Post by GinfnersAddict on Jul 18, 2005 23:55:21 GMT
A recent issue of Classic Rock had some features on Mötley Crüe including a tounge-in-cheek article and interviews with the band members and as I have ALOT of spare time and know what a great read these guys make decided to type them up. First up is the article and the interview with Vince. The interviews with the rest of the band will follow...
Monkey see, Mötley Crüe
The Crüe are a band that’s better to read about than listen to, suggests John Saleeby.
Well, Mötley Crüe have reunited for a tour. And if you’re surprised by that you’d better go to the hospital and get an ECG before the production of another Chucky movie is announced. Mötley Crüe-they may not be very interesting to listen to but, boy, are they fun to read about! And they are fun to write comedy bits about.
This article could have easily been a 350-page book if only I hadn’t been blacklisted by the publishing industry for… Well, I don’t know but it must have been something really bad if after all these years I can’t come up with anything better to do than this crap. Was that skinny chick I got booted out of The Comic Strip for sticking my head up her skirt Judith Regan? When Tommy Lee pulls that crap everybody goes: “Oh, Tommy Lee! Ya great big silly!” But I get dipped in breadcrumbs, deep-fried, and sold to mongoloids on a stick at back-country cock fights. What’s he got that 10 million tattooed nimrods ain’t got?
Not only is Mötley Crüe’s The Dirt book a big hit, but now MTV are making it into an all-out movie! MTV? A Mötley Crüe movie? You would have to dig up the remains of Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick, grind ‘em into powder, and mix ‘em up in a blender with the slime scraped of the bathroom floor of whoever directed that Rude Boy movie The Clash starred in to make a halfway decent movie about Mötley Crüe.
Mötley Crüe began as a New York Dolls-style ‘glam’ act, looking so silly by even those standards a member of Aerosmith wrote Dude (Looks Like A Lady) because someone in Mötley Crüe reminded him of his aunt.
I’m not sure exactly which member of Mötley Crüe inspired the song, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Mick Mars, because then the song would have been called Dude (Looks Like A Gopher).
Mötley Crüe were one of the first bands to emerge from the LA metal scene documented in The Decline Of Civilisation-The Metal Years movie. Everybody remembers the scene in that movie with the drummer from W.A.S.P (We Are Still Practising) swilling from a bottle of vodka in a swimming pool full of water while his mother looks on. A swimming pool full of water? Hell, that was a swimming pool full of VODKA! And that wasn’t a bottle of vodka, it was a bottle of VERMOUTH! Those LA metal dudes drank some serious-ass Martinis! And that wasn’t his mother, that was a member of Mötley Crüe! Aerosmith ain’t stupid! The dude looks like a lady! Du-du-du-dude looks like a lady!
Brace yourself if you ever have yet to get punched by Vince Neil because, from the looks of things, everyone in America will get it sooner of later. It’s rumoured that Ashton Kuchar may be playing Tommy Lee in that goddam MTV movie, but he’d best forget about making Walking Time Bomb Vince the butt of one of his mean little Punk’d practical jokes-Vince ain’t takin’ no shit of nobody! A Punk’d prank on Vince would probably go like…
Vince is in his hotel room. Ashton Kuchar sends in John Saleeby in a Bell Boy uniform to knock on the door.
Saleeby: Room service!
Vince opens the door.
Vince: Yeah?
Saleeby: Hey! You’re that guy! The rock star!
Vince: Yeah…
Saleeby: You’re DAVID LEE ROTH!
Vince: Huh?
Saleeby: Well, lemme tell ya this, Mister David Lee Roth-SAMMY HAGAR RULES!
Ashton is laughing hysterically.
Saleeby: Yeah! Van Halen with Sammy is THE BAST! You suck!
Vince knocks out Saleeby with a single punch. Ashton walks out, giggling like a simpering douche.
Ashton: Vince! You’ve been PUNK’D!
Vince: Who the fuck are you callin’ a punk?!
Vince throws Ashton out of the window to fall 11 stories to the parking lot below.
Ashton: Nooooooooooooo, we don’t have a camera outside to get the shhhhoooooott!
Mick Mars has had a long and profitable career in which the single most creative thing he has ever come up with is calling Jack Daniel’s ‘mouthwash’. Pretty funny. Until you realise that Joe Perry of Aerosmith makes about 350 jokes like that in his sleep. While sleepwalking. While sleepwalking down the street with his wife, kids, and nurses running ahead of him buying up every bottle of Jack Daniel’s in his path and pouring them into the before he can have a little drink and probably decide he’s sick of all this Aerosmith shit and just retire… Why am I going on like this about Joe Perry in an article about Mötley Crüe? Cos there ain’t shit to say about Mick Mars, that’s why.
Oh, hell, let’s face it the only thing about these bums worth talking about is their women. Tommy got things kicked of with a BANG when he married Heather Locklear, whom he’d met backstage at an REO Speedwagon concert.
REO Speedwagon guitarist: On my God! Did you guys see who’s here tonight?
REO Speedwagon singer: Heather Locklear!
REO Speedwagon drummer: One of us is gonna get to fuck Heather Locklear!
REO Speedwagon bassist: This is our LUCKY NIGHT!
REO Speedwagon keyboardist: Who’s gonna be the LUCKY GUY?!
Tommy Lee walks in.
