Teased, tousled and torrid: '80s mane men aimed high

Watch VH1 Classic for any length of time and you're bound to catch your fair share of videos by '80s hair-metal superstars such as Poison, Cinderella, Motley Crue and Warrant alongside clips by also-rans such as BulletBoys, Trixter and Kix. If you're looking to go behind the music, check out the new, appropriately photo-heavy book "American Hair Metal" (Feral House, $22.95), which captures the hair-metal (aka glam-metal) movement in all its teased-out, heavily mascaraed, spandex-clad glory.

"This was a difficult book to write in a way, because there's nothing really to analyze," says "American Hair Metal" author Steven Blush, who previously wrote "American Hardcore: A Tribal History," about the politically charged punk-rock scene of the 1980s. "[Hair metal] really wasn't based on anything, artistically. It was about kicking ass and getting laid and partying."

Whatever their social import and however suspect the quality of their musical output may be, these bands at least deserve to go down in history for their follicular feats. We asked Blush to nominate the inaugural class of our Hair-Metal Hall of Fame.

BEST HAIR:

CINDERELLA

WHO THEY ARE: The recently reunited glam-metal band from Philadelphia behind the hits "Nobody's Fool" and "Don't Know What You Got (Till It's Gone)"

BLUSH SAYS: "They took the look of Elizabethan England or the French court of Louis the XIV and combined that with the hair-metal vibe. So it was big hair, frilly clothes, pouting lips. To me, they define the look and feel of hair metal. There's a quote in the book where Eric Brittingham from Cinderella says that he was at a club doing his hair and all of the sudden (frontman) Tom Keifer came up to him and said, 'You wouldn't happen to be a bass player?' And the next thing you knew, he was in the band. So the hair got him in the band."

BIGGEST HAIR:

NITRO

WHO THEY WERE: Los Angeles rockers whose singer, Jim Gillette, boasted a huge range and whose guitarist, Michael Angelo, wielded a four-necked, X-shaped guitar.

BLUSH SAYS: "They advertised themselves as the fastest guitars and the highest screams and the loudest drums. And what goes with that? The biggest hair. [Nitro had] the largest follicle height I've experienced from my research. Jim Gillette, if you see the 'Freight Train' video, I would say that his hair is at 180 degrees, straight up. I would bet you he got a good foot on the top. When you open the book, the first thing you see is a [picture of a] can of Aqua Net. And that pretty much tells you what the scene was about."

MOST DEFINITIVE:

POISON

WHO THEY ARE: The Los Angeles glam band toured this summer to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their first album, the quadruple-platinum "Look What The Cat Dragged In."

BLUSH SAYS: "They were really a bubblegum pop band wrapped in hair. Hair metal to me starts with the first Poison album, because that's where it all breaks. You have to understand that the Poison record came out at the same time as Metallica. There's the schism right there — you chose which side of the aisle you went on. [Singer] Bret Michaels of Poison is probably, if you ask the women who are fans, No. 1 as far as being a sex object. A lot of these bands were hairdressers, of course. That's not a big surprise. [Poison drummer] Rikki Rockett was a licensed cosmetologist."

BEST HAIR FLAILERS:

WARRANT

WHO THEY ARE: Another Los Angeles glam band, best known for their sexually suggestive hit "Cherry Pie"; they released a new album in February

BLUSH SAYS: "With Warrant, every move on stage was choreographed. Everything was about the swinging of the hair, dropping to the knees, swinging the head. They took choreography to its ultimate extreme. They didn't have the biggest hair at all, but they certainly knew how to work it. A lot of the guys with the huge hair didn't really know how to work it. They wanted to keep their hair in place [and] if you moved too much under the hot lights it falls."

MOST EXTREME:

KING KOBRA

WHO THEY WERE: Yet another Los Angeles band, King Kobra was founded in 1984 by Carmine Appice, drummer for '60s psychedelic rockers Vanilla Fudge

BLUSH SAYS: "[Appice] had black hair and all the other guys dyed their hair blond. [After King Kobra,] their singer, Mark Free, actually went and had a sex change. He's now Marcie Free and performs as Marcie Free. Is that the most extreme or what? You actually go all the way [to being a woman]."