Rolling Stone

Hedwig and the Angry Inch CD Review

By BARRY WALTERS

3 1/2 Stars

February 1999

Cocky theatrics have always been a part of rock & roll, but rock rarely makes it to the theatrical stage with balls intact. So it's fitting that the first undeniably kick-ass rock musical tells the tale of a poor East Berlin boy who undergoes a botched sex-change operation that leaves him with a "Barbie-doll crotch." Although listeners will miss Hedwig's Pat Benatar-meets-Farrah Fawcett outfits, this transgender trailer-park love child of actor John Cameron Mitchell and rocker Stephen Trask makes for the brainiest, catchiest concept album since Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville. From the Ratt swagger of "Tear Me Down" to the Ziggy sparkle of "Midnight Radio," this drama-rich mix of Meat Loaf, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Lou Reed, Pink Floyd's The Wall, Plato's Symposium and power-ballad-era Cher packs more volume, guitars, hooks, aspirations and inspirations into its twelve storytelling tunes than typical Broadway and Top Forty combined. (RS 806)