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Can we talk about this fascinating year?

On one extreme it seems to be the year in which most 60s legends hit their absolute nadir: we have Paul McCartney's Press to Play, Rolling Stones' Dirty Work, Eric Clapton's August, Neil Young's Landing on Water, Lou Reed's Mistrial, Bob Dylan's Knocked Out Loaded and Kinks' Think Visual. All except maybe the last one generally regarded as not only bad, but the artist's worst work ever.

In completely unexpected fashion comes Paul Simon's Graceland, not only a good album but a huge commercial and critical success. Simon not only survived the year without embarrassing himself, but he actually reached his solo peak. The album was not only acceptable, but original and influential.

The alternative scenes seemed to be peaking as well. We have The Smiths' The Queen Is Dead, Sonic Youth's EVOL, XTC's Skylarking, Talk Talk's The Color of Spring and R.E.M's Lifes Rich Pageant, all important milestones in the discographies of the respective artists.

The thrash metal scene was definitely peaking, with Metallica's Master of Puppets, Slayer's Reign in Blood and Megadeth's Peace Sells... But Who's Buying?.

We also have hip-hop losing much of its funk/disco roots and entering the golden age with the commercially successful Run DMC's Raising Hell and Beastie Boys' Licensed to Ill, both produced by Rick Rubin.

So what do you think? Was it a year of extremes? A good one? A bad one?

Hi Ovi. Being from an older generation, I must first check out a list of what was going down musically in '86, just to remind myself.

I do know (and love) the albums you mention by Paul Simon, Metallica and Talk Talk...

I'll get back to this later...

Guns N' Roses made their debut in 1986, with their EP "Live Like A Suicide", and then with their album "Appetite For Destruction". It took a few months, but "Appetite" eventually ended up being a major success, and a new sound was born. I know, that last bit was a little corny.  ;D But it's true. Hearing something like "Welcome To The Jungle" was new and exciting.

Appetite was 1987.

Don't forget Anthrax's Among the Living.  Often thought of as the lessor of the Big Four, I'd put Anthrax second only to Metallica.

Also, it's interesting while thrash was peaking, the big three of heavy metal were trying their hardest to be commercial.  Black Sabbath (essentially a Tony Iommi solo project by 1986) had a power ballad with Glenn Hughes on vocals, and a young Denise Crosby in the video. 

Both Judas Priest and Iron Maiden introduced synths in their sounds to try to appeal to the MTV crowd.

It' seemed to be a year (era?) of "popification." Thrash began heading mainstream as noted above, while full-on pop metal really ascended: Bon Jovi's massive hit Slippery When Wet.. R&B? How about Janet Jackson's enormous breakout Control[/]? World music on Graceland.. Indie--then "college"--groups as noted, like R.E.M. Art like Peter Gabriel's gigantic hit "Sledgehammer."

Not often for the best: op noted a lot of sh*t by legacy artists. But especially with MTV's dominance, if artistic purity suffered, more diverse niches seemed to find mass audiences even if in that new, slick, arguably watered down form.

1986 was a weird year for sure. What I do remember well is the music just didn't have much of a vibe to it, with a few exceptions. A lot of Bon Jovi on the radio. Lot of really bad popped-out makeup-and-hair sleaze metal, although it would explode even more shortly after then be decimated a few years after that, thankfully. Motley Crue...no. Poison...no.

But if you were tuned into it at the time, the effect of Appetite For Destruction on a generation of teenagers and on music in general cannot be understated. It felt like real rock and roll with no apologies.

What was also odd as 1986 went into 1987 was how The Monkees started to own MTV, and if it seems odd consider that "Daydream Believer" was the number one most requested video on their pre-TRL (man, what a sham TRL was...) video request show for weeks if not months. And another #1 video that owned MTV was Paradise City, even well after the album it came from had been released.

There were glimmers of hope in the morass of blah releases and miscues by classic artists.

But imagine a 20-year old song being number one in requests among the 13-19 year old crowd in 2016. That was the Monkees.

Bizarre times. Glad we survived. And happy to have had my yard sale and flea market finds of Beatles and Monkees albums to keep me going.

Addendum: I think it was 1986...but MTV had a show called "Closet Classics" where they would play videos mostly from the 60's for an hour block or something, and this was something I remember watching with other friends who had similar musical tastes, and who had no time for Bon Jovi or the fucking "Crue". Great to see the classic artists who at that time were only 20 years or so beyond their original release. It was jarring to hear the difference in the music from the current to the classic on the same channel.

I will say this too: Thank you for the reminder of Gabriel and "Sledgehammer". That song has aged very, very well and still grooves like a motherfucker. That song was everywhere on MTV and maybe a little less so on the radio, so chalk it up to a breakthrough video driving what was a solid song musically. I doubt it would have been noticed as much without the video.

Add "Miami Vice" to this too. It was still cresting in '86, and a lot of songs became hits because of that show. I'll have to check the broadcast dates and such, but I remember Smugglers Blues had a prominent placement in the plot of one of that show's best episodes that also featured Glenn Frey. They knew what they had going.

I loved Poison. No shame either. 10-year-old me heard big hooks, decent melodies, and seemingly scandalous subject matter all wrapped in a visually transgressive wrapper, like an 80s version of 70s KISS.

Well I had a look through.

Saw a further three great albums listed (Queen's A Kind of Magic, Zappa's Jazz from Hell and Gary Numan's Strange Charm) and some classy singles ("Rock Me, Amadeus", "West End Girls", "The Captain Of Her Heart", the aforementioned "Sledgehammer" and "Walk This Way")

That said, much of the rest means nothing to me. I'd never heard of half of the artists! A generational thing, no doubt... 

To each his own. They had a few decent songs that I appreciate for the craft of writing and production, but "Unskinny Bop" is and always will be one of the worst damn songs I've ever heard.

