Aerosmith

When hair metal emerged in the mid-'80s, the bands looked rather ladylike in a certain focus. With his long blonde hair and heavy application of eyeliner, Mötley Crüe lead singer Vince Neil was very easy to mistake for a girl at first glance, which is what happened when Steven Tyler saw him at the end of a bar. "That dude looks like a lady," he noted.

Not one to judge a book by its cover, Tyler was the bridge between glam rock and hair metal. In the '70s, he started wearing flowing, feminine clothes on stage and became known for an array of scarves that he would hang from his microphone stand. Not what you would expect from the leader of the "bad boys from Boston," but Tyler owned it, and fans ate it up. Writing a song about it was a lot riskier though, and it gave him pause.

Tyler had the seed for a song about a guy falling for a cross-dresser (the "Lola" storyline) ever since hearing a comedian do a bit on Mr. T., the '80s tough guy who wore huge earrings to go with his mohawk. When Tyler hit on the line "Dude Looks Like A Lady," he had his song.

But then he got cold feet. Worried that he would upset the LGBT community, he changed it to "Cruisin' For The Ladies," with a generic storyline about going after girls. Luckily, he and Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry were doing some writing with Desmond Child, the man who brought forth those huge choruses on "I Was Made For Lovin' You" by Kiss and "You Give Love A Bad Name" by Bon Jovi. Child told them it was a boring title; Tyler confessed it was supposed to be "Dude Looks Like A Lady."

"They didn't want to come off as jackass rock stars making fun of someone different," Child told Songfacts. "Joe stepped in and said, 'I don't want to insult the gay community.' I said, 'Okay, I'm gay, and I'm not insulted. Let's write this song.' So I talked them into the whole scenario of a guy that walks into a strip joint and falls in love with the stripper on stage, goes backstage and finds out it's a guy. But besides that, he's gonna go with it. He says, 'My funky lady, I like it, like it, like it like that.' And so he doesn't run out of there, he stays."

With the all-clear from Child, Tyler dove into the song and went full Dorothy for the video, as does Aerosmith's A&R man John Kalodner, who wears a wedding dress.

Ozzy Osbourne

For the May 1984 cover of Faces magazine, Ozzy rocked a housewife look with curlers, make-up, and a housedress. The photo was the work of Mark Weiss, who then went on the road with Ozzy and Mötley Crüe (those guys again) for the Bark At The Moon tour. Mötley Crüe would collect panties... literally.

"Me and my partner in crime, Mikael Kirke, who was the editor of Faces, were hanging out with Mötley, and as we were going to the bus, we saw Tommy Lee throwing some lingerie into this big bin," Weiss told Songfacts. "We were like, 'What's that?' And he was like, 'That's our 'trophy bin.' We looked in there, and there were all these bras, panties, and dresses."

Vince Neil and Ozzy

Weiss set up a photo shoot with Ozzy dressed in a wig and wearing items from Mötley Crüe's trophy bin. Ozzy liked the look so much, he decided to wear it on stage.

"In the first five minutes, he ripped it all off and threw the wig in the audience," said Weiss. "He had fishnet stockings and tighty whities on underneath – it was pretty hysterical."

Ozzy inspects Tommy Lee's package

By this stage of his career, Ozzy had already bitten the head off a bat and peed on the Alamo, so taking the stage dressed as a woman was really no big deal.

Nirvana

Kurt Cobain made it a mission to keep bigotry out of the grunge scene. Growing up in Aberdeen, Washington, he came across his share of intolerant lunkheads, so he took every opportunity to needle them when he could. The Nevermind track "In Bloom" is a takedown of these types - the ones who like to sing along but know not what it means.

The song is too subtle to hit that target, but the video isn't. Set on an Ed Sullivan-like show, the band ends up in dresses trashing the stage. The dress footage was shot in 1990 and can be seen in its entirety in an early version of the video.

This wouldn't be the last time the band wore women's clothes; in 1993 they did a full fashion spread for Mademoiselle magazine that will answer any questions you might have about what Dave Grohl looks like in parachute pants and a bare midriff. That same year, Cobain wore a dress on the cover of The Face.

Cobain was an unabashed feminist with a clear message for fans. "If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this one favor for us - leave us the f--k alone," he wrote in the Incesticide liner notes. "Don't come to our shows and don't buy our records."

June 22, 2020
Further reading:
Trans Soul Rebels: Songs About Transgenderism

Mark Weiss interview by Greg Prato. His book The Decade That Rocked and prints of his photos are available at thedecadethatrocked.com.

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