When Motley Crue released their book The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band in 2001 a little bit of the band died with it. For this was the moment in which The Crue decided to spend the rest of their careers sucking dry the sweet tit of nostalgia. This sort of thing is bound to happed to Bands of a certain age. Especially when records don’t sell like they used to; but Motley Crue has been laying this shit especially thick.
Nowadays Motley Crue be like : Hey Guys remember how COOL we used to be? Why don’t you spend a hundred dollars watching us phone in another performance? You can even make bets as to how many words Vince Neil will sing per song. WOULDN’T THAT BE FUN?!!!! If you close your eyes and concentrate hard enough you can pretend that 1987 never ended. Did we mention that we have pyro? LOTS OF FUCKING PYRO! Or that Tommy Lee plays on a rollercoaster drum kit?
I even read some recent interview where bassist Nikki Sixx laments that Motley Crue is now best know for their antics than their music. When I read that shit, I wished that I could cross the space time continum and fucking smack Nikki (who part of me still considers an inspiration as a songwriter/bassist, real talk) in the back of the head. He would turn around and say to me : Dude! What The Fuck? To which I would reply: You got NOBODY but yourself to blame for THAT motherfucker. It’s your own damn fault Son!
Things were not always this way. Motley Crue sold a good chunk of records and had a decent amount of hits back in the day. They were also were one of the most influential Heavy Metal bands of the 80’s. Which is no small accomplishment when you take into account that the 80’s is considered by many as The Golden Age for Heavy Metal. One of the things I liked the most about Motley Crue was that they would noticably tweek their sound with every record. Every record had its own look, sound and even logo. Yet you knew you were gonna got a Motley Crue album in spirit sound and attitude. They gave the people some of what they wanted but also a bit of what they needed. As a result, Motley Crue managed to stay a step ahead of their peers throught the 80’s.
Their debut record Too Fast For Love had good balance of raw youthful energy, Heavy Metal Riffs and Power Pop sensibilities but the record that broke them through the mainstream was their sophmore release Shout At The Devil. In which they dialed up the Heavy Metal side of the equation with a 70’s Kiss meets The Road Warrior meets inverted Pentagrams look to match. To this day, many Metalheads consider the one two punch of Too Fast For Love and Shout At The Devil to be the bands finest musical moments. Even a lot of Metal people who are into the ‘heavier shit’ and hate glam bands, will give props to those two records. Currently, I’m in the middle of (finally) reading the infamous Lords of Chaos book and I stumbled into something on page 25 that was relevant, amusing and worth sharing: “Even Motley Crue, later to devolve into Glam Rock Sissies, began with a punkified debut and followed it up with Shout At The Devil, bringing a watered-down taste of the demonic to hundreds of thousands of impressionable suburban kids.”
Motley Crue took some shit from older fans for getting a full glam metal makeover on Theater of Pain but it did not stop the band’s upward momentum. Their cover of Brownsville Station’s “Smoking in The Boy’s Room” became their first top twenty pop hit. The band’s other single did not chart as high on billboard (to my surprise) but became a HUGE hit on the network formerly known as Music Television. You may have heard of this song…”Home Sweet Home.” The song directly responsible for ushering the Power Ballad trend of the late 80’s . Complete with its often immitated video concept of how life of the road can be cool yet exasusting.
Motley’s next record, Girls, Girls,Girls was an interesting one. Although they toned down Theater of Pain’s colorful Glam look, it wasn’t the ‘back to basics’ effort fans were hoping for. Girls,Girls Girls was the work of a band sort of trying to rebel against its own success. According to some stuff I read (including a September 99 cover story on Guitar World Magazine), the band wanted to experiment with stuff like sequencing and samples. Longtime band producer Tom Werman tried to talk the band out of it but they did incorporate some of that stuff on songs like “Wild Side” and “Dancing on Glass.”
This time around, Motley Crue took what could have potentially been a big hit for them. A power ballad called “Rodeo” and left it off the record.
Instead they gave us “You’re All I need” a deceptively pretty sounding power ballad about a guy who kills his girlfriend in a fit of rage. Of course, Motley Crue released a video for this song challenging MTV to play it. They didn’t. But as much as Nikki Sixx likes to nible on the hand that feeds him, he loves to make money too. So Sixx made sure to include two big hit songs in the form of “Wild Side” and the title track that would propel the record into quadruple platinum status.