It must be said, though, that I'm also not a fan of KISS although I wore a KISS Halloween costume at age 8 or so, and have photo evidence to prove it.  :lol

I don't mean to go to the grave over them, by any means! Just a thing I was the right age for, probably. Agree on Unskinny Bop btw. By then I would've been 14 or so and had high hopes for the next album...and there it was, built on an OK riff over eighth-note As in the bass. A A A A A A A A killmenow...

The problem with going by year is that the years blended into each other and some albums released in 1986 didn't catch fire until '87. The mention of Run DMC/Aerosmith doing Walk This Way triggered this thought. Rick Rubin did that one, and he also did License To Ill...and I remember License To Ill being more of an '87 jam, and it was.

I can vouch for having heard a lot of boom boxes blasting License To Ill in the summer of 87 and even into 88, that album was HUGE. Yet the historians will say "1986" as the release, even though it was late '86 and it wasn't an instant smash until the Fight For Your Right video blew up on MTV. Again, the power of video at this time on full display.

I also had to go back and think about another groundbreaker that some people got at the time and others didn't know what to make of it. "Pump Up The Volume" by MARRS. I thought that was '86, late '86 like the Beasties, but no - it was '87 and was still getting played into '88. So the memory of these years and release dates can be deceiving. I put "Appetite" into that bag as well, it kept gaining momentum into 1988 even though it's tagged as an '87 release. So at some point the years don't matter as much as when the albums were affecting people.

I do respect a songwriter or band who can write a song which becomes timeless, no matter what parameters of that are applied, from Karaoke favorite to one that gets played every Christmas. So for that reason, I think "Every Rose Has It's Thorn" is a solid song, and it's still heard and played today. It's a good song, and even the often-bashed CC DeVille gets in a good lead guitar break. It was one of the better G-C-Em-D metal power ballads out there because it was a good song. I also liked "Something To Believe In", that was a good tune. So it's not all bad stuff, obviously, but I just remember a ton of bands like Poison getting a wake up call from GnR in terms of real rock and roll, then of course 1991 and '92 put the nail in the coffin for good.

It was perhaps an overdose of glam metal, too damn much of it. Poison, Warrant, Cinderella, Winger, etc etc etc. Not that all of it was bad, but it was just an overload of it.

So called "hair metal" has its fans and detractors.  I'm a fan.

One thing that I don't think can be denied about hair metal is the element of "fun" that is missing in so much rock music post 1992. 

That's why I thought The Darkness was such a breath of fresh air in 2003, as the world of rock had become so boring and morose in the post grunge era. 

But, like GF said, thank goodness for the older stuff. 

I have to say a lot of my own memories of that time and the music also carry a personal side too, which I guess would be an obvious reaction to associate this stuff with things you remember personally versus release dates and chart data.

I remember having friends who were still wearing Diver Down 3/4 sleeve t-shirts going into 1987, and of course at this time Sammy Hagar had taken over lead vocals for VH. I never dug the Sammy stuff, it just didn't hit me. But I loved and still love those first 5 VH albums up to and including 1984. That was the fun in hard rock and metal, and Eddie was always amazing. But as soon as Sammy got in there, I lost them. They had #1 albums and tons of success with Sammy, but it just never hit me like those first VH albums.

But I say that too because "metal" for me didn't include Metallica because their music simply wasn't a part of my friend circle at that time, and you couldn't hear them on MTV or the radio. That was until the first time I heard them, really heard them, when MTV first played the long-form "One" video. I never heard anything like that, and same goes for the video. I couldn't get enough of it, it was new and disturbing and the way Kirk went from a clean guitar tone to the classic Metallica grind floored me as a young player.

I had to go back later and rediscover all the classic albums and songs with Cliff Burton, because it simply didn't exist in my music world in 1986. But that, to my ears, was metal as soon as I heard it. When MTV was playing Winger and Cinderella as "metal", and just before that Quiet Riot and the fucking Crue...to realize what was going on but not being heard, after the fact, it was like the real deal versus an overly processed and calculated copy of the real deal. I literally had no idea a song like Master Of Puppets or The Call Of Ktulu even existed while Cliff was alive and MTV was playing the Crue as metal. Again, the power of video and commercial media to completely ignore what was really happening while instead offering watered down versions for mass consumption and labeling it the same.

One metal band I didn't mention, who often gets overlooked, is Queensryche. 

In 1986, the released their 2nd full length LP, Rage for Order.  It's a very good album, though, IMO, they peaked two years later with the outstanding Operation: Mindcrime.

i agree entirely. The same concept is actually why I defend some modern pop or critically sneered upon bands or music. It's only rock and roll (and I like it).

I can follow your logic there, but to me, it's hard to compare modern pop with 80s hard rock / hair metal as, for the most part, the bands from the 80s wrote their own material, and while they never get credit for it, the level of musicianship of those bands is actually pretty high.   And when I say musicianship, I'm also including vocal talent (which I think is mostly missing from modern pop). 

Yeah I just meant it from the fun/not highbrow sense.

Right, and from that POV, it makes sense. 

I stand corrected. It came out in July of 1987. "Live Like A Suicide" came out in 1986.

I think Neil's Landing On Water was seen at the time as somewhat of a return to form after several years of albums like Trans, Everybody's Rockin' and Old Ways. Bob's Knocked Out Loaded was absolute rock bottom; I know it's fashionable these days to pan Down in the Groove, but that album at least saw him stripping away some of the production excess - I like it. I had enjoyed Macca's Tug of War, Pipes of Peace, even the Give My Regards to Broad Street soundtrack. But Press to Play just left me cold. Maybe it was that cold 80's production. Sounded too much like a Phil Collins album to me. John Fogerty fell victim to this, too, with Eye of the Zombie. As for the Kinks' Think Visual, it's easily the weakest of their 80's albums, but I don't think it sucks (or blows). At least 3 songs rank among their best: Ray's Lost and Found, and Working At The Factory, and Dave's When You Were A Child.

