Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota

by Chuck Klosterman

Months passed, and I kept banging my head. I got Double Platinum and the debut effort from Skid Row. I got Surprise Attack by Tora Tora (which I actually regarded as “underground” metal). I replaced my tapes of Led Zeppelin IV and Van Halen II with CD replicants, concreting my classic rock credibility. I even decided to buy all twenty-plus KISS releases, but only on cassette; even with free money, buying that many compact discs just seemed a little too decadent.

  I still have all these purchases, and they continue to haunt me—or at least remind me—of my criminal past (in fact, whenever I’m looking through my CD racks and my eyes pass over that Tora Tora disc, it’s the only thing I think about). My relationship to the music has been replaced by my relationship with its acquisition. I wonder if Cuban drug lords feel the same sensation when they look at their collection of speedboats.

  Suddenly, it was April. I had been an independently wealthy seventeen-year-old for almost ten months. However, I had finally stopped using my ATM card. I could no longer handle lying in bed all night and thinking about all the things Catholic boys think about when they sin, particularly purgatory. Since the bank was partially at fault for all this, I assumed my offense could not legally constitute eternity in hell, but purgatory was totally plausible (and going to purgatory just seemed so damn boring—it would be like spending four thousand years in an airport). Sometimes I think if I had just kept up this abstinence, everything would have been okay; maybe I would have just gone to college and transferred my account to a different bank, and nobody would have gotten hurt. Maybe escaping from reality wouldn’t have been as impossible as it should have been.

  Unfortunately, I had to go to a track meet in Rosholt, South Dakota.

  Rosholt is a small town just across the North Dakota/South Dakota border, and its high school hosts track and field meets twice every spring. These were always my favorite track meets of the season, because it provided the chance to mingle with girls from a whole different state (in the rural Midwest, track meets are the equivalent of Studio 54—I knew tons of guys who only went out for track in order to meet women).

  The problem was that Rosholt’s track was covered with black asphalt, so it got extraordinarily sticky whenever it was hot and extraordinarily hard whenever it was cold. If you were going to run in Rosholt, you needed to bring a wide assortment of spikes for your running shoes (the individual spikes are removable, so you’d screw in long spikes when the surface was warm and gummy and short spikes when it was cold and impenetrable).

  I didn’t know what the weather was going to be like in Rosholt, but I knew I wasn’t prepared (at least in terms of spikes). I cut class and drove to Stan Kostka’s Sporting Goods in downtown Wahpeton, where I could buy some one-eighth-inch spikes. But as I walked toward the store, I suddenly remembered I had spent the last of my available cash on Slaughter’s Stick It to Ya. (This was because Slaughter—along with Faster Pussycat—was the opening act for the KISS Hot in the Shade tour coming to Fargo in late May, and I needed to familiarize myself with their work.)

  I had my checkbook, but I decided to just pop into the bank and get $10 from the ATM. Spikes are cheap, so why write a check for $2.99?

  I slid my card into the machine’s metal mouth. I punched in my four-digit code, 1805 (“18” being my high school football number, “05” being my jersey number for hoops). I hit the key that signified “cash from checking.”

  My transaction was denied.

  I repunched my numeric code. Again, denied.

  And then—for reasons I shall never quite understand—I went into the bank to complain.

  Perhaps this is precisely what Raskolnikov would have done had he been in my sneakers, but I seriously doubt it (and since I’ve never actually read Crime and Punishment, I guess I’ll never know). Frankly, it was a pretty audacious move, perhaps influenced by the way David Lee Roth used to demand that concert promoters provided a huge bowl of M&Ms in his dressing room before every concert, but all the brown ones had to be picked out by hand.

  The teller was a nice college girl with Scandinavian hair, librarian glasses, and a red sweater that seemed a little too warm for April (and yes, I really can remember all this). She listened to my polite complaint and directed me to an older women who was sitting at a desk. The woman called up my account on her computer and suddenly became very serious. She made an inner-office phone call and made sure I could not hear what she was saying, even though I was sitting three feet away. I was fucked. A third woman came over to the desk; she was wearing a sensible pantsuit, and I thought I was going to pee.A She asked me to come with her, and we silently entered the bank’s inner sanctum. I had never known that banks had such places. Where were we going? Was she going to lock me in the fucking vault? I wondered if she just didn’t feel comfortable shooting me in the lobby.