Tommy: Hey, dudes, lets party!
All the girls: TOMMY!
Tommy: Hey, babes…
All of REO Speedwagon: AW, MAN!
David Lee Roth: You guys better grab a few drinks before Slash, Duff and Izzy get here.
All of REO Speedwagon: WHO?!
David Lee Roth: You guys are doomed!
But Heather Locklear? Tell me that she’s in the same League Of Blondes as Pamela Anderson and Donna D’Errico and you might as well put Vince Neil and CC DeVille in there with ‘em. I don’t care what you faggots say about Pamela Anderson, I think that woman is a PEACH! A peach with a coupla kumquats surgically attached, but one hell of a sweet, juicy peach anyway! I love Pamela Anderson so much I’ve seen every episode of Baywatch, every episode of V.I.P, and made it through more than 10 minutes of the first episode of that Striperella thing. Now THAT is devotion of genuinely John Hinckley dimensions.
That is the kinna girl a rock ‘n’ roll star is supposed to get married to. Mötley Crüe is so Johnny On The Spot, not only did Tommy get married to Pamela Anderson but also Nikki Sixx got married to The Next Best Thing To Pamela Anderson, Donna D’Errico! I guess Donna D’Errico figured: “Oh well, if you can’t get married to Tommy Lee get married to The Next Best Thing To Tommy Lee, Nikki Sixx!”
What? The Pamela and Tommy sex video? I didn’t know there was a Pamela and Tommy sex video! Damn, I’ve been too busy laughing at the Kurt and Courtney sex video to even notice about such a thing. Yeah, check out the Kurt and Courtney sex video, it’s a laugh riot! Ten minutes of: “But Courtney, what happened to your WEINER? Did it get cut off or something? How are you going to put that up my butt? NO FAIR!”
And now I am going to go and listen to every single Mötley Crüe record ever released, and then provide a detailed analysis of their music. First, I’m going to put on… What? Oh, I’m all out of space?
………………………………...........................................................
Fiends Reunited
The band hated each other. Mötley Crüe were over. Finished. So how come they’ve buried the (and not in each other) and reunited? Why now? Are they just in it for the money? Before their rock ‘n’ roll circus hit’s the UK, Classic Rock collars Nikki Sixx, Mick Mars, Tommy Lee and Vince Neil to find out what’s going on.
“It’s all good, bro,” Tommy Lee says, reassuringly. “Your kid’s eight? No worries. Our show’s like a big circus. Oh, but after my drum solo we have the Titty Cam. You might want to get him some popcorn or something then. Not before my drum solo, though-my drum solo’s awesome! But until the Titty Cam, it’s all gooooood.”
Having no doubt reached some sort of horrifying crossroads in my life, I’m getting parenting tips from Tommy Lee. Sent to Portland, Maine to interview Mötley Crüe, I’ve ignored all good sense and brought my eight-year-old son on something of an impromptu Take Your Child To Work Day.
Lee good-naturedly blathers on about the “awsomeness” of his solo (apparently, word never reached him that most humans, if given the choice, would pick a colonoscopy any day over a drum solo-anybody’s drum solo), but my son is out the door and down the corridor and I’m hot on his heels. Luckily, the backstage bacchanal at the Portland Civic Arena, key to the Crüe mythos, is nowhere in evidence, sparing me a small fortune in child therapy bills. We make our way past the punch-the-clock spectacle of behind-the-scenes middle-aged rock: roadies lugging cables and crates; tour managers and their assistants multi-tasking on laptops, Blackberrys, pagers and cell phones; and a local rent-a-guards, generously proportioned men with moustaches and pronounced New England accents, sitting around munching fried chicken as they catch up on the sports pages. The mood is so arid and bloodless it’s a wonder that mass narcolepsy hasn’t set in.
As F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote, there are no second acts in American lives. Somebody forgot to tell the Crüe, so here they are, three weeks into their Carnival Of Sins Tour-and its something of a scaled-down Big Top, with jugglers, fire-eaters, and a small-person master of ceremonies (one wonders why Tommy Lee hasn’t yet volunteered to be shot from a cannon)-enjoying not only a second act but pulling off an entire two-and-a-half hour show-no opening band-for the first time in their two decades-plus career. This being a reunion tour, or farewell tour, or reunion/farewell tour, or we’re back-from-our-long-hiatus-tour, the stakes are high, but so far so good. Every show is sold out, if not literally then technically, and that’s close enough to brag about.
Bragging rights are what it’s all about for the Crüe of 2005, and they’ll take what they can get. Remade, re-educated and rehabbed (well, sort of), this Crüe is a much different beast than the pillaging band of pirates who ruled the charts and concert stages for most of the 80s and part of the 90s. For the first time they’re touring without the benefit of a new studio album (Red, White & Crüe, a greatest hits package plus three new songs, is their third such assemblage within a 10-year period.)
“The fact that we’re touring at all is what the story should be about,” says Nikki Sixx, smoking an ever-present cigarette and admiring his tattoos. “Look what we’ve been through. Look what Mick has been through. The fact we’re even alive is worth the price of admission.”
On the subject of Mick Mars, Sixx has a point. Ankylosing Spondylitis is about as bad as it gets, and the 50-something guitarist has been at its mercy for most of his life. A painful, progressive, rheumatic disease that fuses some or all of the joints and bones of the spine together, it can also affect other joints, tendons and ligaments. Other areas, such as the eyes, lungs, bowel and heart can also be involved. In that annals of medical raw deals, it really sucks, and it’s incurable to boot. Shout at the Devil, indeed.