The Bangles hit it big in '86 . . . and Heart had a good ballad with "These Dreams."

In the '80s, rock 'n roll was still a thing. You still had bands with virtuoso musicians, like Van Halen and Rush . . . and I would put the Police in that category as well.

Stewart Copeland was, and is a hell of a drummer. Very underrated.

Van Halen, yes: didn't "Van Hagar" debut with 5150 in '86? Good album, and a key for them in establishing a new sound.

Weren't some older, harder rocking bands struggling to adjust then, too? I'm thinking KISS Asylum and Twisted Sister Come Out And Play, if I'm not mistaken. I'm sure there are others in addition to the ones KDS mentioned as introducing synths.

The introduction of synths in a really mainstream way as I remember it was headed up by Van Halen on Jump and I'll Wait from the 1984 album (and hardcore fans gave them some grief over it, even though it was Eddie playing the keys), and ZZ Top with "Legs" and Sharp Dressed Man. Keep in mind, once again, the power of MTV and the video format to help put those songs, those sounds, and those bands into the top-10 singles dept where ZZ Top previously had been the blues/rock band purists. They became media celebrities literally overnight because the videos were so damned popular...thanks to MTV and a few synth sequences underneath their boogie roots.

I mentioned Hagar earlier - yes, that was '86 and they were a massive success with Sammy, but it left me cold and still does. It just wasn't the same, and it actually had nothing to do with the lead vocalist or "frontman", I just didn't like the way the songs were delivered after the 1984 album. It didn't feel like VH, still doesn't - my opinion only. They made shitloads of money, #1 albums, etc...but none of the Hagar albums hold a candle to those first 5 VH albums, which are brilliant. Pure fun, party rock and roll with superior if not groundbreaking musicianship especially from the VH brothers.

My daughter had the best line concerning Roth v Hagar. "Hagar is a better singer than Roth; doesn't make the music better. If I wanted good singing I'd be listening to the Beach Boys" :lol

Now those are words of wisdom! Sums it up perfectly for me too. It was never about Sammy versus Roth, at least for me even though the fans and the media jumped on that angle. It was the music - with Sammy, it just didn't click for me and it was because the music lost that Mojo VH had from their debut album.

I remember Eddie sat in with Paul Shaeffer's band when the Letterman show did a run in LA around '85. He was the coolest musician on the planet. They even gave him a solo song, Ed's guitar as lead voice, no vocals - it was a VH cover, can't recall what it was. Cool as hell to see it. But it reminds me of Letterman too. I thought Letterman on NBC had the coolest show on TV for a time. When we finally got a VCR I'd tape it every night and watch the next day. Then he moved to CBS, and it was the same core group of people, same Letterman to a degree, same bits and running gags, same stuff...but it lost me and I never went back after that first year on CBS. It lost whatever it had being on NBC at 12:30 after Carson. Just like VH lost whatever Mojo they had with Roth on those first albums.

Good point with Letterman, although I'd hastily add that his humor in general has dated very, very poorly.

It has, I agree. That also has to be an age and time thing, I think he was funnier when I was 15 because I was 15. The older I got, his schtick got tired and in some cases just wasn't funny anymore. But some of what he did on the old NBC show, especially the remotes he'd do on the street, were as good as TV got, and no one was doing it quite the same. Larry "Bud" Melman at the Port Authority bus terminal is still one of the best bits I've ever seen, and I think that was '82! I saw that on reruns, obviously.

But it's true, the humor did not age well overall.

I think when he really jumped the shark was when he hosted the Oscars, esp. the whole "Uma-Oprah" thing *shudder*

Painful. That was the CBS Letterman. It's just like the difference between the Van Halen debut album and getting OU812 or something, putting it on, and going "hmmmm..." - just not the same mojo. And they ran out of the juice. Letterman was 12:30 on NBC, later was cooler. When he went 11:30, CBS, and mainstream hosting the Oscars, there was no coolness factor to cover up the flaws.

1986 was also the year Depeche Mode's album "Black Celebration" came out. A great album.

CBS in general was lamer than a one legged chicken at the time.

Yes it was. Actually, all of their albums save Speak and Spell and A Broken Frame through Violator were all great albums, and both of those two had some great tracks on there as well (especially the latter).

Let the record show I wasn't trying to overly credit Hagar so much as point out that '86 album's importance in their direction. I don't think they ever had a classic album with Hagar, as opposed to a couple imo with Roth (debut and 1984). I'd actually refer to KDS's and my posts earlier this thread as to why: fun.

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/d1/RandyTravisStormsofLife.jpg/220px-RandyTravisStormsofLife.jpg)Most memorable album of the year. Debut of one of the world's great country singers.

Fun is valid, yes, but it doesn't cover the fact that the songs and even the production (and performances) just wasn't as memorable. Even though they sold a ton of records, some would argue they were more commercially successful with Hagar based on sales and charts...does anyone remember any of the "hits" that were so successful beyond "Right Now" which was also the theme of a soda commercial?

I cannot remember anyone over two decades or so wanting to learn, play, or cover anything from the VH Hagar era. Contrast that with the thousands of kids who weren't even born yet who learn and cover Ed's and Alex's parts from the classic years.

I have to ask, and it's not personal but I am genuinely curious: If the Hagar era VH was more successful and reached more people than the original DLH run, why is there little or no demand for those supposedly more successful songs and albums?

Seriously, are there people out there jazzed up to hear "Poundcake", or 13-year old budding guitarists trying to learn what Ed played on "When It's Love"? It's just not there, compared to how many covers of Hot For Teacher, Eruption, and even beginning keyboard players trying to cover Jump can be found online, and that says a lot about the longevity and vibe that the Hagar years simply lack...even though Hagar is now known as the Cabo Wabo beach party and fast cars laid-back party dude.

For me, the songs and vibe just weren't there after 1984.

Are you asking me? Again, I wasn't defending, much less promoting, Van Hagar. So I could speculate, and the results would likely be similar to your ideas.

