The Dirt (51 page)

TABITHA SOREN, MTV NEWS HOST:
Hitting the road in June, we hear, will be Mötley Crüe, who recently returned to the scene with a new, self-titled album: their first in four years, and their first with John Corabi, who’s replaced original vocalist Vince Neil. We spoke with the Crüe recently about the new album, the new sound, and the new guy. When we brought up the old days, however, things got ugly. Take a look.

VOICE-OVER:
Mötley Crüe is back. And with a new album and lead singer, they say they’re bigger and better than ever. But in a time when metal groups are having trouble staying in the Top Ten, do the fans even care? It was only a few short years ago that the group was fronted by Vince Neil. The new one is the first with former the Scream lead John Corabi.

TOMMY:
It’s a pretty natural evolution. When John came in to audition, we were looking for a singer. He came in and strapped on a guitar. We were like, “Whoa, what’s going on?” And we started jamming, and he was like, “Hey, check out this riff.” It was just real natural for us to jump on the riff as a band and all jam together and all of a sudden the sound got twice as fat. And all these things just naturally started coming, so it just kind of really flowed and happened and did its thing.

VOICE-OVER:
And with Corabi now in place, we thought we’d get the deal on the much-publicized falling-out with Neil.

INTERVIEWER:
What happened with Vince?

NIKKI:
Uh, we’ll save that for the book.

TOMMY:
{Laughs.}

NIKKI:
We don’t want to talk about that. No one cares anyway.
VOICE-OVER:
Okay, but do they care when their former bandmate sustained several broken ribs and internal injuries while jet-skiing a few weeks ago?

NIKKI:
{Laughs.}

MICK:
My heart goes out to you.
{pauses}
Hey, what happened to the coral reef, then?

NIKKI:
Oh, man. Hey, when three hundred pounds of blubber landed on the coral reef, you know there was some dust flying around.

MICK:
{singing “Girls Just Wanna Have Lunch”}
“… how come they don’t weigh a ton?”

NIKKI:
Okay, here we go. Now, you know that’s going to be run.

VOICE-OVER:
At least the group showed they still had a sense of humor when asked about women, fire, and hair spray, the main components of their videos in years past.

NIKKI:
Dude, that is a
{bleep}
stupid question.

TOMMY:
“Dr. Feelgood” wasn’t like that! “Same Ol” wasn’t like that!

NIKKI:
You know what? Let’s knock the interview off. This is
{bleep}
getting really stupid. Women, hair spray, and fire?!
{removes microphone clip from jacket lapel and rises to leave}

{On-air collage shows scenes from Mötley Crüe videos: Women at strip club from the “Girls Girls Girls” video, hair spray spritzed at the camera from the “Home Sweet Home” video, and fire exploding around Tommy Lee’s drum set from the “Wild Side” video. In the background there is an audio loop of Nikki complaining, “Women … hair spray … and fire?” synchronized with the corresponding images on the screen.}

NIKKI:
Dude, who wrote those questions?
{rest of band walks out of interview}

W
e made a great record with John Corabi, and we were sure it was going to sell millions of copies and blow up bigger than
Dr. Feelgood
. We were going to tour without pyrotechnics and dancing chicks and spinning drum cages, and still kick the audience’s ass. We were going to show them that without a front man dancing in the spotlight, we could play heavy four-piece rock and roll like never before. And we were going to challenge them with lyrics and images about fascism and stereotyping that would blow their minds. We were going to do whatever we wanted because, after all, we were Mötley Crüe.

Or were we?

It only took one concert—the first stop on our tour—for all those hopes and expectations to crash and burn at my feet. The show was in Tucson, Arizona, and only four thousand tickets had been sold for a fifteen-thousand-seat amphitheater. I went on the radio before the concert and said to the fans, “Listen, it’s the first night of the tour. So I’m doing something special. Meet me outside the radio station after the show, and I’ll put each and every one of you on the guest list.”

If I had said that in 1989, there would have been ten thousand teenagers rioting in the parking lot. That afternoon, two Mexican kids showed up. And that’s when I realized: It was all over.

It had been four and a half years since
Dr. Feelgood
came out, we had a new lead singer, and alternative rock had not only come in the meantime, it had gone as well. The world wasn’t holding its breath for a new Mötley Crüe album.

To make matters worse, our entire record label abandoned us because Krasnow and most of the top Elektra and Warner Bros. executives were fleeing their jobs as a massive battle was being waged in the corporate boardrooms. Plus, true to our nature, we had just alienated the only people who could still save the album: MTV. (They conveniently edited out the part of the interview where I threatened to knock the host’s teeth out if he asked us about women, hair spray, and fire one more time.)

At our next gig, one thousand six hundred people showed up, then it was eight hundred. Soon we were sending trucks home and scaling back arena shows to theaters, and theaters to clubs. Last time out, we were flying in jets and playing sold-out arenas. Now, we had to change in our bus at some shows because there was no dressing room backstage, creep through the bus aisle with our instruments, and walk onto a tiny stage illuminated by flashing beer lights to play for fifty kids.

Every now and then, though, we’d be surprised. In Mexico City, twenty thousand people packed the arena, and we played a set that made it all seem worthwhile. Afterward, Chuck Shapiro called and told us the tour was going under. “What?” I refused to accept defeat. “There were twenty thousand people here tonight screaming their heads off. Are you crazy?”

The next day, we had a band meeting. I wrote a check for seventy-five thousand dollars to keep the band on the road, Tommy wrote a check for seventy-five thousand dollars, Corabi forfeited his salary of ten thousand dollars a week for the remainder of the tour, and, as for Mick, he couldn’t contribute a thing because Emi had taken all his money. (He couldn’t say we didn’t warn him about shitting in his own backyard.)

But our efforts were futile. Mexico City was a fluke, and it only took a few more depressing club shows before we had to cancel the tour and come home making all kinds of excuses to rationalize what had happened to us.

For ten years solid, we had been invincible. No one could touch us. Tommy and I had raped a drunk girl in the closet, and she had forgotten about it. Vince had killed someone in a car accident, and gotten away with it. We had released two albums we hardly even remembered recording, and they still sold like crazy. I had overdosed and forced the cancellation of our European tour, and our popularity only increased. Our egos were out of hand. Tommy and I thought, to hell with Vince Neil. He doesn’t write a single song, he drinks a lot, and he can be a pain in the ass. We thought it was all about us, Nikki and Tommy, the Terror Twins. We forgot that we were a team, and Vince was the quarterback. We forgot what made us Mötley Crüe: the chance collision of four very driven, very flawed, and very different personalities.

fig. 1