Named after the prissy and spoiled character from Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, Chicago's Veruca Salt was one of the many female-majority hard rock bands that found success in the '90s. The burst onto the alternative rock scene in 1994 with the song "Seether," which went to #8 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. In 1997, they released their second full-length album, Eight Arms to Hold You -- a nod to the original name of what would become The Beatles' second feature film, Help! -- which was produced by Bob Rock and went to #55 on the Billboard album chart, the band's highest-charting album.
Eight Arms to Hold You is a great hard rock album, and the song you probably recognize the most from the album is "Volcano Girls," a fun rocker that starts out with it's sing-along chorus: "Leave me lyin' here / 'Cause I don't wanna go." Like the album title, this song also has a nod to The Beatles, with the bridge, which is inspired by "Glass Onion."
The song went to #8 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and #9 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, and the video looks like it was fun to make, if not vomit-inducing.
One of my favorite '90s rock one-hit wonders is Spacehog's 1996 song "In The Meantime." Spacehog was formed in New York, but the band members were mainly from Leeds in the UK. They played glam-influenced alternative rock, and "In The Meantime" is just a wonderfully catchy and fun alt rock song, even though I have no idea what lead singer Royston Langdon is saying half the time. "I'm the only on you?" "I'm the only onion?" "I'm the oily on you?" "I'm the only young youth?" "I'm the hole beyond the moon?" "I'm the lonely hung Jew?" Frankly, I don't really care, and I don't have any desire to find out what the actual lyric is because, for me, it's better just gleefully singing gibberish whenever I hear the song.
The song was the band's only charting song on the Billboard Hot 100, where it went to #32. It also topped the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, went to #2 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart, and the Top 40 on the pop charts in Australia, Canada, Iceland, Scotland, Sweden, and the UK.
Langdon parlayed his success into a relationship with Liv Tyler. They began dating in 1998, married in 2003, had a son in 2004, and then separated in 2008.
When you think of rock music in the '90s, grunge is likely the first thing that comes to mind. Grunge music and fashion defined much of the decade. Smiles, Aqua Net, coke, guitar solos, and tight pants were out. Brooding, long stringy hair, heroin, fuzz bass, and baggy clothes were in.
After the excesses of the '80s and the related larger-than-life music, image, and, well, hair, of hair bands, grunge was a stark contrast. Born in the rain-soaked Pacific Northwest, it was the antithesis of the party-forward lifestyle of the Sunset Strip. For me, the "Grunge Era" began in the late '80s, with bands like the Melvins, Green River, and Nirvana, who combined the ethos of punk and lo fi with elements of heavy metal and hard rock to create the sludgy "Seattle Sound." And for me, the Grunge Era ended in 1995. The reluctant spokesman of grunge, Kurt Cobain, died a year earlier, joining the tragically legendary 27 Club, and his former band mate Dave Grohl released the Foo Fighters' first album in July 1995, which I think marked the dividing line between grunge and what would become known as post-grunge. Like the Hair Band Era before it -- which lasted a bit longer than the Grunge Era -- the Grunge Era came to an end as record companies tried to capitalize on the grunge sound and replicate it for their own monetary benefit, which watered it down. If you haven't seen the 1996 documentary about grunge, Hype!, check it out. It tracks the brief yet hugely impactful course of grunge.
As a lover of hair bands, I was very conflicted when grunge came along, and like many, I initially resisted it, regardless of whether I thought the music was good. There was definitely a grunge vs. hair band demarcation among music fans, although that eventually faded as people (myself included) realized you could like both types of music without being Judas.
Now that we're 30 years removed from the grunge explosion in the early '90s -- and good God, that makes me feel really old saying that -- it occurred to me that there might be some young 'uns out there that maybe aren't familiar with grunge, outside of Nevermind and Ten. And that's fine, but one of my life goals is to turn people on to music, and that's kind of the goal of this post. For people who are old enough to remember the tidal shift that occurred in popular hard rock music between 1990 and 1992, the list below will seem pretty self-evident. You probably own all of these albums (on CD, no less). I certainly do. But for those of you who were either too young to get into grunge, weren't born yet, or were maybe more into NKOTB and Color Me Badd, this list is more for you.
