even realizing at that time that I was in fact listening to a milder, more commercial sound from this band. Friends soon introduced me to their ‘classics’ from the late 70s and early 80s – Tom Sawyer, The Spirit of the Radio, Red Barchetta, A Farewell to Kings, Circumstances, Hemispheres, Trees…the list goes on and on. They released 12 albums from Rush (1974) to Hold Your Fire (1987) and I loved every single one. From 1989’s Presto onwards, their albums became a mixed bag with a different sound (particularly Geddy Lee’s vocal style) that I just couldn’t get to love. Their 2002 album Vapor Trails was a welcome return to a harder, sharper sound that I quite liked.

It’s impossible to find another band that sounds like Rush, but two rock groups come quite close. One is the ‘other Canadian rock trio’ Triumph, with three really good albums – Just a Game (1979), Progressions of Power (1980) and Allied Forces (1981). The other of course, is Yes, which also is a band with a unique sound, and was one of the musical inspirations for Rush’s Geddy Lee. There are a couple of famous contemporary progressive metal (not rock) bands which have either been influenced by Rush or have a sound reminiscent of Rush that I’ll cover in Part 3 under the prog metal sub-genre.

Milestones on a personal journey through rock and metal: Part 1

Neil Peart (1952-2019), legendary drummer for Canadian progressive rock trio, Rush

The untimely passing away of rock drummer legend Neil Peart last week had me mourning and reflecting on the immeasurable influence Peart and his Rush bandmates had on an entire generation of music lovers in the 70s and 80s, many of whom went on to become acclaimed musicians in their own right. Tributes flowed from the members of Black Sabbath, KISS, Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax, Guns ‘n’ Roses, Dream Theater, Styx, Foo Fighters, Grateful Dead, Skid Row, Sepultura, etc.

This led me to reminisce about my own introduction to the music of Rush and how that represented one of the many milestones in my evolution as a fan of rock and metal. Until I started college, I only listened to contemporary pop (primarily the synth-pop of the British New Wave) and was in fact, rather intimidated by the prospect of listening to rock and metal, finding the repetitive guitar power chords, heavy drum beats and the screaming vocalizations inaccessible compared to the simple, catchy rhythms and melodies of Top 10 chart music.

Sharing accommodations with other students who collectively had a wide repertoire of music tastes gave me ‘free’ access to virtually every genre and sub-genre of popular music. This quickly opened my mind and my ears to the magic of rock and metal, ranging from the classic rock of the 60s to the thrash metal of the early 80s which soon evolved into hair metal in the late 80s.

So, I decided to try and recall the key albums which shaped my musical tastes over the past 30 years and surprisingly, even after all this time, it wasn’t that difficult to pinpoint the one album that made me fall in love with and want to explore a particular genre. As with all lists, this is subjective and personal; other lovers of rock may identify other albums that set them off on their personal music journeys.

Def Leppard’s Hysteria, released August 1987

1987, introduction to ‘modern’ hard rock via Def Leppard’s 1987 album, Hysteria: This one album woke me up to the fact that there was more to life than listening to Michael Jackson, Madonna and Duran Duran. It was impossible not to be hooked by the vocal harmonizing on this album (a vocal style Van Halen had already had success with), combined with the simple synthesizer-enhanced rock chords and punchy percussion from their one-handed drummer, Rick Allen. With lyrics squarely targeting the red-blooded adolescent male, all six songs from Side A plus the title track from Side B were big hits as singles. Although I can revisit this album any time (and sing along with all the songs), I didn’t become a fan of their other albums from before or after. Even now, all I own is a “Best of” collection, which is like owning Hysteria plus bonus tracks!

This Def Leppard album (and Van Halen before them) effectively kick-started the era of ‘pop metal/rock’ and ‘hair metal’ (which is covered as a separate genre in a later post) but I choose to classify them here as ‘modern hard rock’, as Hysteria led me to explore the back catalogue of other contemporary hard rock bands like Aerosmith, Van Halen, Scorpions, KISS and Whitesnake. Almost all these bands experienced their heyday (or resurgence for the older bands) in the mid-80s, riding the wave of mainstream popularity that hard rock enjoyed in those years. Aerosmith made a comeback in 1987 with Permanent Vacation, one of the best hard rock albums ever. Van Halen’s early years with David Lee Roth on vocals featured harder music, but they progressively moved towards pop rock starting with 1984 and especially during the Sammy Hagar years, starting with 5150 and OU812. KISS always had a very accessible style of hard rock and I first heard their music with their 1987 album Crazy Nights (great title track)…I discovered their 70s hits much later. And as for Whitesnake, they too had a number of accessible hard rock albums in the 80s culminating with 1989’s Slip of the Tongue, which for me is very special because it features virtuoso guitarist Steve Vai performing some amazing pyrotechnics on lead guitar (more about him too, later)!

