Mötley Crüe: An interview from 1986

The metal act Mötley Crüe may have announced the Final Tour, but the "most reviled band in the world" isn't quite ready to call it quits. They say they'll keep making music. To remind us of their strange and beastly tendencies, let's take a look at an interview of theirs from 1986.

The first image...

Picture Suite 619 at the Park Hyatt in Chicago. Floor plants in wicker baskets. The drinks cabinet. The glass coffee table, with fresh flowers and copies of the latest editions of the Esquire, Fortune and Neiman-Marcus catalogues.

All the wonderful touches to make the busy traveller feel right at home. If you want a cold beer, just call room service. Alternatively, enjoy your drink in a velvet chair at the lobby bar, where you can buy a 12-ounce Miller Lite for three dollars.

You can do a lot of things in a room this nice. In fact, you can do whatever you want. You're paying for it. It costs you $225 a night. Check-out is at noon. One thing you can do (and you can do it even if someone else — say, a rock band with a lot of money — is footing the bill for Suite 619) is spend an hour with a musician.

That's what I did, with the musician in question being Nikki Sixx, the bassist, songwriter and spokesman for Mötley Crüe. Of the most reviled band in the world, and the band that has worked hardest to convince the world it's despicable.

Let's just say plenty of people see the Crüe as sexist morons. It's a real curse. Tipper Gore, the well-known musicologist, once recited some of their lyrics to me (Livewire and Too Young To Fall In Love), and I believe she did it purely from memory. Singer Vince Neil has been quoted in newspapers saying: "Oh, we're so happy to be in Albuquerque. Our only regret is we can't eat all the pussy we see out there tonight." This was reported by reliable sources.

It's been widely reported that the same man was behind the wheel in a car accident that killed Nicholas Dingley of Hanoi Rocks and seriously injured two others. Driving under the influence of alcohol, Neil — aside from a few other penalties — was ordered to pay $2.6 million to the injured parties.

But that was a year ago. Now Neil is back on the road, and with him, so are Mötley Crüe. Their Chicago show sold out. Then again, that's true of most of their shows. Their fans practically worship them.

So do they deserve all this hullabaloo? (And more to the point, if the 1986 atmosphere made them deserve it, what about now?! Has their paint job held up?!)

Honestly, I doubt it. Their three albums are indistinguishable from one another. Let's be honest: when Mick Jagger was their age he sang with an innuendo ("She said she liked the way I held the microphone") that makes the Crüe's stuff sound like it was written by a mediocre-imaginative dishwasher. That's none other than Nikki Sixx, of course. (The dishwasher, I mean.)

Their shows are peppered with huge flame bursts and constant loads of dynamite. That just means they can afford such things. Besides, it diverts your attention from their songs, which (as noted) are unremarkable.

I imagine they're worth examining for sociological reasons, as Bob Greene did in Esquire. Unfortunately, that's not the issue that came up at the glass coffee table in Suite 619.

Nikki Sixx is tall, slow and relaxed. He speaks with a teenage manner that combines a certain intelligence with an aggravating repetitiveness. Even here, offstage in Suite 619, he wears cut-off leather gloves. He says his real name is Nikki Sixx and that he's 26 years old. So you can believe some of what he says, I suppose.

"I remember, when I was a kid, I heard Big Bad John by Jimmy Dean on the radio. It drove me crazy!" says the 26-year-old. "I used to sit there and call radio stations requesting that song. And by then the Beatles were obviously already out, but I really didn't know about the Beatles. I remember I ran into some Beatles movies. Fucking wizards. I kept listening to Helter Skelter. We covered that on our album [Shout At The Devil]. Then I found the Rolling Stones, and I said, 'This is getting better.' And it kept getting better. Heavier sound. And I always liked that more glamorous stuff. But it all started with a song that had such a big, deep voice. You know, it sounds big! It sounded raw. I always liked that. You can't say why you like it, you just do."

Wow… from Jimmy Dean to Mötley Crüe. Talk about entropy. How could the famous balladeer and future sausage-man have known what he was unleashing when he wrote Big Bad John on a plane on the way to a recording session in Nashville?

