#30 L.A. Guns - Cocked & Loaded: The Underground of Glam Metal

ROCKTOBERFEST:  A Most Excellent Countdown of the 31 Most Bitchin Glam Metal Albums

#30 L.A. Guns Cocked & Loaded (Released 1989) Gold #38 Billboard Albums Chart

Phil Lewis (Wicked British Teeth) – Vocals

Tracii Guns (Puts the Guns in Guns N Roses) – Lead Guitar

Mick Cripps (Never understood the last name) – Rhythm Guitar

Kelly Nickels (BITCHIN Glam Metal name) – Bass

Steve Riley (Best Posture in Metal) – Drums

The Underground of Glam Metal: Sleaze Metal

I poke fun at the excesses and peculiarities of glam metal because I check self-seriousness at the door when it comes to this fun, trashy and sleazy metal. (Hey Nikki why don’t you have Vince sing the chorus one more time  that will surely draw more album sales or take a drink everytime Ratt employs a cliche in one of their songs and you would be wasted by the third song on the album) However there are some common criticisms that really stick in my craw more than others. The one that really drives me up a fuckin wall is that all glam metal sounds the same. I blame power ballads. 

Glam metal is amalgamation of heavy metal (using the VH1 definition of heavy metal), punk, blues-rock and of course 1970’s glam rock (such as Alice Cooper, NY Dolls, Sweet etc…). Different bands accentuate different aspects of glam metal, while others discard facets that do not fit their desired sound. Def Leppard will never be confused for a punk band instead preferring glossy, sweet harmonies. Cinderella loved the blues a little more than most glam metal bands do. W.A.S.P. and Ratt employed a traditional heavy metal attack to their albums.  Then there is the sleaze sub-genre of glam metal that stood in direct contrast to pop sensibilities of Warrant and Def Leppard with dark lyrics, punk aggression, sneering vocals and shouted gang-vocals replacing dulcet harmonies. 

The sleaze reaction against the pop metal branch of glam metal was mainly underground movement (save for Guns N Roses’ MONSTER album, Appetite For Destruction) that combined punk with the original glam metal movement promoting a bad boy image. As bands such as Motley Crue and Ratt were taking off the make-up (to get more “serious” read: being lame-asses) bands such as L.A. Guns and Faster Pussycat donned the make-up to once again make the answer to your question, “Is that a dude?”, “I need a body shot.”. They retained the convention of having androgynous names (Tracii Guns and Kelly Nickels). The most bitchin glam metal name belongs to Stacey Blades of Roxx Gang (yes, a dude). The imagery of sleaze metal was often a dirty take on the sordid underbelly of the Sunset Strip that described a hard lifestyle of sex, love, violence, and drug abuse. 

Cocked & Loaded is one of the most quintessential sleaze album titles: blending drug-abuse, hyper-sexuality and pseudo-violence in two words, now that’s efficiency. It is a much more effective sleaze title than Cinderella’s Long Cold Winter, but then the audience needs to recognize the clear difference between the band’s sounds. These albums sound very different while fitting in the same genre. LA Guns are much guitar-oriented band as Tracii Guns is meant to be the star of the band.  The blues riffs of Cinderella are replaces by Tracii’s finger-tapped and flashy guitar pyrotechnics. Metallic guitar fills extended solos are the norm of this album by L.A. Guns. The soulful, strained vocals of Tom Keifer sound very different than the reedy sneer employed by Phil Lewis.  Lyrically, Cinderella incorporates many common blues tropes: life on the road, distance from one’s lover, and the idea of home. LA Guns retain the usual hyper-masculine themes of glam metal: comparing a woman’s love to an addiction or disease, insatiable women, that will never take no as an answer from women, and life on the streets. 

The comparative analysis can be extended to the album’s two power ballads. Cinderella sings about the very conventional topic of breaking up with a loved one in Don’t Know What You’ve Got Until Its Gone. In, The Ballad of Jayne, LA Guns laments the loss of sex symbol, Jayne Mansfield (Died in 1967). She represented the ultimate pinnacle of the ideal sleaze woman. The members of LA Guns ranged from barley born to ten years old when she died. Therefore there was little or no personal connection to Jayne Mansfield. So while Cinderella sings about personal issues, the L.A. Guns in true over-the-top sleaze fashion released a power ballad about “one of their own.”

Cocked&Loaded declares right off the bat that this is a guitar-driven album and Tracii is the star with the instrumental “Letting Go”. In the first single off the album, Rip and Tear, a chugging rhythm section is accompanied by Lewis’ signature sneer as the band launches in a obnoxious gang-shout of “RIP AND TEAR!”. Tracii plays a short, melodic solo in mold of Mick Mars that leads into a short breakdown before the LA Guns blaze into the end of song as the rhythm sections starts picks up the tempo steadily and Tracii shows off his skills with a fierce lead outro.  This is a good example of a conventional L.A. Guns song. 

I am not positive, but I do believe that the name, “sleaze metal” originates from L.A. Guns constant usage of the word, “sleaze”, which is apart of the excellently titled “Sleazy Come, Easy Go.” There is no doubt in my mind if that song was written by a sleaze band in 2011 it would be called “Sleazey Cum, EZ Go.”

Next up is my favorite song of the album, Never Enough, it displays more pop influences as Lewis sings a little “better” than usual and the gang-shouting is replaced by layered harmonies. Now layered harmonies are apart of the 1970’s glam rock scene, which LA Guns clearly draws influence from so it fits like a glove in the sound of the band. The fuckin riff in this song will get stuck in your head for days, it is still so friggin sleazy. The guitar fills by Tracii are just killer especially in the middle of the chorus with great finger-tapped work.  His solo just drips with sex as he finger-taps his way to victory and the “studio girls” go BATSHIT INSANE. I will explore the idea of Tracii in Guns N Roses when I cover L.A. Guns’ debut album, but lets just say I think Tracii is the better glam guitarist, but Slash is definitely the better overall guitarist. In the music video, it is not the best example of Riley’s extremely good posture while drumming, but make sure to look for it. Also, Nirvana TOTALLY stole this video concept for In Bloom once again, a grunge band stealing from glam metal to get themselves over. Lame. 

Following this is LA Guns’ Malaria, which is a friggin dirty, nasty song with a thick (by glam standards) riff. Tracii’s leads fills play hauntingly over this nasty riff. The song just sounds grimy and sweaty as Lewis describes attempting to escape “death” by “disease”. Per usual, a woman’s love is described as an affliction that “kills” men. This is a very interesting take on the glam metal genre that could have competed with the realism of grunge. It has become future of glam as this song and the L.A. Guns as a whole are a major influence on today’s sleaze bands.

The rest of the album contains standard L.A. Guns songs that contain the usual characteristics of the L.A. Guns songs. The song I Wanna Be Your Man, is a good example of the rest of the album as it includes the sneer of Phil Lewis, a chugging rhythm section and Tracii playing a very distorted lead guitar with a finger-tapped, melodic solo. I think Phil Anselm of Pantera is the only person to ever have a worse hair-cut than Tracii in this video. 

Cocked & Loaded is a fun album that is filled with the usual sleaze attack of sneer, distorted guitar and chugging rhythm section that is about sex, drugs and rock & roll.