Below are what I consider the ten essential grunge albums of the '90s. These are the albums that I think best defined the era. I was going to say that these albums aren't necessarily the "best" grunge albums, but when you look at the list, it's pretty damn hard to argue that they aren't. Obviously, since this is a '90s Rocktober, all of the albums below were released in the '90s, even though there were some influential grunge albums released in the late '80s. And I'm only including one album per band. I'm also including the YouTube embed from my favorite song from each album, and I'm putting them in chronological order by release date.
1. Temple of the Dog by Temple of the Dog (4/16/91)
This is a bittersweet album, as it it was a tribute to the late Andrew Wood -- the frontman of Seattle grunge band Mother Love Bone -- who died of a heroin overdose in March 1990. Soundgarden lead singer Chris Cornell was Wood's former roommate, and he recruited former Mother Love Bone guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament, Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron, and then-unknown singer Eddie Vedder and guitarist Mike McCready. Of course, Vedder, McCready, Ament, and Gossard were already working on the first Pearl Jam album by that time. The album didn't really catch on until a year later, after the success of Pearl Jam's Ten and Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger. But what a fucking grunge supergroup this was, and the album is one of the best one-off albums ever and a fitting tribute to one of grunge's pioneers. "Hunger Strike" is one of those songs that I can never tire of hearing.
Favorite song: "Hunger Strike"
2. Ten by Pearl Jam (8/27/91)
Along with Nirvana's Nevermind, Ten, of course, is one of the defining albums of grunge. There's not a bad song on the album, and it kicks you in the face from the get-go with "Once," provides several grunge highlights with "Even Flow," "Alive," "Black," and "Jeremy," as well as some other great deep cuts, and then gives you that post-climax cigarette in bed with the last track, "Release." It was really hard to pick a favorite from this album, but I went with "Porch" for no particular reason other than I hadn't yet mentioned it in this post.
Favorite song: "Porch"
3. Nevermind by Nirvana (9/24/91)
Obviously, this album is at the top of most "essential grunge albums" lists, and rightfully so. It was the album that thrust grunge into the mainstream and transformed Nirvana from a regional Seattle band to one of the biggest and most important rock bands in the world. I'm not going to belabor the album's glory, but I'd just like to note that in addition to the songs everyone knows -- "Smells Like Teen Spirit," "Come As You Are," "In Bloom," and "Lithium" -- the deep tracks on the album are just as good. My choice below, "Breed," was on my pysch-up mix tapes back in the day, and it remains on my running/workout mixes to this day.
Favorite song: "Breed"
4. Singles: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by Various Artists (6/30/92)
Along with 1994's Reality Bites, the Cameron Crowe film Singles was one of two '90s films that epitomized Gen X lifestyle, but the latter was set in Seattle and was focused on grunge. Members of Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, and Soundgarden have cameos in the film, and while there are some non-grunge songs on the the soundtrack (including Paul Westerberg's "Dyslexic Heart," which was his first post-Replacements offering), it is very grunge-centric, featuring a couple non-album tracks from Pearl Jam, "Would?" by Alice in Chains, and songs by Soundgarden, Chris Cornell, Mother Love Bone, Smashing Pumpkins, Mudhoney, and Screaming Trees.
Favorite song: "Nearly Lost You" by Screaming Trees
5. Dirt by Alice in Chains (9/29/92)
For whatever reason, I didn't really get into Alice in Chains back in the '90s, and I'm not sure why. They seemed to be the grunge band that was the most metal. Dirt was their second studio album, and it solidified them as one of the top groups of the genre, with songs like "Rooster," "Would?," "Them Bones," and "Down in a Hole."
Favorite song: "Would?"
6. Core by Stone Temple Pilots (9/29/92)
September 29, 1992 was apparently a big day for one-word albums released by three-word grunge bands. I always liked STP, and Core was one of the first three CDs I ever owned, along with 2Pac's Strictly For My N.I.G.G.A.Z. and the Spin Doctors' Pocket Full of Kryptonite, which I got for my 15th birthday, along with my first CD player. STP seemed to have more of a hard rock slant than some of the other grunge bands, and Core is just a kickass album, with one of the best opening lines to an album in rock history -- "I am smellin' like a rose that somebody gave me on my birthday deathbed" -- while "Plush" remains my favorite song of the '90s.