Jethro Tull’s Aqualung, released March 1971

1987/88, introduction to ‘classic’ hard rock via Jethro Tull’s 1971 album, Aqualung: It’s probably a disservice to classify Jethro Tull as ‘classic rock’; in reality it’s difficult to pigeonhole their music into any specific sub-genre of rock, covering everything from folk to prog rock and ironically winning the inaugural Grammy for Best Heavy Metal band at the expense of shoe-ins Metallica in 1989 (with a pretty good “synth-rock” album Crest of a Knave that has really stood the test of time). Besides the title track, the Aqualung album contains classics like Cross-Eyed Mary, Hymn 43 and Locomotive Breath. There were so many “Best of Jethro Tull” bootleg tapes floating around college (including tape transfers of their 20 Years of Jethro Tull boxed set released in 1988, which contained 60+ tracks) that over the next three years, I got to listen to all their best music. I was fortunate to see them live in concert in the early 90s in Chennai. As much as I love all their music, I only own two albums of theirs…my favourites from their ‘folk rock’ period of the late 70s – Songs from the Wood and Heavy Horses.

In due course, I reached out for other bands which originated during the heady days of the 60s. Although I don’t listen to all of them quite as much these days as I used to, the music of Wishbone Ash and Uriah Heep remain evergreen. The twin guitar attack of Wishbone Ash is as sweet a sound as can be heard in rock and Argus is my top album. Uriah Heep had so many good songs, but I suppose Wizard from the 1972 album Demons and Wizard ranks as the most timeless. I had heard of classic rock bands like Mountain and Blue Oyster Cult, but it wasn’t until the late 90s that I was able to immerse myself in their music. Ditto for Jimi Hendrix, who surprisingly wasn’t such a big deal in college, but is now one of my all-time favourites.

And of course, how can one not talk about Deep Purple and its spin-off, Rainbow. Deep Purple owns perhaps the best-know riff in hard rock from Smoke on the Water from their 1972 Machine Head album. That song and Highway Star from the same album were staples of any college dorm party. Having said that, my top Deep Purple album is in fact 1984’s Perfect Strangers by their reformed, classic Mark II line-up and I’ve never warmed up to their classic stuff from the 70s. On the other hand, I’ve really enjoyed all the music of Rainbow the band formed by Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore and fronted by Ronnie James Dio and subsequently Joe Lynn Turner.

Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, released September 1970

1987, introduction to classic heavy metal via Black Sabbath’s 1970 album, Paranoid: Eschewing speed and virtuosity and instead, doubling down on heaviness and intensity, further amplified by dark lyrics, it’s no wonder that Black Sabbath are considered one of the fathers of Heavy Metal. When I first listened to songs like War Pigs, Paranoid and Iron Man from their 1970 album Paranoid, I was unable to appreciate how heavy these songs were, as much as I did when I revisited the album in recent years…particularly when Iron Man was featured in the eponymous Marvel comics movie. No wonder these guys inspired a whole generation of heavy metal bands. In the 90s, I was introduced to another classic song from this album, Planet Caravan, when it was performed as a cover by Pantera. For all its influence, I don’t own any albums by Black Sabbath and for a period of time, I was in fact a bigger fan of Sabbath front man Ozzy Osbourne’s solo albums (particularly Blizzard of Ozz and Bark at the Moon).

Simultaneously with Black Sabbath, I discovered other classic heavy metal bands birthed in the late 60s, many with strong blues influences – Iron Butterfly, Cream and Led Zeppelin (although one could argue that Cream and Led Zeppelin are more rock than metal). By far the most commonly played band in college dorms was Led Zeppelin, although I was not a big fan of their music, especially not Stairway to Heaven. I’ve come to appreciate their music more in recent years, with Kashmir and Immigrant Song among my favourite epic tracks, as well as the reggae-rock track D’yer Maker.

Although formed much later in 1982, I think of Dio in the same “space” as the classic metal bands. Band frontman Ronnie James Dio was Black Sabbath’s lead singer for their classic 1980 Heaven and Hell album and its follow-up Mob Rules. He brought that ‘slow and heavy’ sensibility over to his own band and they produced classics like Holy Diver, The Last in Line and All the Fools Sailed Away through the 80s.

In the next part of my post, I will cover albums that introduced me to hair metal, thrash metal and progressive rock.