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“Metal Health” is Quiet Riot’s second-biggest hit, reaching #32 in early 1984 – three months after their top 5 cover of Slade’s “Cum On Feel the Noize” peaked. It was also a minor hit in Canada.
Musically, the band took inspiration from AC/DC in writing this song. Its title is a play on the phrase “Mental Health,” and is a celebration of the rebellious nature of heavy metal and fans who bang their heads to the music. Lead singer Kevin DuBrow wrote the lyrics based on the slights he heard throughout his life. DuBrow, who died of a drug overdose in 2007 at age 52, did indeed have a “mouth like an alligator,” as he would always speak his mind.
Drummer Frankie Banali shared in 2017:
“If there is only one track that I would have to pick that defines Quiet Riot, it’s “Metal Health.”“
Drummer and songwriter Frankie Banali spoke at length about this track:
“Kevin and I spent a lot of time working on that song, and at that point in time, we were huge fans of AC/DC, so we wanted something that had a very simple, straight ahead groove at a certain tempo. And then Kevin just ran with the lyrics, mostly from personal experiences. Especially the line, “I’ve got a mouth like an alligator,” because as we all know, Kevin spoke his mind quite often.
It went through a lot of different changes, and what I mean by “changes,” a lot of that song has to do with the tempo. I listen to a lot of classical music and jazz, and the thing that I found interesting about both classical music and jazz is that certain parts of a song only work at a certain tempo, and they don’t work at another tempo. With jazz, they shift gears – the same thing with classical. With rock ‘n’ roll, you basically start at a tempo and you end at that tempo. So the tempo on that record is not slow, but it really digs into the groove. It didn’t work at that tempo live, which is why we actually played it a little faster live – because it gets the energy of the audience. So that is something that we paid attention to.
And at one point, the song was much longer than it is now. Kevin was really good about trimming fat.“
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