ITT: 70s artists crashing and burning in the 80s

ITT: 70s artists crashing and burning in the 80s.
Pic very related.
Post other examples.

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Penis

That's not an example.

Pink Floyd - A Momentary Lapse of Reason
The Who - It's Hard
Yes - Big Generator
Heart - Bad Animals
Aerosmith - Rock in a Hard Place
Queen - Hot Space

A ton of the big rock bands of the early 70s crashed hard in the 80s.

Neil Young

/thread

People were excited because they thought it'd be like Zeppelin meets Free, but instead we get a sub-Power Station kind of thing.

youtube.com/watch?v=ApS7wncd5ac

Basically all of them. It'd be more fun to list ones that didn't crash and burn, like Rush or Talking Heads.

He was strong at the start and end of the 80s, it was mid-decade where he kind of got lost.

>It'd be more fun to list ones that didn't crash and burn

Or the bands like Aerosmith that were irrelevant for a good portion of the decade but came back in the late 80s.

60's artists were even worse:
Paul McCartney
Eric Clapton
Bob Dylan
Rod Stewart
George Harrison
All made terrible albums during the worst decade of music

Heart and Alice Cooper were others in that camp. God, you have to wonder how the whole thing would've gone if not for hit doctors like Desmond Child, Diane Warren and Holly Knight.

Rod Stewart is a 70s guy, not a 60s guy and actually he went to shit well before January 1, 1980.

...

Iggy Pop and Ted Nugent fell apart big-time. I think in their particular case, it was because that whole "gonzo guy" schtick didn't translate into the 80s.

Paul Simon somehow pulled off a miracle with Graceland, but it probably helped that he only put out three albums during the decade unlike Bob Dylan who had no clue what he was doing, but the product kept coming anyway.

>It'd be more fun to list ones that didn't crash and burn
Billy Joel had some good early 80s stuff

youtube.com/watch?v=nPe9EEOTCJE
youtube.com/watch?v=Pqc4U8uWTRU
youtube.com/watch?v=cf0s-YfTpw4

>Rod Stewart is a 70s guy, not a 60s guy
What? His first single came out in 1964 and his first album in 1969

He had a couple of non-album sings in the 60s but his first LP wasn't until the end of the decade and he was at his peak in the 70s.

If you only released one album in the 60s you're not a 60s guy.

You're a 'decade artist' if a bulk of your most respected work is in that decade.

Here's an example: David Bowie had 2 albums in the 60s (Self Titled, Space Oddity) but he's widely considered a 70s artists because his most famous albums (Ziggy Starudst, Aladdin Sane, Station to Station, Low, etc.) were released in that decade.

KISS were irrelevant in 80-82 then took off their makeup and had a career revival as a generic LA glam metal band. They didn't make good albums anymore but could still put on a killer live show.

AC/DC really didn't do anything good after BIB, although the 80s were their peak as a live act.

A lot of the corporate rock like REO Speedwagon and Foreigner didn't last much past 1982.

Plenty of singer-songwriters from the 60s-70s did terribly.

Black Sabbath came back in the early 80s then lost it after Born Again.

The Rolling Stones after the 81-82 tour.

Alice Cooper was totally in the wilderness in the early 80s until Desmond Child resurrected him.

Blondie...wow, they didn't outlast the 70s.

Sabbath got it together by the late 80s after half a decade of internal strife. Headless Cross was well-received critically and while largely irrelevant in America, sold very well in Europe and Japan. TYR was in the same boat and was gaining momentum, but then Iommi went through a divorce, needed a quick cash injection and tore down that lineup to run back to Dio to try get some of that sweet reunion money.

Joni actually wrote good songs that were butchered by 80s production. And stuff like Chinese Cafe still shines out. She corrected this when she revisited them with a full orchestra or when she played them acoustically.

And Jimmy Page is considered a 70s guy although he had been active since the mid-60s as a session musician and with the Yardbirds.

Billy Joel was never good.

