If you were alive and rockin' in 1983, that meant one thing: You were staring down the horizon of a rock 'n' roll sub-genre that would dominate the airwaves for the next eight years: glam metal.
Quiet Riot's Metal Health, the first heavy metal album to reach No. 1 on the US album charts, would begin the trend. The rise of bands like Motley Crue, Def Leppard and a sleeker, makeup-free Kiss added to the growing prominence of what is now colloquially referred to as "hair metal."
Whether you liked Spandex or not, one thing was certain: The rise of mainstream guitar music was under way.
With an abundance of guitar albums - and hairstyles - to choose from, here are your picks for the 10 best guitar albums of 1983.
"The BTO sound is BACK!!" Bachman-Turner Overdrive release first new material in over 25 years – and it features a Neil Young guitar solo
“He would beat the crap out of the guitar. The result can best be described as Jackson Pollock trying to play like John Lee Hooker”: Aggressively bizarre, Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica remains one of the craziest guitar-driven albums ever made
