Last year was a good one for fictitious rock bands on the big screen. You
probably know all about the hit soundtrack to Josie and the Pussycats
(Epic), which made power-pop magic out of the unlikely collaboration between
legendary R&B producer Babyface and a distinguished horde of alterna-rock
melody junkies including Boston rock chick Kay Hanley. You might not know about
the soundtrack to Rock Star (Priority), which substitutes
Poison/Mötley Crüe producer Tom Werman for Babyface and Ozzy Osbourne
guitarist Zakk Wylde for Hanley. But if you've ever had a soft spot for '80s
pop metal, you should.
The movie stars Mark Wahlberg as a rock-and-roll nobody who's called upon to
replace the original lead singer of the fictitious Steel Dragon, a band he's
worshipped for years. On the album, Steel Dragon are Wylde, drummer Jason
Bonham, Dokken bassist Jeff Pilson, and Black Label Society guitarist Nick
Catanese. Singers Mike Matijevic (Steelheart) and Jeff Scott Soto (Yngwie
Malmsteen) share time on the microphone, shrieking their heads off over the
band's well-oiled chug. They do Rainbow's "Long Live Rock and Roll" and five
hard-partying "original" songs contributed by seasoned rock tunesmiths like
Desmond Child, Sammy Hagar, and recently deposed Marilyn Manson bassist Twiggy
Ramirez. Except for Wylde and the individual songwriters, none of these guys is
very active in the pop mainstream anymore. But listening to this frighteningly
authentic reproduction of the big-hair era, any hard-rock enthusiast worth his
mullet will wish they were.
The rest of the Rock Star soundtrack is filled with a stellar assortment
of pop-metal oldies, including the crown jewel of them all, Bon Jovi's "Livin'
on a Prayer." It's a song Bon Jovi will always be remembered for -- and an era
they'll always be associated with -- but the New Jersey rock veterans have done
a better job of avoiding nostalgia-act status than any of their peers. In 2000,
the band emerged from a five-year break with the album Crush (Island),
which yielded the pop smash "It's My Life" and sold two million copies. Apart
from the buoyant hit single, the disc was a bit of a snooze. But the group's
comeback was convincing enough to re-establish them as one of the biggest
concert draws in the world.
Sammy Hagar
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Now Bon Jovi are back with their seventh album, Bounce (Island), a more
aggressive effort than its predecessor and the catchiest batch of songs they've
come up with since the classic '89 disc New Jersey (Mercury). The
album's first single, "Everyday," is a frisky descendant of both the uplifting
Dave Matthews Band hit of the same name and, uh, "It's My Life." Guitarist
Richie Sambora kicks it off with a sinister riff, and frontman Jon Bon Jovi
brings good cheer to a monster chorus the way only he can: "I've had enough of
crying/Bleeding, sweating, dying/Hear me when I say/Gonna live my life
everyday." It's the same kind of hard-edged commercial pop the band have been
doing for almost 20 years, and they're not getting worse at it.
Like all great corporate-rock albums, Bounce is a huge production: its
pulse is overwhelmingly digital, and the string section gets free rein. Jon and
Richie wrote "Everyday" with Swedish pop mastermind Andreas Carlsson, who made
his name with Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys and also worked on the new Def
Leppard disc. The band also collaborated with Desmond Child, who co-wrote
"Livin' on a Prayer" way back when and is currently producing an album for the
American Idol gang.
Jon, Richie, Andreas, and Desmond all work together on three tracks -- and
somehow they manage to keep the schmaltz to a minimum. Jon dedicates a
bittersweet acoustic-rock chorus to his wife as an apology for staying out too
late on "Misunderstood"; "Hook Me Up" is an urgent headbanger that borrows
expertly from Weezer and the Cult. The all-star songwriting quartet's only
misstep is "All About Loving You," an overblown ballad that bites REO
Speedwagon's "Keep On Loving You" even harder than Aerosmith did on "I Don't
Want To Miss a Thing."
Deep down, Bon Jovi have always been more about Jersey grit than about
Hollywood glamor, and Jon & Richie's best songwriting foil on Bounce
has similar New York City bridge-and-tunnel roots. Billy Falcon, a Long Island
rock journeyman and an old friend of Jon's, helped write "Bounce" and
"Undivided," which have the two best pop-metal hooks on the disc. The title
track is a hard-hitting jock jam dedicated to New England Patriots head coach
Bill Belichick, a friend of Jon's since his days with Bill Parcells and the New
York Giants. But the band have more important things on their minds than
football on "Undivided," a riff-heavy September 11 anthem that's full of
classic Jon/Richie vocal harmonies and splits the difference between "Livin' on
a Prayer" and U2: "One for love/One for truth/One for me/One for you."
