“Quicksand,” written by Jani Lane and buried on Warrant’s 1992 album “Dog Eat Dog”.

Em.

C.

D.

That’s it.

Another generic hard-rock chord progression. But chords are rarely the problem.

What you do with them is.

Warrant take those three chords and start opening them up with arpeggiated strings. Suddenly the guitar isn’t just hammering away at the root notes. There’s movement. There’s tension.

Then the song gets heavy and the E pedal point arrives.

And suddenly I’m thinking of the “Pyromania” album. Specifically “Comin’ Under Fire.”

You can’t escape the influence.

And I love it.

This is the thing about hard rock in the eighties and early nineties. Everybody was influenced from everybody. Def Leppard took from Queen. Everybody stole from Led Zeppelin. Led Zeppelin stole from everyone. Metallica as well. Warrant stole from Def Leppard. Somebody else was stealing from Warrant.

That’s how rock music works. The trick is making the influence sound like you.

And “Quicksand” does.

There’s another important change happening here. Beau Hill is gone from the producer’s chair.

Hill had produced Warrant’s first two records, “Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich” and “Cherry Pie”, the albums that made the band a multiplatinum commercial force.

The early records weren’t simply about five guys plugging in and making a record.

Session musicians were involved, most famously guitarist Mike Slamer, and Hill has subsequently explained that he believed the band’s guitar department needed outside help to compete with players like Steve Vai, Warren DeMartini and Eddie Van Halen.

Whatever you think of that decision, it created a strange situation.

Warrant became incredibly successful while simultaneously carrying the perception that the studio version of Warrant wasn’t necessarily the same thing as the band standing onstage.

Then came “Dog Eat Dog”.

Michael Wagener.

Different producer. Different attitude. Different record.

Wagener had already built his reputation working with bands where the guitars weren’t decoration. He understood heaviness, but more importantly, he understood how to make a band sound like a band.

Joey Allen later described the “Dog Eat Dog” sessions as six weeks of “complete rock and roll debauchery.”

That tells you something. There is an hour YT video doing the rounds of making the album.

The guitars aren’t polished into submission. The drums hit. The bass is allowed to exist. And the band sounds like it’s actually playing.

Even a song as melodic as “Quicksand” has muscle underneath it.

Michael Wagener made them sound more dangerous.

“I can’t eat, I can’t sleep / I feel I’m going down for the last time”

This is Jani Lane doing what he did better than people often remember.

He isn’t simply saying, “my girlfriend is driving me crazy.”

He’s describing what happens when affection turns into anxiety.

I can’t eat.

I can’t sleep.

I’m sinking.

The relationship has entered his body.

He’s drowning.

“I’m sinking in your sea / Of insecurity”

Not hers.

His.

You can love somebody and still become exhausted by the emotional ecosystem surrounding them.

You can genuinely love someone who is genuinely bad for you. He’s saying: I love you. And I’m drowning.

Both can be true.

“And do I love you, yes I do / But I love my own life too”

This is the whole song. And it’s remarkably blunt.

I love you. But I love my own life too.

That’s a boundary.

And it’s why the song has aged better than its reputation.

“The tighter you hold on / The more that it’s feeling / Like quicksand”

That’s what makes quicksand such a good metaphor for a toxic relationship.

The instinct is to struggle. To fight harder. To pull yourself out. But the struggle becomes part of the trap.

The harder the other person tries to hold onto you, the more trapped you feel. And the more trapped you feel, the more desperately you try to escape.

Now everybody is pulling in opposite directions.

And the relationship has become a machine that produces the exact outcome neither person wants.

“You’re holding too tight to my heart / It’s gonna burst and leave an empty space”

It’s melodramatic.

But underneath the melodrama is an uncomfortable truth, possession eventually destroys the thing you’re trying to possess.

Hold too tightly and you don’t make love stronger. You suffocate it.

That’s the tragedy of the song. The thing that is supposed to preserve the relationship is destroying it.

And then the guitars come crashing back in. Which is exactly what they should do.

What I like most about “Quicksand” is that Warrant didn’t need to reinvent rock music.

They took Em, C and D. They listened to Def Leppard. They added some open strings.

They put an E underneath the heavy sections. They let Michael Wagener turn the band loose.

And they wrote a song about something everybody understands.

Being trapped by something you still love.

“Quicksand” is Warrant understanding their influences.

Sometimes all you had to do was let them play.