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50 free 80s Hair Band trivia questions with answers. Hairspray, spandex, power ballads and Sunset Strip club nights: this quiz covers the whole glam metal decade. Fifty questions run from the first metal album to top the Billboard chart through Poison, Def Leppard, Van Halen, Twisted Sister, Whitesnake, Ratt, Dokken, Cinderella, Skid Row, Warrant, Winger, Great White, W.A.S.P., Europe and Guns N' Roses, plus the clubs, the videos, the PMRC hearing and the Nirvana album that ended the party. Easy questions ask which single gave Van Halen its only Hot 100 No. 1 and which band Nevermind knocked off the top; the hard ones want the club Great White used to be called, the guitarist Skid Row paid for their name, and the country where Dokken first released their debut. Made for anyone who still knows every word of a Bon Jovi chorus and can argue about whether Winger deserved the Beavis and Butt-Head treatment. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the bands, albums, songs and venues, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which band recorded Metal Health (1983), the first heavy metal album to top the Billboard 200?
Quiet Riot
It knocked The Police's Synchronicity off the top spot in November 1983 and went on to sell six million copies in the US.
Q 02Which English group originally recorded 'Cum On Feel the Noize', a 1973 UK No.1 covered into a US hit in 1983?
Slade
The original reached No. 98 in America, while the 1983 cover climbed to No. 5 on the Hot 100 and sold a million copies.
Q 03Poison formed in 1983 in Mechanicsburg, a town in which state, before relocating to Los Angeles?
Pennsylvania
The band was originally called Paris and changed its name to Poison in March 1983, just before heading west.
Q 04Which future Guns N' Roses guitarist was the other finalist against C.C. DeVille for Poison's lead guitar spot?
Slash
The band wanted an East Coast player, and DeVille also brought along a song from his old group: 'Talk Dirty to Me'.
Q 05Which Poison ballad, written by Bret Michaels after a pay-phone call from a Dallas laundromat, became the band's only Billboard Hot 100 No. 1?
Every Rose Has Its Thorn
It topped the chart for three weeks starting on Christmas Eve 1988; Miley Cyrus later covered it in 2010.
Q 06Def Leppard formed in 1976 in which English city?
Sheffield
Their first gig was in a school dining hall, and drummer Rick Allen joined when he was only 15.
Q 07Which single from Def Leppard's 1987 album reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100?
Love Bites
Producer Mutt Lange first brought it to the band mostly written in the style of a country ballad.
Q 08Where was the August 1986 Monsters of Rock festival at which one-armed Rick Allen returned to Def Leppard?
Castle Donington
He returned behind a specially designed electronic kit that let him play parts with his feet.
Q 09Which keyboard-driven 1984 single gave Van Halen its only Billboard Hot 100 No. 1?
Jump
Eddie Van Halen wrote the synth line around 1981 but the rest of the band rejected it for years; it was played on an Oberheim OB-Xa.
Q 10Van Halen's album 1984 spent five weeks stuck at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 behind which record?
Thriller
There was a twist: Eddie Van Halen played a guest guitar solo on the very album that kept his band off the top spot.
Q 11Which former Montrose singer replaced David Lee Roth as Van Halen's frontman in 1985?
Sammy Hagar
Eddie Van Halen had once told him Montrose was his favourite band, calling himself a 'Montrose freak'.
Q 12Before becoming Van Halen in 1973, the brothers' band briefly used which name after 'Genesis' was taken?
Mammoth
Even earlier they were the Trojan Rubber Co, and they rented their PA from a local singer named David Lee Roth for $10 a night.
Q 13Which 1984 single was Twisted Sister's only Top 40 hit on the Billboard Hot 100?
We're Not Gonna Take It
Its slapstick video, with an Animal House-style tyrannical father, became an MTV staple.
Q 21Dokken's debut album Breaking the Chains was recorded in 1981 and first released in which country?
Germany
Early pressings came out under the name 'Don Dokken'; while there, Don also demoed songs with the Scorpions for Blackout.
Q 22The band Europe, of 'The Final Countdown' fame, comes from which country?
Sweden
Named after the continent, they got their break by winning the first televised Rock-SM championship in 1982.
Q 23Joey Tempest's lyrics for 'The Final Countdown' were inspired by which David Bowie song?
Space Oddity
The keyboard riff dates to 1981-82, played on a Korg Polysix Tempest had borrowed; the song hit No. 1 in 25 countries.
Q 14Which Twisted Sister frontman testified against the PMRC's warning labels at a 1985 Senate hearing?
Dee Snider
He turned up in full stage gear and read a prepared statement defending 'Under the Blade' and 'We're Not Gonna Take It'.
Q 15Twisted Sister formed in 1972 in the borough of Ho-Ho-Kus, in which US state?
New Jersey
The band later based itself on Long Island and grew out of an earlier group called Silver Star.
Q 16On which 1982 Whitesnake album did 'Here I Go Again' first appear?
Saints & Sinners
David Coverdale and Bernie Marsden wrote it in late 1981 while Coverdale was holed up in a villa in southern Portugal.
Q 17David Coverdale formed Whitesnake in 1978 as a backing band shortly after leaving which group?
Deep Purple
His first two solo albums leaned on blues, soul and funk because he wanted distance from his old band's hard rock sound.
Q 18Which model on the cover of Ratt's 1984 debut Out of the Cellar went on to star in Whitesnake's 1987 videos?
Tawny Kitaen
At the time she was dating Ratt guitarist Robbin Crosby; she later married David Coverdale.
Q 19Which veteran comedian appeared in drag in Ratt's 1984 'Round and Round' video?
Milton Berle
He was the uncle of the band's manager, Marshall Berle, and played his 'Uncle Miltie' drag character.
Q 20Dokken's 1987 single 'Dream Warriors' was recorded for the soundtrack of which horror sequel?
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3
The video had the band interacting with the film's characters, and the single reached No. 22.
Q 24Blackie Lawless toured as guitarist for which glam band after Johnny Thunders quit mid-tour in 1975?
New York Dolls
He only stayed for the rest of that Florida tour, then formed Sister, a band that later briefly included Nikki Sixx.
Q 25Which W.A.S.P. guitarist is interviewed drunk in a pool, mother beside him, in The Decline of Western Civilization II?
Chris Holmes
Penelope Spheeris shot the film between August 1987 and February 1988; it also features Ozzy, Poison and Lemmy.
Q 26Great White's biggest hit, 'Once Bitten, Twice Shy', was a cover of a UK single by which artist?
Ian Hunter
It remains the only Great White single ever certified gold.
Q 27Under what name did Great White perform before manager Alan Niven suggested the change?
Dante Fox
Niven got the idea when someone in a crowd outside the Troubadour saw Mark Kendall lean out of a car window and said 'there goes Great White'.
Q 28Which 1991 Skid Row album was the first heavy metal record to debut at No. 1 in the SoundScan era?
Slave to the Grind
It sold 134,000 copies in its first week; before SoundScan, only Elton John and Michael Jackson had ever debuted at No. 1.
Q 29Skid Row frontman Sebastian Bach, raised in Peterborough, Ontario, was born in which country?
The Bahamas
The band spotted him singing at a rock photographer's wedding when he was 18 and asked him to join.
Q 30Skid Row's management reportedly paid $35,000 to which guitarist for the rights to the band name?
Gary Moore
The deal came just before their debut, after Jon Bon Jovi's manager Doc McGhee got them signed to Atlantic.