So it was something of a small miracle when the Crüe announced a reunion that would include the ailing Mars, and although they’re outwardly pleased with themselves for hitting the stage, one if not more of Mars’ bandmates had his doubts about the guitarist’s chances of surviving the rigours of the road. “I can’t say who,” Mars says, “but there was a doubting Thomas. Or Thomases.”
As I chase my son away from the motorcycles the band will ride some 10 feet on the stage to perform Girls, Girls, Girls, I bump into Jozie (“Jozie with a Z,” she stresses, “like Liza”), one of the Mötley Crüe dancers. Long of leg and tooth, Jozie is a veteran of three Crüe tours. “This one is the best,” she says. “The mood is way up there. Everybody’s happy for once.” I ask Jozie with a Z for any tour highlights and she’s quick to tell me of her “naked showers with Tommy and the other dancers.”
Asked to clarify “naked showers from showers involving clothes, Jozie bats her pole-dancer eyes and says, “It’s not like you think. It’s not sexy or anything. It’s more like a brother-sister thing.” I neglect to tell Jozie with a Z that my sister and I don’t shower together, and if we did, if we had to-if we were at gunpoint for example-it certainly wouldn’t be sexy.
The plan was that Classic Rock would interview the members of Mötley Crüe separately, one after the other. This plan was shelved the minute we arrive backstage. Instead, we wait-one hour, then 90 minutes. My son fidgets; I negotiate. Finally, road manager Jack Carson informs me that Vince is ready, then he’s not ready. Then he’s ready again, but we’ll have to do it in Vince’s tour bus which is parked outside the front of the arena. And so it goes: Mick isn’t here; Mick’s here. Where’s Tommy? OK, Tommy’s here but no Nikki. Oh, Nikki’s here but you’ll have to do Tommy and Nikki together. When Carson informs me that today is “one of the more orderly days” on tour so far, I can’t help but laugh.
Talking to Mötley Crüe is bizarre: each member of the band, in his own highly individual way, remembers little or nothing about the same event. Every time one of them starts to answer a question, he pauses a moment too long, unable to stop the goings-on in his head. It’s exhausting to watch. At the end of a very long day, when my son asks me the most innocent of questions-”Is something wrong with those guys?”-I have no idea how to answer.
VINCE NEIL
Vince Neil sits in his travelling wine cellar that doubles as a tour bus and gulps an endless glass of Chardonnay. Apparently, white wine isn’t liquor, at least in the land of Vince. Alcohol both steadies him and taunts him with moments of faux profanity. Despite a public makeover on reality TV, he still resembles a weathered, heavy metal version of Saturday Night Actor Jon Lovitz. He rubs his eyes as if he’s just been roused from a nap. “What do you want to know?” he asks, forgetting to offer me anything in the way of liquid refreshment.
This has been called a reunion tour, a farewell tour, but the prevailing view is that it’s a get-the-money-while-the-getting’s good tour.
The money’s good, no doubt about it. But you know, everybody’s pretty set. We don’t have any money worries. The main thing was getting the band back together. We had no idea it was going to be this successful. Reunion tour, farewell tour-all I know is, it’s a tour, and we’re doing great. Every night’s sold out.
Why didn’t you record a new album before hitting the road?
Recording an album is a heavy commitment, brother. But hey, what am I talking about? We do have a new record out: Red, White & Crüe.
Which is a greatest hits album with three new tracks. It’s your third greatest hits release within 10 years…
I don’t pay attention to numbers. Besides, the thing’s platinum, or it’s platinum in Canada or whatever. I never thought I’d have another platinum Mötley Crüe record on my wall. It’s crazy. It’s wild, man.
Greatest hits packages aside, the band hasn’t put out a new album since Generation Swine-that’s eight years ago. And Dr. Feelgood came out in 1989. Wouldn’t it have been better for the fans for you to record a new album of really strong material, and then do the tour?
I don’t know. Making a record is a lot of fucking work. But this tours been kicking ass, man. Every show is sold out, people are going nuts, and they just love hearing the old songs. Old songs are what people get off on. Most of the time they hear something new they don’t give a shit.
So, it’s not so much ‘Give the people what they want’ than it is ‘Give the people what they had’.
[Vince appears to consider this, but doesn’t respond.]
Let’s talk about the VH-1 documentary (Inside) Out: Resurrecting Mötley Crüe…Is that what it’s called? I haven’t seen it. They followed us around with cameras, but other than that…
From what little I’ve seen, every three minutes one of you jumps up and yells, “This isn’t happening! Tour’s off!” There’s a lot of storming out of rooms in a huff.
Look, here’s my attitude on this tour. I wasn’t going to do it unless everybody in the band was committed to doing it too. Why start something and a month later one of the guys says, “I’m not doing this.” You know what I mean?
But that is what you guys said. You said it… continually.
Yeah… Well, there were time when we weren’t going to tour. Everybody’s been involved in his own lifestyle for so long, all these different projects that had to be put on hold. Deciding to put Mötley Crüe as a priority was hard, and I didn’t think it was going to happen. But it did. Here we are.