>Joni actually wrote good songs that were butchered by 80s production.
Oh I know. I've been relistening to her discography the past week and today was the dreaded '80s period'.

There were a few highlights across the albums (Chinese Cafe, Love, Etheopia, A Bird That Whistles) but it's mostly cheesy synth dreck.

The problem with the Tony Martin lineup is that it was ignored by the thrash-dominated late 80s metal scene in the US.

Keep telling yourself that.

>Queen - Hot Space
> hot space is bad

get your head out of the clouds

The 80s were full of cheesy, synth dreck. That's why it's the worst decade for music in the last 60 years.

>uptown girl

>That's why it's the worst decade for music in the last 60 years.
I like you.

A lot of older artists sounded awful with 80s pop production, probably because it tended to be amelodic and beat-driven and these guys had all developed their songwriting and vocal styles around the more melodic sounds of the 60s-70s.

On the other hand, 80s artists like Madonna and George Michael sounded great with the production aesthetic of that era, because they wrote songs around it while the older guys didn't.

>mfw Christgau's inexplicable defense of Empire Burlesque and Dirty Work

Queen never really put out a bad album in the 80s although Hot Space did alienate a lot of the core rock audience and they largely fell off the radar in the US, although their European fanbase continued to be massive.

Fuck off, Tango in the Night had fucking gems on it. Everywhere, Seven Wonders, Family Man, Big Love, Little Lies. That's almost half the album in singles.

Not a lot of 70s guys other than Bruce Springsteen didn't go to shit in the 80s.

And then George Harrison also had a slightly inexplicable late 80s comeback.

This is oversimplification, and I'd argue that any decade that popularized Stevie Ray Vaughn, Prince, Jaco Pastorius, Nick Cave, The Cure, etc is a lot better than the last ten (or hell, twenty) years or so.

The eighties at least had some great new wave, post-punk, and goth rock acts, plus jazz virtuosos were still popping up. Not any more...

Talking Heads might be unfair because they debuted in the late 70s and didn't have very much mileage on the odometer when the 80s started. When you're talking artists who'd been around since the Nixon years, it was a little different.

Devo also didn't do so good after 1982.

I'd agree with this. Devo is another perfect example.

>A lot of the corporate rock like REO Speedwagon and Foreigner didn't last much past 1982.
Hair metal killed most of these guys off. The hair metal groups were younger, more amenable to MTV, and not linked with the 70s. REO and Foreigner also forgot how to do rockers after the 70s and turned into nothing but ballad glop.

You and me against the world, baby.

I'll see your cherry picked artists and raise you Hair Metal.

"The American music scene in the '80s was abysmal and Europeans mostly turned away from American music during those years. Everything was just big shoulder pads and Madonna singing about being a material girl. Bob Dylan had fallen asleep and nobody except Bruce Springsteen was singing about the things that mattered."

Ditto Journey.

He has a habit of defending shitty albums like Liz Phair S/T just to be a contrarian.

youtube.com/watch?v=5uPHktBo_3k

lol fair enough, but I'll still take hair metal (who at least wrote all their own songs) over the nickelback & limp bizkit era of rock.

What about pop? I think that shitty 80's singers like Cyndi Lauper and Tina Turner are vastly superior to today's pop singers (like Beyonce, Tay Swift, etc), because a) the backing instruments in their songs were actual instruments played by dank session musicians, and some of those lines are actually complicated & tough to play, and b) even when they didn't write their own songs, the songs were written by noted songwriters (like Private Dancer, music and lyrics actually written by Mark Knopfler).

Today we have Nicki Minaj, Iggy Azelea, and The Chainsmokers...

Phantom of the Paradise is one of my favorite bad movies.

>Blondie...wow, they didn't outlast the 70s
Mike Chapman said that Blondie were "typical punks. They wanted to get on the radio, but didn't want to have to work too hard for it." He also said that their decline after Eat to the Beat was because "They got what they wanted and had no more motivation to try and make good albums."