His favourite albums, at least, came out after the JFK assassination. Nikki names Highway To Hell by AC/DC, the Beatles' White Album, and Shout At The Devil by Mötley Crüe as three of the greatest moments in music.

Of course, the Crüe feel obliged to disappoint you, whoever "you" may be. I think they shout more at those who couldn't care less about Mötley Crüe existing than they do at the devil.

In fact, I suggested writing the following: "These guys really suck. They've never done anything worthwhile."

"That's fine!" Sixx said enthusiastically.

"They hate women—"

"That's fine!"

"—and they're the worst influence on anyone, ever," I concluded.

"Please print that," Nikki Sixx requested.

Picture it in print. Your music is bitter. You violate every convention of politeness ever invented. You're sick. You're rich.

"First of all, let me explain something: I'm not incredibly rich," said Nikki Sixx.

I stole the Neiman-Marcus catalogue from Suite 619, as a souvenir.

A cold, cold rain hit the Chicago area as five of us piled into a limousine. (Classic 1986 situation!)

Two were Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee, the Crüe's drummer. Two were their managers, Doc McGhee and Doug Thaler. The last one was me, the magazine thief.

A limousine, you understand, is big and comfortable, and a good way to travel if you're incredibly rich, or even if you're not. This particular limousine had a phone in the back and a tape deck accessible to Tommy Lee, who played a few tapes.

The long drive went on, as did the boredom and the claustrophobia. Lots of stories were told and lots of comments were made. Tommy Lee referred to Yngwie Malmsteen as "Yngwie Bumsteen." Humour flowed.

When the long drive finally ended, dozens of these fans had gathered at the back of the arena, the spot where the limousines glide in, delivering the stars. The fans, standing in a torrential, freezing rain, recognised Tommy Lee, who was sitting by the left rear window. Lee rolled the window down and shouted, "Yeah — sex!" thrusting his fist in the air. The fans went wild. Lee rolled the window back up and looked at Nikki Sixx.

"Pussies," he said, in an unmistakably harsh tone.

A strange ride, as I said before.

Well, I have to admit I had a great time with the Crüe at the Rosemont Horizon. Nikki Sixx took me up on stage during the soundcheck to show me the pyrotechnics and their weird, angular stage. I met Vince Neil there. He was drinking a glass of water. (Strange for a rock star in 1986!)

I drank a lot of beers, courtesy of Mötley Crüe. I met Mick Mars, who had collapsed onto a couch backstage. He ended up giving me a bunch of personalized Mick Mars guitar picks and some souvenirs from the "Theatre of Pain" tour for my kids. (The book is actually a high-quality product, but it has some strange information in its pages. For example, it says Mick Mars's "scariest experience" was that he "beat up some black guys.")

I told them I'd read somewhere that someone had counted the flash bursts at the last Dio show — there were over a hundred.

"We've got 116," said Nikki Sixx. "Write that down." Yes sir!

Sixx lamented their fate when I mentioned that the Crüe were probably becoming less cool. What about the ballad Home Sweet Home on their latest LP. "First we were mass murderers doing Helter Skelter, then we were Satan worshippers, and now we've gone soft." You just can't win, I guess.

Still, Nikki was thrilled about their Home Sweet Home video. In fact, he was so enthusiastic he took me onto the bus to show it to me. "Watch the lesbian from the beginning," he advised me with a bit of intensity. Yeah, they were homophobic.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Those are people who are afraid of gay people because they're afraid of their own homosexual tendencies," I explained.

"Man, if that's what people want, it's fine with me. I don't really care what they do."

"Well, what about your clothes?" I asked.

"I like to look good, I wear makeup," said Nikki. "Shit, President George Washington wore a wig and makeup. If he can do it, I can do it."

During their show, Vince Neil rolled out the usual lines ("How many perverts made it out here tonight, huh?" "As I recall, there's nothing like Chicago pussy, right, boys?").

Overall, the impression is that these guys have something special going on. They certainly deserve our attention. Maybe they need medical monitoring! (A finding that holds just as true today as it did in 1986!)

The interview was conducted by © J. Kordosh in 1986.

For more news about the band, we refer you to the official page of Mötley Crüe.