Nikki Sixx once famously
said he wanted to have a band that was a combination of the Sex Pistols, David
Bowie and Black Sabbath. Nearly 33 years after their debut, Too Fast for Love,
we are still waiting for that band to materialize. Motley Crue, with its purposely
(and unintentionally comic) misspelled name is as quintessentially Californian
as Hollywood, the Beach Boys and Van Halen and equally as cheeseball. Instead
of achieving the admixture set forth by the former Frank Ferrana, the band
displays a propensity for the shock of Alice Cooper, the glam of Kiss, the
androgyny of the New York Dolls, the studs and leather of the Plasmatics, the
simultaneous tenderness/toughness of Joan Jett, a dose of Crackerjack-box
Satanic imagery and the accessible tunefulness of Cheap Trick fueled by an
appetite for sleaze, unbridled rawness suffused with electricity and a desire
to "make it." All of this contrived with the intention of being the
heaviest and most outrageous band possible but suffering from lack of context and
general obliviousness. They did not really create anything new, but
instead synthesized this amalgam of influences into what was passably a new
breed of heavy metal. In short, they were Reagan-era "punk
rock" for people who never heard of either the Anti-Nowhere League or
the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, except maybe for Def Leppard and Iron
Maiden, and who thought Slayer and Dio were too extreme for their comfort
zones.
Too
Fast for Love killed disco and sidelined prog-rock in the beginning
of the '80's the same way Nirvana's Nevermind would kill hair metal in
the beginning of the '90's. Both albums utilize a lethal cocktail of Punk,
Metal, amateurishness, and lack of production (Too Fast for Love ironically
being less polished than Nevermind) to create a new template for popular
youth rock in their respective decades (well maybe if you switched Too Fast...
with Shout at the Devil and Nevermind with Bleach,
but you get the general gist...) In their '80's heyday, Motley Crue were feared
by elementary school kids, loved by tweens and teens, and despised by parents
and teachers across the United States. Most "true" metalheads and
punks however, considered them an anomalous corruption of the genre, little
more than Duran Duran with strange-shaped guitars.
Songs
on Too Fast for Love can be categorized into "classic
Motley", "predictable but not particularly memorable",
"pop/Cheap Trick-inspired", and "tough ballad" with overlap
between all 4 categories. Opener track "Live Wire" starts with an
incessant riff that falls under "classic Motley", more Glam/Thrash
than the Speed Metal many make it out to be, mainly due to the middle slow-down
and the corny cowbell, both of which save it from both Speed Metal status and
being taken too seriously. Next song "Come On and Dance" has a cool
main riff and comes off as a classic Motley jam colliding with a Cheap Trick
jam--of which the latter, "Public Enemy Number One" is definitely
more Cheap Trick-inspired. Everything from the catchy lead to the consistent
melody pervading all the vocal parts elevate it into almost power pop status.
Fourth number, "Merry Go-Round", is the first ballad on Too
Fast for Love but even then that really isn't an accurate description.
Instead of clean guitars with shitty keyboards or something else associated
with the '80's, there is muted guitar picking with that same gnarly guitar tone
never again replicated on any Motley Crue release with an overall aesthetic
that Suzi Quatro might find pleasing. "Take Me to the Top" is next.
It is classic Motley but unfortunately only sounds better in comparison to
weaker jams on here such as "Piece of Your Action" and the title
track. Both are okay, but are too unabashedly cock rock for my liking. “Too Fast for Love” should be a
classic Motley Crue track but just isn't, in my opinion. "Starry
Eyes" is to me, another standout track to me both because of its poppy
Cheap Trick sensibilities as well as an almost '60's garage feel to it. It also
has some amusing gong work in the first few seconds as well as some hysterical
lead work in last few seconds before the (inevitable for it's time and genre)
fade-out...
The
album ends with "On With the Show", a song that is equal parts
heartfelt, clumsy, clunky and sleazy. It has a classic (almost) doo-wop chord
progression with what the Motley dudes must have thought was the perfect
marriage of tenderness and heaviness with fake autobiographical lyrics: a
classic Motley Crue closing ballad (a style of ending albums replicated on both
Shout at the Devil and Dr. Feelgood.)
There
are different versions of this record with different running orders and bonus
material. The almost impossible to find first pressing on Leathur is obviously
the most desirable but at the end of the day it doesn't really matter. The
ultimate legacy of Too Fast for Love? It kick-started a whole new
sub-genre of hard rock (call it what you may: Hair Metal, Cock Rock, Pop Metal,
whatever) and set its tone for almost a decade. It seems that bands that came
after Motley took the worst elements of the worst songs on Too Fast for
Love and amplified them to nauseating effect while ignoring the
essential garage-iness of this release. To some it is a template, to some a
much-needed escape from reality, but if one is to attempt to be objective, it
is a Glam/Punk-influenced Proto-Hair Metal release with appropriated and weak
Satanic imagery, and an uber-raw guitar tone and songwriting prowess straight
out of the L.A garage that spawned it. It probably transcended any
expectations, influence-wise, or commercially, that the band might have had for
it, paving the way for the paradoxically more focused and polished but
looser follow-up, Shout at the Devil,
which really put them on the map, and into the homes and consciousness of the
public in the era of malls, New Wave, MTV, Tipper Gore, yuppies, feathery
haired and earringged teenagers, and suicides allegedly influenced by heavy
metal records.
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