MOTLEY CRUE
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When most of the people at this show were in junior high, Motley Crue was the walk on the wild side. They blasted REO Speedwagon off the pop charts and took on MTV clad in leather and face paint and a chorus of “Shout at the Devil,” all while the Parents’ Music Resource Center geared up to stop them. The band gathered death threats at shows; singer Vince Neil served time for killing another musician in a drunk-driving accident; bassist Nikki Sixx was pronounced dead on arrival after a heroin overdose (but lived to tell about having his heart kick started); and drummer Tommy Lee donned a white leather tuxedo and made the cover of People when he wed Dynasty vixen Heather Locklear. The Crue claimed to have had “more sex, drugs and rock and roll than any other band in history.” And all the while it made some of the cheesiest, sappiest, fluffiest hair metal this side of Bon Jovi. Crue’s excesses were offstage and off record.
Sixx chronicled tales of “Girls, Girls, Girls” on Sunset Strip and sentimental love on “Home Sweet Home” rather than penning paeans to heroin like modern bands such as Alice in Chains. (Even the band’s few songs about drug abuse skirted the issue, turning “Dr. Feelgood” and “Kickstart My Heart” into double-entendres for sex and love.) The formula worked well enough to sell several million copies each of five albums and net the band a deal with Elektra Records worth $25 million–the first of the now-commonplace megadeals.
In Neil’s place stood John Corabi in his Jesus Christ pose, playing guitar and acting for all the world like a rhythm guitarist rather than a lead singer, although he did force a falsetto occasionally as the band covered a very few of the old tunes. The new Crue has done everything in its power to adapt to the times–slamming Neil in every interview, even claiming to have been forced by him to do that cheese metal while the rest of them wanted to be tougher. Any reader of Sixx’s recent interviews could almost picture him pulling at his hair and sobbing, “We just want to be cool again! Oh God! We’ll do anything!”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Yael Routtenberg.
