Faster Pussycat is an American hard rock and glam metal band from Hollywood, California, formed in 1985 by vocalist Taime Downe. The band's name — borrowed from director Russ Meyer's 1965 cult exploitation film Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! — announced their attitude immediately: trashy, provocative, and proudly rooted in the gutter end of rock and roll. The earliest incarnation featured Downe alongside guitarists Greg Steele and Brent Muscat, with the lineup eventually settling into its best-known configuration of Downe on vocals, Steele and Muscat on guitars, Eric Stacy on bass (replacing Kelly Nickels, who broke his leg in a motorcycle accident just before recording — Nickels would later resurface in L.A. Guns), and Mark Michals on drums. The band quickly established themselves as a fixture on the Sunset Strip, playing the Cathouse — a legendary club Downe co-ran with promoter Riki Rachtman — and building a reputation for sleaze, swagger, and a more genuine blues-punk edge than many of their glam metal peers.
Their self-titled debut album arrived on Elektra Records on July 7, 1987 — two weeks before Guns N' Roses released Appetite for Destruction. It produced the MTV-played videos for "Bathroom Wall," "Don't Change That Song," and "Cathouse," charted at number 97 on the Billboard 200, and immediately established their place in the Hollywood rock scene. That same year, the band appeared in Penelope Spheeris's documentary The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years, performing live and being interviewed at length — one of the most authentic and memorable segments in a film that captured the Sunset Strip scene at its peak and its most excessive. They toured in support of the debut with Alice Cooper, David Lee Roth, and Motörhead.
Wake Me When It's Over (1989) was their commercial high-water mark. Moving away from pure glam toward a heavier, blues-influenced sound, the album peaked at number 48 on the Billboard 200 and was certified gold by the RIAA. Its power ballad "House of Pain" reached number 28 on the Billboard Hot 100 — the band's highest-charting single — with a music video directed by a then-unknown Michael Bay in heavy MTV rotation. "Poison Ivy" and "Where There's a Whip There's a Way" were additional highlights. The band also contributed a cover of Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" to Rubáiyát, the compilation celebrating Elektra Records' 40th anniversary. Whipped! followed in 1992, peaking at number 90 on the Billboard 200, but grunge had effectively pulled the rug out from under the entire Sunset Strip ecosystem, and the band dissolved in 1993.
Taime Downe spent the subsequent years operating clubs in Los Angeles and leading the industrial rock outfit The Newlydeads before reuniting Faster Pussycat in 2001 with Muscat, Steele, and members from The Newlydeads. The 2001 reunion saw the band adopt a more industrial-leaning sound that divided longtime fans. Muscat and Steele eventually departed again, and Downe has kept the Faster Pussycat name active since then through a revolving lineup — releasing The Power and the Glory Hole (2006), the live album Front Row for the Donkey Show (2009), and continuing to tour with new members including guitarist Sam Bam Koltun and drummer Chad Stewart. Taime Downe remains the only constant.
Wayne Dennon photographed Faster Pussycat as part of an archive that documents the full sweep of hard rock's most colorful era. Faster Pussycat were never the biggest band on the Strip, but they were among the most authentic — dirtier, more blues-rooted, and more genuinely dangerous than most of the competition. Wayne's images capture that quality: a band that looked like they meant it.