Motley Crue wasn’t done with their crazy ideas. I have a few issues of hit parader magazine from the late 80’s in which the working title for what became Dr. Feelgood was Monsterous. If the song Monsterous (which was later released on a b-sides compliation Super Sonics and Demonic Relics) was any indication, we could have ended up with a MUCH different record had Bob Rock not intervined.
Dr. Feelgood was not only Motley Crue’s most commercially successful record. According to legend, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich was so impressed with the polished yet heavy sound of the song DR. Feelgood that he hired Rock to produce what became the known as Metallica’s Black Album. Which led to Rock being Metallica’s go to producer for the next decade. To the dismay of many die hard fans.
On 1991 Motley Crue released Decade of Decadence 81-91. A career retropesctive/greatest hits record that included three old songs being remixed (livewire, piece of your action , Home Sweet Home), two songs that were originally included in compilations/soundtracks (teaser, and Rock n roll Junkie) and three new songs. The three new songs included “Angela” a heavy power pop song in the vein of “Don’t Go Away Mad (just go away)” and a cover of the Sex Pistols “Anarchy in the UK” but the real gem of the bunch was “Primal Scream.”
“Primal Scream” had a mean groove, the polished heaviness of the Dr. Feelgood record but with a darker vibe. Lyrically, the song dealt with childhood trauma, a topic that wasn’t very common among glam metal bands. A good four years before Nu Metal bands like Korn beat that horse dead. At this time, Motley Crue was still at the peak of their powers. Thanks to “Primal Scream” and Motley Crue’s intuative ability to roll with the times, Motley Crue seemed poised to have continued success in the new decade. But then they fucked it all up.
Depending on who you ask, vocalist Vince Neil was either fired or quit the band in the middle of working on new material. The timing for this was pretty shitty since it was right around the time when when some scrappy new bands from Seattle were challenging the dominance of bands like Motley Crue. To his credit , Vince Neil wasted no time assembling a new band and releasing his first solo record Exposed. In which he essentially hired a bunch of guys (including Billy Idol guitarist Steve Stevens) to essentially do Dr. Feelgood on steroids. The record became a moderate success.
When it came to the John Corabi/Motley Crue 94 record the band took too fucking long to release it. It had been five years since their last full lenght studio record DR. Feelgood and three since their last batch of new material on Decade of Decadence. It also didn’t help that they chose the wrong five years to take their sweet time. By the time the Corabi album came out ‘Alternative Rock’ was the hip new thing and bands like Motley Crue were considered old news. Had they released the record in 92 or 93 the name Motley Crue might have carried enough weight for the album to become a hit. At that time Guns and Roses was STILL running around stadiums like they were the second coming of The Rolling Stones . Bon Jovi’s new record at the time, Keep the faith record went double platinum. Despite the fact that Bon Jovi was the posterboy for the kind of ‘souless corporate rock’ bands like Nirvana supposedly ‘killed.’ Even current tourmates Def Leppard were killing it on MTV and the road with their record Adrenalize.
But by 94 Motley Crue had to more or less start over. Especially with a new singer fronting the band. Motley Crue also fucked up by pissing off MTV when they walked out during an interview. Immediately the network went from moderatelly supporting their lead single “Hooligan’s Holiday” to essentially telling them to get fucked.
Although the 94/John Corabi record did not live up to commercial expectations; the passage of time has been kind to it. There are many now who even go as far as saying it’s Motley Crue’s best record. I’ve always loved this fucking record. Even when it wasn’t cool to admit it. I think it has Tommy Lee’s best drumming. I remember a review of the record back in the day where it said something along the lines of: Tommy Lee plays the drums as if it had pictures of Vince Neil plastered on the drumheads. Musically it picks up where the song “Primal Scream” left. The material is darker, heavier but still grooves the way it should.
Vocally John Corabi gives up more of a Steven Tyler in solitary confinment vibe as oppossed to whatever it is that Vince Neil does. It’s a little different but still works within the context of Motley Crue. For the life of me I don’t understand why they left Babykills off the record and put it on the Quaternary ep instead. Not only would I have put Babykills on the record but I would have used it as the lead single. Since it’s essentially an old fashioned cock rock song in the key of 1994 Motley Crue.