No Cap'n, not asking you or addressing you directly! Just adding to what you said - I agree there has to be an element of fun, but I'm seriously interested in hearing opinions from people who know VH's music why the Hagar era albums and singles are not in the public ear at all as of 2016, I mean you just don't hear any of them compared to the original run. And Hagar cultivated and promoted this image as the fun Cabo Wabo party dude, so it's not like he brought a bunch of serious or depressing tunes to the band, yet that era just gets dusted under the rug for the most part - as successful as it was.

I'd even say Hagar took the party image even further than Roth, but maybe the kind of party he was offering was khakis and docksiders on the deck with 10-buck tropical shooters served by hired bikini models versus the original band who you would imagine Jeff Spiccoli hiring to play at his party and having a blast doing it with all the kids... :)

This is for Bubbly Waves, who admits to listening to this band of late. The Colour of Spring is probably Talk Talk's most accessible album----and, like its two less accessible successors, a masterpiece:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upyrWwstEMY

This is quite off topic but I must disagree with elements of the Letterman discussion. I think that the stuff that Letterman was doing in the 80s is still ahead of its time. The only real counterpart to it, in my view, in terms of comedy challenging the norms of the TV medium is Monty Python's Flying Circus.

I also think it's a bit of a myth that Letterman went downhill when moving to CBS. The show changed, definitely. It didn't have the same kind of edge and the show now had the look of a mainstream TV show, rather than some secret cult program taped on the cheap. That said, there were amazing things that happened during the first few years at CBS. The show was a real spectacle and Letterman was still doing some really wild stuff. Was the Uma-Oprah joke his best work? No. But watching that whole Oscars broadcast, I can't think of anyone since who has been anywhere near as funny as Letterman was that night. As someone who has noted since, the New York comics tend to be poorly received by the LA media who write about the event and Letterman's anti-Hollywood attitude and routine didn't sit well with, well, anyone at the event or anyone reporting on it. But sitting at home watching it as a kid in Ontario, I thought it was great.

Demon-fighting genius, patronizing-twaddler, Van Hagar promoter

He was the straw that stirred the drink.

 

I agree the Letterman NBC show in the 80's was unique, groundbreaking, and exciting as hell because you never knew what they were going to come up with. I loved it, and still do. When I was in 9th grade or whatever, I was wearing a "Late Night" t-shirt with a top ten list on the back, and I'd get stopped by people wanting to read the list. A good ice-breaker for sure, lol. I also collected all the books, the top-ten list, other mid-80's books, I even had the old RS cover with Letterman from 83 or so on display. I was a fan, even though the earliest shows came to me via reruns on A&E and any bootleg tapes I could scrounge up in the pre-internet days.

But seriously, NBC Letterman had the juice - whether it was the 12:30 time slot where the vibe was we can do whatever the hell we want and buck the system, or whether it was just the lightning in a bottle winning-lottery-ticket thing where the timing was right and people wanted to see what they were doing.

Consider this: In those first years at NBC, when Letterman's pal Merrill Markoe and Chris Elliot were on the creative team and Barry Sand was still directing, they would bring on musical guests like James Brown and Carole King...and allow them to play multiple songs along with multiple segments of interviews. It was amazing, the James Brown show from '82 is still one of my favorites of all time. Three songs and long interviews. Carole King too, multiple songs. Frank Zappa interviewed with his teenage daughter - who does this? Then factor in the stunts he'd do like having lawn chairs instead of the usual chairs for the guests, just for the hell of it. Or taking a remote camera across the hall to pester the crew of "Live At Five" as they were prepping for a broadcast. Or deciding to throw watermelons out the window of 30 Rock for the hell of it. No one did this stuff, it's still amazing they got away with it.

Then CBS, it felt like too much of a production. The musical guests got one song, usually. That was it. You'd have to sit through the usual Hollywood big shots plugging the latest movie or theme restaurant, it was just like any other show. Springsteen did the final show at NBC, 'Glory Days" - where he simply rocked out with pure abandon. It did feel like the glory days were ending. Not that CBS didn't have some moments, but it lost the feel.

Later with the availability of more vintage video, it came to be that Letterman and his staff took a lot of their ideas going back to the early NBC days from old Steve Allen stunts, which by 1983 most of Letterman's audience who could stay up to 1:30 to watch would have no idea about from the 50's. But that's just an observation, not a critique. Steve Allen got the rap for being a bit of a stuffed shirt, but in the 50's he was doing a lot of what Letterman would do in the early 80's from the sight gags to the live remotes. A lot of Allen's bits have been lost to history.

One I heard about was involving Tony Randall. In the 50's, Tony was doing a Broadway show and also appeared on Allen's show. Tony would finish the theater matinee, and when the curtain closed Tony would have to gather up and literally run through the blocks of Manhattan to get to Steve Allen's studio to make his showtime there. So Allen and his staff got the idea to put remote cameras along Tony's route through the rush hour streets of NYC, and film him as he tried to run to the studio. From what they say, it was hilarious watching Tony trying to push through the people coming out of work and running block to block to get to Allen's studio.

That sounds exactly like the stuff Letterman would do 30 years later. :)

Great observations and it seems we have very similar backgrounds - right down to watching the A&E re-runs and owning the top ten books. One of the great pleasures for me with Youtube is finding those old Letterman shows.

I suppose our one minor difference is in how much we appreciate the CBS shows. Again, I agree they are very different animals and certainly, once we get into say the late 90s, the show was nowhere near the calibre of the 1980s shows in terms of comedy. However, I think part of the problem (and Letterman himself acknowledged this) was trying to do too much to compete with The Tonight Show once Leno overtook Letterman in the ratings in 1995. Until then, that first year and a half of CBS shows was, in my opinion, incredibly strong (although, yes, as you mention, the structure of the show had changed for the worse).

