Warrant – Cherry Pie
It’s kind of like being one of the best dinosaurs ever, and then a comet hits you.
Warrant were the last great pre-grunge cock-rock, hair metal bands, and combined all the best elements of luminaries such as Poison, Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, Van Halen etc, big hair, big riffs, big chorus. The last pre-post modern party band, rocking out on MTV, whilst Kurt and his boys were playing shows in seedy backwaters. Cherry Pie was out in 1991, almost at the same time as Teen Spirit. Why hair metal and grunge couldn’t co-exist is anyone’s guess, it had an okay relationship with Thrash/Death Metal after all, but there was a growing stigma for cheesy power ballads and adolescent songs about girls. Rock and fun had a messy divorce at the beginning of the 1990’s it would seem, and yeah I’m stating that Green Jelly/o’s “Three Little Pigs” was not fun.
I remember the time well, things changed over night (well the day I bought Nevermind and Nine Inch Nail’s “Pretty Hate Machine”). Waking up the next morning thinking, “I can’t listen to Warrant and Poison anymore”. Please forgive me, I was just 16 at the time, and I’ve done my best to make up for this temporary flirtation with the cool.
In hindsight, Warrant should be out on the road filling stadiums on endless greatest hits tours, but it’s not to be. Five years too late, or twelve years too early, whichever way you want to see it. And, hey if you like the Darkness, go and get Warrant’s greatest hits, coz it’s quite a bit better than “Permission to Land”.