  We sat down in a relatively empty room and I listened to the air conditioner, even though it seemed way too early in the year for air-conditioning (it occurred to me that this might explain the teller’s need for a sweater). The woman asked me if I was comfortable. I said, “I don’t know.” She pretended to smile, and I tried to make eye contact while holding an expression that tried to simulate bewilderment. We had a nice chat, and this woman explained how this “error” had occurred.

  Now, I have been legally advised not to give any details about how—or why—this “error” happened (however, I will say that the explanation is much, much simpler than you’d possibly imagine). And as soon as my female jailer felt I was completely aware of the specifics of our little misunderstanding, this nameless woman in a sensible business suit made a simple, unemotional request.

  “We need you to give us two thousand one hundred and sixty dollars.”

  I pretended to seem shocked. In truth, I had expected the amount to be even higher, although I had no idea how much. I contemplated freaking out and feigning hysterics, but I was afraid that would only change my problem without really improving it. I shuddered a bit and I took some exaggerated deep breaths to create the illusion of confusion.

  But then I noticed something.

  This woman looked nervous.

  Some journalists will tell you that—over time—they have learned to read people’s faces during interviews. This is one skill I never had to learn. I could tell this woman knew she was almost as fucked as I was. The process of explaining the situation had unconsciously validated what she already knew: Her bank had made the kind of mistake that banks are not supposed to make. Moreover, I was a minor. I was seventeen, and I looked even younger; I couldn’t be charged with a crime. I couldn’t be charged with anything. And I was a good actor. I could tell everyone I had no idea what I was doing, and it would seem credible. I could claim that I was too irresponsible to balance my checkbook and that I never even glanced at my ATM receipts. I could insist I was just a feeble-witted headbanger who didn’t understand the value of money. Besides, I had even told the bank about it—twice!

  If I fought this, I could get off.

  I could get off.

  I could get off.

  Unfortunately, “getting off” would create another problem, and that one was even worse. Even though I had spent ten months buying a whole shitload of nothing, my parents had no idea about any of this. White-collar crime is not something you discuss over a roast beef supper. And even though I could trick the rest of the world into thinking I was just an ignorant teenage simpleton, I could not trick my parents. My mom would know. I would have to tell my mom I had accidentally withdrawn $2,160 over a ten-month period, and I would have to look into her disappointed face while she pretended to believe me.

  I thought about the way so many of my friends bitched about their parents; they all seemed to think they were destroying their lives. I never felt like that. My parents were undoubtedly crazy, but they never did anything except make my life better. I was their seventh and final child, and they did not need this. To this day, I never want them to know anything about my life that makes me seem like the horrible person I truly am
. In fact, the thought of them reading this book keeps me awake at night. It makes me want to get drunk.

  In seconds, I decided that the news of my great rock ’n’ roll swindle must never reach my parents. The pantsuited woman behind the desk may have been nervous, but her silence was the kind of inadvertent negotiation that could have made fictional Gordon Gecko filthy fucking rich. I played the only card in my deck: I pulled out my checkbook and wrote a check for $2,160.

  Did I have that much money in my account? Of course not. I had to be creative, and this required even more deception. When I was eleven years old, my dad had suffered a stroke. He recovered, but somehow this event resulted in my underage sister and me earning money we couldn’t spend. My father had been technically disabled by the stroke, and we somehow got money to supplement the lost income (which we certainly needed, because my mom was a housewife). The money was deposited into an account in my mother’s name, which I would gain full access to when I turned eighteen. This money was intended for college. But when I explained this to the anonymous, nervous banker lady, she agreed to transfer that money straight into my checking account (a wildly inappropriate move that further solidifies my suspicion that I could have beaten the rap).

  To this day, I am paying off the financial aid loans I took for my freshman year of college.