I think the first big mistake was lengthening the monologue. Letterman's strength was not the monologue. This is why the Carson-mandated "Opening Remarks" worked so well at NBC. It allowed a lot of time for a desk piece, or an audience segment, or a taped segment. All that fell by the wayside when they made the monologue longer. Then, after Letterman's heart surgery in the early 2000s, Letterman abandoned the taped segments altogether, and those were really the strongest element of the CBS Letterman years - from going to fast food restaurants with Zsa Zsa Gabor, to going door-to-door in Jersey with Siskel and Ebert or Richard Simmons, to making Michael "The Bar" Hirsch a man on campus in Boston, to feeding lines to Rupert Gee. To me, these pre-taped segments were as funny as many of the best NBC bits. I can understand why they were eliminated though. Clearly Letterman chose a less strenuous workload for his health. But in place of the taped segments came what seemed like 1000 segments of Will It Float? or Is This Something? or Guess the Meat with the audience - none of which were particularly hilarious concepts the first time around.

Great post, and I agree. I think you're right about the Leno debacle, how that affected the Letterman show on CBS, and also about his heart surgery. It's a natural progression of life going on and people changing over time. He wasn't the same Letterman from 1983, and I guess a big fan like me wasn't the same kid who thought his show in the 80's was as cool as TV would ever get.

To go back to the 80's, the early days especially, I think what Letterman and his team had was an opportunity which only comes up once - To be the "first" with a template and a goal but essentially no rules. It's what Steve Allen had in the 1950's - There was no late night TV. After the news, it was either old movies or a test signal after the station would sign off until the morning. So Allen's team had carte blanche to do whatever the hell they wanted in terms of format and content.

Fast forward to 1982. NBC had tried for the past decade to fill the slot after Carson. Carson started out in the 60's going 11:15PM to 1AM. 1 hour and 45 minutes after the local news. Then they trimmed back to 11:30 to 1, 90 minutes, then finally in the 70's cut back to 1 hour. NBC tried to plug in Tom Snyder and "Tomorrow" but it wasn't electric enough to keep college kids and others who could stay up late on a Tuesday night engaged. Too stock of a format.

Enter Letterman - A fan of Carson to the core, and Steve Allen, Letterman basically had the template and the freedom to do whatever the hell he wanted because NBC had no idea how to fill that 12:30 slot. This was open season, carte blanche on new ground just as Allen had in the 50's. As long as it got advertisers and ratings, NBC was OK. And Carson still had the power over late night at NBC and he had Letterman's back - crucial at NBC corporate, just ask Lorne Michaels. As Carson's sway in the corporate offices started to wane into the 90's, that's part of how Letterman lost out to Leno. Carson specifically wanted Letterman to fill his chair. The suits at NBC didn't care at that point what Carson wanted. They were still trying to find ways to be as hip as Arsenio...in retrospect, a fool's errand because Arsenio's lightning in a bottle didn't last. And ironically, Arsenio Hall himself grew up idolizing Carson and aspiring to do what Johnny did.

So Letterman had new ground to navigate, and he basically hit the TV screen with whatever he and his crew felt like doing, and it was awesome. Still is. It was the vibe of not giving a damn that I think appealed to a lot of us, like there was a template but no rules to follow. I feel like CBS had too many rules, then factor in Dave's health issue and it became a formula rather than the vibe of "let's do this, who cares if they approve..."

Absolutely!

One thing I might say is that while I agree that much of the inventiveness that Letterman brought to TV in the early 80s was largely inspired by Steve Allen, there was something about Letterman's character and personality that pushed it to a whole other level. Because while Allen's bits were inventive, his persona was still very much rooted in old school show business or, as Letterman would put it, show bidness. Letterman, despite the fact that he was himself so often the target of his own humour, was kind of like a rock star with a no-nonsense approach to the medium, a complete and utter unwillingness to refine, and a total irreverence for Hollywood, glitz, and glamour. This is why the show became notorious for Letterman's battles with guests on air (and to his credit, despite the tons of money going towards both him and his CBS show, he never completely lost that side of his personality, even when the guests did become more glitzy and glamorous - there was always a sense with him up until his very last show of, good lord what on earth am I doing here?)

I think this is why Conan O'Brien's comments about Letterman were among the most accurate I've seen when describing Letterman's achievements as a broadcaster. He likened late night hosts to explorers and said that Letterman discovered so much that every talk show host was now only able to work within the map that Letterman had created. I tend to agree. Even Letterman himself was forced to do that after a while.

I think some of the older bands went a little too far with synths.  For their first five LPs, Queen famously included the credit "No Synthesizers"  By the 1980s, it was a different story, and we got the mostly dreadful Hot Space as a result.  McCartney also went super synth in McCartney II. 

By the mid 1980s, Alex Lifeson from Rush was frustrated by the fact that his guitar playing was being replaced by synths on their mid 80s albums.

Roger Waters's 1987 Radio KAOS album is absolutely buried in synths, and Waters himself has criticized himself for that choice.  In fact, when he resumed his career as a touring act in 1999, the version of "The Powers That Be" he played in concert bore very little resemblance to the KAOS track.   

One band that refused to relent was AC/DC.  That was a band that refused to change their image or music to suit the era. 

For me the issue is less the use of synths (or drum machines, or whatever), and more losing their own vision and pandering to trends. That's the killer for musicians. Not to say that it's bad to try out other styles, either, but you can hear the difference between involved, excited exploration/experimentation and flat-out bad ideas. (The same thing actually applies to some of these 80s bands once Nirvana ruined their lives (and my ears).)

So some of these legacy artists' 86 albums, for example...not the synths, just the awkwardness. It's like seeing your 60-something mom dressing like a college kid.

I agree.  I think Rush (at least at first), Iron Maiden, and Van Halen did a good job incorporating synths in their music without changing their sound. 

Queen on the other hand really overused it and it really changed their sound.  I think they did a better job with them on albums like The Works and A Kind of Magic. 

