Mötley Crüe - Dr. Feelgood (1989)

No.  Lord God, no.

After the big commercial breakthroughs of U2 and R.E.M. in 1987, and given all the indications that other alt-rock college favorites such as the Alarm, who played Drew University in my senior year there in 1988 - three years after R.E.M. did so - seemed to be on the verge of mainstream success, hope for the future of rock and roll was replaced with disgust in 1989.  Not by Madonna or Janet Jackson, whose LP releases that year were declarations that dance pop wasn't going away and that rock fans had best deal with it, but by the Los Angeles heavy metal band Mötley Crüe.  Their album Dr. Feelgood ended up being the only rock album to top the Billboard Top Two Hundred LP chart in 1989.

This was the best rock could do?

Dr. Feelgood is typical Mötley Crüe garbage.  Opening with "T.nT. (Terror 'n Tinseltown)," a sound collage of violence on the streets of LA, and followed by the trashy title track, the album is one joyless mess of a song after another, full of misogynistic and satyric lyrics - courtesy of bassist Nikki Sixx - Mick Mars's simple-minded chords churned out on over-amplified guitars, Tommy Lee's messy drums, and power ballads as pumped up as their hair.  Vince Neil struggles with the craft of singing, and you're too busy hacking your way through the noise pollution to even consider Sixx's bass playing.

Songs with titles such as "Slice of Your Pie," "Sticky Sweet" and "She Goes Down" are typical of the band's crudity, and the glossy production, with occasional brass and piano flourishes, is an attempt by the Crüe to say, "Look!  We're serious musicians!"  But not a serious band - all four members of this appropriately named group had so little use for each other at the time (Vince Neil would soon leave, only to return) that their parts were all recorded separately.  Sort of like how the Beatles mostly recorded Abbey Road, to be fair, and maybe the musical quote of  "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" in "Slice of Your Pie" was done as a joke, but I was not laughing.

I knew I wasn't going to like Dr. Feelgood, but I wanted to hear it for myself to understand anew how much trouble rock was in back in 1989.  It would be the last rock album to top the Billboard album chart for nearly two years (rap albums dominated the top spot on that chart in 1990), and rock's comeback in the early nineties through chart-topping LPs from R.E.M. and Nirvana ultimately proved to be short-lived.  Dr. Feelgood was the beginning of the end, and I don't feel good about that at all.  Rock and roll isn't dead, but it's on life support, and hair-metal bands like Mötley Crüe accelerated its decline.  And rock fans actually bought this swill.  If rap takes over completely and there's nothing left for us rock fans to listen to, then we'll deserve it.