Olivia: Jackson, if I told you we were discussing a book hailed as 'The Great Gatsby of Heavy-Metal Literature,' what band would you guess is at its heart? Jackson: Uh... Metallica? Iron Maiden? Something... respectable? Olivia: Nope. Think bigger hair. Think more makeup. Think... Poison. Jackson: Poison?! Okay, now I'm intrigued. How do you even begin to make that argument? Olivia: That's the genius of Chuck Klosterman's Fargo Rock City. And what's wild is that Klosterman isn't just some fanboy. He's a New York Times bestselling author, a celebrated cultural critic for places like Esquire and The New York Times Magazine. He served as The Ethicist! And he wrote this book from the perspective of growing up a die-hard metalhead in a town of 498 people in rural North Dakota. Jackson: Wow. So a guy with serious intellectual cred is making a case for music that most people dismiss as cheesy, sexist, and shallow. That feels like a deliberate provocation. Olivia: It absolutely is. And his defense of Poison and the whole hair metal scene starts with a core idea that challenges how we think about 'good' and 'bad' art altogether.

Jackson: Okay, so where does he even start? How do you build a case for the cultural importance of, say, Warrant's "Cherry Pie"? Olivia: He starts with a personal revelation. It's 1998, and he's in a Borders bookstore. He's browsing the music section and sees books on everything: punk, disco, rap, you name it. But he's shocked to find there is virtually nothing written about 80s hard rock. Jackson: That's actually a great point. I can picture a dozen books on punk, but zero on Ratt. Olivia: Exactly. And his first thought is, "Maybe nobody literate cares about metal." But then he has this moment of realization. He thinks, "Wait, I'm semiliterate. And all my intelligent friends from college, we grew up on this stuff." He realized there was this massive cultural phenomenon that shaped millions of kids, and it was being completely ignored, or worse, laughed at. Jackson: So his argument is that popularity equals importance? I'm not sure I buy that. A lot of popular things are just... bad. Olivia: That's the common critique, and he tackles it head-on. He has this hilarious section about the "Ironic Contrarian Hipster" persona. It's this strategy for dealing with music snobs. You own a thousand CDs, but you publicly claim to hate all of them. The only bands you can advocate for are the most uncool ones imaginable, like Insane Clown Posse or Britney Spears. Jackson: Oh, I know that person. They're insufferable. Olivia: Totally. But Klosterman says once you establish that ironic credibility, you're free to actually listen to what you love, whether it's Fleetwood Mac or, in his case, Mötley Crüe. The core idea is that pop music doesn't matter for what it is—its technical merit or lyrical genius—it matters for what it does. And what hair metal did was dominate the cultural landscape. Jackson: You say dominate, but was it really that big? I always think of it as a kind of niche, theatrical thing. Olivia: That's what's so fascinating. He pulls up the Billboard charts from a random week in June 1987. Number one is U2's The Joshua Tree. But look at the rest: number two is Whitesnake. Number three, Mötley Crüe. Number four, Bon Jovi. Number five, Poison. Number six, Ozzy Osbourne. This wasn't a subculture. For a moment in time, this was the culture. Jackson: That's a powerful point. But it still doesn't address the content. The book has been criticized, and rightly so, for how Klosterman seems to explain away the genre's blatant sexism. He kind of argues that it was so over-the-top it became a form of commentary. Olivia: He does, and that's one of the book's most controversial and, for many readers, weakest arguments. He tries to frame it within the genre's perceived "stupidity," suggesting that if the art is "dumb," its sexism is almost expected and therefore less harmful. It's a very debatable point, and it shows the tightrope he's walking. He's not trying to say the music was morally perfect; he's trying to argue for its cultural existence and impact, warts and all. Jackson: Okay, so it was a huge, flawed, but culturally dominant force. But what was the actual appeal? What was the secret formula that made it so seductive to a kid in a town of 498 people?

