Lisa Burnell

authors

CD Reviewer

In 1985 the Sunset strip was like a nuclear reactor approaching critical mass as heavy metal bands flooded. It became clear that Rock not only was an essential part of culture, but spoke for social good. It was the year that Rock and Rollers turned the heavy metal’s influence and energy to positive change and those who attacked the music industry in this year should have been listening instead of talking.

Steven and Slash met Axl. Til Tuesday won the MTV Best New Artist award. Mick Jagger released his first solo. Van Halen appointed Sammy Hagar. VH-1 was launched. The USA album “Sun City” was released for the Artists United Against South African Apartheid. The Live Aid concert was the largest one-day music event ever staged, originating from a documentary on the famine in Ethiopia. Diane Lane dated Jon Bon Jovi. Madonna wore a wedding dress without writhing on the floor. Vince Neil was charged with vehicular manslaughter. 1985: The Year Of The Record. And sadly, only the year I was born.

The 80’s is a lifetime I wish I had lived in: the hair, the make-up – the sex appeal of it all. It’s frustrating when your potential isn’t tapped into your time.

Bands like Lizzy Borden, Faster Pussycat, Iron Butterfly, Whitesnake, Alice Cooper and Ratt have all provided the inspiration and stimulus for my metal adoration, but my first love was and will always be Guns N Roses. It was in the more recent years that the recovery of Steven Adler, who has pioneered through a lifetime of sex, drugs and Axl’s constant bitching, changed my views through the honesty and desperation of his words and it is through these sufferings that he has taught me how to handle the world through his eyes. I hope to someday be able to share this with him.

Heavy metal was more of an evolution unlike punk rock. It evolved from hard bands like Led Zeppelin, Uriah Heep, The Doors, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple – the Godfathers of a generation that would change the music of the world to come. The more recent bands that I follow vary through the now metal sub-genres, and I can’t distinctly extricate why that is, as certain bands seem to evoke certain similar reactions: Dream Theater, Ill Nino, In Flames, He Is Legend, Trivium, Otep and Enslaved.

The first metal album I bought was Korn’s Life Is Peachy, when I was 14. A phase that was short-lived. But there is still something in the lunacy of Twist that I will always relate to.

My hopes and dreams are to stage dive off an original GNR line-up, get a black eye in a Rage Against The Machine pit and write Marilyn Manson’s biography.

I’m in this business for the same reason that Megadeth is in this business, and that’s because of attitude, integrity and music.