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.
“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
“There is no-one who can do this process with me as well as he can”: Alex Van Halen says a new Van Halen album is in the works – and he’s recruited Steve Lukather to help him complete it