Motley Crue did start working on a second album with John Corabi under the tentative title Personality #9. But the record label people had other plans. They essentially told Motley Crue to get back with Vince or we ain’t releasing dick. So the band took a good chunk of the material they were working on and slapped Vince Neil’s voice on top. The end result of this shotgun reunion being the Generation Swine record.
To this day, Generation Swine still gets a mixed reaction from fans. Many fans were hoping to get something along the lines of DR. Feelgood. Instead they got something that was continuation of what the band been doing all those years the old fans were not paying attention. I like the record a lot. In fact, the first Motley Crue shirt I got has Swine’s album cover. Artistically, I think Generation Swine was Motley Crue’s last stand. The last time they made a serious attempt to do something different. To give the people some of what they but also some of what they need.
One thing that doesn’t get mentioned often is that Motley Crue took the name Generation Swine from a book the late Hunter S Thompson wrote about the 80’s. This was a year before Johnny Depp introduced Hunter S to a new generation of fans with the movie adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Generation Swine was Motley Crue’s attempt to say: Yea we are a bunch of pigs from the 80’s but we can still make rock music just as good as any of you young motherfuckers. Songs like “Find Myself,” Generation Swine,” and “Let us Prey” where attempts by Motley Crue to give people new sounds with the same ol Fuck You We’re Motley Crue attitude. And then there’s the band’s re-arranging of Shout at the Devil “Shout 97.”
Generation Swine does have some weak spots. I always found the song “Confessions” to be boring and that song Tommy Lee sang about his kid “Brandon” is simply embarassing. Whenever I listen to the record I make a point to skip that track. Been doing that for at least a decade. But it also has some inspired moments. “Beauty” a song about Hugh Grant’s mid 90’s ‘incident’ was an interesting mix of Goth Rock and Sleaze Metal. “Glitter” is a pretty new wave/power ballad hybrid. “Flush” is much gloomier than what you expect Motler Crue to sound like but I love that song. It agreed with me since it came out around the time I was discovering Joy Division. One thing I always loved about Generation Swine was that this one the once record where Motley Crue pushed Vince Neil vocally and do something other than sound like you’d expect Vince Neil to sound.
I will admit I wasn’t crazy about their lead single “Afraid” but it grew on me. That song was meant to be a single and given a chance it could have been huge. But it was a mistake to have it as the lead single. The first single should have been the song Generation Swine. Something that sounded closer to what fans expected but still hinted at all the other shit that was on the record. Although the label put pressure on getting Vince back they didn’t do much to promote the record once it came out. Despite extra media attention the band got from the reunion and Tommy Lee’s relationship with Pamela Anderson, Generation Swine sold below expectations. Still, Motley Crue decided if they were gonna go down that they would go down swinging. They named their tour Motley Crue v/s the earth and tried to raise as much hell as possible.
Shortly after touring obligations were done for Generation Swine the band parted ways with their label Elektra Records. But the band was able to leave owning all their master recordings which was a big win for the band. Around the same time, Tommy Lee ended up in jail over a domestic incident where he spent a good chunk of 1998. As soon as Lee was out, the band wasted no time going on another tour and releasing the second (of an ongoing series of) greatest hits package with two new songs: “Bitter Pill” and “Enslaved.” I really like those two songs. The songs were pretty heavy in a (then) contemporary sort of way but closer in spirit to ‘classic Motley Crue’ than the Generation Swine record. The also had a certain pop sensibility that was different for them yet made sense for Motley Crue. I really wished they had released a full lenght record in the style of those two songs. Shortly after that tour Tommy Lee left the band.I guess all the media attention he got from his sex video and courting marrying breaking up making up and finally divorcing Pamela ‘Lee’ Anderson made him think he was big enough to strike on his own. Unfortunately the music he’s done outside of motley crue hasn’t been very good.
After Tommy Lee left, Motley hired ex Ozzy Osbourne drummer Randy Castillo and recorded New Tattoo. New Tattoo was an obvious attempt to give the fans the ‘sequel to DR. Feelgood’ that some fans were wanting throught the 90’s. They even got Guns N Roses’ old producer, Mike Clink on board. Musically, New Tattoo sort of delived but the whole thing felt forced. Mike Clink did a decent enough job producing but was unable to capture the lightning on the bottle he did with Appetite for Destruction or on Megadeth’s Rust in Peace.
