Rooted is all about the people and the places that make us proud to call our community home.
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“The hardest part of writing a book is the same as the hardest part of writing a song, getting off the couch. Once you get off the couch it starts,” says Sean Kelly, the North Bay-born musician who has released a second book titled Don’t Call It Hair Metal: Art in the Excess of ’80s Rock.
“I’m very deeply inspired by the music of this era. For some reason, a lot of this music is met with derision, and I wanted to speak about the artistry and the sonic evolution of that time and make the case that the best of it should be considered rock and roll,” he says.
Kelly says ‘Hair Metal’ was a pejorative term that was put on the music after it had had its commercial heyday.
“I think I was working at Tower Records in the ‘90s and it was on one of those corner displays that read “As seen on TV, The Best of Hair Metal” which is great in its own way, and really, I don’t care what you call it, at the end of the day it is music. I wanted to get the voices of these artists, whose music has stayed with me, and show that I have benefited greatly from their art.”
Kelly has had a tremendous career as a musician, from playing in already-established bands and with artists such as Helix and Lee Aaron, to writing his own music and releasing albums with his band Crash Kelly, which toured with Alice Cooper in the early 2000s.
He says, “I loved having my own band and Crash Kelly will always be special to me. I did that for the purist of reasons. I had a record deal and I lost it. I had tried to fit in with the musical style of the '90s and it just wasn’t who I am, so I said ‘I know who I am and I know it’s not what is cool, but I’m just going to make my own records.’”
Kelly says he was supply teaching and making the music he felt more comfortable with and says, “That’s when things clicked for me.”
“When we did get a record deal, we got to go on tour with Alice Cooper which was so rewarding. It was hard work, it was a real grind, but so rewarding,” says Kelly.
Making music that was reminiscent of the ‘Hair Metal era’ was one way Kelly says he benefited from those artists and now with his book, he’s looking to do the same. He says the reason some of the derision exists comes from the time frame itself of when this music rose to popularity.
“It was right in the middle of the cultural zeitgeist with MTV, so you’re marrying intense visuals with the music and certainly that helped to sell records. As the record companies in the ‘80s started to become major conglomerates. You had people who weren’t necessarily music people, but they oversaw artistic decisions. Ultimately it became very defined, you had all these bands that all started with W; Whitesnake, Winger, White Lion, then they started using session guys on the records instead of letting the guys in the band play the songs, and they started using the same clothing designs and the same video director.
"Near the end of its commercial apex, a lot of this stuff sounded the same and we needed a palette cleanser and a new sound, and we got that coming out of Seattle with Nirvana and Sound Garden. That’s the cycle of Rock and Roll and eventually it should come back around, and we should celebrate the best of it, and I haven’t seen that done to my satisfaction yet, so that’s why I wrote the book.”
This is Kelly’s second book. His first book “Metal and Ice: Tales from Metal Heroes” talked about the hard rock and heavy metal artists which Kelly grew up listening to and loving in the 1980s that were from Canada, but people who he felt “never got enough recognition in Canadian history books.”
“I’m a music buff and I read everything and anything to do with rock and roll. Anything I read about Canadian rock and roll always glazed over this very important part for me. Helix and Lee Aaron and Honeymoon Suite, somehow it just didn’t fit into the overall tapestry of the Canadian rock scene as far as those music books went and I wanted to honour that.”
But even with one book under his belt, he said this second one was a long arduous process.
“There is a lot of self-doubt. I want to make sure that I’m telling something that’s worth reading. Am I saying something new?”
Kelly says, “There’s a lot of prep that goes in and you want there to be a story arc and for me, the arc was basically laid out in the decade itself and I just broke it down into two-year chunks. Once I had that arc I just started reaching out to people. Gilby Clarke (of Guns N’ Roses) was great in that sense because he has a lot of friends that wanted to contribute. I also reached out to people that I had jammed with or toured with and then I also just cold-called people. It wasn’t just musicians I talked to either, it was industry officials and insiders as well.”
Kelly says this is music that has had a lot of staying power over the years.
