![]() ![]() This was the dawn of the teen-pop era and Seventies/Eighties rock bands were already aggressively uncool. Why should it matter who is singing? In 1998, they learned the hard way that the singer mattered quite a bit when they brought in Extreme’s Gary Cherone to replace Hagar and cut Van Halen III. After all, this is a group named after the guitarist and drummer. When original Van Halen singer David Lee Roth left the band in 1985, they simply brought in Sammy Hagar and continued packing arenas, scoring hits, and selling albums by the million. It was sort of becoming like a business.” “They really weren’t part of the creative process anymore. ![]() “I just was a new dad, I just had a baby girl, and I kinda just wanted to be at home with my family at that time, but it was time to get back in the studio.” Working with longtime producer Phil Ramone, he did manage a couple of genuinely great songs like “A Matter of Trust” and his Ray Charles duet “Baby Grand,” but the rest of the album is largely lifeless filler like “Code of Silence” and “Getting Closer.” “I wasn’t that enthusiastic about going back in the studio, and the band that I had worked with for so long had become somewhat disenfranchised from the whole process,” he said. “I wasn’t all that focused on writing again and recording again,” he told Rolling Stone in 2013. Townshend himself probably barely remembers making this record, and most Who fans have worked hard to forget it exists.īilly Joel had nearly a solid decade of success and hits after finally breaking through with The Stranger in 1977, but when it came time to cut 1986’s The Bridge, he was tapped out. The rest of It’s Hard, however, is the absolute low point of the Who’s career. “One Life’s Enough,” “I’ve Known No War,” “Why Did I Fall for That,” and “Cooks County” are clearly the result of exhaustion, very hard drugs, and a contractual obligation to Warner Bros. (It should be noted that throughout this whole time, he saved the best stuff for his solo albums.) Leadoff track “Athena” was a genuine radio hit, and “Eminence Front” is a masterpiece that’s been in the Who’s live repertoire for the past 40 years. But when the time came to enter the studio and cut It’s Hard in 1982, his stockpile of tunes was down to virtually nothing. He somehow found the time to cut two stellar solo albums (1980’s Empty Glass and 1982’s All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes), and the Who’s underrated 1981 LP, Face Dances. In the early Eighties, Pete Townshend was juggling a solo career, the Who’s difficult post-Keith Moon period, and a pretty nasty heroin addiction. Beginning with least-worst and counting down to the most historic flop. True suckiness - like true greatness - is a subjective quality.ĭid we rank them? We sure did. Those are fighting words to some, and we’re sure many readers will have their problems with this list. (We happen to enjoy both those records.) There’s also no U2 record because we like them all, even Songs of Experience and October. Some of you will feel that we picked the wrong Elvis movie soundtrack, or that we were insane to leave off Tom Petty’s Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough) or Public Enemy’s Muse Sick-n-Hour Mess Age. We’re sure there are people out there that love Elton John’s Leather Jackets, the Velvet Underground’s Squeeze, and Carole King’s Speeding Time. Needless to say, rock fans are notorious contrarians and one person’s garbage album is another person’s overlooked classic. ( Cough-Genesis- cough).Ī huge percent of them were sad victims of horrid Eighties production choices, most notably the dismal period from 1985 to 1988, when cheeseball synths and shotgun-blast snare drums created a sound that has aged worse than a tuna fish and sardine sandwich left in the sun. (Hello, Liz Phair.) Some of them were crafted before a band found its true sound (Pantera, take a bow), while others came long after key members parted and the band had no earthly reason to still exist. (Elton, we’re looking at you.) Some of them came from label pressure to move beyond a cult following by creating commercial music. Some of these albums were the products of way too much cocaine. Among the many celebrated masterpieces these artists have given the world, they have also turned in works so monumentally putrid that nothing short of “a touch of madness” can explain their existence. “There is no great genius without a touch of madness.” Greek philosopher Aristotle made this observation roughly 2,300 years ago, long before legit geniuses like Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Carole King, Elton John, Madonna, and Prince proved him right. ![]()
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