Is there any truth to the rumour that Dave Navarro was lined up to tour if Mick couldn’t hack it?
No, that’s an internet thing. I don’t know how these things start.
Even so, you did have reservations about Mick touring.
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I hadn’t seen him in a long time, and when I finally did-whew!-he looked pretty frail. But now he’s rocking. He looks great, he’s playing great, he’s running up and down the stage-he’s Mick Mars.
You say that as if Mick Mars was always this run-around-the-stage kind of guy.
I see him rum around on occasion. You gotta catch him at the right time. Actually, he’s getting in my way on stage with all the carrying on he does.
One of your new songs, If I Die Tomorrow, is written by a couple of guys from Simple Plan. How come?
That’s a question for Nikki. Honestly, I have no idea where that song came from, although he way I hear it is that Bob Rock, our producer, was working with the band Simple Plan… I don’t know, I had nothing to do with it. Great song, though. See, that’s the thing, does it really matter who writes a song? A great song is a great song. I don’t care who writes it. Some guy’s mother writes it, who cares?
It’s been a few years since the publication of The Dirt. Looking back, do you think it in any way changed people’s perceptions about the group?
I don’t know about that, but I’m happy with the way it turned out. We wrote it, so it’s 100 per cent truthful. When I’m taking, that’s really me talking. That’s Vince Neil. Same with the other guys. I would have been really bummed out if we weren’t truthful and honest. The good thing about the book is, in some parts I’m the asshole, and in other parts I’m the hero. It doesn’t gloss over the bad stuff.
Then again if you did gloss over the bad stuff, you’d be left with a pamphlet.
[Vince shrugs, sips wine.]
Are there any plans to update the book? You could add some chapters from this tour.
No. None that I’m part of. [Laughs]
Having been together, what, 20, 25 years, has everybody in the band hit each other at least once?
Probably. It’s sort of fuzzy. When you think about it, though, how could we not hit each other? I remember my best duke-out was with Nikki, in a hotel lobby in San Francisco. This was when I quit the band and he got all pissed off. We were rolling around on the floor of the lobby and I nailed him.
Good times. As a member of Mötley Crüe, what are you most proud of? At the same time, is there anything you wish you could change?
I wouldn’t change anything about the band, good or bad. We are what we are. We’re playing better than we ever have, we’re playing longer than ever before. I was afraid to do a show with no opening act; now I can’t imagine doing it any other way.
What’s the deal with you doing all these nutty reality shows? In The Surreal Life you were in a penal colony with C-list celebrities like MC Hammer…
My man, Hammer!
…And then in Remaking: Vince Neil you got a face-lift and tried to lose weight. It’s a bit cheesy, don’t you think?
I did lose weight, though.
Mmmm, OK. But aren’t you concerned about what your long-time fans think? Getting ‘remade’, so to speak, is like being in Weight Watchers ads. It’s not very rock ‘n’ roll.
I don’t know, I think reality shows are very rock ‘n’ roll. The way it happened for me was, I was hanging out having cocktails at the Ritz-Carlton down in Miami, I got a phone call, and my manager said, “VH-1 called and they wanna remake you.” I started thinking, here I am, I’m 44, I’ve got a gut from drinking, I’m not in the best shape, you know, I’m not 22 anymore. You watch these shows and you always want to get that fire under your butt, that motivation. Doing the show motivated me. I had three months to do it, and by the end of the show I had to look, sound and bee better than I was than at the beginning of the show.
Otherwise you’d look a moron.
Right. It was a tough commitment, but I got through it. The real cool thing was, when it finished, that was right when we started talking about getting Mötley Crüe back together, so I had a head start on everyone as far as getting in shape goes.
You look the same though. No offence.[/b]
I don’t know. Everybody else seemed to like the new me, other than the fact my hair was brown. The bottom line is, I wasn’t doing it for anybody other than myself. I didn’t care if the show turned out good, if anybody watched. I didn’t think about what the Crüe fans would say. I did it for me.
Being remade hasn’t curbed your drinking. It’s 3.30 in the afternoon.
Somebody’s gotta uphold the Mötley Crüe tradition. [Laughs]
What’s with you guys and your sex tapes getting out to the public? Tommy and Pamela had one, you have one… I hope Mick doesn’t have one.
[Laughs] Can you imagine that? Wow. Who would watch that? See, the difference between my sex tape and Tommy’s is that I didn’t do what he did and that’s go on every talk show and talk about it. I just figured, OK, it’s out, people know about it. I thought if I didn’t talk about it that no one would care.
Why on earth would you think that?
I don’t know. The thing with my sex tape was, I was with these two girls, one of them was this really famous porno star, Janine, and the other girl was this Penthouse Pet Of The Year, and she-the Penthouse Pet-ended up selling it.
Are you upset about the lost revenue?
[Laughs] Nah. I really don’t care. I wasn’t going to file a lawsuit, I wasn’t going to make a big deal about it. Whatever. So, I’ve got a sex tape out. Big deal. So do lots of people.
Lots of people don’t.
That’s for them to decide.
Now that you're older, does courting trouble seem as inviting as it once was?
How do you mean?
How do I mean? This could take all day! Calling one of your greatest hits packages Music To Crash Your Car Too-not subtle, dude.
We've never been a critics' band. If they...
No, no, no. Not critics. I mean fans. There's a lot of people who were offended by that. And rightly so.