There were some Motley Crue creative low points on this record. Especially, “She Needs Rock n Roll” and the two ballads: “New Tattoo” and “Hollywood Ending” which FUCKING SUCK. But the record has some salvegable material. “First Band on The Moon” is silly, self aware but also a solid hard rock song. “Punched in the Teeth by Love” is decent enough even if it is a blatant rip off of The Four Hoursemen’s “Rockin is Ma Buisiness” (a song that stole its m,ain riff from Ac/dc’s Down payment blues, but then again if you’re gonna steal, steal from the best). For some reason they left “Timebomb” as an import bonus track despite being better than the bulk of what ended up on the regular record.
My favorite song on the record by a mile is “Fake” which oddly enough felt as the most real jam of the bunch. I also got to give Crue props for their decent cover of The Tubes’ “White Punks on Dope.” Since that song was my introduction to the music of The Tubes. Outside of “She’s A Beauty” of course which I’ve never been a fan of but The Tubes’ second album Young and Rich is a fun record.
When Motley Crue released The Dirt in 2001 the future of the band seemed uncertain. Tommy Lee was still trying everything to get his solo career going. Vince Neil was a making a drunk ass of himself in stages accross America. Mick Mars was laying low while Nikki Sixx was keeping busy with his metal punk side band Brides of Destruction. But then sometime around the end of 2004 the word on the stret was that motley crue was on the verge of another shotgun reunion. At the time, I was not very optimistic about this whole thing. The only one who seemed gung ho about it was Vince Neil who had recently gotten a makeover (on VH1’s dime) that included healthier eating, cosmetic surgery and writing and recording a song with song assistant to the stars Desmond Child. Tommy Lee did not appear to have much interest in the whole mess while Mick Mars was going through some SERIOUS medical shit.
So serious that there was doubt that Mars could be able to play on the new songs Motley Crue were recording. Songs for YET ANOTHER greatest hits compilation. Of the new stuff, the lead single was a song Motley took and rewrote from this really shitty pop punk band called Simple Plan. The song in question “If I died Tomorrow” had a video that (in a now predictable fashion) alluded to the near death experiences of the individual bandmembers and Tommy Lee’s time in the can. The remaing songs included a respectable cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Street Fighting Man” and a decent new song called “Sick Love Song.”
Despite or perhaps because of lower expectations I was pleasantly surprised with their comeback Carnival of Sins reunion tour. They brought their A game. An evening with show where the band played all the hits and then some. Even the red white and crue compilation turned out ok. If you only want one motley crue greatest hits record this one is the one to have. It includes the mandatory hits plus the three new songs, the two new ones from 98 and an unreleased jam from back in the day “Black Widow.”
in 2008 while the effort to adapt the dirt into a movie sat in development hell, Motley Crue decided to make a ‘concept album’ based on the book. Essentially a record where they boast about the shit they used to do. yay! I was not very exited about this. Especially when I found out that the bulk of the record was written by sixx with the guys from his modern rock side band sixxam with some assistance from mick mars and tommy lee. But the record called Saints of Los Angeles was actually decent. A step up from New Tattoo. The whole thing was a bit derrivative lyrically but the music somehow found a good balance between the polished hard rock of dr feelgood and the scrappy power pop of too fast for love. As far as concept records go it’s nowhere near the quality of say The Wall or Operation Mindcrime but the individual songs are enjoyable and the whole thing together does have a loose narrative. SOLA is nowhere near my favorite Crue record but it was the best we were gonna get at them at that point in their career. I was even more surprised that the title track from the record became Motley Crue’s biggest hit IN YEARS. It got heavy rotation on rock radio and the video even got decent airplay on (what was left back then) of VH1’s music programming.
Motley Crue dropped the ball by releasing “Motherfucker of the year” as the next single. A decent enough song but…it says MOTHERFUCKER ON THE FUCKING TITLE. If you want your song to be played on commercial radio THIS IS NOT the way to do it. By the time they released what should have been their second single “White Trash Circus” the momentum was lost.
