Hardtime: Rock Of Ages
Video Killed The Radio Star
In the early eighties, the cable channel Music Television, better known by the initials MTV, was created. It was a grand concept: an entire channel devoted entirely to the current mainstream music scene. With the first video playing on the channel being “Video Killed The Radio Star” by The Bangles, a new colossal entity was now born into teenage culture. The concept of the music video was that a special video was made consisting of various footage that the artist wants to use to have playing with one of their singles playing in the background, that was meant to help promote their album sales. This created the platform that was needed for the entire music industry to be revolutionized, and ultimately for the rock genre to encounter it’s first real, substantial, long standing competition in the main stream. The business was on the verge or changing as a whole, and no single person propelled these changes more than…
Michael Jackson. Formerly the star of the all African American ensemble “The Jackson 5”, consisting of Michael and four of his brothers, Michael became the very first African American to have a music video on MTV when “Billy Jean” was released off of his then new album “Thriller”. The song would become acclaimed, and many would deem this to be Michael’s signature song. Then, in the mid-eighties, Michael released a music video for the song “Thriller”, a single off his album of the same name. As a number of you most likely already know, the video became an enormous attraction in and of itself, and was in such high demand at one point in time that it was played almost once every hour on MTV. With Michael portraying an undead zombie, and dancing in unison with other bizarre creature of the night, the notion of music videos grew rapidly in popularity, and many artists then (and to this day) used it as a vehicle to promote their album sales.
Not merely did Michael Jackson just build the music video into an integral part of the music scene, but being one of the primary musicians in the genre of “Pop Music”, he elevated a new form of music that broke into everyone’s conventional, everyday lives. While it is true that many of today’s (and yesterday’s) biggest stars are, to a degree, manufactured products of a specific music label, Michael Jackson was an actual musician. Making use of an electronic synthesizer, he meticulously composed his songs while writing his own lyrics. He was for real, and was not a “cookie cutter” brand of entertainment through any comparison. From the arrival of Jackson’s solo career, pop music did not become purely a new trend of the time period, but a long lasting category of music that became a permanent staple of the music scene.
Throughout that same time period, the familiar notes of the guitar that the world had grown accustomed to listening to were now in head to head competition with the best sounds that electronics can produce. It was man made vs. technological. It was White Snake vs. Debbie Gibson. In the rock world, new artists were now making a name for themselves. The era of the “hair band” had begun. These bands were characterized by composing rock ballads with drawn out, passionate choruses, appearing to live wild lifestyles on and off stage, and, obviously, having long hair. (many songs from Rocky 4 are examples “hair band music”)
Legendary bands such as Van Halen, Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, Poison, and Duran Duran became household names in that age. If someone showed you a poster of Jon Bon Jovi or David Lee Roth, you immediately recognized who was in the photograph. If you heard the name Twisted Sister mentioned, the name certainly wasn’t foreign to you. The utilization of the music video was not limited to only pop stars, as rock bands incorporated this technique as well. The video for “Here I Go Again On My Own” by Whitesnake was both groundbreaking and controversial in it’s use of a scantily clad woman famously dancing on top of a car. Van Halen’s “Hot For Teacher” video respectably exploited the fun living image that they tried to convey. The songs “Pour Some Sugar On Me”, “Cum On Feel The Noise”, and others rock hits were very popular.
But they were not without competition. Pop sensations Paula Abdul, Madonna, and of course Michael Jackson, among others, were leading the charge. They were not merely making a dent into rock n’ roll’s percentage of the audience that, if they had to make a choice, would choose their music over another genre as the disco icons had done, but rather something that was being promoted with equal billing had arrived. The concept of the radio as the major way to promote music was no longer present, but rather a whole new world had been opened.
In this same way did professional wrestling in the eighties change as dramatically as it did. Just as the radio was no longer the primary source to promote music, so too were the ways of traditional “’rasslin” starting to fade away. As Michael Jackson revolutionized the industry with the idea of the music video, so too did Hulk Hogan help make those same changes to professional wrestling. Just as the young Michael Jackson was already stepping onto a platform he did not create himself, but was practically single handedly elevating that platform, The Hulkster did the same thing. Hogan stepped into Vince McMahon’s then WWF, and with his overwhelming charisma, a heavily muscled physique packed onto his 6 foot 8 frame, impressive power wrestling, and passionate, energetic interviews, the wrestling world as we knew it changed forever. Wrestling may have entered Hollywood back in the fifties, but now it purchased a permanent residence there.