Yeah but... If your going to talk about fans, hey, we've got fans coming in droves. They're coming to the shows, they're buying the record... Personally I don't see any downside to anything we do.
Monkey see, Mötley Crüe
The Crüe are a band that’s better to read about than listen to, suggests John Saleeby.
Well, Mötley Crüe have reunited for a tour. And if you’re surprised by that you’d better go to the hospital and get an ECG before the production of another Chucky movie is announced. Mötley Crüe-they may not be very interesting to listen to but, boy, are they fun to read about! And they are fun to write comedy bits about.
This article could have easily been a 350-page book if only I hadn’t been blacklisted by the publishing industry for… Well, I don’t know but it must have been something really bad if after all these years I can’t come up with anything better to do than this crap. Was that skinny chick I got booted out of The Comic Strip for sticking my head up her skirt Judith Regan? When Tommy Lee pulls that crap everybody goes: “Oh, Tommy Lee! Ya great big silly!” But I get dipped in breadcrumbs, deep-fried, and sold to mongoloids on a stick at back-country cock fights. What’s he got that 10 million tattooed nimrods ain’t got?
Not only is Mötley Crüe’s The Dirt book a big hit, but now MTV are making it into an all-out movie! MTV? A Mötley Crüe movie? You would have to dig up the remains of Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick, grind ‘em into powder, and mix ‘em up in a blender with the slime scraped of the bathroom floor of whoever directed that Rude Boy movie The Clash starred in to make a halfway decent movie about Mötley Crüe.
Mötley Crüe began as a New York Dolls-style ‘glam’ act, looking so silly by even those standards a member of Aerosmith wrote Dude (Looks Like A Lady) because someone in Mötley Crüe reminded him of his aunt.
I’m not sure exactly which member of Mötley Crüe inspired the song, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Mick Mars, because then the song would have been called Dude (Looks Like A Gopher).
Mötley Crüe were one of the first bands to emerge from the LA metal scene documented in The Decline Of Civilisation-The Metal Years movie. Everybody remembers the scene in that movie with the drummer from W.A.S.P (We Are Still Practising) swilling from a bottle of vodka in a swimming pool full of water while his mother looks on. A swimming pool full of water? Hell, that was a swimming pool full of VODKA! And that wasn’t a bottle of vodka, it was a bottle of VERMOUTH! Those LA metal dudes drank some serious-ass Martinis! And that wasn’t his mother, that was a member of Mötley Crüe! Aerosmith ain’t stupid! The dude looks like a lady! Du-du-du-dude looks like a lady!
Brace yourself if you ever have yet to get punched by Vince Neil because, from the looks of things, everyone in America will get it sooner of later. It’s rumoured that Ashton Kuchar may be playing Tommy Lee in that goddam MTV movie, but he’d best forget about making Walking Time Bomb Vince the butt of one of his mean little Punk’d practical jokes-Vince ain’t takin’ no shit of nobody! A Punk’d prank on Vince would probably go like…
Vince is in his hotel room. Ashton Kuchar sends in John Saleeby in a Bell Boy uniform to knock on the door.
Saleeby: Room service!
Vince opens the door.
Vince: Yeah?
Saleeby: Hey! You’re that guy! The rock star!
Vince: Yeah…
Saleeby: You’re DAVID LEE ROTH!
Vince: Huh?
Saleeby: Well, lemme tell ya this, Mister David Lee Roth-SAMMY HAGAR RULES!
Ashton is laughing hysterically.
Saleeby: Yeah! Van Halen with Sammy is THE BAST! You suck!
Vince knocks out Saleeby with a single punch. Ashton walks out, giggling like a simpering douche.
Ashton: Vince! You’ve been PUNK’D!
Vince: Who the fuck are you callin’ a punk?!
Vince throws Ashton out of the window to fall 11 stories to the parking lot below.
Ashton: Nooooooooooooo, we don’t have a camera outside to get the shhhhoooooott!
Mick Mars has had a long and profitable career in which the single most creative thing he has ever come up with is calling Jack Daniel’s ‘mouthwash’. Pretty funny. Until you realise that Joe Perry of Aerosmith makes about 350 jokes like that in his sleep. While sleepwalking. While sleepwalking down the street with his wife, kids, and nurses running ahead of him buying up every bottle of Jack Daniel’s in his path and pouring them into the before he can have a little drink and probably decide he’s sick of all this Aerosmith shit and just retire… Why am I going on like this about Joe Perry in an article about Mötley Crüe? Cos there ain’t shit to say about Mick Mars, that’s why.
Oh, hell, let’s face it the only thing about these bums worth talking about is their women. Tommy got things kicked of with a BANG when he married Heather Locklear, whom he’d met backstage at an REO Speedwagon concert.
REO Speedwagon guitarist: On my God! Did you guys see who’s here tonight?
REO Speedwagon singer: Heather Locklear!
REO Speedwagon drummer: One of us is gonna get to fuck Heather Locklear!
REO Speedwagon bassist: This is our LUCKY NIGHT!
REO Speedwagon keyboardist: Who’s gonna be the LUCKY GUY?!
Tommy Lee walks in.
Tommy: Hey, dudes, lets party!
All the girls: TOMMY!
Tommy: Hey, babes…
All of REO Speedwagon: AW, MAN!
