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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Rude, crude Crüe bids adieu

Fast living hard rockers bring farewell tour to Arena for sold-out show

Mötley Crüe is set to perform Saturday night in a sold-out show at the Spokane Arena. (Associated Press)
Piet Levy Tribune News Service

Mötley Crüe may be coming to an end – but the band will never truly die.

In its ’80s heyday, the outrageous glam metal group of frontman Vince Neil, bassist Nikki Sixx, drummer Tommy Lee and guitarist Mick Mars made its place in rock history as one of the most notoriously hedonistic bands that ever lived.

Its insatiable lifestyle of booze, drugs and girls was celebrated by fans – but it had incredible consequences, including a car crash in 1984 with an intoxicated Neil behind the wheel that left his passenger dead.

Yet against almost impossible odds, Mötley Crüe is ending things on its own terms with what it swears will be its final tour.

Before the start of its victory lap, we checked out the band’s highly revealing 2001 tell-all book, “The Dirt,” to revisit its scrappy origins in L.A. in the early ’80s and up until it secured superstar status near the end of the decade. Here are 37 outrageous stories – good, bad and ugly, but mostly, they’re just ugly.

1. One of Lee’s girlfriends in the band’s early days – nicknamed “Bullwinkle” by the other guys – had a raging temper; one time, she threw a fire extinguisher through the band’s apartment window when Lee locked her outside.

2. The band’s Sunset Strip apartment had a major roach problem. They couldn’t afford pesticide, so they’d use lighters and hair spray to exterminate the bugs – or, if they were using the oven, they’d leave it on high for 10 minutes to kill any roaches inside first.

3. The Los Angeles County Department of Health Services had to force the band members to remove all the garbage they let pile up on the back patio of their Sunset Strip apartment.

4. In those early days, to save money, they didn’t buy toilet paper – instead using socks, band fliers or magazines whenever there was a need.

5. One time Lee bedded a woman just to drive her Jaguar – and Sixx and Neil watched them in action.

6. Sixx, Neil and Lee once doused a tree in their courtyard and set it on fire just for fun.

7. Lee slept with a studio engineer to get some free time to record the band’s first songs, including “Stick to Your Guns,” “Nobody Knows What It’s Like to Be Lonely” and “Toast of the Town.”

8. Mars had a habit of biting Lee’s nipple.

9. At their first show at the L.A. club Starwood, a guy in the crowd spit a loogey that landed on Neil’s white leather pants. Neil hopped off the stage and started fighting him, and Sixx backed him up, cracking his bass guitar against another guy’s shoulder.

10. Neil once bought cocaine from a drag queen for $20 that turned out to be baby powder. When he couldn’t get his cash back, he got into a big bar fight with the dealer.

11. Fed up with a long-winded punk-rock poser hanging at the band’s house, Sixx grabbed the guy and nailed his ear lobe to a table.

12. Sixx tried to hook up with Lee’s mom.

13. The band recorded “Too Fast for Love” in three days – drunk the whole time.

14. Sixx got into a fight with bikers – he even hit one guy in the face with a chain he was using as a belt – and they turned out to be undercover cops. He was hit seven times with clubs, resulting in a black eye and broken cheekbone. After he made bail, he was inspired to write “Knock ’Em Dead, Kid.”

15. After a cop was giving the band grief at a bar, the guys drank up and took painkillers, and when they saw the window was rolled down in his patrol car, they urinated on the seat.

16. After Sixx got wasted, he stumbled into his Porsche – naked – and was spotted by fans. He sped off and crashed into a telephone pole.

17. Mötley Crüe was so unruly when it was an opener on a KISS tour that Gene Simmons fired the band.

18. While the band was on tour with Ozzy Osbourne, Osbourne dared Sixx to urinate on the floor and lick it up. Sixx peed – and Osbourne ended up drinking Sixx’s urine.

19. While on tour in Memphis with Osbourne, Osbourne and Neil stole a car, took it for a joy ride around Beale Street, smashed the windows and gutted the upholstery.

20. One of Lee’s girlfriends sold intimate pictures of them to a porn magazine without Lee’s knowledge – and when he confronted her about it, she suggested they get married.

21. While in England to play a rock tour with Van Halen and AC/DC, Sixx tackled Eddie Van Halen and bit his bare stomach. Neil bit his hand.

22. Restless on a European tour, Lee and Sixx would break bottles over each other’s heads and swallow small light bulbs whole just for fun.

23. In Germany, the band threw two beds out of their hotel window on top of a couple of Mercedes.

24. In Switzerland, the band set Lee’s hotel bed on fire and smashed all the glass windows in the elevators.

25. Sixx hooked up with a stranger in England who climbed through his bathroom window.

26. Fans threw animal bones, sausages and darts at the band at a show in London.

27. Sixx was so high during the music video shoot for “Home Sweet Home” that he wandered underneath a stage and recalls having a conversation about “family, music and death” with an imaginary person.

28. Trying to kick his drug habit, Sixx stayed up for nearly 24 hours, shaking, sweating and listening to Lone Justice’s self-titled album over and over.

29. Sixx once got so high on heroin his dealer tried to wake him up by beating him with a baseball bat.

30. While high, Sixx urinated on Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen’s jacket.

31. On cocaine and mushrooms somewhere in Texas, Sixx and Lee hopped on a moving train – then freaked out and jumped off after it picked up speed.

32. Sixx was best man at Lee’s wedding to Heather Locklear – and was messed up on heroin for the ceremony.

33. High out of his mind on cocaine, Sixx unloaded a .357 Magnum at his bedroom door when the voices on the radio wouldn’t stop talking.

34. Lee admits that during phone interviews while on the “Girls, Girls, Girls” tour, he’d sometimes urinate in the bedroom or vomit on the floor.

35. Recording the staccato guitar line for “Girls, Girls, Girls,” Mars was so drunk he fell out of his chair. The take ended up on the record.

36. Lee and Sixx spent a train trip to Tokyo running up and down the aisles, dumping bottles of sake on passengers; when the band’s Japanese promoter tried to make them stop, Sixx threw a bottle of Jack Daniel’s toward him. He missed, and the bottle hit another passenger.

37. Even after Sixx nearly died from a heroin overdose in 1987, the first thing he did when a couple of fans gave him a lift home was shoot up more heroin. The near-death experience inspired one of the band’s most successful songs, “Kickstart My Heart.”