Re: Letterman's show on NBC: there were some great music shows in Dave's early years. I remember the legendary James Brown appearance.  I also remember a couple appearances by Wayne Cochran, who had just become an evangelist, but he agreed to sing a couple of the old songs on the show. Then he insisted on singing a gospel song and just tore the place up. Little Richard, also an evangelist at the time, was on the show in '82 and '84 and had good chats with Dave, going over his career, and did a rockin' version of "Joy Joy Joy". Letterman always showed these legends the respect they deserved. These days, it's standard for the music guest to be crammed into the last 5 minutes of a show. It's nice seeing the old Carson shows on Antenna tv, too - when someone like B.B. King was on, he would get to do a couple songs and talk with Johnny for more than 30 seconds.

We've talked about this to some extent so I won't rehash the disagreement we have on the merits of Hot Space, but I think Queen actually eased into the synths with The Game, which I think is a great album even if you discount Hot Space. So I find Hot Space--regardless of its own merit, mind you, so you can still hate it!--more a legit exploration of a different sound as opposed to a trend-hopping mistake such as those referenced earlier in the thread by the legacy acts trying in vain to be relevant. Maybe it wasn't a pure success (which I'd grant), but it did have some real passion behind it (though the passion of roughly half of a seemingly splintered band).

I totally agree that by the mid-to-later '80s stuff, they seemed to have found themselves again. Maybe because they'd gone off and done their own things, maybe because by the late '80s they knew their time together was limited.

And to bring it back firmly to 1986, I love A Kind of Magic. The "Highlander" stuff was so over the top, so ridiculous, that it fit them perfectly.

I do enjoy The Game alot.   

For the switch to dance music, I wish Freddie had limited it to his solo material.  To me, there is stuff on Hot Space that, if not for Freddies vocals, I wouldnt even recognize as Queen. 

But back to the topic, I really enjoy A Kind Of Magic.  One track nobody ever mentions is Gimmie the Prize.  Queen channel a bit of Black Sabbath on that one.

The main way I can agree re Hot Space is the knowledge that Brian and Roger weren't into it. Not that I'd expect 100% enthusiasm from everyone on everything--in a band with multiple strong personalities and talents, that's not realistic--but in that case it was obvious. Since he was very soon doing solo stuff anyway, it would have made sense. Even if Deacon was on board for that material in his solo work, that would have been better from a marketing standpoint, probably. The Queen work around that time could have walked the line a bit more. They always put out albums of genre-crossing material, but with Hot Space it was almost uniformly dance-pop oriented, which made it an outlier not for what it contained, but from what it didn't contain.

The pity about the dance-ness of Hot Space is that there are actually a couple Queen gems on that album that tend to get overlooked - Life is Real and Put Out the Fire.  Had those tracks appeared on, say, The Game, The Works, or A Kind of Magic, I think they'd be more well known. 

You've got to admit, though, the synth bass line of "Staying Power" could have been a great riff on a rocker if arranged and produced differently!

This thread was fun. Was it Ovi who started it? Great thread. I'd love to see a 1987 thread pop up in the coming days as that year lands, especially because at the time and in the years immediately following, I considered '87 a great year for music. I wonder how it would seem looking back. (I suspect not so hot...)

I've heard a couple live versions of Staying Power that are pretty good.  Whenever Queen played their more dance based songs live, they always rocked them up a bit.  Same goes for Another One Bites the Dust.  But, Staying Power sounds like a completely different song in concert. 

You're exactly right about Queen live. I recall Nuno Bettencourt talking about that during Extreme's heyday. I think he was probably responding to the ballads and funkier aspects of Pornograffiti or something, and he said that one of the things he loved about Queen was that dichotomy of a really diverse and nuanced album band that, when performing live, was high energy and really rocked.

(For a second I thought we accidentally brought it back home to 1986, based on a mistaken memory of their debut being from that year. But I think it was actually '88 or '89. So we're still off!)

Yeah, I think Extreme's debut was 1988.  I know Nuno has huge respect for Queen.  In fact, when Nuno and Gary do More Than Words in concert, it's very reminiscent of how Freddie and Brian used to do Love of My Life. 

Their fondness for Queen was one of the reasons Extreme was asked to play at the Freddie Tribute Show in 1992, which was held at Wembley Stadium, the site of one of the most revered Queen live shows from their final true tour in...................................1986. 

AND HE DOES IT! On-topic success! (I did love that Extreme performance at the Queen benefit. The medley was spectacular.)

I think Hot Space's a great album. Always gets me groovin'. I mean, the rhythm on Back Chat? The best song Chic never wrote. Deacon was on a roll at the time.

Yes.  I got a Blu Ray of the Freddie Tribute Show for Christmas last year.  I forgot how good that concert was (although the Blu Ray still leaves off Robert Plant's rendition of Innuendo).  

While not released in 1986, the DVD of the Queen Wembley Concert from 1986 is essential IMO.  Too bad they never did Princes of the Universe in concert.

Yes! re Wembley. I got the VHS when I was in high school, and subsequently the DVD. I must have watched that show 50x. Freddie's charm is in full effect throughout the show, and the band (augmented by Spike Edney) really playing well. Freddie's voice was sadly not what it had been 10 years earlier, but it was still strong and captivating.

I was too young to notice or care that Queen was back on tour in '86, but for those people who hadn't seen them in several years by that point, it must have been amazing, not to mention a thrill that they weren't breaking up, weren't retiring from the road, etc.

Also I want to mention that the "no synths" thing on early Queen albums was not their stance against that type of music but a mere disclaimer that the guitars and sound effects were not synthesized.

And a friend of mine HATED Queen for being too pompous and serious before I converted him with Cool Cat.

Too pompous, I can see, but too serious!?

I had the VHS too, and was thrilled when the full concert was released on DVD.  

My favorite Queen live release is probably their Rainbow concert from 1974, which was finally officially released a couple years ago.  Now, if they'd just release Earls Court from 1977 in a legit DVD, that would be awesome.  