David Lee Roth: You guys better grab a few drinks before Slash, Duff and Izzy get here.
All of REO Speedwagon: WHO?!
David Lee Roth: You guys are doomed!
But Heather Locklear? Tell me that she’s in the same League Of Blondes as Pamela Anderson and Donna D’Errico and you might as well put Vince Neil and CC DeVille in there with ‘em. I don’t care what you faggots say about Pamela Anderson, I think that woman is a PEACH! A peach with a coupla kumquats surgically attached, but one hell of a sweet, juicy peach anyway! I love Pamela Anderson so much I’ve seen every episode of Baywatch, every episode of V.I.P, and made it through more than 10 minutes of the first episode of that Striperella thing. Now THAT is devotion of genuinely John Hinckley dimensions.
That is the kinna girl a rock ‘n’ roll star is supposed to get married to. Mötley Crüe is so Johnny On The Spot, not only did Tommy get married to Pamela Anderson but also Nikki Sixx got married to The Next Best Thing To Pamela Anderson, Donna D’Errico! I guess Donna D’Errico figured: “Oh well, if you can’t get married to Tommy Lee get married to The Next Best Thing To Tommy Lee, Nikki Sixx!”
What? The Pamela and Tommy sex video? I didn’t know there was a Pamela and Tommy sex video! Damn, I’ve been too busy laughing at the Kurt and Courtney sex video to even notice about such a thing. Yeah, check out the Kurt and Courtney sex video, it’s a laugh riot! Ten minutes of: “But Courtney, what happened to your WEINER? Did it get cut off or something? How are you going to put that up my butt? NO FAIR!”
And now I am going to go and listen to every single Mötley Crüe record ever released, and then provide a detailed analysis of their music. First, I’m going to put on… What? Oh, I’m all out of space?
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Fiends Reunited
The band hated each other. Mötley Crüe were over. Finished. So how come they’ve buried the (and not in each other) and reunited? Why now? Are they just in it for the money? Before their rock ‘n’ roll circus hit’s the UK, Classic Rock collars Nikki Sixx, Mick Mars, Tommy Lee and Vince Neil to find out what’s going on.
“It’s all good, bro,” Tommy Lee says, reassuringly. “Your kid’s eight? No worries. Our show’s like a big circus. Oh, but after my drum solo we have the Titty Cam. You might want to get him some popcorn or something then. Not before my drum solo, though-my drum solo’s awesome! But until the Titty Cam, it’s all gooooood.”
Having no doubt reached some sort of horrifying crossroads in my life, I’m getting parenting tips from Tommy Lee. Sent to Portland, Maine to interview Mötley Crüe, I’ve ignored all good sense and brought my eight-year-old son on something of an impromptu Take Your Child To Work Day.
Lee good-naturedly blathers on about the “awsomeness” of his solo (apparently, word never reached him that most humans, if given the choice, would pick a colonoscopy any day over a drum solo-anybody’s drum solo), but my son is out the door and down the corridor and I’m hot on his heels. Luckily, the backstage bacchanal at the Portland Civic Arena, key to the Crüe mythos, is nowhere in evidence, sparing me a small fortune in child therapy bills. We make our way past the punch-the-clock spectacle of behind-the-scenes middle-aged rock: roadies lugging cables and crates; tour managers and their assistants multi-tasking on laptops, Blackberrys, pagers and cell phones; and a local rent-a-guards, generously proportioned men with moustaches and pronounced New England accents, sitting around munching fried chicken as they catch up on the sports pages. The mood is so arid and bloodless it’s a wonder that mass narcolepsy hasn’t set in.
As F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote, there are no second acts in American lives. Somebody forgot to tell the Crüe, so here they are, three weeks into their Carnival Of Sins Tour-and its something of a scaled-down Big Top, with jugglers, fire-eaters, and a small-person master of ceremonies (one wonders why Tommy Lee hasn’t yet volunteered to be shot from a cannon)-enjoying not only a second act but pulling off an entire two-and-a-half hour show-no opening band-for the first time in their two decades-plus career. This being a reunion tour, or farewell tour, or reunion/farewell tour, or we’re back-from-our-long-hiatus-tour, the stakes are high, but so far so good. Every show is sold out, if not literally then technically, and that’s close enough to brag about.
Bragging rights are what it’s all about for the Crüe of 2005, and they’ll take what they can get. Remade, re-educated and rehabbed (well, sort of), this Crüe is a much different beast than the pillaging band of pirates who ruled the charts and concert stages for most of the 80s and part of the 90s. For the first time they’re touring without the benefit of a new studio album (Red, White & Crüe, a greatest hits package plus three new songs, is their third such assemblage within a 10-year period.)
“The fact that we’re touring at all is what the story should be about,” says Nikki Sixx, smoking an ever-present cigarette and admiring his tattoos. “Look what we’ve been through. Look what Mick has been through. The fact we’re even alive is worth the price of admission.”
On the subject of Mick Mars, Sixx has a point. Ankylosing Spondylitis is about as bad as it gets, and the 50-something guitarist has been at its mercy for most of his life. A painful, progressive, rheumatic disease that fuses some or all of the joints and bones of the spine together, it can also affect other joints, tendons and ligaments. Other areas, such as the eyes, lungs, bowel and heart can also be involved. In that annals of medical raw deals, it really sucks, and it’s incurable to boot. Shout at the Devil, indeed.