At that same time, the biggest form of “traditional wrestling”, the NWA, was in full force. Here, the ideas of theatre were used, but it still closely resembled the same brand of sports entertainment we had seen for years. It was the same stuff we had been used to seeing, and with a fan base that was amassed throughout a number of decades, there was a solid foundation for it to compete with the over the top “cartoon” style of wrestling in WWF. Generic boots, generic trunks, and generic knee pads, along with your basic use of headlocks, elbow drops, suplexes, and your other basic holds and maneuvers were used. Things were not very advanced, by today’s standards. Men like Ricky Steamboat, Harley Race, Dusty Rhodes and “Nature Boy” Ric Flair lead the helm. Traditional promotion of wrestling was still used in WWE, as to this day it has never died out, as the customary concepts of simply employing good old fashioned wrestling as the backbone to a feud are still around.
But overall, traditional wrestling, like rock music, was now on the road to being eclipsed by something that was more trendier. It was being overshadowed by something that simply was welcomed with wider arms than in the reception it was getting. You can’t say it was the beginning of the end, as the end has not yet come (and I personally doubt it ever will.) But you can say that it was the beginnings of pure rock music and the pure style of professional wrestling to eventually taking a spot on the backburner.
Smells Like Teen Spirit- The Industry Changes Forever
Back in the 80’s, the main television shows for WWE were Superstars, All American Wrestling, Prime Time Wrestling, WWF Challenge, and the once a month airings of Saturday Night’s Main Event. With the exception of SNME, which did not have a huge impact on the actual development of storylines due to their frequency (save for big events that could ignite feuds to go in certain directions). These shows were based out of a studio, or a remote location in the arena where the commentators sat. The overall format for the shows was for the hosts, usually Gene Okerlund or Sean Mooney, to discuss WWE’s current events of wrestlers and their feuds. They would talk about who hated who, show interviews from wrestlers taped in front of plain backgrounds, run down the matches on the upcoming pay per view, and show matches of the superstars, usually against preliminary wrestlers, and rarely against someone they were feuding with.
Nothing big had to happen on every show. Everyone was generally just entertained by the generally slow and thorough development of the product.
Enter Monday Night Raw. The show was based out of the arena itself, with the focus being on action and excitement. While it can be argued that action and excitement wasn’t always delivered, they almost certainly tried to do just that. The show brought with it an overall feeling of “What’s going to happen next?” for the viewer. They no longer wanted to just see Shawn Michaels give an interview where he simply talked about how he was going to break the young girls’ hearts and how he loved Sherri Martel. He had to do or say something exciting. Irwin R. Shyster couldn’t just talk about how everyone was a bunch of tax cheats and actually dig up the grave of a deceased man who once wrote off something for his daughter’s birthday party as a business expense, and said that he was taking away his grave site to recompense for the tax evasion. (That seriously happened in an I.R.S. vignette.) Irwin had to have his face shoved into the Raw One Year Anniversary cake by Macho Man Randy Savage.
When WCW started increasing their number of pay per views a year, WWE increased their ppv’s as well to compete with them. With most major feuds never going past one pay per view, feuds were rushed to be developed, and with the flag ship show being Monday Night Raw, which made the developing of well done feuds to be difficult, it really made the entire product to be of an entirely different quality.
In this same way did Nirvana change the course of music forever. When someone makes a list of the top five biggest songs of the nineties, numbers 2 through 5 will usually lead to a good amount of pondering and debating. However, number one is almost always unarguable; Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana rightfully holds that spot on almost anyone’s list. And for exceptionally good reason. With the release of that song, and the song’s music video, the entire era of hair bands died. Or rather, was killed. In it’s place was alternative music: specifically in the form of grunge rock. In appearance similar to Guns ‘N Roses, these bands were characterized by rugged clothes and overall dark, yet realistic personas. Artists like Pearl Jam, The Offspring, Sound Garden, and others flooded the music scene, and with the controversial video for the grunge song “Jeremy” by Pearl Jam winning the Video Of The Year Award at the MTV Video Music Awards, a heavy argument could be made that at that time, rock music had taken back it’s firm hold of the music scene. It was still in a new world that was virtually created by pop music, but rock was music was once again running the yard. Grunge music was influential in eliminating hair bands, but also set a trend in its own right.
