THE VIDEO Ratt, "Wanted Man," Out of the Cellar, 1984, Atlantic
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SAMPLE LYRIC "And by the ro-oh-ope / you will hang / it's your neck / from this Ratt ga-aaaannnnnnnnnng / 'cause I'mmm / a wanted may-an-an"
EXCESSIVELY DETAILED DESCRIPTION This video opens with Stephen Pearcy and Juan Croucier silhouetted by a spotlight onstage from far away. This zooms out three times as a still shot before it finally starts moving and we hear the crowd cheering. The band takes a bow, and we hear a man's voice saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please" while we suddenly switch to a shot of Ratt's tour bus from the outside, then inside, a not-so-fat looking Robbin Crosby lying down and looking at the camera like he’s really out of it.
The man's voice continues, "I have a special message from Atlantic Records for Ratt," and we see, from inside and then outside of the tour bus, people running up to greet it, then Stephen backstage at a concert dancing around with a fan-made Ratt banner. A marquee (for some place with the word "Bronco" in the name) says "Ratt in concert." Stephen and Bobby Blotzer shake hands with each other in front of the Ratt banner. As bikini-clad women carrying gold records walk onstage, the man's voice says, "Congratulations, your album has just sold one million, five hundred thousand records!" Robbin and Stephen embrace the women, and Warren DeMartini gestures at his as the crowd goes wild.
We then hear a different man's voice say, "Ladies and gentlemen, Ratt!" as the boys triumphantly enter a um, mall. They walk by a Waldenbooks accompanied by uh, hopefully those are cops and not just mall security before taking their seats in front of a Camelot Music. A fan gives Warren a little teddy bear, and a girl with really cool red, white, and blue hair gets stuff signed while we hear a line from the song's chorus playing quietly in the background. We see Robbin signing an autograph from overhead while someone off camera slides a piece of paper into the shot that says "help!"
The tour bus travels on. Inside it we see Stephen holding a drink, then messing with one of his many earrings as we hear a woman's voice saying, "Wow, they're so wild in concert." Another woman laughs and says, "Oh, I lahk 'em all," and another says, "I like the way they dress" as the camera focuses on Warren, who’s wearing a Clockwork Orange t-shirt under a black leather vest. Stephen pretends he's going to eat the earring he just took off. The southern-sounding girl goes, "They look goood, and all the girls were just going crazy 'cause they're just so heavy metal and hardcore" (at least I think this is what she says). We see Robbin (no longer looking slim) passed out, and the bus driver, a skinny older dude with a beard and a Harley Davidson t-shirt.
Next, randomly, we see a cowboy dude nailing a sign up to a board that says "Bulletins," then we see the tour bus pulling into an Old West style town. A mean looking cowboy spits from chewing tobacco, and as we hear wind blowing we see random shots of the desolate looking town.
The band step off the bus, and Stephen says, "What a trip. Think we can get something to eat around here?" Robbin replies, "Let's check this place out, looks like a bar," and Bobby chimes in with, "That ain't no bar, that's a saloon!" while flexing in a most unflattering way. They swing open the doors, and the saloon is completely empty. Juan says, "Wow, this looks just like the Old West!" Off-camera, someone says something unintelligible, to which Bobby replies, "Right, man." We see a Clint Eastwood looking old dude who appears to be in the bar, although it's unclear where, then someone says (again, off camera, otherwise I'd know who it was), "I always wanted to be a cowboy," and another replies "Me too" as the song begins.
Flashpots go off at a Ratt concert, and in the distance we see the members of Ratt, now on horseback and dressed as old-timey cowboys. Shots of them riding slowly toward the camera (with Bobby obviously unable to control his horse even at a walk) are interspersed with concert footage. After Stephen screams "Wanted man!" and jumps around onstage a bunch, we are suddenly back in the saloon, which is still poorly lit (what did they not even have candles in the old west?) but is now crowded with Western folk (crusty-looking dudes, women in showgirl dresses, etc.).
The Clint Eastwood guy nods, and we can see his opponent's hand (a pair of twos and three aces). He looks skeptical and shuffles, then a hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold type comes down the stairs. We see a bunch of the guy shuffling the cards, then that woman (who on second thought seems more like a madam) starts working the room. She pulls off a guy who's going too nuts on one of her girls. Then we get some concert shots of an extra-bony looking Warren, which you know I love, followed by some more live stuff of Stephen and the crowd.