“They are not just images cast in time, in a video or an album cover, they are musicians who hone their chops, playing live for people and coming up with the best songs and at the end of the day, the songs don’t lie, and they stay with us.”
He says during the early days of this scene a lot of the music came out of Hollywood where it was extremely difficult to break through.
“It was a very competitive scene and it forced everybody to up the ante and in those early days it forced music producers to go into these clubs and spot the new talent of a band like Van Halen and they had to take this club band, who were playing mostly cover songs, tweak them a little bit and all of a sudden they are on the radio.”
Kelly adds, “As we get older it’s harder for us, scientifically, to have the same connection to music, our brains just don’t work that way. But some of those bands from that era are coming out with new songs and they really work hard at trying to make them just as memorable as the stuff from their prime. I think it just speaks to the quality of these artists that they can do that.”
The music and artists of this era may have received a renewed sense of popularity when the musical “Rock of Ages” hit Broadway over a decade ago. Kelly just wrapped up a stint as one of the guitarists in the band in the show in Toronto and says as far as jukebox musicals go, it’s a wonderful tribute to the era.
“Great songs, clever and entertaining dialogue. It’s not a Stephen Sonheim work, but it is a lot of fun, and it's beautiful and hopeful. I did 65 shows and I loved every one of them and I couldn’t wait to be on stage for every single performance. There were times when me and the other guitarist, Gino Del Sole from Sudbury, were up there saying to each other ‘two northern Ontario guys up here rocking out on a big stage like we're Judas Priest! We’re in our fifties and life is good! We won man!’”
Kelly has played on some big stages before the Rock of Ages gig, including as a member of Nelly Furtado’s band in the 2010s.
“Every gig has its challenges. I was in Helix when I had the opportunity to audition for Nelly Furtado who was at the time one of the biggest pop stars in the world, but I really didn’t know much of her music. It wasn’t my thing. My guitar tech said to me ‘Hey she needs somebody who can play classical guitar and she’s going to South America; you should come to do this gig.’ It was a challenge because I wasn’t used to that scale and scope and all of a sudden I’m rehearsing in a space that’s bigger than some of the places that I play in. My first gig was in front of 160,00 people in Mexico City. That was a real ‘We’re not in Kansas anymore’ moment.”
Kelly is also a full-time educator and says he uses this music as a teaching tool.
“I had a parent of one of the kids bring my first book in and there are some things in there that are pretty raw, including things that I experienced on the road and that was a bit of an ‘uh-oh’ moment,” says Kelly.
“But I try to keep things pretty PG-13 in my profession and just say everything is part of the artistic experience. To be honest, we were listening to stuff as a 13-year-old that really challenge the values that our parents tried to instill in us. What I try to encourage is for them to be judicious listeners and for them to understand that you can appreciate elements of somebody's art and hear a challenging idea, without taking that idea to heart.
"I encourage them to listen to it within the context of reality. What those artists are doing is selling you an emotion. They aren’t selling you the truth. You define the truth. You are intelligent and you have values, and you are someone who wants to respect your parents and your teachers. Those are the types of discussions we have and come to an understanding that some things are appropriate, and some things aren’t, and I think it's good to have those conversations.”
Kelly says just because he’s inside a classroom, doesn’t mean his touring days are over.
“This summer I’m going to be touring with Lee Aaron behind our new album Elevate. As well as with Coney Hatch and we have a new live album, post-card from Germany out in August,” he says, adding, “I’m going to be in North Bay, playing at North Bay Pride with Carol Pope and Rough Trade. I played with them for years and got invited to do this show with them.”
As for his book, Kelly says he hopes people enjoy it and he feels like it has already been a successful adventure.
“When I’m getting a text from Dee Snider at night saying ‘Dude! We have to talk about the book! I have some perspective and I have sticky notes ready to go,' that's when you feel success. It’s when your peers and your mentor, like Dee, is to me when they connect with it, but most importantly, just when other music fans connect with and see something in it. That to me is success. When I get to communicate with more people who are just as passionate about this as I am.”
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