Favorite song: "Plush"
7. Siamese Dream by Smashing Pumpkins (7/27/93)
Chicago's Smashing Pumpkins broke through to the mainstream -- and apparently alienated many fellow indie musicians who thought they sold out -- with Siamese Dream, which is unquestionably an album that most of those haters wished they could have made. "Today," "Cherub Rock," "Disarm," and "Rocket" are all Pumpkins classics, and I'm still pissed that radio stations wouldn't play "Silverfuck."
Favorite song: "Rocket"
8. Superunknown by Soundgarden (3/8/94)
It was a tough call between Superunknown and Soundgarden's 1991 album Badmotorfinger, but I think the latter is more grungy and the former is more metal or alternative metal, so I went with Superunknown. Plus, I feel like Superunknown is what really broke the band to a wider audience, with songs like "Black Hole Sun," the inimitable "Spoonman" (featuring a spoon solo from Artis the Spoonman, a Seattle street performer), "Fell On Black Days," "My Wave," and "The Day I Tried to Live." The latter is the one where I think Chris Cornell's amazing pipes shine the brightest. He fucking wails on that song.
Favorite song: "The Day I Tried to Live"
9. Live Through This by Hole (4/12/94)
Released a week after Kurt Cobain's death, Live Through This showed that Kurt's wife, Courtney Love, was also a hell of a songwriter and frontwoman. "Violet," "Doll Parts," and "Miss World" are grunge classics. Sadly, like Cobain, Hole's bassist on this album, Kristen Pfaff, would also join the 27 Club about two months after the album was released, as a result of a heroin overdose.
Favorite song: "Violet"
10. Sixteen Stone by Bush (12/8/94)
One of the last massive albums of the Grunge Era, Bush's Sixteen Stone (or 224 pounds for you American readers) showed that the grunge sound wasn't exclusive to America. The album had a bunch of great songs that I consider the band's signature songs, like "Everything Zen," "Comedown," "Little Things," "Glycerine," and "Machinehead." "Everything Zen" presented me with several questions that remain unanswered to this day: Why was Gavin Rossdale's brother an asshole? Why did he live in Los Angeles? And why would Rossdale want to find him if he was an asshole?
Favorite song: "Machinehead"
Honorable mention: Bricks Are Heavy by L7 (4/14/92); Sweet Oblivion by Screaming Trees (9/8/92); Candlebox by Candlebox (7/20/93); Rubberneck by Toadies (8/23/94)
It would be a disservice to you if I had a '90s Rocktober without featuring a Foo Fighters song, so I'm going with one of my favorites from my favorite of their albums, 1997's The Colour and The Shape. The album was the first album truly as a band, as the self-titled debut was essentially Dave Grohl playing all the instruments. He added bassist Nate Mendel and former Germs founder and guitarist Pat Smear (who was also a touring member of Nirvana for a couple years), and then drummer William Goldsmith for a few tracks -- though Grohl handled most of the drumming.
The Colour and The Shape built off of the success of the first album and established the band as more than just a novelty or a Nirvana off-shoot. This is a fantastic hard rock album, and the songs are inspired by Grohl's break-up with his then-wife Jennifer Youngblood. Several of the band's signature songs are on this album: "My Hero," "Everlong," "Monkey Wrench," and "Walking After You" (all Top 12 songs on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart). It was the band's first Top 10 album in the U.S., starting their current streak of nine consecutive Top 10 albums on the Billboard album chart -- and it went to the Top 10 on nine other international album charts. It's also the band's best-selling album in the U.S., having gone double platinum.
But anyway, let's get to the song. "Monkey Wrench" is nearly four minutes of unabashed energy and catharsis, as Grohl wrote the song about how he had caused problems in his marriage and he needed to set his wife free to rid her of the problem (i.e., him). The climax is the bridge, where Grohl, seemingly in one breath, culminating in his primal scream "freeeeeeeeeee!" I try to sing it in one breath whenever I hear the song, and I have not yet succeeded. And as an added bonus, the video is the first appearance of Taylor Hawkins as the band's drummer, even though Grohl drummed on the actual track.
I'm going to be out of town tomorrow, so there won't be another Rocktober post until Monday (or a Hair Band Friday post). For this, I issue you my sincerest of apologies, but I'll leave you with something fun before I go.
One of the surprise hits of 1993 was Green Jellÿ's updated and comical take on the classic folk tale "Three Little Pigs." Originally named Green Jellö, the comedy metal -- and yes, that's a genre! -- band had to change their name to Green Jellÿ because of legal pressure from Kraft, who owned Jell-O. The best part is that, despite the name change, the name of the band is still pronounced "green jello."
