Review: the Australian production of Rock of Ages

It’s hard to fathom here -- in the home of AC/DC -- that Quiet Riot could be regarded as the godfather of anything in the USA, least of all hard rock. The band certainly can’t claim to be its biological father. QR’s breakthrough hit in 1983 was a cover of ‘Cum On Feel The Noize’ which Slade topped the UK and Irish charts with, a decade earlier. (Slade’s version didn’t rate much more than a blip in the US in 1973, #98 without a bullet, and just two weeks on the charts.)

But ‘Cum On’ broke some kind of ceiling in the States. It was the first ‘metal’ [more ‘late-onset glam’ if you ask me] song to make Top Five on Billboard’s pop charts. And it set the tone for what was acceptable on the pop charts: pomp rock and hair metal and overblown AOR. That shiny little song opened the floodgates for mullet metal. Took it from its LA ghetto to the rest of the continent.

Apart from the brief but spectacular success of QR’s album Metal Health -- it sold 5 million copies -- the band was more famous for the musicians that left it: Randy Rhodes for Ozzy Osbourne, Rudy Sarzo for Whitesnake and, infamously, frontman Kevin DuBrow was finally overthrown and turfed out as an ‘egomaniac’.

Quiet Riot doesn’t actually have an original song in the set list of Rock of Ages, but the band’s shadow looms.

The lead singer in ROA’ fictional cock rock band ‘Arsenal’ Stacee Jaxx (Michael Falzon) is about to suffer the same fate as Kevin DuBrow... for identical reasons. And the bar in which the show is largely set is suspiciously named the Dupree... which is kinda close to DuBrow, right? And ‘Cum On’ is the opening number in this Eighties musical.

You know, I reckon my one reservation about Rock of Ages is the title. But I guess ‘AOR of Ages’ doesn’t have quite the same ring to it!


Production photograph: Jeff Busby

Songs by Foreigner, Asia, Styx, the Styx-like Damn Yankees, REO Speedwagon, Quarterflash and their ilk certainly outnumber the hair metal and hard rock numbers by Whitesnake, Poison, David Lee Roth, Twisted Sister, Joan Jett et al.

But with Tzan Niko on lead guitar, man... I’d probably hold up a lighter for a song by Hush.

My ‘real’ review is in today’s Australian. It’s on-line here. Short version: It’s a party... even for a snobby purist like me who hated mainstream ’80s pop and rock. (I reckon the song ‘We Built This City’ is an absolute abomination... arguably the worst song ever to chart!)

Like Xanadu, Rock of Ages takes some dated and dodgy original material and fashions it into something shrewd and sharp. But unlike Xanadu, the sound and staging are close to flawless.

I had a ball. Scratch that... everyone has a ball. Rock of Ages really is irresistible.