Like Bruce Springsteen's "The Rising," "Undivided" is a tuneful and dignified
response to the World Trade Center attack from one of metro NYC's most
comforting pop voices. Jon's Springsteen affectations have only intensified as
he's gotten older, and there are as many open roads and shady characters in
these songs as there are big guitar solos. The piano-driven narrative "Joey" is
actually more of an Elton John homage, but the whiskey bottles, strip clubs,
and cop cars on the poignant "Right Side of Wrong" are as close to
Springsteen's Nebraska (Columbia) as this band will ever get.
Bounce ends with "Open All Night," a tastefully understated ballad
inspired by Jon's role on Ally McBeal. Jon hits a few high notes for the
ladies, and Richie downshifts his Eric Clapton licks from "Layla" to "Wonderful
Tonight." Rock dudes will probably stop the disc as soon as the song's mellow
drum loop kicks in, and the band would be hard pressed to blame them. But on
the whole, the album's deft combination of arena-rock bluster and
contemporary-pop glitz should satisfy Bon Jovi fans of all eras.
Rock Star fans will recognize "Stand Up," the first track on the new
Sammy Hagar and the Waboritas album, Not 4 Sale (33rd Street), as one of
the hottest Steel Dragon songs on the soundtrack. The first verse is Sammy at
his pre-Van Halen finest: "I know what you want and what you're thinking/I can
free your sexuality." But the Red Rocker's singing a more serious tune these
days, and he revised the lyrics for this recording of the song: "You don't have
to spend your life on the bottom/Staring at the shadows on the floor." Still,
the original's primitive guitar riff stays, and the chorus says it all: "Stand
up and shout/Stand up, stand up, stand up."
Ted Nugent
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The toned-down version of "Stand Up" is the only thing even resembling a
disappointment on Sammy's fourth disc since leaving Van Halen, a release that
received curiously little advance hype during his headline-grabbing summer tour
with David Lee Roth. Closer to the fleshed-out pop metal of Van Hagar than to
the tequila-slammin' mischief of his solo stuff, it's as heavy on barroom
philosophy as it is on hooks. Keyboardist Jesse Harms wrote the album's
honky-tonkin' first single, "Things've Changed," but that's the only love song
here. Sammy sets the tone for the rest of the disc on the autobiographical
title track, where he makes a particularly humorous admission: "It sounds
familiar, but that's all right/It gets me by, it keeps me high."
All jokes aside, Hagar has rarely been sharper as a songwriter: he mourns Jeff
Buckley on the inspirational organ ballad "Halfway to Memphis," and "The Big
Nail" is a blues-pop roadhouse gem originally written for Toby Keith. The band
get the party started on the ingenious "Whole Lotta Zep" medley, which
transfers the chorus of "Whole Lotta Love" to acoustic guitar and tosses it
into the middle of "Black Dog." For a guy who just celebrated his 55th
birthday, Sammy sure sounds as if he had still a whole lotta rock and roll left
in him.
At 53, Ted Nugent is no spring chicken either: his classic 1975 solo debut,
Ted Nugent (Epic), was the first album Steel Dragon producer Tom Werman
ever worked on. Ted's infamous "Stranglehold" appears on the Rock Star
soundtrack, and the Motor City Madman has also just released Craveman
(Spitfire), his first new album in seven years. All it takes is one look at the
song titles -- "Cum n' Gitya Sum-o-This," "My Baby Likes My Butter on Her
Gritz" -- to see that he's up to the same old tricks.
As any classic-rock fan will tell you, Nugent still rocks like a bastard --
regardless of what you think of his notorious right-wing political views. He
and his crack power trio come out screaming on the disc's first single,
"Crave," an arena-ready thrasher co-written by the Nuge's former Damn Yankees
bandmate Jack Blades. The oversized "Goin' Down Hard" is about hunting, the
boogie-punk battle cry "Rawdogs & Warhogs" is about the flag, and almost
every song kicks into a double-time guitar solo at the end. There's no
eight-minute psycho-guitar jam like "Stranglehold," but that's okay -- that's
what nostalgic rock-movie soundtracks are for.
Issue Date: November 1 - 7, 2002
