The 5 Best Hair Metal Bassists of All Time (Ranked)

Our list of the five best hair metal bassist is a testament to the notion that more doesn’t always equal better (but sometimes it does).

Hair metal — or pop-metal, or glam metal, or just plain old hard rock, whatever you want to call it — was a genre built on flashy riffs and speed-of-light guitar solos. With all the six-string mayhem taking place, there wasn’t always a ton of extra room for showy rhythmic work.

That’s where the “less is more” approach comes into play for hair metal bassists. Prog-metal fans may scoff at the notion of holding down the low end with primarily root notes and occasional fills, but that’s what many of the biggest and best hair metal anthems called for — and that’s what these bassists delivered.

READ MORE: The Heaviest Song by 11 Big Hair Metal Bands

This bass-playing mentality proved valuable outside the studio as well. When bands such as Ratt and Def Leppard were storming arenas with subpar acoustics and overwhelming echo, it helped to scale back the sheer number of notes per second to let the songs breathe and land better with everybody from the floor to the nosebleeds.

And, of course, the simpler the bass part, the fewer inhibitions for the bassist — a major consideration in an era of over-the-top stage presence.

“If I’m gonna play less, I perform more,” Quiet Riot and former Ozzy Osbourne bassist Rudy Sarzo explained on Spector Player Profiles. “Let’s say if I’m just playing simple parts on the bass, I put the bass on my head or behind my neck. … Growing up, I watched a lot of boring shows, and I promised myself, ‘If I’m ever on that big stage, I’m not gonna be that boring.’ So I actually project myself into the audience a lot of the time.”

Read on to see hair metal’s five best bassists.