Sleaze by Geoff Jackson

So my concert up in New York – not far from Greenwich, CT – got cancelled yesterday a few hours before doors were set to open.  6 hours of driving round trip wasted and lost – all for naught.  But it got me thinking, why’d I even buy the tickets to see the Joe Perry Project in the first place?  I know why – I have an enduring love and personal identification for a certain brand of rock n’ roll.  Some people are hip to jazz and fusion, others to rockabilly and folk, but my jam is straightforward, late-stage early rock n’ roll.  The sleazier the better.

Let me elaborate:

There’s a radio station on SiriusXM called “Classic Rewind”, billed as one playing “the second generation of rock n roll” – stuff we got in the 70s and 80s.  They focus on songs you’d hear on cassette tape when that medium dominated.  Not vinyl, definitely after the obsolete 8 track – just good ole’ fashioned cassette tape rock n’ roll.  Think Rush, Def Leppard, The Police, Eddie Money, Journey – stuff of that ilk and contemporaries of those bands.  Three chord anthems with 2/4 beats. 

That ain’t sleaze.

When I was in my late 20s I saw Scott Weiland perform with Stone Temple Pilots at (what was then) the Philadelphia Spectrum.  He had a bull horn and he yelled into it – telling the audience we were in for a rock show – a true rock show – and we got one.  Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll – all gritty, all tempting, and all a bit personally dangerous.  That’s what it’s all about. 

I think a good rock band personifies three things:

1.    Musicianship (though there are exceptions – like the Clash and the Ramones)

2.    A look and an image

3.    And most importantly, an attitude. 

Let me offer a few bands as examples:  Aerosmith, Guns n Roses, Stone Temple Pilots, Van Halen, and Deep Purple.  Of course there are countless others, and no disrespect to any I’ve left off the list, but the root of what I’m talking about is sleaze. 

Sleaze you ask? 

Yes, sleaze. 

True rock music (to me) embodies a sound of auditory sleaze.  Dirty riffs played by dirty dudes.  The Beatles?  A phenomenal rock sensation, but not one I’d call sleazy – too prim and proper as British royalty.  The Eagles – too country and folksy.  The Who?  Wild and crazy (in their heyday), but not what I’d ever call sleazy.  Don’t get me started on the Grateful Dead.    

So who’s at the root of everything?  Who’s the ancestral “Eve” in this long line of Cro-Magnon evolution?  

The Rolling Stones.   

Billed as "The World's Greatest Rock & Roll Band", this iconic group personifies what I’m talking about.  There’s the sound and musicianship, the image, and an attitude – concert attendees died at shows in the 60s at the hands of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang, heroin and its addiction abounded aplenty, and the lead singer got saddled with an out-of-wedlock baby from an over-willing fan – all stuff you really don’t want in your own life, but you love to live it vicariously through your music and mythology. 

You can see a pattern emerge throughout the seventies and eighties; Aerosmith patterned themselves on the Rolling Stones, and Guns and Roses patterned themselves on Aerosmith.  Direct lines can be drawn.  There’s the Glimmer Twins of Jagger and Richards, and later the Toxic Twins of Tyler and Perry.  These aren’t coincidences.   

Does KISS fit this mold?  Kinda, sorta yeah – mostly -- but they’re also a bit too glammy.  Ratt comes close — especially their excellent first two LPs — because they have the musicianship and attitude, but they’re also too much into the glam thing.  The Stones’ influences are certainly there, though, for both.

I’d make the case that Jane’s Addiction in the 90s took this simple formula and updated it again for a new generation.

Specific albums distill in crystalized perfection exactly what I’m describing:

• Appetite for Destruction by Guns N Roses

• Rocks by Aerosmith

• Contraband and Libertad by Velvet Revolver

• Core by Stone Temple Pilots

• Nothing’s Shocking by Jane’s Addiction

• And Buck Cherry’s debut LP of the same name — at least the LP’s opener “Lit Up”.  

And of course, do yourself a favor and discover (or rediscover) the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers.  Even the title encapsulates a bit of sleaze, as your mind wanders to consider what exactly made the fingers so sticky …

Enjoy all the music of the above in the safety and security of your own home and your sheltered life … because you know you want to. And you’ll have to listen to it at home as people like Joe Perry age out and get sick before shows. They’re in their late 70s after all.