Chums Again With Lead Singer Vince Neil Back In The Fold, Motley Crue Once Again Aims To Rule Rock World
‘Oh, awesome, man. This is awesome! She won! She won!”
Tommy Lee is understandably more than excited. Amid an interview about the reunion of his band, Motley Crue, with its original lead singer, Vince Neil, the notorious bad boy has broken out in shouts, hoots, hollers and giddy, expletive-ridden proclamations.
Lee just found out that his wife, Pamela Anderson Lee, won the multimillion-dollar breach-of-contract suit brought against her by the makers of a film who wanted the often-nude sexpot to perform more involved erotic scenes than she was willing to do.
Lee, no stranger to a courtroom himself, quickly becomes emphatically empathetic.
“I know just what she’s feeling right now, bro,” he says. “Before, she was flipping out, and I’ve been there. I know exactly what that’s like.
“It’s such a relief to have something like this over and done with.”
He isn’t exaggerating.
“Seems like I’m always in court anymore,” he notes wistfully, “battling lawsuits for allegedly punching some photographer or working out problems with the band. We’re always in some sort of trouble. That never changes.”
Well, maybe it occasionally changes. One court fight, at least, has been resolved: The battle over Motley Crue, which began in 1992 with the debated departure of Neil, has been decided.
What’s more, it has a happy ending.
If only Van Halen had had the same attorneys as the Crue did. Maybe then that musical divorce might have ended amicably as well.
“It’s the same sort of situation,” Lee pointed out. “Things were probably going to get uglier than prettier with us if we hadn’t done something like this.”
“This” is reunite, rather than further draw out the legalities. This month, Motley Crue returns to the wildly disparate rock world it once dominated with a new album, “Generation Swine,” and a fall tour that, like that of Kiss, is expected to bring glossy, mindless fun back to the nastiest sound around.
But it wasn’t easy getting to this point. To understand what went wrong and how it came back together, imagine this scenario: You are a broken-down wreck of a womanizer with your eyes on new horizons. You spot a new flame. The attraction is instant. Troubles lie ahead.
Your wife, long harboring suspicions about your fidelity, gets wise to your ambitions. There’s a nasty split. She tells everyone she left you, while you tell your friends you dropped her like a bad habit.
But, keeping with the cliches, old habits die hard. Once past the infatuation, it’s obvious (to you, at least) that sparks don’t seem to fly as high in this new romance. You don’t really have that much in common. (You’re still a bit of a party animal. She turns out to be the shy, quiet type.)
Things quickly become routine. You were a fool, and you know it.
Now imagine the unexpected: As divorce proceedings start, your lover tells you in no uncertain terms that you should do everything you can to get back with your ex. Fast. Soon, the two of you are chatting and - what do you know? - fall in love all over again.
Maybe it’s a little far-fetched for divorce court, but (removing the love affair element, of course) it’s a fair encapsulation of the past five years of Motley Crue’s career.
In 1992 the band that had inadvertently had spawned dozens of atrociously cheesy metal bands - call them hair bands, your Wingers and Poisons and Cinderellas - with aggressive glam-rock albums such as 1983’s “Shout At the Devil” and 1985’s “Theater of Pain,” decided to change focus by firing caustic, addiction-prone singer Vince Neil and replacing him with an unknown named John Corabi.
At least, that’s how Neil, who later took the band to court over his share of its success, sees it. The rest of the band - Lee, bassist Nikki Sixx and guitarist Mick Mars - say Neil had become more interested in race-car driving than rock ‘n’ roll, so he quit.
Whichever side you believe, the fact remains that any version of the Crue performing at the height of grunge was bound to be laughable. Not surprisingly, the band’s 1994 self-titled effort sold dismally, and its subsequent tours were reduced to runs through the club circuit.
“That’s when, if you can believe it or not, Corabi said to us, ‘You know, you really need to get Vince back,”’ Lee recalled. “Mind you, we’re in a nasty legal battle with him over royalties, right? But John just keeps saying, ‘That’s what your fans want, man. You guys have 17 years of history. They’re not going to accept some substitute.”’
“The truth of the matter,” Sixx said in a separate interview, “is that John just wasn’t coming to the table. He felt a lot of pressure from the last album not being successful, and he wanted out.”
It seems no two Crue members are capable of viewing any issue the same way. But the bottom line is that the band’s highly publicized appearance on the American Music Awards this year was not just a stunt.
This re-formed Motley Crue is no joke. It seriously wants to rule the rock world once again. “Generation Swine” (in stores next Tuesday), which acknowledges the changes in rock over the past few years while picking up where 1989’s “Dr. Feelgood” left off, is just the beginning.
Still, unlike Kiss last year, the last thing the Crue wants is to be seen as launching some campaign for the return of ‘80s arena-rock.
“We’re not coming back because we have some sort of mission to save that aspect of rock ‘n’ roll,” Sixx said. “We don’t want that movement (hair bands) to come back. I didn’t like it in the first place. My tastes are the Stooges and the MC5, not Winger and Warrant.” Lee agrees.
“We don’t want to be seen as the poster boys for the arena-rock-is-back kick,” Lee said. “We didn’t represent it then, and we sure don’t now.
“We’re not here to give everyone else license to get back together. That’s just so stupid.”
“We’re not doing this for anyone but ourselves,” Sixx said. “It’s not the money or the acclaim. Basically we’re just getting back to what we’re about and pushing our own envelope. “It’s what we want. We’re not in competition with anyone else.”