Lest anyone worry about the snob credentials of the Times’ second-string theater snoot Charles Isherwood following his rave for Broadway’s hair-metal musical Rock of Ages today, he would also really like you to know just how cool his taste in music used to be:
I was an adolescent pop snob in the ’80s, turning up my nose at the vulgarity of straight-up guitar-driven rock to seek out adventurers on the fringe, which is to say anything British involving big, bad hair of a different sort. But while waiting impatiently for MTV to vouchsafe a morsel of Siouxsie or the Smiths, I absorbed an awful lot of thrashy pop.
He also cops to enjoying Bon Jovi’s “Dead or Alive†(“a song I furtively loved even back in the dayâ€), though, so we suppose we can give him a break.
Big-Hair Rockers Return in a New Arena: Broadway [NYT]
Earlier: Rock of Ages’ Constantine Maroulis on Groupies and Performing for Drinking Audiences