How Ratt’s Golden Era Ended With ‘Detonator’

Throughout the ’80s, there were two ways of looking at Ratt‘s chart trajectory. On one hand, you could say their sales were a study in steady decline; on the other, you could argue that even if their debut album sold almost as many copies as their next three releases combined, they were still reliably going platinum every time out.

Unsurprisingly, the guys in Ratt took the latter view — and after the widely perceived failure of their third album, 1988’s million-selling Reach for the Sky, they were getting a little cranky about the growing notion that their best days (and best material) lay behind them. So when they headed into the studio to cut the follow-up, 1990’s Detonator, they put that angry energy to work.

“During Reach for the Sky, our last album, people were putting out the vibe ‘Ratt is over,’ which is ludicrous, because it sold over a million copies,” grumbled drummer Bobby Blotzer. “People just like to have somebody who looks like they’re going down, and then they want to push them into the ground with a foot on their head. All of that just made us more pissed, and Detonator sounds it. We were hungry and mad, and the album shows that.”

As often tends to be the case in this type of situation, Blotzer might have been overstating things just a tad. While Ratt vaulted to the top of the nascent pop-metal scene with their debut single “Round and Round,” from 1984’s Out of the Cellar LP, their early records were still… well, pretty ratty. Their songs had enough polish to get on the radio, but they still put the pedal to the metal heavily enough to establish their rock ‘n’ roll bona fides.

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As annoyed as they may have been by the fact that everything they did after Out of the Cellar was inevitably compared to Out of the Cellar, the band members still had no choice but to recognize its preeminent status in their catalog. While making the press rounds to hype up Detonator around its August 21, 1990 release, singer Stephen Pearcy promised fans that the new material was something of a callback to that earlier album.

“We wanted it to sound like Out of the Cellar,” Pearcy told the Detroit Free Press. “We had an idea of how we wanted to record it; we wanted it to be much harder of a record, more aggressive. We didn’t want to sound like a pop band.”

To accomplish this goal, the band parted ways with longtime producer Beau Hill, opting instead to hook up with Desmond Child. Of course, as any fan of the era’s rock bands is well aware, Child had a hitmaking streak a mile long due to his work with acts such as Bon Jovi and Aerosmith — yet none of those songs were what you’d describe as “harder” or “more aggressive” than Ratt’s early material. If anything, they were slicker and far more radio-ready.

Nevertheless, Ratt went all in with Child. Although he handed off the day-to-day production duties to his engineer Arthur Payson, Child’s artistic imprint was all over Detonator, as evidenced by the fact that he co-wrote ten of the album’s 11 tracks. (The 11th, “Intro to Shame,” was a 55-second instrumental that kicked off the record.)

Child’s knack for finding chart success was also reflected in the inclusion of the band’s first big power ballad, “Givin’ Yourself Away,” a three-way cowrite between Pearcy, Child, and hitmaker du jour Diane Warren, whose pen powered a streak of Top Ten hits that included Starship‘s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,” Heart‘s “Who Will You Run To,” Chicago‘s “Look Away,” Cher‘s “If I Could Turn Back Time,” and Bad English‘s “When I See You Smile.”

All of this is not to say that Child was a bad hire for the Detonator gig. He brought craft and discipline to the songs selected for the album, and the sound Payson applied to the tracks was clean and precise without sacrificing much muscle. Put another way, the album sounded a lot like the biggest rock records of its time; if anything, due to the relative lack of keyboards and synths, it might have been a little rougher in spots. Perhaps not as rough as Out of the Cellar, but you could at least hear the outline of what Blotzer and Pearcy said they were going for.

“Our competition is not Poison or any of the other new bands,” Pearcy insisted in an interview with the Baltimore Evening Sun. “Our competition is Led Zeppelin, Judas Priest, Van Halen, the Rolling Stones — bands that have proven they can make it for the long haul. When I started this band, the first thing on my mind was to have some longevity. I wanted to stick around long enough to say something.”

Unfortunately, time wasn’t on Ratt’s side — for a variety of reasons. First, it quickly became clear that Detonator‘s sales weren’t destined to soar to Cellar‘s heights; although the album peaked at a respectable No. 23, rock radio’s response to leadoff single “Lovin’ You’s a Dirty Job” was somewhat tepid, and plans for a major tour were delayed in favor of a quick run of club dates that were spun as a gift to hardcore fans.

Hear Ratt Perform ‘Lovin’ You’s a Dirty Job’

When Ratt really did hit the road, it was apparent that they were dealing with bigger issues than slumping sales. Guitarist Robbin Crosby’s substance abuse started to seriously impact his playing during some Japanese dates in early 1991; by the time the band started the American leg of the tour, he was in rehab and out of the lineup, replaced by UFO and Scorpions veteran Michael Schenker.

Initially, at least within the band, it seemed like Schenker’s arrival might serve as a sorely needed shot in the arm. “I didn’t like that tour, pretty much at all,” Pearcy told UCR in a 2023 interview. “We had a fuckin’ keyboard player in the back. That’s not Ratt. It wasn’t until Michael came into the picture onstage… there’s some cool stuff out there. A friend of mine actually filmed [guitarist Warren DeMartini] and Michael doing solos. And playing [UFO track] ‘Lights Out,’ which was my favorite part of the set. Oh, I get to sing ‘Lights Out’!”

“Warren DeMartini and Robbin Crosby expressed what fans they were,” Schenker told UCR in 2024. “I love that song ‘Round and Round,’ by the way. But basically, I found out that they were very good fans, and so Warren and I became friends, and so when Robbin left, I was asked by Warren if I could help out. That’s how I ended up doing the tour with them.”

Schenker’s addition might have made the tour more enjoyable, but it didn’t do anything to reverse the impression that Ratt’s sales glory had faded. Neither did the release of Ratt & Roll 81-91, a best-of set that arrived eight months after Detonator. Both records stalled out at gold-record status — nothing to sneeze at, but still a far cry from triple platinum.

Once Ratt wrapped its 1991 tour, things fell apart fairly quickly. The group called it quits in early 1992, with Pearcy forming a new band, Arcade, while DeMartini briefly joined Dokken and bassist Juan Croucier started his Liquid Sunday project.

Blotzer walked away from music, at least in the short term. Crosby, meanwhile, faced a series of serious issues related to his addictions; in 1994, he was diagnosed with HIV, which eventually progressed to AIDS before his death in 2002. After Detonator, the lineup responsible for Ratt’s greatest hits never made another album.

It’d be really stretching things to try and add a happy ending to the Ratt saga, but not because Detonator was truly the final chapter of their story. Instead, various lineups broke up and reunited repeatedly over the years, periodically producing music that added to the band’s legacy even if platinum sales were definitely a thing of the past.

While no shortage of rock fans had long since written them off, they proved with 1999’s Ratt and 2010’s Infestation that when they weren’t publicly feuding or taking each other to court, they still had some of the old chemistry.

Although Pearcy and DeMartini are currently touring together, as of this writing Ratt hasn’t been active in any officially recognized form since 2022. But who knows? Stranger reunions have definitely taken place, and with this band, the only real known is the unknown. There’s still a chance for the surviving members to crawl out of that cellar one more time.