I don't pay much attention to pop music, so I'll have to take your word for it, but speaking of Cyndi Lauper, Time After Time is a great song.

Don't you have a Youtube comment section to post on?

I never saw or heard of that movie but now that I know Paul Williams starred in it I'm interested.

>the backing instruments in their songs were actual instruments played by dank session musicians
Huh? Did I just imagine all the terribly cheesy synths in 80s pop music?

Amen to that. Listen to the bass line in Time After Time. It's beautifully simple...but you won't find bass lines like that in pop music any more.

There was a great theory breakdown, I'll see if I can find it, of how music has kept getting progressively simpler since the early 70's.

The same study talked about how music also kept getting louder, and the compression today is just...insane. Been that way since the late 90's, but at least people were pissed about it then.

The early 80s was a transitional period when the charts were dominated by 70s artists adopting 80s sounds. Also it was a big period for pop country like Dolly Parton and Charlie Daniels Band.

The release of Thriller in late 82 was kind of a turning point, after that, most of the 70s holdovers fell off and the major names of the 80s like Madonna and U2 started to pop up.

No, but the 80's were a great decade for bass players and guitarists. Drummers suffered more than anyone. A lot of singers still had actual backing musicians at live shows. Look up live footage of the Go-Go's. They're bubblegum garbage, but they could all play, and they could all play well.

You didn't imagine it, but the 80's get broad-painted all the time. A lot of bands like R.E.M. and U2 made it through the whole decade with no synths.

Aww, don't like someone bringing new info to a message board? Go heat up some tendies.

>Amen to that. Listen to the bass line in Time After Time. It's beautifully simple...but you won't find bass lines like that in pop music any more.
In fact one of the oft-criticized aspects of 80s pop music was very weak bass compared to the melodic bass lines that were common in the 70s. Bassists would typically just chug the root note over and over (like in 90% of hair metal songs).

Synths were one of the sworn enemies of rockists back then. Some bands like Queen would actually put disclaimers on their albums reading "No synthesizers were used in the making of this album".

He plays a guy who sells his soul to the Devil for rock stardom and is somehow inexplicably cast as a sex symbol. Brian DePalma directed it. Based on Faust.

Steely Dan was a band that didn't go to shit like other bands often compared to them. They put out Gaucho in 80 then went on Hiatus Fagen did the Nightfly in 1982 and then sat out the rest of the decade.

They did and a lot of people shit on 80s Neil Young, Beach Boys, Joni Mitchell, etc for the production on their albums, but if you heard live recordings of those songs without the studio dreck, they sound infinitely better and fit in well with those artists' older songs.

>Paul Williams
>Sex symbol

grateful dead

Don Henley released some really good solo material in the 80s.

MTV was definitely a factor since it put a premium on youth and good looks. Many artists were too unattractive to look good on music videos.

I know. Laughable. Of course, they were on some serious drugs in the 70s so..........

In The Dark [Arista, 1987]

They were a great live act, probably still are on the right night, and despite the hooks and do-or-die production, this still isn't Journey or Starship. But only on "Throwing Stones", about one middle-aged man's fear of love, do they shake off the image of hippie complacency that young naysayers and old fools have charged them with ever since the '60s. B-

Dire Straits

Gary Moore's a prime example of this. A huge commercial success worldwide with the exception of the US, where Virgin basically didn't promote him at all because Richard Branson thought it would've been a waste of money to "try and break a face like his on MTV".

He'd play to 30,000 people every night in Europe and Japan, but then he'd like 200 people clubs when he'd come to the States, the latter basically being a glorified holiday for him.

As a bass player who has been diddling off and on for over 40 years, I have never heard that (except in metal--bass parts in metal are either straight eighths on the root or they're insanely impossible, just guitar parts on a longer scale neck).

Seriously, listen to Tears for Fears, Talk Talk, Tina Turner, Cyndi Lauper, Patrice Rushen. All of it's FM-friendly pop, but the bass lines are often the focus--and they're brilliant.

