Before Steel Panther’s glam metal journey began, Ralph Saenz worried that Nirvana had killed his dream.
Nirvana, fronted by the late Kurt Cobain, was the Seattle grunge band that is widely believed to have let the last aerosol spray out of the glam/hair/heavy metal music scene’s hair spray bottle in the early 1990’s rendering it hackneyed.
“I always wanted to be in a heavy metal band and have a record deal and tour the world, and so when Nirvana came out, I saw the chances of that happening go away,” said Saenz, who spoke in character as Steel Panther’s frontman Michael Starr. “That’s why we started the cover band; because we still wanted to play this music, we really enjoy it.”
Unfortunately, Starr and his heavy metal cover band couldn’t get record labels interested enough to sign them.
“They wouldn’t even look at us,” Starr recalled. “Once we stopped taking ourselves so serious and we were able to write songs based off past experiences that actually did happen to us, it turned out to be fun, funny and exciting.”
The satire group, whose last three albums hit No. 1 on the Billboard comedy charts, is now set to perform a two-night stint at the House of Blues in West Hollywood on June 18 and June 25, plus a show June 19 at the Riverside Municipal Auditorium.
The four-piece band has been accused of being misogynistic with song titles like “Fat Girl (Thar She Blows)” on their 2009 album “Feel the Steel,” “17 Girls in a Row” off 2011’s “Balls Out” and “You’re Beautiful When You Don’t Talk” on last year’s “All You Can Eat” among other unprintable titles. But Starr shrugged it off.
“I don’t know, we’re dudes,” he said. “That’s what dudes talk about.”
Touring with the likes of Mötley Crüe, Def Leppard and Aerosmith, among others, would make it seem like the guys of Steel Panther have been embraced by the heavy metal community, but not all are fans, Starr admitted.
“Yeah, Mötley Crüe wasn’t really down with it,” Starr said. “Tommy Lee was pretty upset over the fact we poked fun at Vince Neil. He didn’t like it. He just thinks we’re just a joke, like a stupid joke band that shouldn’t be playing with them. But all their fans like us.”
Starr added that the members of Mötley Crüe simply “take themselves a little too serious,” while “Vince Neil totally loves it.”
“You know he told me, ‘Hey, Michael, when we retire you can have all our fans,’” Starr said.