Getting back to 1986, Queen's Live Magic album was released in time for a Christmas release in 1986, but as a live album, it's very poor in that most of the songs are truncated versions.  

Yeah, that's kind of a common complaint against them these days. I guess judging just from the hits people don't realize how fun and genre-bending their albums actually are.

Even the hits, I can't think of them as "serious."  I mean, they had a massive hit about girls with big a$$es.  Other than the harmonies, that could've easily been a KISS song. 

Oh, I've been meaning to get that.

Well worth it. 

Speaking of over the top music that's often called pompous, Yngwie Malmsteen released his excellent Trilogy album in 1986.

Wow, I guess I haven't heard that complaint about them. That's hilarious. I would actually share it as a complaint if I thought it were the case: I think pop musicians who take themselves too seriously--not their work, I mean obviously I'd like musicians to take care in their craft--musicians who honestly think it's a serious business to prance in tights or leather and sing about sex or dancing or rock 'n' roll, I just can't tolerate it. (And that was a very badly written sentence.) It's fun, and nobody was able to get across the fun, the silliness, quite like Queen.

Actually that reminds me, a week or two ago we began talking about the early DLR Van Halen v Van Hagar including as related to seriousness. I think guitarfool posed a question about the bands' fates or accomplishments and I meant to get back to it. Stay tuned: if ideas like mine weren't shared then, I'll belatedly post them now.

The first Yngwie album I ever bought (on cassette)!

Well, they're seen as that big classic rock group that wrote anthems such as Bohemian Rhapsody, I Want to Break Free or We Are the Champions. Your father's favorite songs, the ones he gives as arguments as to why music was better back then. I can tell you from experience that in a lot of groups with people my age they are very hated. I often have to defend myself through. Which is fun. When compared to artists such as Frank Zappa or Beefheart or King Crimson they're not "hip" at all.

It might be my favorite Yngwie album.  Mark Boals was quite the singer.

Keyboardist Jens Johansson was borrowed by one of Yngwie's idols this past summer, Ritchie Blackmore, for his limited return with rock with Rainbow.......which released Finyl Vinyl in 1986.

First I'd ask, was the Hagar era more successful? They were both quite successful, commercially. I just checked Wikipedia and they don't list album sales specifically, but they do show top chart position and status (gold, platinum, etc.) In terms of chart position, no doubt those first three Hagar albums were higher rated on the charts, as they all reached #1. But the older ones weren't slacking: 19, 6, 6, 5, 3, 2, respectively (in chronological order up through 1984. And they are all multiplatinum, both Roth and Hagar.

But if we accept that the Hagar albums as more successful anyway, just for the point of the discussion, I think the answer is that the Roth band had the excitement and energy of youth, and the novelty of the Van Halen brothers' (and DLR's) talents. It's almost inevitable that these guys' early bursts of creativity unto the world would be what contained their greatest energies, their best inspirations, as is very often the case with pop musicians. (It seems to me very rare that a band's second decade is better than its first.)

Once the band was fully established as a behemoth, it's hard to expect real energy or creativity because they're shackled by commercialism, habit, band politics, and even just middle age. Van Hagar sounds like a very rich band playing music designed to be commercial that appeals maybe not quite to that young, crazy, enthusiastic kids at some mid-70s L.A. house party, but to the adult versions of those kids. It's still "dangerous" from a job-holding grown-up's point of view, but otherwise? Meh. They know too well the value of the power ballad, the value of MTV, the routine of the business. In some ways it reminds me of late '70s Beach Boys. It's not that it's incompetent, it's that it's exclusively competent.

Kids since 1978 have felt the thrill of "Eruption" and they always will. Conversely, even the cool guitar parts from the late '80s are just cool guitar parts: a dime a dozen.

I do really enjoy plenty of the Van Hagar stuff, but no question it's not the dynamic, charismatic band of the first six or seven years of the band's recording career.

I think I recently read that the band sold more overall LPs with Roth (though that's a tad unfair as DLR fronted 7 to Sammy's 4).  But their only #1 LPs are Sammy fronted. 

I guess I could see that to a degree.  I'm guess you're a little younger than me.   I'm 36, so Queen was still around during my elementary school years, and experienced quite the spike in popularity when Bohemian Rhapsody was included in Wayne's World when I was in middle school.

And you're a little younger than me--I'm 40--and so my recollection as a Midwesterner in America is that Queen was a total non-entity in the current music scene. Some of those hits, obviously, were still well regarded and played on classic rock radio sometimes, but despite being a follower of new releases from roughly '86 on, the only new music from Queen I recall being put out was Innuendo ... and that just barely. It wasn't until "Wayne's World" that anybody cared again, that and the re-release of the catalogue on CD in '91, I think it was, which made it easier to see and buy the music.

So interestingly, I think my experience is almost closer to Ovi's, except the part about them being seen as serious. But they were totally an uncool, "classic rock" band that nobody I knew cared about at the time. Especially since they weren't the macho kind of classic rock band people tended to gravitate toward, but rather, well, ... not that. (I think the band's--OK, Freddie's--camp style and assumed gayness probably did hurt them in middle America at the time.)

I could see that, and that's why they were filling stadiums in South America and Europe, but not even touring in the US in the mid 1980s. 

These days, I almost take "uncool" as a badge of honor when it comes to the music I like. 

LOL, I know what you mean. While being part of something big, some of-the-moment trend is very exciting, especially when you're young, I think with age you start feeling a little detached from it all. You see other trends you're not part of, maybe you're too old for or the wrong demographic or whatever, and you see the silliness of it all. Again, not knocking them, they're great to be part of. But the in-crowd/out-crowd aspects are really dumb, as is the sometimes mindlessness of being a joiner.

