Take me back to the Paradise City

The last time I remember Guns N’ Roses being relevant was during the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards and I’m not talking about their boring performance of the boring November Rain. I’m talking about Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl taunting Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose with a sarcastic “Hi, Axl!” after Nirvana’s performance of Lithium, supposedly in response to a backstage spat between Rose and Grohl’s bandmate Kurt Cobain. At the time, Cobain stood as the antithesis to Guns N’ Roses’ misogynist and decadent form of rock and he went out of his way to diss them in the press, calling their music “cock rock,” and declining invitations to go on tour with them. This stung Rose, who was a self-avowed Nirvana fan.

What’s worse than being disrespected by people you respect? Irrelevance, I guess. Guns N’ Roses eventually disappeared in the ‘90s behind a mushroom cloud left by grunge, the genre that annihilated heavy metal and supplanted it as the default rock ‘n’ roll sound. It was quite a turn for the erstwhile reigning rock gods of the late ‘80s who reinvigorated the then-staid heavy metal genre (also dismissively called “hair metal” by the time the ‘90s rolled around) by spiking it with some punk flavor via Axl Rose’s unparalleled energy, lead guitarist Slash’s fiery solos, and rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin’s hard-edged riffs. How they went from gods to laughingstocks during the dawn of alternative music is one of the great forgotten subplots of ‘90s lore, taking a backseat to the oft-told stories of Nirvana, grunge and alternative music as a whole.

But now they’re back in the headlines as they are slated to headline Coachella — the biggest music festival in America, or perhaps the world. After decades of carrying the Guns N’ Roses’ name by his lonesome, Axl Rose is now reuniting with Slash (after calling him a “cancer” years ago) and original bassist Duff McKagan (no word yet as of this writing on the return of Izzy Stradlin and drummer Matt Sorum or Steven Adler). Excitement all over the Internet, driven mostly by the 35-and-up crowd, is being carried by the momentum of a heavy metal nostalgia initiated by mourning fans of Motörhead and its recently deceased frontman Lemmy Kilmister. Is heavy metal prime for a comeback? More importantly: Can a heavy metal resurgence lead to a wider resurgence in mainstream rock music, a genre buried for so long by rap, R&B, and glittery pop? Will Coachella be the ground zero for the great rock explosion of 2016?

Metal’s historical significance

A funny thing happened at the turn of the 21st century: Heavy metal’s historical significance was correctly revised just as rock music’s currency began to die. The two occurrences may have been unrelated. Mainstream rock’s death was more due to its failure to prop up a worthy counterpart to Beyoncé and Jay Z (and no, The White Stripes do not count). The heavy metal historical revision was more of a slow diffuse, settling into the culture the farther it got from grunge to the point where it started to see its over-appraisal. From pop culture essayist Chuck Klosterman’s book Fargo Rock City to Richard Linklater’s hit movie School of Rock, paeans to heavy metal finally became safe and cool again.

Much of today’s heavy metal nostalgia is rooted in that early-aughts revision. People long to see Axl Rose share the stage with Slash once again, their memories of Guns N’ Roses no longer marooned in the band’s bloated “Use Your Illusion” double album, but now liberated to their earlier, more exciting, “Appetite For Destruction”-era work. They are no longer the embarrassments they were in the early ‘90s. They are now, once again, the rock gods they used to be.

Rock Resuscitation

It will be fascinating to see if this nostalgia can be enough to resuscitate rock from its decades-long coma. Rock music is no longer as relevant as it once was. Rock stars are more fantasies and metaphors now than they are actual people. There are no more Bruce Springsteens or Kurt Cobains or Axl Roses, just a bunch of Chris Martins and whoever sings in Imagine Dragons.

It will be fascinating to see if heavy metal can succeed where grunge failed: to make rock relevant again through sheer nostalgia. Remembering Kurt Cobain and his music has been a cottage industry for decades and yet no one is eager to recreate the “Seattle sound” of the ‘90s. Scott Weiland’s death last month triggered a Stone Temple Pilots nostalgia but not exactly for the heyday of alternative music.

Heavy Metal’s advantage is that Axl Rose is still alive. Or maybe it’s more of a disadvantage: Cobain can be a romantically-tragic 27-year-old forever while Axl Rose will be headlining Coachella as a bloated 54-year-old whose once-sparkling, shrieking vocals have crashed down a few octaves. But the people who would be flocking to see them already know this. Many of them will go to see Guns N’ Roses as a nostalgia act and not as a force that can still push the future of rock music forward. But none of them has seen the band truly rock since their late ‘80s peak. They have no idea what will happen, what portals of possibilities will open once Axl Rose’s voice meets Slash’s guitar one more time. The past has been corrected. The future is yet to be written.

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