Guitar Anthems of the '80s

All the finger-wagging in the world wasn't about to stop rock 'n' roll from racing cars and chasing girls in the '80s. If anything, artists like Twisted Sister, Mötley Crüe, and Quiet Riot got more menacing with each passing year, as their riffs snapped and sizzled right alongside crackling pyrotechnics and lip-curling, acid-tongued lyrics. And who was at the forefront of the fray? Why, none other than a bandana-sporting Axl Rose, who spoke for us all when he squealed, "Take me down to the paradise city, where the grass is green and the girls are pretty."

Unwilling to let the party die while the night is young are our Next Steps — raising your blood pressure once again with the help of guitar gods and girls, girls, girls.

Thanks to night-crawling hair-metal bands like Cinderella, Skid Row, and Ratt, many U.S. cities started looking like spitting images of the Sunset Strip during the '80s: an everything's-better-in-leather attitude topped off with teased hair and plenty of spandex. Every song also started to sound like a sing-/drink-along anthem, from the piano-pounding, guitar-guided "Once Bitten Twice Shy" to the surprisingly tender harmonies of "Headed for a Heartbreak". Also out to rock thousands — sans spandex, mind you — were heavy metal headliners like Dio and the almighty Iron Maiden.

As for a counterpoint to the mainstream, our Deep Cuts cover that hipper-than-thou corner of the record store perfectly.

When Nirvana was still on Sub Pop — churning out wicked and wiry pop tunes like "Negative Creep" — the idea of "alternative rock" had nothing to do with what the cool kids were listening to. Instead, critics (in the U.S.) coined the term "college rock" to describe the indie-influencing work of artists such as the Replacements (the deceptively simple hooks of "Alex Chilton", an early Goo Goo Dolls inspiration), Bad Brains (the unhinged hardcore of "Banned in D.C."), and — from Manchester and the Midlands, respectively — Joy Division (the steely guitars and suffocating gloom of "Dead Souls") and Bauhaus (the gothic thrash of "Third Uncle", a.k.a. a rather spectacular Brian Eno cover).

Rock and its many guitar-wielding offshoots ruled the '80s, from the small towns and strip malls of America to the suburbs and council blocks of Blighty. Simply put, everyone had their own personal anthems on blast, including punks who spent their Saturday nights snarling up a pogo-frenzy (Dead Kennedys, Black Flag), metalheads on snakebite (Megadeth, Judas Priest, Ozzy Osbourne), fiery-eyed indie rockers (Fugazi, Minutemen, Pixies), goths (the Cult, Bauhaus), an army equipped with leather and lace (Mötley Crüe, Twisted Sister, Quiet Riot), and classic rock fans who caught somehow more defining moments from the music's defining bands (the Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Neil Young). And bringing them all together somewhere in the middle? Lots of awkward, a-rhythmic air-guitar moves.