Strangely, I've only started respecting or seeing value in the "cool" after becoming too old to be part of it, anyway. I was almost always more an outsider in terms of taste, except for when I was so young it didn't matter (like '84-90, maybe, when I was 8-14 and nobody gave a f*** what I liked!). And now, here I am this 40-year-old guy whose playlist, when on shuffle, may turn up Queen, Rihanna, Zeppelin, Kacey Musgraves, Loretta Lynn, Earl Sweatshirt, Beach Boys, Run-DMC, Frank Ocean. And I think that sort of thing is true of a lot of people here--diverse tastes not necessarily restricted to what they "should" listen to based on their demographics, but rather experienced with open minds and then judged--which is cool. Or uncool. I forget which I want to be!

I think current music trends started passing me by when I was around 12, when Nirvana became huge.  Suddenly, rock and roll just wasn't fun anymore.  My local rock station went grunge almost overnight.  So, I had to look backwards.   

In high school, when my classmates were talking about new groups they were getting into like Green Day, Oasis, and Weezer, I was discovering the back catalogs of Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Queen, Van Halen etc. 

When I started college in the late 90s, modern music got even worse with Limp Bizkit, Smashmouth, Sugar Ray, etc all over the place.  I was going to the record store to buy old Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and Iron Maiden albums. 

Granted, I guess I can't say my tastes are as diverse, as I stick to rock.  But, if I liked other genres, I'd go broke.

Nirvana and grunge did the exact same thing to me. I went to older music, including classic rock/pop, blues, and jazz. That's when I dug into Zeppelin, Hendrix, Zappa, Beefheart, as well as Ellington, Monk, Coltrane, etc. I didn't actually dive back into modern music until around 2000, and then I was still really a snob about it. (Had to be indie this or that, ideally of the wannabe Beach Boys or Beatles styles.)

I know what you mean about the potential for going broke. One of my greatest achievements was suppressing my old completist tendencies. I always felt like if I liked a few songs by some band, I had to buy the whole collection and really know it all. As time went on, that got ridiculous: to this day I have a ton of Stones albums I don't ever, ever listen to. So why own them? I have wasted so much money on crap I don't want or like...

I suppose, in a way, I should almost be thankful for Nirvana for helping me turn to classic rock.  But, then again, I probably would've found those bands eventually anyway.

It's funny when you talk of the Indie movement.  From 2002-2006, I worked for a guy who was really heavy into that stuff.  When he found out I liked The Beatles and the 60s British Invasion, he played me a bunch of that indie stuff, but I just couldn't get into it.  I think they kinda had the sound, with not the songs IMO. 

I kinda feel the same way about some modern bands with classic / retro sounds like Airbourne or Rival Sons.  I like the sounds, but not the songs. 

Funnily enough, it's kinda become "cool" to like Phil Collins in recent years.  So, if I were in high school today, I could brag about my copy of Invisible Touch, which was the first Phil Collins related album I ever bought.  Of course, I bought it in 1997, but it was released in...................................1986

It's that era when I realized success was impossible for the kinds of bands I liked: if you exist only to do a perfect impression of [band], perfection is still just ... sad. Pastiche started jumping out in a bad way.

As for the Phil Collins thing, kill me.

Oddly enough, I like the so-called "alternative" rock of the early 1990s a lot more now then I did in the early 1990s. I was mainly listening to classic rock then. My tastes have expanded as I've gotten older. These days, the only things I don't listen to are Tejano, polka, most current pop, most current rap, and  death metal.

So, that means you're not a Phil Collins fan?

I liked Phil Collins when it was uncool to do so; I like him just as much now that it *is* cool to do so.

I think I started liking him when it was uncool.  I'm not 100% when his cool factor increased so much, but I really only recently started going deeper in the Genesis / Phil Collins catalog.

I've noticed in the past that 1986 seems to be a relatively lean year for me, and I'm not sure why. I seem to recall this being a very pop-heavy year from the singles and albums that charted. I also stop following just about any popular band from the 60s or 70s once they hit the 80s, so I can't comment much on those cases. However, I can easily see older artists becoming lost and out of touch around the mid-1980s and releasing some terrible attempts at remaining relevant.

A bit like older listeners, I suppose. ;D

On the whole, it's a lost area for me, a sort of a doldrums between synth pop (over its peak) and the house/rave scene (yet to emerge). With notable exceptions, of course. This one got me through some sh*t:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX-Ru1XkNZc

Although while hard rock bands of the 80s were doing the 80s version of AOR, and the old heavy metal guard (Sabbath, Maiden, Priest, Ozzy) was getting more poppy with synths, 1986 saw the creative peak of thrash metal with Anthrax, Slayer, Megadeth, and Metallica all releasing career defining albums in 1986.

Yes, and that's another thing. A lot of the "good stuff" from 1986 just isn't for me.

oh well

To each their own, but I'd gladly take the music of 1986 over 1996, 2006, or 2016. 

Yeah, you can say that again!  :(

As time passes, it seems to me that there ends up being some good stuff (and more mediocre stuff, and even more crap) from every year or era. Though I wouldn't bother going through it in detail to chart it out because, well, that's a huge waste of one's limited lifespan! But years where I wholly ignored new music because what I was hearing sucked, inevitably later I find out had plenty of good things happening.

There may be some truth to that, but you appreciate more different genres than I do. 

Maybe the most important point about it is that it's not worth spending all that much time digging for what you might like if you've got anything better to do. The clock is ticking, after all. How many ticks does a person really want to waste looking for a hypothetical hidden gem?

Five years ago, Id probably have a different answer, but these days I have trouble finding time to listen to artists I already like.  Ive had the new Maiden for almost a year and a hslf, and I think Ive listened a total of 2-3 times. 

Maybe it's time to go out of your comfort zone, KDS.

If I can do it and embark on listening to three albums by Can (three-quarters down, two and a quarter to go), so can you, KDS. ;D 

No, thank you.  Other than some country, I really dont care for anything outside of rock and roll.  Plus, like Ive said before, between CDs and concerts, if I branched out, Id go broke.