Anywho, in the early '90s, future Tool lead singer Maynard James Keenan and drummer Danny Carey were members of the band, and the band's bassist (and one of the co-founder) from 1981-1995 was Scott Rozell, who would then go on to form punk band Scatterbox.
Originally released in 1992 and then re-released in 1993 after the band changed the spelling of its name, "Three Little Pigs" is the band's biggest hit. As I mentioned above, it's a humorous take on the Three Little Pigs, set to a backdrop of heavy metal. Lead singer Bill Manspeaker (a.k.a. Moronic Dicktator) handles lead vocals, while Keenen, Pauly Shore, and Les Claypool all provide backing vocals as the pigs on the song.
Buoyed by the claymation video, which was in heavy rotation on MTV, the song went to #17 on the Billboard Hot 100, #1 on the New Zealand pop chart, Top 10 on the pop charts in six other countries. Looking back on it, it seems very strange that this song was so popular, but then again, that was the beauty of the '90s. A lot of weird shit was embraced, and we're all better for it.
You knew rap metal was going to make an appearance. The genre had its beginnings in the '80s with Aerosmith and Run-DMC's 1986 collaboration on "Walk This Way," and over the next decade, there were various hard rock and rap collaborations, like Anthrax and Public Enemy on "Bring the Noise," as well as some hard rock and metal bands that began to fuse their sound with elements of rap and hip hop, like Faith No More and Rage Against the Machine.
And then in the late '90s, rap metal exploded, with Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit, and Korn leading the way. When I hear the phrase "rap metal," the first band that comes to mind is Limp Bizkit. Say what you will about the genre or Limp Bizkit -- they're easy targets, apparently -- they were hugely popular in the late '90s and early '00s. Their 1999 album Significant Other went 7x platinum in the U.S., and their follow-up album, 2000's Chocolate Starfish and The Hot Dog Flavored Water, went 6x platinum.
For most people, myself included, the first taste of Limp Bizkit was 1999's "Nookie," a rocking and rapping tribute to every straight guy's mantra: "I did it all for the nookie." The song only peaked at #80 on the Billboard Hot 100, but it went to #3 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and #6 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, and the video was wildly popular on MTV.
One of the many things that was great about rock in the '90s is that there was a marked increase in the visibility and popularity of female rockers. In the '80s, while there were plenty of female pop stars, when it came to hard rock, it was Joan Jett, Pat Benatar, Heart, Lita Ford, and a maybe a handful of others.
That all changed in the '90s, as the riot grrrl movement in the Pacific Northwest, grunge, and alternative rock helped thrust female rockers to the forefront, thanks to bands and artists like Hole, 4 Non Blondes, Veruca Salt, L7, Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney, The Breeders, Liz Phair, Elastica, Luscious Jackson, 7 Year Bitch, PJ Harvey, and many others.
One of the biggest female alt-rock frontwomen was former Canadian child actress and pop singer Alanis Morissette. In the early '90s, she had a six Top 40 hits on the Canadian pop chart between 1991 and 1993, but hadn't broken through outside of the Great White North.
After her record deal was up, she changed musical directions, moved to Toronto and then LA, teamed up with producer Glen Ballard and, with Ballard, co-wrote one of the biggest albums ever. Here third studio album, Jagged Little Pill, was released in 1995 and went to #1 on the Billboard album chart and various other album charts across the world. It ended the decade as the #1 album on the Billboard decade-end album chart for the '90s and is #7 on the Billboard all-time album chart. It has gone 15x platinum in the U.S. and sold over 33 million copies worldwide, making it one of the 15 best-selling albums of all-time.
Strangely, the album was supposed to just be kind of a go-between album for Morissette, as her record company was expecting it to make just enough money to allow her to make a follow-up album. That all changed when LA rock station KROQ started playing "You Oughta Know," the lead single from Jagged Little Pill that featured Dave Navarro on guitar, Flea on bass, and Benmont Tench on organ. It caught on like wildfire and eventually went to #6 on the Billboard Hot 100, as well as #1 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart for five weeks, which was the most for a female artist up to that point.