Olivia: That's the next layer. The book argues that glam metal was a complete identity package. It was a fantasy you could step into. And the key ingredient was what Klosterman calls "Constructed Glamour." Jackson: Constructed Glamour. Break that down for me. Is that like the difference between a naturally charismatic movie star and someone who just has a really good stylist? Olivia: That's a perfect analogy. He says there's "altruistic glamour"—people like Jim Morrison or Michael Jordan who just have this undeniable, natural charisma. But "constructed glamour" is different. It's an idea turned into a fashion, which then becomes a philosophy. It's something you build. And the ultimate masters of this were KISS. Jackson: With the makeup and the personas. The Demon, the Starchild... Olivia: Exactly. Klosterman argues KISS is one of the most influential bands ever, not for their music, but because they taught millions of kids that you could "pretend to be someone you’re not." And that, he says, is 99 percent of rock 'n' roll. Poison just took that idea to its logical, hairsprayed conclusion. They weren't just a band; they were the archetype of a hairspray rock band. Jackson: So it's about the image. But the lifestyle was part of that image, right? The whole "sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll" thing. How does a kid in rural North Dakota even connect with that? It must have felt like a different planet. Olivia: It did, and he has this incredibly personal and funny story about how that connection was made. For him, the gateway was Lita Ford. In 1988, he's fifteen, on a four-hour car ride to a speech tournament with his female teacher and two female classmates. And all he can talk about is Lita Ford. Jackson: The guitarist from The Runaways. Olivia: Right. And for him, she was this crucial figure. The male-fronted bands sang about women in this abstract, objectified way. But Lita Ford was a real woman inside the metal world he understood. She was a "rock chick." He says it was the first time he ever talked about anything sexual in front of women. He gets to the mall in Bismarck and immediately buys her cassette, even though he has no way to play it. He just reads the liner notes for hours. She made the fantasy tangible. She was the bridge from the abstract idea of "sex" to the reality of "sexy women as people." Jackson: That's surprisingly profound. The music created a safe space for him to process his own adolescence. Olivia: It created a whole world with its own rules. And some of those rules were completely absurd. He talks about the "Keyboard Issue" in metal. There was this intense, dogmatic hatred of synthesizers. Jackson: Wait, like Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer"? That's all keyboard. Olivia: And that's exactly why so many "true" metalheads hated them! He tells this amazing story about Charlie Benante, the drummer for the thrash band Anthrax. An interviewer asks if Anthrax would ever use keyboards, and Benante just snaps, "That is gay. The only band that ever used keyboards that was good was UFO." Jackson: (Laughs) That's incredible. It's so specific and so aggressive. It’s like the pineapple-on-pizza debate for metalheads. Olivia: It's a perfect encapsulation of the subculture. The casual homophobia of the era, the arbitrary rules of authenticity, and this weird, deep respect for obscure, "old-school" heroes like UFO. It was a constructed world, and you had to know the rules to belong. Jackson: It's wild how much this was about identity, not just music. It feels like the songs were just the soundtrack to a much bigger project of figuring out who you were.

Olivia: Exactly. And that leads to Klosterman's most profound point: the audience is more important than the art. He has this theory that all criticism is really just "veiled autobiography." When we judge a piece of art, we're really just writing about ourselves. Jackson: I can see that. Our reaction to a movie or a song often says more about our mood or our history than the thing itself. Olivia: He gives a powerful personal example. He was working as a newspaper critic, and he and his girlfriend were having this massive, relationship-ending fight over lunch. He goes back to the office, completely distraught, and has to review the new Van Halen album, Balance. He writes a scathing review, calling it the "single worst album ever recorded." Jackson: Because he was heartbroken. Olivia: Right. He admits later the album isn't that bad. But his personal misery completely dictated his professional judgment. And he argues this happens all the time. The meaning we find in art is the meaning we bring to it. And this is where the book gets really dark and personal. He tells this story about how the "rock 'n' roll" ethos he learned from glam metal directly led him to become, for a short time, a criminal. Jackson: He did what?! And he blamed Gene Simmons? Olivia: Pretty much. It's an insane story. In 1989, he's sixteen and using an ATM. He expects to have about $80, but the receipt says he has over $3,000. He tells the bank, they dismiss it as an error. A week later, it says $8,800. A month later, it's $63,000. Jackson: Whoa. Olivia: So one night, with the bank closed, he decides to test it. He withdraws $180. And it works. For the next ten months, he lives this double life, secretly withdrawing cash and buying CDs, basketball shoes—living out this fantasy. And he justifies it with KISS lyrics he has rattling in his head, like Gene Simmons singing, "Burn your bridges, take what you can get." Jackson: That is unbelievable. How did it end? Olivia: It ends when the ATM finally denies him. He goes into the bank to complain—the audacity!—and a bank manager pulls him into a back room and tells him he owes them $2,160. And here's the crucial part. He knows he's a minor and could probably get away with it. But the thought of his parents finding out, the sheer disappointment on their faces, is unbearable. That fear is more powerful than any legal threat. So he agrees to pay it back by secretly diverting his college savings. Jackson: Wow. So in the end, it wasn't the rock 'n' roll ethos that won. It was his small-town, family values. Olivia: Precisely. And that's the beauty of the book. It's not just a celebration of metal; it's a deeply honest look at how these cultural messages get tangled up with our real lives. The fantasy is powerful, but reality, and the people in it, are ultimately more so. And that connection we forge with music when we're young, that's the thing that lasts. He says it best himself. He admits that, as an adult, he knows Radiohead is a "better" band. But he says, "I could never love Radiohead as much as I loved Mötley Crüe... because I’ll never be 15 again."

Jackson: That hits hard. So this book isn't really a defense of hair metal... it's a defense of being a fan. It's about why the things we love, especially when we're young, become part of our DNA, no matter how 'uncool' they seem later. It's about the feeling, not the objective quality. Olivia: Exactly. The music becomes a vessel for all our adolescent confusion, our hopes, our frustrations. Klosterman isn't arguing that Shout at the Devil is a masterpiece. He's arguing that it was a masterpiece for him, a fifth-grader in the middle of nowhere who needed to feel like he was part of something bigger. The music did something for him. And that's what makes it important. Jackson: It makes you think about your own formative albums. The ones that feel less like music and more like a diary. Olivia: It really does. It makes you wonder, what's your Fargo Rock City? What's that one album or movie from your youth that you'd still defend to the death, even if you know it's kind of ridiculous? Jackson: That's a great question for our listeners. We'd love to hear about it. Find us on our socials and tell us your ultimate 'guilty pleasure' that you're not guilty about at all. Olivia: Because as Klosterman proves, there's no such thing. There's just the stuff that made you who you are. Jackson: This is Aibrary, signing off.