Motley Crue spent the next seven years touring on the regular but only released two songs. Both of which were terribly shitty. “Sex” in 2012 and “All bad things must end” to conmemorate their 2013-14 first farewell tour. A song that also serves a cationary tale: that which sounds as a good name for a tour might not necessarily work as a song. At the time Crue seemed pretty adamant about this being their last tour. They even signed a ‘legal binding contract’ to prove how ‘serious’ they were about this. A sensible move by a band not know for making too many of these. Then the movie adaptation of The Dirt came out…
The dirt had some entertaining moments but it STILL SUCKED. It was little more than a cheesy tv movie but with titties and swearing. I would have been more inclined to give Motley a pass had they (mainly Nikki) not talked SO MUCH SHIT about how they weren’t going to make the movie unless it was done right, on their terms and yada yada yada. Yet the finished product was slightly better than that Marky Mark Rock Star movie. I assume that the development period wore them down to the point where they settled with Netflix. Still, that was a missed opportunity. There was enough material on the book to stretch The Dirt into a decent miniseries if they wanted to. It could have given a better rounded portrait of the band. Instead we got as much 80’s stuff crammed as possible while breesing through the less fun adult stuff of 90’s Motley Crue.
To add insult to insult Motley Crue recorded some new songs for the movie soundtrack. Saints of Los Angeles worked because there is some artistic merit in reevaluating the shit you did when you were younger through an adult perspective. Even if the intent was less about introspection and more about selling cheap nostalgia. But going back to that well for inspiration some ten years lately feels lame and lazy. As if Motley Crue has become that aging high school jock who won’t shut the fuck up about how he used to be captain of the varsity footbal team; because he can’t stand how his life turned out. The kind of people The Boss describes on his hit song glory days.
I can honestly say new material is the worst shit Motley Crue has ever released. You’d figure a group of people who have been writing and performing for forty years could easily phone in something in better than this bullshit. It baffels me that they insisted on shohorning ‘the dirt’ into the chorus of every new song. Was there NOBODY in the recvording sessions there to talk them out of such a shitty idea? GIVE ME THE DIRT? ARE YOU FUCKING FIVE YEARS OLD? YOU WANNA GET BACK TO PLAYING IN THE SANDBOX? The only salvagable thing about the new songs was the hook Machine Gun Kelly did on “The Dirt.” The less is said about their cover of Madonna’s “Like A Virgin” the better. The Lords of The New Church did a better version btw.
The members of Motley Crue claimed they rekindled their friendship when they went in the studio to record those shitty new songs. They also claim that the success of the movie gave way to a HUGE demand for a new Motley Crue tour. A demand so huge that it prompted them to wipe their ass with that one contract. I’m sure their is truth to those statements. Being loyal to a band for a few decades tends to go hand in hand with being forgiving. There might be old fans who are pisssed about them breaking their word but odds are they will still pay to see them on tour. And there’s always gonna be some younger fans who missed the boat and would like to have their chance to see the band. But I do find it curious that as soon as Motley Crue was annoucing touring plans that people on my Facebook feed where posting the fuck out of this video:
In true Motley Crue fashion, when it comes to fucking up: go big or go home. For Motley Crue decided to go on a fucking summer STADIUM TOUR. Despite the fact that Motley Crue was NEVER a stadium band. Not even when they were in their commercial peak. To offset any potential disaster they are going out with two bands who normaly headline arenas on their own: Poison and Def Leppard. As well as Joan Jett who is also a respectable draw. On the promotional materials I’ve seen for the tour they seem to play down the whole Motley Crue reuniting bit. They also seem to give Def Leppard (who to be fair, HAVE sold more records and had more hits)equal level of importance.
Even putting their name top billing in some cases. This sort of thing tends to suggest that Motley Crue’s big ‘comeback tour’ is actually a co-headline package tour with def leppard. Where both bands get to play for an equal amount of time (my guess being 90 minutes each) and probably take turns closing out the night.
As much as I like these bands I don’t know if I’ll go see them when they come to Orlando. I guess it all depends on how much money I want to pay to see Vince Neil only sing every other word as the band plays on autopilot. I like my old time rock n roll and I’m loyal to a fault but I also like it when them old farts still have enough fire in them to give us something new. Like The Cult who will gladly play “Fire Woman” and “She Sells Sanctuary” live but have also been making new music on the regular since reforming in 1999. I saw an interview where guitarist Billy Duffy refers to their modus operandi as: “nostalgia with a lower case N.” Motley Crue used to be that kind of band and I loved them for it. But that all changed when they released The Dirt. Now they’re just living off the past.
ahandfullofnapalm 