So it was something of a small miracle when the Crüe announced a reunion that would include the ailing Mars, and although they’re outwardly pleased with themselves for hitting the stage, one if not more of Mars’ bandmates had his doubts about the guitarist’s chances of surviving the rigours of the road. “I can’t say who,” Mars says, “but there was a doubting Thomas. Or Thomases.”
As I chase my son away from the motorcycles the band will ride some 10 feet on the stage to perform Girls, Girls, Girls, I bump into Jozie (“Jozie with a Z,” she stresses, “like Liza”), one of the Mötley Crüe dancers. Long of leg and tooth, Jozie is a veteran of three Crüe tours. “This one is the best,” she says. “The mood is way up there. Everybody’s happy for once.” I ask Jozie with a Z for any tour highlights and she’s quick to tell me of her “naked showers with Tommy and the other dancers.”
Asked to clarify “naked showers from showers involving clothes, Jozie bats her pole-dancer eyes and says, “It’s not like you think. It’s not sexy or anything. It’s more like a brother-sister thing.” I neglect to tell Jozie with a Z that my sister and I don’t shower together, and if we did, if we had to-if we were at gunpoint for example-it certainly wouldn’t be sexy.
The plan was that Classic Rock would interview the members of Mötley Crüe separately, one after the other. This plan was shelved the minute we arrive backstage. Instead, we wait-one hour, then 90 minutes. My son fidgets; I negotiate. Finally, road manager Jack Carson informs me that Vince is ready, then he’s not ready. Then he’s ready again, but we’ll have to do it in Vince’s tour bus which is parked outside the front of the arena. And so it goes: Mick isn’t here; Mick’s here. Where’s Tommy? OK, Tommy’s here but no Nikki. Oh, Nikki’s here but you’ll have to do Tommy and Nikki together. When Carson informs me that today is “one of the more orderly days” on tour so far, I can’t help but laugh.
Talking to Mötley Crüe is bizarre: each member of the band, in his own highly individual way, remembers little or nothing about the same event. Every time one of them starts to answer a question, he pauses a moment too long, unable to stop the goings-on in his head. It’s exhausting to watch. At the end of a very long day, when my son asks me the most innocent of questions-”Is something wrong with those guys?”-I have no idea how to answer.
VINCE NEIL
Vince Neil sits in his travelling wine cellar that doubles as a tour bus and gulps an endless glass of Chardonnay. Apparently, white wine isn’t liquor, at least in the land of Vince. Alcohol both steadies him and taunts him with moments of faux profanity. Despite a public makeover on reality TV, he still resembles a weathered, heavy metal version of Saturday Night Actor Jon Lovitz. He rubs his eyes as if he’s just been roused from a nap. “What do you want to know?” he asks, forgetting to offer me anything in the way of liquid refreshment.
This has been called a reunion tour, a farewell tour, but the prevailing view is that it’s a get-the-money-while-the-getting’s good tour.
The money’s good, no doubt about it. But you know, everybody’s pretty set. We don’t have any money worries. The main thing was getting the band back together. We had no idea it was going to be this successful. Reunion tour, farewell tour-all I know is, it’s a tour, and we’re doing great. Every night’s sold out.
Why didn’t you record a new album before hitting the road?
Recording an album is a heavy commitment, brother. But hey, what am I talking about? We do have a new record out: Red, White & Crüe.
Which is a greatest hits album with three new tracks. It’s your third greatest hits release within 10 years…
I don’t pay attention to numbers. Besides, the thing’s platinum, or it’s platinum in Canada or whatever. I never thought I’d have another platinum Mötley Crüe record on my wall. It’s crazy. It’s wild, man.
Greatest hits packages aside, the band hasn’t put out a new album since Generation Swine-that’s eight years ago. And Dr. Feelgood came out in 1989. Wouldn’t it have been better for the fans for you to record a new album of really strong material, and then do the tour?
I don’t know. Making a record is a lot of fucking work. But this tours been kicking ass, man. Every show is sold out, people are going nuts, and they just love hearing the old songs. Old songs are what people get off on. Most of the time they hear something new they don’t give a shit.
So, it’s not so much ‘Give the people what they want’ than it is ‘Give the people what they had’.
[Vince appears to consider this, but doesn’t respond.]
Let’s talk about the VH-1 documentary (Inside) Out: Resurrecting Mötley Crüe…Is that what it’s called? I haven’t seen it. They followed us around with cameras, but other than that…
From what little I’ve seen, every three minutes one of you jumps up and yells, “This isn’t happening! Tour’s off!” There’s a lot of storming out of rooms in a huff.
Look, here’s my attitude on this tour. I wasn’t going to do it unless everybody in the band was committed to doing it too. Why start something and a month later one of the guys says, “I’m not doing this.” You know what I mean?
But that is what you guys said. You said it… continually.
Yeah… Well, there were time when we weren’t going to tour. Everybody’s been involved in his own lifestyle for so long, all these different projects that had to be put on hold. Deciding to put Mötley Crüe as a priority was hard, and I didn’t think it was going to happen. But it did. Here we are.
Is there any truth to the rumour that Dave Navarro was lined up to tour if Mick couldn’t hack it?
No, that’s an internet thing. I don’t know how these things start.
Even so, you did have reservations about Mick touring.