Clint, who we now can see is also wearing a sheriff's badge, deals, and a random Old West hussy makes out with some guy. Clint peers over at the guy next to him's hand (which is still two twos and three aces) while noticing something off camera, and we see Ratt riding into town from behind. The guy who was putting up posters before turns around, and we see he's been using a gun as a hammer. Ratt ride into frame, all looking over dubiously. They stop, and Robbin spits. We see one of the posters the guy was hanging up (it's of Robbin in Old West gear) and it says "Wanted the Ratt Gang $10,000 Reward." Robbin and Bobby nod at each other, and the camera pans over to the poster of Stephen. Juan makes a face like he can't read the signs. The guy who was hanging the signs stares in terror, and backs off slowly then runs away.
Back in the saloon, the bartender talks to one of the ladies, who is sitting on the bar. A guy pours his drink into a woman's mouth, then attempts to lick up what she spilled, and the sheriff dude deals yet again. Ratt burst into the bar, which causes the men to just fall on the women for some reason, and the sheriff grins. Stephen, in concert, raises his arms triumphantly, and we stay with Ratt in concert for the rest of the chorus.
The men of the saloon grope the women, and soon enough it gets ugly as (I think) Bobby starts a brawl with one of them that lasts about two seconds (a punch gets thrown, someone gets tossed onto the table where they were playing cards). This causes Ratt (in concert) to gyrate wildly. We get a lot of low shots of Warren playing the solo, then some of Juan making silly faces and Robbin yelling.
As the solo wraps up, we see Old West Robbin looking around, then we see five men (with the sheriff in the middle) lining up to face Ratt in a shootout on the town's main street. The members of Ratt approach, and we see close-ups of different people's faces as they anticipate the duel. There's much trigger-touching, lip-licking, etc.
Ratt draw first, firing madly, while the Old West dudes seem more interesting in spinning their guns around on their fingers. We see random shots of Bobby looking particularly nervous, then Ratt fire more, and we see some shots that imply that the Old West guys get nailed. Suddenly, we see regular Bobby fall backward in a chair in the saloon. The other members of Ratt run over to help him up, and he shakes himself off, looking befuddled. He lets out a puff of smoke and we see that he is clenching a bullet between his teeth. A disgruntled looking Robbin wakes up on the bus and smacks at the camera, then there's a parting shot of the crowd going nuts, which zooms away into the middle of the screen. It was all a dream… or was it?
THE VERDICT Though I like this video (and I love this song), it has caused me much anguish. First, it has taken me four years to get around to adding in pics from the whole "Ratt on tour" prologue, since most versions you'll see have this edited out. This killed me enough that yes, I am adding this bit in now, four years after having originally posted this video. Second, I am greatly grieved by my uncertain identification of Robbin as the guy sleeping on the bus. 1) He looks a bit slim to be Robbin but at the same time 2) The only other person it could be is Bobby, and in the Old West segments of the video, he's got brown hair. Now we all know that 99% of the time Bobby is blonde, but does he really change hair color within the same video? It seems a bit preposterous. And the guy sleeping on the bus seems a bit too good-looking to be Bobby. But at the same time, he simply seems too slender to be Robbin. Sigh. I feel like I've failed you.
Anyway. About the video. If there's one thing that hard rockers love more than dressing up as pseudo-medieval warriors in a post-apocalyptic future (Armored Saint's "Can U Deliver," or Queensryche's "The Queen of the Reich," for example), it's dressing up as cowboys or, at the very least, visiting the Old West (W.A.S.P.'s "Blind in Texas," Van Halen's "Pretty Woman"). Or some combination of the two (Tesla's "Modern Day Cowboy"). Why might this be?
Well, it's not so much the idea of the cowboy per se but the idea of the outlaw that seems to be so appealing -- whether you're "Wanted: Dead or Alive" a la Bon Jovi or a member of "this Ratt gang," the idea is that the band members are outsiders, ne'er-do-wells who’ve come to town to take the women and shoot up the saloon. It doesn't take a genius (or someone with more than a passing acquaintance with heavy metal) to understand why this might be appealing. A huge thematic subgenre in metal concerns persecution, whether real or imagined (Keel's "The Right to Rock," Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It" [and uh, most other TS songs], Judas Priest's "Parental Guidance"). Cowboy songs are the more fantastic corollary to the persecution songs --just one of metal's many forms of imagined revenge. The upside to all of this? I've got one word for you: Chaps.