Matthew & Gunnar Nelson: What Happened To Your Hair…And More

Throughout my 35-year career, I've never met or spoken with Matthew of Gunnar Nelson. That streak ended this week when the guys told me about their latest book, friends in the world of rock, their career, and more.

Their book What Happened To Your Hair drops on December 16th. Why now? Matthew answered that. "Well, you know, we just got that question. Why not? It's because honestly, we really just didn't feel it was time yet. And we hadn't lived enough life, really, to say we're going to write our book. You know, we're not getting any younger. We have a lot of stories to tell. And it was just that there were so many people at our concerts. We had a lot of our shows, we'll tell a story behind a song, or we'll talk about an anecdote that led up to something or somebody we met along the way. And we just had too many people saying, you guys need to write a book."

A fellow Slaughter rock star really jump-started the project. "I think that the real driver for this, if I'm going to be 100 percent honest, Dana Strum. Dana Strum is a friend of ours. And he was the guy that said, Listen, I'm going to tell you the obvious. But I keep hearing you guys telling stories about...you guys need to write a damn book. Write a book. And so then it came down to what kind of a book are we going to write? Because there are two of us, which is a very interesting concept of how to do it. So we split up stories and chapters."

I was curious how the Grunge era hit them. They had dropped their first album in 1990 and had great success, then bands like theirs weren't wanted anymore by record labels. "We have an amazing story about what it was like being at DGC Records, which was Nirvana's label. We were the first band that actually broke through on David Geffen Company, was the offshoot of the main Geffen label. And we were out on the road playing arenas. And then we showed up at the office and everybody was 20 years old and wearing flannel. And we were relics and at the ripe old age of 23. So that's just how it was. But it made it into the book in a lot of different ways."

Matthew went on, "I've got multiple chapters on what it was like for the rise and then the immediate fall off the cliff at the label and how MTV changed everything overnight. And it was definitely not an organic thing, not to take anything away from Nirvana. They were just the right band to kind of break open. I think there was a big glut of mediocre bands, and it just needed a reset."

They did play SNL once. "We were the only unsigned band to play SNL. We had actually booked the show at a weird time. We were catching a buzz in LA in the clubs. And our father had an accident and died. And we still had the booking, but we decided to do it regardless. We were kind of a mess. And Gunnar actually was playing drums.
He was a great drummer." Then it got weird, "Our mother, she was a free spirit. And she had boyfriends, let's just put it that way, while she was married to our dad. And one of them turned out to be Ron Reagan Jr. And, you know, Uncle Ron. And we hadn't seen him in years or whatever. And we showed up for the first day of rehearsal. Only us, right? First day of rehearsal. And guess who the host of the show is that week? Uncle Ron! So, only us, man. I'm telling you. That's why we had to write a book. Stories like that."

I asked them what the biggest misconception about them is. "There's a lot of stuff, you know? Yeah, I think, you know, when you meet people that you hang out with them and stuff. And at the end of that, they go, wow, you're really nice guy. It's like, thanks. Did you get it? What does that mean? I was like, well, I thought you guys were going to be dicks.
You know, honestly, I think we know what it's like to kind of feel as guilty until proven innocent."

After a story about going to a Foo Fighters concert, I had to ask them about getting recognized out and about now. They both piped in, "It really depends. You know, it's really more of a generational thing. I think so, too. Yeah. I mean, it was funny. I went to my HOA today to try to get a key to get into the gym And the girl behind the desk, she was, well, she was a woman. She said, oh, my gosh, I thought it was you. I'm such a huge fan from back in the day. And you guys still playing music? And that's the thing is like, we never stopped. The only difference was we just aren't on MTV all the time. But then again, MTV isn't MTV anymore. So it's a different era."

Matthew and Gunnar recalled many days at MTV, and being played on the station, making them famous. "People used to pick up their phone and call in and vote for videos. Our first single, the first video, debuted that Friday. And it debuted at number one. So it just came out of the pipe huge. And we just went from... We thought we were ready for it. But having that kind of... It was like the world's longest overnight success. Because we've been working at this for years."

Watch the entire video above, then grab the book What Happened To Your Hair on December 16th. Thank you to Matthew and Gunnar for the fun conversation.