And what a scathing, angst-ridden song it was, with lyrics about scorned love aimed at an ex-lover. This wasn't just some "oh he hurt me, now what am I gonna do?" type song that might have been more likely for a female singer to sing in the past. This was a "fuck you, I bet your new girlfriend won't give you head in a movie theater like I did" song, quite literally. I remember being blown away by the brutal honesty and sexuality of the song, and it's still an all-time post-break-up song 26 years later. "And every time you speak her name / Does she know how you told me you'd hold me until you died? / Until you died / But you're still alive." Anyone who's ever been dumped can relate to a line like that.
Of course, my favorite story about the song is the rumor that it's about Dave Coulier, who had previously dated Morissette. The idea that Uncle Joey from Full House was getting a BJ in a theater was enough to rattle everything I had ever known or thought about him. Morissette has never publicly said who the song is about, and there are a couple other possible subjects, but for me, I'm just going to always assume it's about the man behind the Jackalope.
But anyway, "You Oughta Know" is one of the defining songs of the '90s, and the video is so purely '90s that I couldn't not feature in this year's Rocktober.
For our first Tuesday Top Ten of this '90s-themed Rocktober, we're going to take a look at the genre that grunge killed. Whether you call it hair band music, glam metal, hair metal, or pop metal, it was the hard rock genre that defined the '80s with bands like Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, Guns N' Roses, Poison, and Mötley Crüe selling millions of albums and selling out arenas around the world. And for the first two and a half years of the '90s, things were largely the same, as hair bands continued to sell a ton of albums, chart well, tour well, and get plenty of love from MTV.
What I deem the Hair Band Era was from the release of AC/DC's Back in Black in 1980 until May 23, 1992, when the last album of the Hair Band Era to reach #1 on the Billboard album chart -- Def Leppard's Adrenalize -- was knocked out of the #1 spot after five weeks on top by Kriss Kross's Totally Krossed Out. While there were other bands that I would consider to be hair bands that had some success later in the '90s (like Van Halen's Balance, which hit #1 on the Billboard album chart in 1995), by the end of 1992, for all intents and purposes, the dominance of the hair bands was over.
But before then, there were still some huge hair band hits, including several dozen Top 10 hits and 4 #1s on the Billboard Hot 100. The purpose of this list is to highlight the ten biggest hair band hits of the '90s. This list will be limited to songs that charted between January 1, 1990 (even if technically released prior to January 1, 1990) and December 31, 1992. For determining the "biggest" hits, first I'm looking at the songs' highest-charting position on the Billboard Hot 100. To break ties, if the song reached #1, the more weeks at #1 is considered a "bigger" hit. Likewise, weeks in the Top 10 will further break ties. So with that, here are the ten biggest hair band hits of the '90s, with the peak Billboard Hot 100 position, dates of the song's peak, and number of weeks in the Top 10 (or at #1, where applicable) in parentheses. And, of course, I'll embed the video for each song because you know that every big song in the early '90s had a video on MTV.
10 (tie). "Wind of Change" by Scorpions (#4, 8/31/91, 5 weeks in Top 10)
Scorpions lead singer Klaus Meine was inspired to write this song when the band was playing at the Moscow Music Peace Festival in 1989, as the Cold War and communism were beginning to crack. The song served as an anthem for Glasnost and the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, and contrary to a fun, but untrue, rumor, it was not written by the CIA.
10 (tie). "Hole Hearted" by Extreme (#4, 10/19/91, 5 weeks in Top 10)
Along with "More Than Words" (see below), this was the second of Extreme's two Top 5 hits in 1991, and it unfortunately pegged them as an acoustic/power ballad band, when, in fact, they could, and did, rock.
9. "Something To Believe In" by Poison (#4, 12/8/90, 6 weeks in Top 10)
Poison's second-biggest power ballad, behind the 1988 #1 hit "Every Rose Has Its Thorn," this was one of four Top 40 hits off of the band's 1990 album Flesh & Blood.
7 (tie). "Unskinny Bop" by Poison (#3, 9/1/90, 8 weeks in Top 10)
Speaking of Poison, "Unskinny Bop" was the band's third of four Top 10 hits in a row.
7 (tie). "High Enough" by Damn Yankees (#3, 1/12/91, 8 weeks in Top 10)
Rock supergroup Damn Yankees followed the power ballad success formula, and it resulted in their biggest hit.
