In a new interview with The Jeremy White Show, former White Lion singer Mike Tramp reflected once again on how the rise of grunge in the early 1990s forced most hard rock bands off the radio and MTV, causing album and tour sales to plummet. He said:
“The ’80s were slain and put to sleep by the record companies and the industry. Once they succeeded with White Lion, they signed Skid Row, and after signing Skid Row, they signed the next Skid Row. It was just an assembly line. It’s like the iPhone version 25, which is already on the drawing board—it’s just a matter of how long they should wait before offering the audience that option. So, MTV goaded every ’80s band to outdo themselves. In the end, they basically goaded every ’80s band to self-destruct. I’m not talking about myself here, but by the time we got to the last wave of ’80s bands, it became a joke. They copied each other a million times over, and I can’t stand to listen or look at it because there was no originality left. There were only so many waves, and after that, everything was just a copy. That’s how I see it—it was cloned.”
Elaborating on how grunge’s popularity affected the so-called “hair metal” scene of the 1980s, Tramp continued: “It’s funny that we have the word ‘grunge,’ but we also had ‘alternative.’ If you think about it, an alternative is like saying, ‘I don’t want the black car. Do you have an alternative?’ ‘Yeah, we’ve got the gray one.’ There wasn’t anyone who came with anything truly new by the last two and a half years.”