  I did not feel like David Lee Roth when I walked out of the bank that day. I didn’t buy any track spikes either. Instead of returning to school that afternoon, I drove around the countryside and cried, listening to the KISS cassette Hotter Than Hell. It dawned on me that if I had never purchased Hotter Than Hell, I would have only had to repay $2,150. The meaninglessness of that realization buried me like an avalanche of gravel. Fuck, what difference would that make? There was no singular purchase that had sealed my fate; there was no eight-hundred-pound gorilla sitting in the corner of my bedroom. I had somehow pissed away two grand of my future, one blistering power chord at a time.

  In 1996, the KISS reunion earned $43.6 million in revenue, by far the year’s most successful tour. Obviously, the decision for Paul and Gene to reunite with Peter and Ace was a good one. Meanwhile, nobody really knows how much money KISS lost to bad decisions like 1981’s Music from the Elder and the doomed 1979 “Super KISS” tour; according to former KISS business manager C. K. Lendt, those losses were far greater than what they made in the ’90s (particularly when you factor in inflation). But what continues to make KISS so appealing is that all of these decisions—the brilliant ones, the bad ones, and especially the downright idiotic ones—were all made for the same reason: Because this was rock ’n’ roll. When Paul was about to record his 1978 solo album in Beverly Hills, he showed up at his rented studio on the first day and decided he didn’t like the acoustics. He demanded that they change studios, which would waste $60,000. Predictably, his management advised against the move. Paul supposedly said, “Well, it’s cheaper than not making an album.” This is a terrible argument, but it’s a damn good point. I only shelled out $2,160, but I completely understand where Paul was coming from: It was cheaper than looking like the idiot and the liar that I was.

  “Burn your bridges, take what you can get.”

  Well, okay.

  “Go for the throat, ’cause you paid your debt.”

  True.

  “Livin’ well is the best revenge.”

  Sort of.

  “So give ’em hell.”

  I tried, Gene. Really. I tried.

  September 10, 1990

  Warrant releases Cherry Pie. In a CD review for my college newspaper, I call this record “stellar.” It is three years before I am allowed to review another album.

  The film Velvet Goldmine opened in most major markets on November 6, 1998. In the cinematic community, this was news, but only mildly so. Simply put, Velvet Goldmine was a good—but by no means great—movie. Chronicling the British glam rock era of the early ’70s, Goldmine was visually interesting and generally fun (assuming you love glam rock and gayness), but the story was questionably conceived and poorly executed. It may actually seem better twenty years from now, when the connections between fact and fiction won’t seem so impossible to separate.

  However, the release of Goldmine was major news for people who were considered “pop cultural journalists,” and I was one of those people. The hot topic that autumn was the “glam revival.” Due to a weird collision of coincidences, every social pundit in America seemed to be claiming that glitter rock—and particularly glitter fashion—was poised to sweep the world. To be honest, it was basically just because of this one movie and Marilyn Manson, who had recently re-invented himself as David Bowie for his latest release, Mechanical Animals.

  But in this day and age, two of anything makes a trend. That forced me (and everybody like me) to write stories with headlines like “Glam Rock Is Back On the Attack!” It just so happened that Manson was playing in nearby Cleveland the week after Velvet Goldmine opened, so our timing was especially fortuitous. Here’s the article I wrote for The Beacon Journal in Akron on November 13 of that year (and remember, this story was written for a pretty broad audience, so please excuse the pedantic nature of the introduction …):

  CLEVELAND—When Marilyn Manson struts onstage at the 3,000-seat Music Hall tomorrow night, it’s very possible—in fact, probable—that he will be sporting prosthetic breasts.

  He will be covered in pasty white makeup, and he’ll wear highly impractical platform shoes. And instead of donning all black, he will likely be dressed in angelic white (or possibly hot pink).

  This alien, androgynous look is Manson’s new attempt at shocking people. Of course, there’s really nothing new about it: Manson is simply trying to lead the so-called “rebirth” of glam rock, a bygone genre that’s having a cultural (if not necessarily musical) effect on the state of rock ’n’ roll.

  Glam rock was born in Britain during the early 1970s. Categorized by outlandish costuming, bisexual attitudes and synthetic pop songs, it was defined by U.K. icons like David Bowie and groups like T. Rex, Sweet and Mott the Hoople. American bands combined the theatrical elements of glam with a harder style of rock, starting with Iggy and the Stooges and evolving into Alice Cooper and KISS.

