Photo: Janet Gardner | By Lyndsey Parker, Yahoo Music | “There was definitely a double-standard. … We couldn’t be doing the same things the guys did and get away with it,” says the singer of one of the few female bands to infiltrate ’80s hair-metal scene. In Penelope Spheeris’s notorious 1988 rockumentary The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years, KISS’s Paul Stanley is interviewed while lounging in bed with a bevy of lingerie-clad groupies; W.A.S.P.’s Chris Holmes chugs a bottle of vodka in a swimming pool; Odin’s Randy O canoodles in a hot tub with bikini girls; Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry brag about spending millions of dollars on drugs; and Taime Downe, Faster Pussycat’s lead singer and the proprietor of popular Hollywood hangout the Cathouse, admits that women can gain entry to his nightclub faster if they wear “sleazy” outfits.
But when all-female metal band Vixen is interviewed in Decline II, they come across as much more sensible, with drummer Roxy Petrucci even joking that her motto is “sex, drums, and rock ‘n’ roll.” Three decades later, former Vixen frontwoman Janet Gardner — whose story is featured in a new three-part documentary, Paramount+’s I Wanna Rock: The ‘80s Metal Dream — tells Yahoo Entertainment that she and her bandmates never felt they had the freedom to wildly party and let it all hang out in the ‘80s like their male Sunset Strip peers.
“I think that people would’ve been like, ‘Oh, sloppy, drunk sluts — that’s not appealing!’ But with men, it’s cool because they’re ‘bad boys,’” gripes Gardner. “There was definitely a double-standard that we had to contend with, but that we were well-aware of. We knew we couldn’t be doing the same things the guys did and get away with it.”
Gardner explains that in a sexist hard-rock era when almost every woman on MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball was a “video vixen,” the band Vixen had to work twice as hard to be taken seriously. “There were definitely people that were skeptical that we could really do it, and that we would be accepted doing it,” she recalls. “There was a lot of us fighting to prove the fact that we were a real band, just like any other guy bands. There was a lot of, ‘Oh, it’s just a novelty!’ or ‘Do they really play?’ It was very difficult to get past a lot of that.”
This meant there was no room for error — but the scrutiny and skepticism Vixen faced ultimately made them better musicians and a tighter unit.
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“But on the other hand, there are female musicians that come up to me and say, ‘You guys inspired me to form a band!’” Gardner adds with a grin. “So, if you get a few of those, it’s all good.”
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Read the rest of Lyndsey’s and Janet’s interview here:
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/vixen-janet-gardner-objectified-80s-metal-magazine-195226941.html
Photo: Janet Gardner | https://www.facebook.com/JanetGardnerofficial/
Vixen’s Janet Gardner on Being Objectified by ’80s Metal Magazine: ‘That was the last time I dressed like that.’
