August 1987

ROCK PIX

The Editor

Have you ever tried to buy front row concert tickets? The lines, the wait, the hassles. And who can afford scalpers’ prices? $75 for Bon Jovi? $800 for Madonna!? To be sure, prime real estate at the major shows is about as easy to get your mitts on as. . .a good issue of any magazine but ROCK-PIX!

CONTENTS

ROBBIE NEVIL

What do Robbie Nevil, Bryan Adams and George Michael have in common? Besides loads of talent and good looks, they all have a way with words. The Monkees probably put it best when they sang “We’ve got something to say.” Artists like U2 and John Cougar Mellencamp draw their inspiration from real-life experiences, while David Bowie and Duran Duran focus on romantic and exotic elements for their poetic imagery.

U2

"I'm not afraid to be ugly or to be myself. A lot of people are frightened they may be normal. Everyone should realize, there's no such thing as 'normal.'" —Bono

BRYAN ADAMS

"I want to be able to look back and say that I did something in all this time. Not only did I sell millions of records, I was able to put something back into this funny place we call Earth."

DAVID BOWIE

People say ‘Oh, that’s cliched,’ but cliches are very important, I think.

DURAN DURAN

"I think that the tragedy is that a lot of people are after money before art." —Nick Rhodes "I do take pride in my lyrics. I do take it very seriously. I compare my words to poetry." — Simon Le Bon "What is art...man? We're sort of the Roy Lichtenstein of pop music; blatant and colorful."

JOHN COUGAR MELLENCAMP

“To me, I’m still struggling. I can’t think that my last record lived up to any type of promise. I guess you can’t be objective about yourself, but to me, I still wanna do better and do more for other people."

THE MONKEES

“The Monkees have had an 18-year break, and then they’ve come back. I think we’re one of the only bands ever to do this.” —David Jones “A lot of our continued success has to do with the fact that the songs are just fundamentally good songs. That gives us such a strong, heavy foundation that it’s very difficult to screw it up.”

BOY GEORGE

“I think somebody like me has got a lot to do sexually for young people. I would do anything to break down barriers. I’m the first man to be on the cover of Cosmopolitan. I’ll do anything that will break down those stereotypes.”

Rap It Up

It’s hard to say exactly where this rap phenomenon began.

RUN-DMC

"We couldn’t rap over the disco records we used to listen to on the radio because there weren’t hard beats. Run-DMC’s version of rap is really hard beats, loud rock ’n’ roll beats. Run-DMC couldn’t rap over ‘Boogie Nights,’ so we used to find records that had hard beats like Aerosmith.”

THE BEASTIE BOYS

“There’s more copycat heavy metal than copycat rap. We hereby challenge Bon Jovi to an MC contest!” —MCA & Mike D.

HEART

No question about it: women have become the new leaders in music, what with Madonna’s sensational “Who’s That Girl?” tour filling stadiums, the Bangles’ Different Light staying on the charts for well over a year and the youthful Lisa Lisa (along with Cult Jam) enjoying massive rock success with their latest, Spanish Fly.

LISA LISA & CULT JAM

“We’ve worked hard for this. We’re young and people think we haven’t paid our dues, but we have.” —Lisa Lisa

THE BANGLES

“We’re very instinctive about music. We play with our... ” “...sense of smell.” —Susanna Hoffs & Michael Steele

THOMPSON TWINS

“Slowly, the music business is changing. There’s a lot of women musicians around who are every bit as good and expressive as the men.” —Alannah Currie

MADONNA

"I think I'm a good comedian. If 10-year-old kids can get the humor in what I do, why can't adults?" —Madonna "My work is the only thing that's going to change people's minds. It's just going to take some time."

CROWDED HOUSE

When the Beatles first appeared on American shores in the early 1960s, they helped open the gates for a flood of new bands from overseas. Today, group’s like the Cult from England and Australia’s Crowded House and INXS are muscling their way into the Top 30 here, while other British bands such as the Cure and Simple Minds seem poised for American chart success as well.

SIMPLE MINDS

"I think we always had a rather nice kind of arrogance." "I think our music has a sort of femininity. And personally, I’m very glad about that." —Jim Kerr

THE CRUE

“I didn’t write a song until I was 15. A terrible song. I can’t remember what the title was, but strangely enough, it was very similar to ‘Why Can’t I Be You’... ” —Robert Smith

INXS

"What we’re trying to do is break down barriers. Here we are on this big, ji-normous stage, looking down. It’s all fantastic, but we’re trying to get across something else...it’s like, ‘We’re just like you and we’re having fun.’” —Tim Farriss

THE CULT

"The hardest thing is going onstage and realizing that you gotta educate. Not only just playing places but you've got to educate them as well, because nobody else is going out and doing it." —Ian Astbury

PSEUDO ECHO

"The sound that’s really popular in Australia isn’t popular anywhere else in the world. It’s something that’s been cultured here; it’s sort of hard to explain, but it seems that most Australian bands are guitar-shy. They seem to want to keep their music a bit arty."

THE OUTFIELD

“For us, music was a release from where you were last night—‘Your dad is watching football on TV, keep quiet!’ I couldn’t wait to get out of school so I could go to work. But once I was working, I couldn’t have stood just plodding along from weekend to weekend.

BON JOVI

Who would have believed that after the heyday of Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, overeager critics would try to convince the music-lovin’ public that heavy metal was a dinosaur on its way toward extinction? Recent releases from Bon Jovi, Ozzy Osbourne and Motley Crue have slammed their way high into the charts, sending metal’s wimpy detractors running for cover.

VAN HALEN

"I'm not really a competitive type of person. I see so many guitar players that are so uptight because they want to be the best. But I don't really care; this is the honest-to-God truth."

DEF LEPPARD

"Without being cruel and without naming names, we did notice that many records which came out since about 1984 seem very much to be Pyromania-type records.” —Joe Elliott

JUDAS PRIEST

“The great thing about Judas Priest is we’re all different individuals with different opinions and ideas, and I suppose that’s what’s kept us together so long—we agree to disagree about a number of things.” —Rob Halford

MOTLEY CRUE

"Can you believe this?! We debuted on the charts at #5! Us! The bad boys doing the bad boy boogie! I can hardly hold still!" —Vince Neil

OZZY OSBOURNE

"I can't even go into a coffee shop without someone saying that I sat there eating a bat sandwich and drinking ox blood!" "I am schizophrenic. I don't look now like the fiend on the album cover or the guy that comes down on the throne, do I?"

WHITESNAKE

An intimate gathering of 80,000 metalheads recently gathered at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas for the heaviest lineup yet at the world-famous Texxas Jam! The special 10th anniversary party—the longest-running stadium event in North America—featured such heavy-weights as Aerosmith, Whitesnake, Poison, Tesla and Farrenheit.

TESLA

“I’m from a little town of about 900 people and they think I’m sort of a celebrity. It’s really kind of weird: I’m not into that at all, I’m still a greenhorn at all this. I drove a truck for seven years!” —Jeff Keith

POISON

"We dress for success just like everyone else!" —Bobby Dall "It takes a real man to wear make-up. You have to have a lot of guts to do it." —Rikki Rockett

AEROSMITH

"The thing about rock 'n' roll music—or any music, for that matter—is to learn it from who you got it from, then take it one step further." —Steve Tyler "Tom (Scholz) is a perfectionist and he won't walk away from even a minute of tape untill he's crafted it into what he deems worthy."