Bret “The Hitman” Hart won the WWF Championship in late 1992, and soon the New Generation was born. With the technical expertise of Bret Hart being shown in championship matches, and with others like the new singles star Shawn Michaels and “The Bad Guy” Razor Ramon leading the way, in ring wrestling was now once again at the forefront of the industry, just as rock music regained its place around that same time. It was not the same rock music we were accustomed to, but a modernized version, just as wrestlers like Owen Hart and the 1-2-3 Kid were of a faster pace than Flair or Steamboat, and used more inventive, advance moves.
Bret Hart was not like Nirvana in the sense that he forever changed wrestling. While he is one of my favorites, that he did not have that particular influence. Bret merely set a trend as Nirvana started the trend of grunge music. However, it was the implementation of Monday Night Raw that revolutionized the business in the way Nirvana did. The slow, drawn out development of characters and storylines were no more. But in that same vein, the format for sports entertainment was now more conducive to the over the top theatrics of wrestling, rather than any modernized version of the traditional wrestling seen back in the NWA.
The Gangstas
At this same time, a new genre of music was growing in the mainstream: Gangsta rap music. With the release of Dr. Dre’s “The Chronic” and his single featuring Snoop Doggy Dogg entitled “Aint Nothin But a G-Thang”, there was a new brand of music to listen to. A new style that was generally unfamiliar, yet surprisingly enjoyable to the mainstream audience. It was already around, as the original NWA (N****s With Attitude) making a name for themselves, and with Ice T being publicly criticized by George Bush for the song “Cop Killer”.
It can be said that the “cool image” of a rock star comes from what he holds in his hands: that being, the guitar. The lyrics to many rock songs are not “hardcore” by any stretch, as most of them are about lost love, celebrating love, etc. All he needs to do is put a pick in his hand, and strum away at the chords. Rap music is the exact opposite. A rapper tries to appear to be cool by the image he can convey through his lyrics. There are plenty of love songs that fall under the rap category, but overall, they try to glorify themselves by the amount of women they sleep with, the drugs they take, the money they have, and the violence they inflict on others. That is a generalization, and there are exceptions, but rap in general sense is categorized in this way.
In time, rap music started to become interwoven with the pop music scene, and many of the bigger names in pop music and rap music have done collaborations. While there are many instances or the two genres existing as separate, distinct entities there are many mixtures of this. Today, pop princess Avril Lavigne has done a remix of her hit single "Girlfriend" with rapper “Lil Mama”, as The Pussycat Dolls have collaborated with rappers such as Busta Rhymes.
In this same way did ECW bring the notion of hardcore wrestling to the mainstream. ECW was the third biggest promotion in the US for most of the nineties. Granted it was always a distant third, but everyone still knew about it none the less. The idea that such extreme violence could be incorporated into wrestling was generally a foreign approach to matters. Marty Jannety had been thrown through the barber shop window, Sherri Martel had had a mirror smashed over her head, and even Hulk Hogan tried to pile drive Andre onto concrete at Wrestlemania 3. But overall, the idea of a cheese grater and being wrapped in barbed wire was way too extreme. However, as the knowledge of ECW got around with the use of syndicated television, it was well received by the majority of the audience that knew about it and able to watch it, just as gangsta rap was generally well received. Overall, it went over in a fairly respectable fashion. As time went on, the marketable concepts derived from hardcore wrestling were interlaced with the over the top theatrics of wrestling.
Over time, Bret Hart’s trend of great in ring wrestling, carried on by Shawn Michaels and others, was eclipsed once again. With the employment of the techniques and overall attitude of ECW, WWF was now changing the pace of the industry. Now, as the “MTV era” made it so conducive to, the Hollywood aspect of wrestling became center stage again, and in general, wrestling as the main pillar took a backseat, where it generally stays today. The great technician Chris Benoit main evented Wrestlemania through this time, but not before Steve Austin and The Rock were no longer active on full time schedules. That’s just the way it was.
The Long And Winding Road
Rock music had been the dominant form of music for many decades. Over the years, it was left virtually unchallenged by any genre. But then, if you were to replace the phrase "video killed the radio star" with "MTV killed the Rock Star", it would still ring true. In the same manner did Vince McMahon, Hulk Hogan, and the entire rockin' wrestling era revamp the industry as we know it. It was the beginning of the end- an end that we haven't seen yet, but may very well be on its way to arrive in years to come.
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