OCD Chronicles: Ratt "Lay It Down"

For reasons known only to me and my therapist, I downloaded every single original Ratt album and set about making the most awesome Ratt compilation ever. It contained selections from the band’s rough-sounding e.p. and followed their career all the way to the album they were able to get a gold certificate for.
While putting this compilation together, it struck me how limited this band really was. It seemed that every album was cut from exactly the same cloth: a couple catchy-as-fuck pop metal tunes surrounded by also-rans.
A lot of the problem was because Steven Pearcy has a notoriously limited range…As in, he can only hit about three notes and those three sounds suspiciously alike. So that placed a lot of the band’s burden on guitarist Warren DeMartini.
Sometime, and I’m sure that Mr. DeMartini knows exactly the time and place he came up with it, he created a riff of such bad-assed structure and tone that it’s a crime that he’s even associated with a perceived hair metal outfit like Ratt.
The riff he came up with is the one that is found on “Lay It Down” from their Invasion Of Your Privacy album.
Coming off the heels of the mega-successful Out Of The Cellar, Invasion tried to emulate the entire formula of the band’s debut. While the band did manage to find success with it, you can see a clear reduction in the band’s overall sales with each subsequent album. It’s as if the fans slowly started to understand “Hey, this sounds just like the last one.” before dropping their support entirely.
But “Lay It Down” may be the band’s (certainly DeMartini’s) peak and I’ve been playing it with equal amounts of nostalgia and admiration. Not to the point where I actually want to run out and buy a Ratt album (the comp I made is already showing signs of fatigue) or would I really care to see their announced reunion tour (read: Pearcy is back with them after figuring out that nothing he does outside of Ratt will bank as much as his original band). I’m simply getting a kick from hearing perhaps one of the best guitar riffs to ever emerge from the Sunset Strip.