6. "November Rain" by Guns N' Roses (#3, 8/29/92, 10 weeks in Top 10)
GNR's biggest hit from Use Your Illusion I or II, "November Rain" was the band's last Top 10 hit, and it was also, in arguably, the best music video of the '90s.
5. "More Than Words Can Say" by Alias (#2, 11/24/90, 5 weeks in Top 10)
Alias was formed by former Sheriff lead singer Freddy Curci and guitarist Steve DeMarchi, as well as several of Heart's founding members, after Sheriff's "When I'm With You" had rocketed to #1 in 1989, six years after it was initially released and four years after the band had broken up. "More Than Words Can Say" -- not to be confused with Extreme's "More Than Words" (see below) -- showed that Curci and DeMarchi could still write a hell of a power ballad.
4. "(Can't Live Without Your) Love and Affection" by Nelson (#1, 9/29/90, 1 week at #1, 7 weeks in Top 10)
Silken-haird twin brothers Matthew and Gunnar Nelson -- the sons of '50s rock legend Ricky Nelson -- had two Top Ten hits off of their 1990 debut album After the Rain (the title track went to #6), and this one topped the charts.
3. "Blaze of Glory" by Jon Bon Jovi (#1, 9/8/90, 1 week at #1, 8 weeks in Top 10)
Jon Bon Jovi had a brief hiatus from Bon Jovi to record his debut solo album, Blaze of Glory, which featured songs that were either in or inspired by the movie Young Guns II, including the title track, which was a huge hit.
2. "More Than Words" by Extreme (#1, 6/8/91, 1 week at #1, 9 weeks in Top 10)
Extreme's "More Than Words" -- not to be confused with Alias's "More Than Words Can Say" (see above) -- is a soft acoustic ballad that was apparently what the listening public wanted to hear in 1991. It would be the last song by a hair band to hit #1.
1. "To Be With You" by Mr. Big (#1, 2/29-3/14/91, 3 weeks at #1, 9 weeks in Top 10)
The big (pun intended, motherfuckers!) winner is Mr. Big, whose classic, sing-along "To Be With You" topped the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks in early 1991.
In addition to the grunge and alt-rock that dominated rock in the '90s, there was also a bit of a punk revival. One of the leaders of that revival was the Bay Area's Rancid, who was formed in 1991 by several former members of Operation Ivy.
In 1995, Rancid released their third studio album, . . . And Then Came The Wolves. The title was a nod to the fact that the band had been the target of a major label bidding war. They ended up staying with their label (Epitaph), and this album was the band's most successful to date, reaching #45 on the Billboard album chart and eventually becoming the band's only platinum album in the U.S.
From that album came one of the band's signature songs, "Roots Radicals," which reached #27 on the Billboard Modern Rock tracks chart. The song itself is a tribute to the politically conscious reggae subgenre known as Roots reggae. It is also the namesake of two stages at one of my two favorite music festivals, Riot Fest -- the Roots Stage and the Radicals Stage.
The first selection in this year's Rocktober is a reminder that, even though '90s rock was generally defined by grunge, alternative rock, and rap metal, there was still some pretty damn good straightforward rock and roll that was being released.
Lenny Kravitz had a huge hit with "It Ain't Over 'til It's Over" in 1991, as the song went to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it his highest-charting single in the U.S. to this day. For whatever reason, I don't really remember that song when it came out. What I do remember is the first time I heard "Are You Gonna Go My Way." I didn't have cable growing up, so when I would go to friends' houses or babysit, I'd go straight for MTV. I saw the video for this, and I thought, Good Lord, this guy's the reincarnation of Jimi Hendrix!
The song is a ball-busting hard rock song, from the great opening riff until the last note. Hell, in the video -- which won the MTV VMW for Best Male Artist -- save for the bassist, the others in the band even looked like The Jimi Hendrix Experience, with the other guitarist, Craig Ross, resembling Experience bassist Noel Redding, and drummer Cindy Blackman resembling Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell, round bug-eye sunglasses and all -- though I just learned that it was Kravitz who actually played the drums on the track, and Blackman was brought in for the video.
The song wasn't released as a single in the U.S., so it wasn't eligible for the Billboard Hot 100, but it topped the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart and went to #2 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. It was also a huge hit internationally, topping the Australian pop chart for six weeks and reaching the Top 10 on the pop charts in eight other countries. All in all, it's a great song to kick off this most rockingest of months.
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