Record labels hate being on the outside looking in at a trend, so when a localized music scene starts to elbow its way into the national conversation, A&R reps are quick to flock to that city and snatch up every band associated with it, hoping they’re signing the next big thing.
Such was the case when Quiet Riot brought the glam metal sound of L.A.’s Sunset Strip to the top of the album chart. The musical style soon to be dubbed “hair metal” was on the map, and bands from the scene would be all over the pop chart by the end of the decade, aided by a ton of affection from MTV.
It seems a musical style that leans on flash and sizzle, leather and lace, sex appeal and in-your-face guitar riffs was tailor-made for television.
And one of the bands who was most poised to profit from all that attention was a quintet with a dual-guitar attack that already had an album in the can.
Ratt released their debut Out Of The Cellar in February 1984 and announced its arrival with a hard-rocking single and a music video that featured a living comedy legend. The band’s manager Marshall Berle just so happened to be the nephew of Milton Berle and got Uncle Milty to appear in Ratt’s first ever music video.
The cameo helped earn the clip eyeballs and heavy rotation at MTV and thrust the band out to the forefront of the hair metal movement. And while other acts like Poison, Mötley Crüe and Guns N’ Roses would come along and eclipse them in short order, no one can take away that one big loud hit that climbed to #12 on the Billboard Hot 100 and proved so memorable that it anchored a Geico commercial that featured the band in 2020.
Ratt has us headbanging in circles at #61 with “Round And Round.”