That's nothing against 70's bass lines, but with the exceptions of John Entwistle and Chris Squire there wasn't a lot of bass innovation happening for much of the 70's.

You think Jon Bon Jovi didn't benefit immensely from that flowing mane of his?

>except in metal--bass parts in metal are either straight eighths
They certainly were in the 80s. Take for example Judas Priest. Ian Hill had some very tasty melodic bass lines on their 70s albums, but by the time you get to Screaming For Vengeance, he just plays 8ths over and over.

Oh, and AC/DC. Straight eighth notes in the 70's, 80's, 90's...you get the idea. Fuck AC/DC.

Agreed. That's actually pretty common among bassists, though, it's like they get tired of moving their fingers long distances and just give up.

Dusty Hill is another prime example of that. He was a decent bassist in the 60's and 70's, but ZZ Top in the 80's? Straight eighths on EVERY SONG.

I played bass in an AC/DC tribute band for a while. Easiest gig money I ever made. I actually enjoyed it, but it could be a little monotonous at times.

Haha I hear that, brother. Do they have any tunes that didn't make you want to fall asleep?

KISS are another example. Gene Simmons was a pretty good melodic bassist in the 70s. By the 80s, he just played 8th notes and he got so lazy that he only bothered playing bass on his own songs, anything else the bass was played by Paul Stanley or Bruce Kulick or whatever session musician was available that day.

Also true. With him, he was definitely getting tired of making rock & roll money. Guy wanted the big bucks.

Also, check'd.

>Bassists would typically just chug the root note over and over (like in 90% of hair metal songs)

At least Nikki Sixx has admitted he really can't play bass at all. And same thing. All Motley Crue songs are just 8th 8th 8th 8th 8th 8th 8th 8th.

Also when they'd play their older songs like Detroit Rock City live, he would play 8ths instead of the original melodic bass line.

Hair metal was mostly terrible for bass, no question.

I totally believe it. I need to find some videos, now...

Beating Around the Bush was a little tougher than their normal fare.

>I totally believe it. I need to find some videos, now.
youtube.com/watch?v=_Lr7lgvfMGw

Try this one from '84. Seriously, nice practice scale. It's like a 16 year old who just got his first bass.

When we played The Jack, it never failed to get at least a dozen girls on the dance floor engaging in some hot lesbian action.

That's just embarrassing. Also
>bass solo

Jesus. Thank you, this is...oh, Gene.

I have a homework assignment now, thanks!

This is the real reason why guys in prog rock bands hate AC/DC. Karn Evil 9 does not do this to women haha

the thing about acdc is their stuff may be easy but as a band they were tight as. The drumming is spot on, I've heard of a drum teacher that advises students to play along with acdc to get a sense of time

is this a way of acknowledging they had "the jack" ??

>7 virgins and a mule
Yeah, that doesn't have quite the same effect.

Especially Back In Black. That is one tight album.

I think it was more about the slow, grinding beat than the lyrics about gonorrhea, but that's just a guess.
The other guys in the band were all top notch at their instruments, the guitar player and the drummer(who I'm still in a band with, writing and recording)were both incredible musicians. The vocalist was just a crazy drunk who would do the weird stunts and shit on stage. We just did it for fun and money. Lasted a couple years until the singer got locked up for drunk driving and possession of crack cocaine. Still in prison last I heard.

It's better to think of 80s KISS as a Paul Stanley solo act more than anything.

Bon Scott>Brian Johnson

It's a mediocre disco pop record that only has two or three worthwhile songs. Not their worst album but definitely a misstep. A classic example of an old band trying, and failing, to adapt to modern times.

how pathetic

80s Bowie was horrible.

Not really. Scary Monsters and Let's Dance are two great albums. Tonight and Never Let Me Down are mostly horrible, but Loving the Alien is great, and Blue Jean isn't bad.

Compared to his 70s output, Let's Dance is a joke.