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I hadn’t seen him in a long time, and when I finally did-whew!-he looked pretty frail. But now he’s rocking. He looks great, he’s playing great, he’s running up and down the stage-he’s Mick Mars.
You say that as if Mick Mars was always this run-around-the-stage kind of guy.
I see him rum around on occasion. You gotta catch him at the right time. Actually, he’s getting in my way on stage with all the carrying on he does.
One of your new songs, If I Die Tomorrow, is written by a couple of guys from Simple Plan. How come?
That’s a question for Nikki. Honestly, I have no idea where that song came from, although he way I hear it is that Bob Rock, our producer, was working with the band Simple Plan… I don’t know, I had nothing to do with it. Great song, though. See, that’s the thing, does it really matter who writes a song? A great song is a great song. I don’t care who writes it. Some guy’s mother writes it, who cares?
It’s been a few years since the publication of The Dirt. Looking back, do you think it in any way changed people’s perceptions about the group?
I don’t know about that, but I’m happy with the way it turned out. We wrote it, so it’s 100 per cent truthful. When I’m taking, that’s really me talking. That’s Vince Neil. Same with the other guys. I would have been really bummed out if we weren’t truthful and honest. The good thing about the book is, in some parts I’m the asshole, and in other parts I’m the hero. It doesn’t gloss over the bad stuff.
Then again if you did gloss over the bad stuff, you’d be left with a pamphlet.
[Vince shrugs, sips wine.]
Are there any plans to update the book? You could add some chapters from this tour.
No. None that I’m part of. [Laughs]
Having been together, what, 20, 25 years, has everybody in the band hit each other at least once?
Probably. It’s sort of fuzzy. When you think about it, though, how could we not hit each other? I remember my best duke-out was with Nikki, in a hotel lobby in San Francisco. This was when I quit the band and he got all pissed off. We were rolling around on the floor of the lobby and I nailed him.
Good times. As a member of Mötley Crüe, what are you most proud of? At the same time, is there anything you wish you could change?
I wouldn’t change anything about the band, good or bad. We are what we are. We’re playing better than we ever have, we’re playing longer than ever before. I was afraid to do a show with no opening act; now I can’t imagine doing it any other way.
What’s the deal with you doing all these nutty reality shows? In The Surreal Life you were in a penal colony with C-list celebrities like MC Hammer…
My man, Hammer!
…And then in Remaking: Vince Neil you got a face-lift and tried to lose weight. It’s a bit cheesy, don’t you think?
I did lose weight, though.
Mmmm, OK. But aren’t you concerned about what your long-time fans think? Getting ‘remade’, so to speak, is like being in Weight Watchers ads. It’s not very rock ‘n’ roll.
I don’t know, I think reality shows are very rock ‘n’ roll. The way it happened for me was, I was hanging out having cocktails at the Ritz-Carlton down in Miami, I got a phone call, and my manager said, “VH-1 called and they wanna remake you.” I started thinking, here I am, I’m 44, I’ve got a gut from drinking, I’m not in the best shape, you know, I’m not 22 anymore. You watch these shows and you always want to get that fire under your butt, that motivation. Doing the show motivated me. I had three months to do it, and by the end of the show I had to look, sound and bee better than I was than at the beginning of the show.
Otherwise you’d look a moron.
Right. It was a tough commitment, but I got through it. The real cool thing was, when it finished, that was right when we started talking about getting Mötley Crüe back together, so I had a head start on everyone as far as getting in shape goes.
You look the same though. No offence.[/b]
I don’t know. Everybody else seemed to like the new me, other than the fact my hair was brown. The bottom line is, I wasn’t doing it for anybody other than myself. I didn’t care if the show turned out good, if anybody watched. I didn’t think about what the Crüe fans would say. I did it for me.
Being remade hasn’t curbed your drinking. It’s 3.30 in the afternoon.
Somebody’s gotta uphold the Mötley Crüe tradition. [Laughs]
What’s with you guys and your sex tapes getting out to the public? Tommy and Pamela had one, you have one… I hope Mick doesn’t have one.
[Laughs] Can you imagine that? Wow. Who would watch that? See, the difference between my sex tape and Tommy’s is that I didn’t do what he did and that’s go on every talk show and talk about it. I just figured, OK, it’s out, people know about it. I thought if I didn’t talk about it that no one would care.
Why on earth would you think that?
I don’t know. The thing with my sex tape was, I was with these two girls, one of them was this really famous porno star, Janine, and the other girl was this Penthouse Pet Of The Year, and she-the Penthouse Pet-ended up selling it.
Are you upset about the lost revenue?
[Laughs] Nah. I really don’t care. I wasn’t going to file a lawsuit, I wasn’t going to make a big deal about it. Whatever. So, I’ve got a sex tape out. Big deal. So do lots of people.
Lots of people don’t.
That’s for them to decide.
Now that you're older, does courting trouble seem as inviting as it once was?
How do you mean?
How do I mean? This could take all day! Calling one of your greatest hits packages Music To Crash Your Car Too-not subtle, dude.
We've never been a critics' band. If they...
No, no, no. Not critics. I mean fans. There's a lot of people who were offended by that. And rightly so.
Yeah but... If your going to talk about fans, hey, we've got fans coming in droves. They're coming to the shows, they're buying the record... Personally I don't see any downside to anything we do.
