LOS ANGELES — Jani Lane, the lead singer for
Hollywood metal band Warrant, was found dead in a Los Angeles hotel
Thursday evening, and with the news, a whole generation is reliving some
classics of the so-called “hair metal” era.
Warrant’s biggest hits, “Cherry Pie,” “Heaven” and
“Sometimes She Cries,” displayed the yin and yang of teenage desire: In
“Cherry Pie,” the group celebrated (objectified?) the female form by
comparing it with a scrumptious desert, and the result was a
scream-along anthem tailor-made for testosterone-fueled pop metal heads
and the women who loved them.
Like any self-respecting metal band, though, Warrant
and the bleached-blond Lane had a softer side, one that you can see on
full display in the video for “Heaven,” in which the viewer is treated
to a love ballad and slow-motion images of Lane and the band enjoying
their rock-star lives. We see Lane showing off his tattoo, swinging
around on a band member’s back, performing at massive outdoor concerts,
dancing in the back of a limousine, signing ecstatic fans’ T-shirts and
twirling in front of the mike stand, his perfectly coiffed hair shining
like a lion’s mane.
Lane and Warrant rose on the Sunset Strip circuit in
the mid-1980s alongside kindred spirits Guns N’ Roses, but, ironically,
one of their early fans was funk singer Prince, who tried to sign the
band to his Paisley Park imprint. The band ultimately signed with
Columbia Records, and the label delivered.
They rode a wave of success through the early ’90s.
Lane parted ways with the band in 1993; grunge had replaced metal on the
rock charts, and the band’s hits stopped coming. But he and Warrant
reconciled a few times over the years for concerts. They last they
performed together in 2004.
A cause of death is not yet known, but Lane had struggled with addiction for much of his adult life.
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