Nöthin’ But a Good Time: The Uncensored Story of ’80s Hair Metal, directed by Jeff Tremaine, is a three-part docuseries based on the book Nöthinâ But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the â80s Hard Rock Explosion by Tom Beaujour and Richard Bienstock, both of whom are among the people interviewed for the series. It documents how hair metal bands like Mötley Crüe, Quiet Riot, Ratt, Dokken and others started to dominate the music scene starting in the early 1980s, the crazy backstage stories involving sex, drugs, booze and biting, and how it all came crashing down with the rise of Nirvana and other alternative bands in the early ’90s.
NÃTHIN’ BUT A GOOD TIME: THE UNCENSORED STORY OF â80S HAIR METAL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Archival news footage of Mötley Crüe, with the reporter saying “they are both revered and reviled.”
The Gist: Interviews with stars like Bret Michaels, Stephen Pearcy, Nuno Bettencourt, Dan Dokken, Jack Russell, Rudy Sarzo and many others are also combined with archival footage, animated sequences and interviews with managers like Alan Niven and Don McGhee, as well as record execs like Tom Zutaut. They tell the story of how hard rock almost died with the rise of new wave in 1979, but bands like Mötley Crüe started playing clubs like the Whiskey a Go Go on the Sunset Strip in the very early 1980s, and attracted crowds of teens who just wanted to tease up their hair and unleash their inner metalheads.
While the docuseries goes in somewhat chronological order, it does segments on the most influential bands, gigs and songs of the era, including an extended segment on the late Randy Rhoads, the guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne’s band who died in a plane crash in 1982. The first episode also looks at the Us Festival, which featured a number of metal bands, and Quiet Riot’s “Cum On Feel The Noize,” one of the first metal songs to become a top-5 hit.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Nöthin’ But a Good Time has the feel of other recent music documentaries like Lolla: The Story Of Lollapalooza, and the subject matter is very much in line with the 2023 doc I Wanna Rock: The ’80s Metal Dream (also streaming on Paramount+). And of course, you can’t really think about this time period without flashing back to the seminal documentary The Decline Of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years, directed by Penelope Spheeris.
Our Take: Whether you were a fan of hair metal or not — we were always ambivalent about it — you’ll enjoy Nöthin’ But a Good Time because the music was such a dominant part of the 1980s, there are at least a few songs or bands you’ll enjoy revisiting. So you’ll come for the music, but you’ll stay for the stories.
Putting a heavy emphasis on the backstage stories, with all of the sex, drugs, and strange behavior they entail, is what makes this docuseries so entertaining. Tremaine isn’t shy about showing bands surrounded by topless female fans, and he encourages the people he interviews to reveal some outrageous stories. Then some of those stories were animated, making them even funnier.
Tremaine is going in a rough chronological order, but doesn’t adhere to it religiously, allowing him to follow a path that connects bands, gigs, songs and songs in a way that makes sense. There is some attention paid to the sticks-in-the-mud who thought bands like Mötley Crüe were “satanic,” but it feels that Tremaine would rather adhere to ethic of the series’ title than be a downer about the fuddy-duddies who didn’t realize one of the Crüe’s first hits was called “Shout At The Devil.”
Sex and Skin: As we said, there are with lots of topless groupies, and also discussions about the usual nightly conquests that various bands had on tour.
Parting Shot: We see and hear archival footage from Quiet Riot singer Kevin DuBrow talk about how heavy metal made a resurgence after New Wave took over in the late ’70s.
Sleeper Star: Eric Brown, the show’s animator, should get a lot of credit for making the funny stories told by the interviewees even funnier. Though a story told by McGhee about the biting habits of Tommy Lee and Nikki Sixx would have been hilarious even without the animation. We also loved Steve-O’s story about getting to meet members of Mötley Crüe when he was 12.
Most Pilot-y Line: We did think the interviewees made hard rock’s fallow period feel like more than it was. The “skinny tie” period of rock really only lasted a couple of years. But that period must have felt like forever for the longhaired crowd.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Nöthin’ But a Good Time: The Uncensored Story of ’80s Hair Metal will bring back tons of memories of the music viewers might have listened to in middle or high school back in the 1980s, but the backstage stories will be what hold the interest of people who didn’t grow up with the music.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesnât kid himself: heâs a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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