“Time” Lets Hard Rock Fanboy Fawn Over His Idols

Apparently some Time story got killed at the last minute, because this barely copyedited piece on the recent resurgence of hard-rock bands that can only be described as “odd” for a lot of reasons somehow made it to the magazine’s site. Not only is Don Dokken referred to as “Dan” in the story’s second sentence (ouch!), and not only does Vince Neil’s assertion that Motley Crue is in its heyday right now go unquestioned, and not only was the Rocklahoma festival–which, if anything, was the moment that hard rock could have been claimed as ruling the roost during the just-completed summer concert season–completely ignored (as was the fact that many of these touring bands were full of reshuffled hired guns), the numbers that were presented as evidence of writer/CNN Headline News personality Kris Osborn’s “rock is back!” thesis were subject to some curious inflation:

In some cases the crowds and revenues have rivaled those of the 1980s. Ratt and Poison just wrapped up a long, large-venue summer tour where they played regularly before 8,000 to10,000 fans. Ratt lead singer Pearcy says he noticed an emerging younger fan base of teenagers and twenty-somethings who were born years after Ratt multi-platinum “Out of the Cellar” album released in 1984. “It has been a gradual build up again. It’s rock and roll — colorful, dangerous, exciting,” Pearcy said.

Hey, thousands of fans, that’s good, right? But those numbers often resulted in half-empty venues, even for tours that had the fortune to be big-upped endlessly on VH1. That’s not to say that there isn’t a story about the number of hard-rock bands who hit the road this summer–look, it’s Exhibit A!–but this one seems like it was tailor-made for one purpose: Getting Osborn some face time with his favorite bands. Even if he can’t spell their lead singers’ first names.

They Came from the Eighties [Time] [Photo: AP]