  The original life span of glitter rock was brief—it started in 1970 and was dead by ’74. But interest in the high-heeled era is peaking. Manson’s latest album, Mechanical Animals, is an unabashed throwback to Bowie’s 1973 Aladdin Sane LP. The cover of the October issue of W magazine declares “Glam Rock Is Back,” and the accompanying story suggests glam fashion will be influencing runway models this winter. Even Tuesday’s Live! With Regis and Kathie Lee had a segment on glam chic.

  Perhaps most telling is the buzz surrounding Velvet Goldmine, a film that chronicles the glitter era in semifictional terms. Currently showing at Cleveland Heights’ Cedar Lee Theatre, Goldmine has received mixed reviews. But flaws in the movie’s plot seem secondary to its spacey soundtrack and provocative, sexually ambiguous cinematography. In fact, Goldmine costume designer Sandy Powell insists the picture is “really a fashion movie.”

  Amazingly, there’s even a renewed interest in the second era of glam: the much-maligned hair metal years of the 1980s. Sony is rumored to have signed Cinderella, Ratt and Great White to new recording contracts for a yet-to-be-named subsidiary label.

  “I don’t know if Sony is chasing a specific look, but I do know those bands are doing very well on club tours,” says Cinderella publicist Byron Huntas. “There’s definitely interest in ’80s glam. When we played at the Key Club in L.A. on Oct. 2, Marilyn Manson was in the audience. Billy Corgan [of Smashing Pumpkins] was recently spotted at a Ratt show. People love this stuff.”

  Meanwhile, a handful of neo-glam rockers—Spacehog, Blur and Nancy Boy—have used glitz and posturing to achieve mild notoriety. But all that glitters is not gold; though Manson gets bushels of media attention, his much-publicized album has already fallen out of the Billboard Top 20. People may be talking about glam, but they do
n’t seem to be buying it.

  “At this point, the glam revival is more about theory than it is about music,” says Barney Hoskyns, the U.S. editor of the British magazine MOJO and the author of Glam! Bowie, Bolan and the Glitter Rock Revolution. “A movie like Velvet Goldmine is a very structured attempt to comment on what glam meant, along with a story line that has heavy homoerotic overtones. But it’s not going to get average kids on the street to parade around in silver boots with six-inch heels.”

  Hoskyns thinks the hype surrounding glam is primarily coming from the fashion industry. Musically, he’s not surprised record buyers have been less enthusiastic.

  “The term ‘retro’ has become such a buzz word,” Hoskyns said. “Everything is described as retro these days. I think people are starting to pull away from brazen replications of the past.”

  Dennis Dennehy at Geffen Records says the illusion of a glam revival is probably a collision of coincidences: Manson’s new look, the release of Velvet Goldmine and the return of pop metal just happen to have occurred at the same time.

  Still, Dennehy suspects the spirit of glam rock is making a valid resurgence, even if it’s being manifested in a different way. At least he hopes it is: In February, Geffen will push a debut album by the band Buck Cherry, a group on the DreamWorks label that Dennehy favorably compares to the New York Dolls.

  “Glam was always about sexual freedom and drug experimentation. People are interested in those themes again,” Dennehy says. “AIDS and the heroin epidemic don’t cast the cultural shadow they did five years ago. I’m not trying to say those situations are any less important, but people have grown accustomed to living with them. It’s just become part of life. Artists feel like they can be rock stars again, and that’s what glam is all about.”

  I include this article for a couple of reasons. Obviously, it’s notable; it seems crazy to talk about glam metal without mentioning the reemergence (or at least the supposed reemergence) of the incarnation’s original animal a decade after the fact. I also think the potential (albeit unlikely) signing of Cinderella and Ratt to Sony is a little more than a minor anomaly; in fact, I’m kind of afraid that glam metal will completely come back in vogue before I can finish this damn book. At the very least, I’m absolutely certain it will eventually have the kitschy, contrarian appeal of dance pop and new wave. The ’98 glam revolt might be a harbinger of another full-on retro explosion that’s just around the corner.