Following the seismic explosion of punk in the late ‘70s, the aftershocks continued to ripple into the next decade, reshaping the mainstream in the process. The result was alternative rock: music that was too offbeat to conform to traditional guitar-band archetypes, yet too insidiously melodic and sonically ambitious to be confined to the indie underground. First-wave punks like The Clash and Talking Heads paved the way when they started taking cues from dance music and became early MTV stars, while post-punk-spawned acts like U2 and R.E.M. offered early prophecies of their arena-filling futures. By the mid-’80s, The Cure’s Robert Smith and The Smiths’ Morrissey emerged as the era’s quintessential anti-rock stars, rallying millions of misfits around the world with their sad-eyed romanticism. However, at decade’s end, harder-edged bands like Jane’s Addiction and Red Hot Chili Peppers started whipping up the mosh pits that would carry alternative toward a grungier new phase in the ‘90s.