During an interview with Heavy Consequence, Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine made a comparison between glam and heavy metal, mentioning the similarities between Metallica’s James Hetfield and Motley Crue’s Vince Neil vocals.
Here’s what Mustaine said:
“So, what do I think between glam and between heavy metal? Let’s boil it down to its least common denominator. Let’s look at the first two albums by Motley Crue and Metallica.
“You can’t really say that the first Motley Crue record (”Too Fast for Love”) didn’t have some metal tracks on it, because ”Take Me To The Top” or ”Live Wire” had the same kind of real fast right-hand picking like James (Hetfield) and I were doing.
”And when Vince (Neil) was first singing, and James was first singing, their voice was very similar in the registry where it was at. They both sang really high.”
He went on:
“But I think that if you would have taken those two songs and had Metallica record them, they would have been heavy as f*ck. Probably would have stayed pretty similar because we were doing a lot of copy songs.
”And so, when you take a band that is dressing up, wearing high heels, wearing leather, wearing makeup, using hairspray, belts and chains and big hoop earrings and jewelry and fingernails painted and stuff like that, and start getting way into mascara, lipstick, foundation, all that kinda shit, that’s somebody’s impression of what a rock star is supposed to look like.”