5 Great 1980s Hard Rock Bands That You Should Know, But Never Made It Big
Fastway 1983 (l-r) Jerry Shirley, Fast Eddie Clarke, Dave King
If there is one common theme to a band not making it big it is wrong place, wrong time. The public’s shifting and fickle tastes in music often conspire against success. But that’s not the only reason.
You can’t underestimate luck in the success formula.
Many talented hard rock bands were left by the wayside for no other reason except that they were unlucky.
The other reasons for not making it? Bad management, an indifferent record label, poor distribution, a lack of exposure and personnel turmoil within the band. Also in the late 1980s an oversaturation of the market with a lot of bands sounding indistinguishable from one another. Finally, the rise of grunge / alternative was the coup de grace for hundreds of hard rock bands.
With the exception of Badlands, where the band imploded and the singer died in 1993, we present here five 1980s bands that should have been huge but never got there.
Zebra
I can say positively that Zebra’s music is unknown to the vast majority of rock fans. With one possible exception – the 1983 hit, Tell Me What You Want.
From 1983 on, their record label, Atlantic Records, dropped the ball and did nothing right in promoting Zebra. Continue reading
