Motley Magazine Miscellany #1

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After you’d shred up your 1980s magazines, taking out the Crue stuff and maybe trading or giving away articles and pics of other bands to buddies, you’d have all this leftover stuff. You might have a mention of Crue in a news section or a Crue pic in the magazine title page/table of contents like above. Some of this stuff was cut out and became scrapbook fodder but I kept a bunch of other pages that contained Crue content and they really show the band in the context of the magazine and hard rock scene of the ‘80s-early ’90s. 

 

Some more vintage magazine table of contents. That’s a pic of Nikki with Jon Bon Jovi in a chokehold, above, and at the top right a cool little pic of Nikki throwing a towel into the audience during a Girls, Girls, Girls performance in 1987. These are all from 1986-1992.

. . . a few news items about Motley’s onstage guests during the Dr. Feelgood tour & a visit to a Planet Hollywood . . . 

. . . the social and recreational Crue . . . 

. . . Metal Edge’s Gerri Miller asked rockers ‘What was the strangest gift you’ve ever received?’ and you have to check out the second image to read Nikki’s one word, hilarious answer . . .

. . . Here are two incomplete articles from Blast! Magazine devoted to fan letters about censorship be it from their parents or the PMRC. Nikki is mentioned in one of the letters & check out the Motley logo X’d out in the border graphics. The Crue were obviously prime targets for censorship in the 1980s . . . 

. . . Vince reminisces about school, Motley are discussed in ‘Hard Rock Heroes’ (with Shout era photo of Vince and Nikki) and a couple DOD era photos with mention of the work on the 6th studio album that never saw the light of day . . . 

. . . ‘Looks That Kill’ is voted third best song in some magazine’s poll and Shout At the Devil is voted 25th in a Circus poll of most important or best Hard Rock/Metal albums . . .  

More Motley Magazine Miscellany to come at the Sleaze Patrol Files . . .

Tommy Lee Part 2 - "Hats Off To Heather"

Motley Crue's 1989 masterpiece DR. FEELGOOD was possibly the most anticipated Hard Rock album of the 1980s. As early as 1988 the band started teasing information and we learned about the switch from stalwart and consistent producer, Tom Werman, to Canadian Bob Rock. Nikki and Tommy emerged with sleeves of tattoos and shocked many of their long-time fans.

In 1989 the band did many interviews detailing their new drug and alcohol-free lives as well as the writing and recording of their fifth album. BLAST! Magazine was a goldmine of Crue interviews and top quality studio/posed pinups and centerfolds in the months leading up to the release. BLAST! writers wrote many an article based on extensive interviews with all the members. I bought many of these and am happy to feature them here at the Sleaze Patrol Files.

Judy Wieder gets her turn with Tommy in Vancouver. In "Hats Off To Heather!" Tommy talks about his sober relationship with Heather Locklear and his wariness in having children while he’s still rockin’ at 26 years of age.

Motley Scrapbook #2, Part 1

 

I got into Crue at a very young age. I must’ve been only 8-9 years old when I heard Shout At the Devil. I lived in neighbourhoods where you learned about the birds & the bees & such things at a tender age & Motley were the perfect soundtrack to my youth.

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As soon as I could I tried getting my dirty little hands on Crue stuff. Sometimes it would just be a scrap of a pin-up with Nikki’s face, sometimes your older cousin would give you his huge Shout era door poster because he was moving on to more ‘mature’ music. I wanted it all. Early on I’d plaster my walls with whatever band I was kinda into but as my Crue collection got bigger there simply was no room for any others.

 

The scrapbooks were a way to put all those little bits of Crue stuff in order. Some of this is simply taken out of the second copy of a Crue tribute mag to beef up the content but the really great items are the random clippings from all kinds of magazines. The above Heather Locklear pic (with Tommy mention) woulda came from a copy of the National Enquirer (probably) that my mother had lying around . . . or I purloined it from a dentist’s waiting room copy, that kind of thing. The 1980s scrapbook really shows that Rock print culture was alive & well in those days. It’s still present for the teeny-bopper crowd, but certainly the days when the Motleys graced the pages of so many magazines is long gone.

There’s another Tommy-Heather clipping above that looks like it came from an entertainment magazine. Tommy’s marriage to Heather meant that us Crue fans would get some Crue content in popular magazines.

 

Above is an ad for the old Motley S. I. N. club (Safety In Numbers). I would look at that big Allister door poster & the shirt & tour book & drool wishing I had an allowance! To the right is an early media mention of the infamous Izzy Stradlin harassment of Vince’s then wife Sharise. This was even before Vince punched Izzy at the MTV Awards. Looking back I have to say Vince handled this the right way. Can you imagine some guy doing this to your wife or girlfriend?! That Vince didn’t murder him is surprising & Axl Rose’s meathead response is laughable, what a fucking dickhead. IMO, Vince woulda kicked Axl’s ass if they had ever actually scuffled. Check out Paul Miles’ Chronological Crue page for the year 1989 to learn more about this classic ‘80s battle (HERE) (starting with the August 13th & then the September 5th entries). And look below for a brief news item about the altercation & a mention of the latter’s bathroom proclivities.

 

More to come of my second Motley scrapbook at the Sleaze Patrol Files. Check out my first Motley scrapbook HERE.

***Apologies for the somewhat intrusive watermarks on the images. I’m finding my collection popping up on a lot of folks’ pages on the internet & although I of course do not own the copyrights of the actual photos I DO own my copy of them & it’s annoying to see my pics (with my old tape & nicks & rips present) used & uncredited on so many people’s pages (cropping doesn’t hide them either, I know my collection like the back of my hand). So go ahead & use my photos but maybe offer a link to my blog or something you fucking vultures :)

Vince Neil Part 2–The Blast! Interviews, 1989

The Sleaze Patrol Files brings you Vinnie being interviewed by Blast! Magazine’s Judy Weider at the Little Mountain Sound Studios in Vancouver. This is early 1989 & Vince talks about Nikki & lyrics & getting sober & clean. Again. You’ll notice a theme to all these early Dr. Feelgood interviews.

(click interviews to enlarge & READ)

Blast! magazine was a low-budget publication with the reader’s drawings making up much of the visual content. Blast! didn’t seem to care if the reader could draw or not, they’d still use the art, with the ‘Famous Last Words’ rock stars quotations getting a lot of the subpar submissions. Of course they knew kids would be buying copies to see their work published, the ‘contest’ ad below doesn’t even mention if the chosen artists get a measly free copy of the Blast! issue or not! 

I can’t find a very convincing chronology to my Vince Blast! interviews so I’ll just post them in the order they were scanned. Judy Weider seems to be assuming that her & Vince are much more chummy than they actually are when she asks about Vince’s marriage to Sharise Ruddell & he politely tells her it’s none of her business. The next few articles are from a late 1989 interview.

(A note): The shots at the top of the post show a Vince that looked like he got a ‘cheek-bone job,’ perhaps trying to compete with the then very famous & pretty Sebastian Bach of Skid Row (see a pic of the two together in the previous post). I will be posting a reader’s ‘mailbag’ in the near future where a fan asks Vince if he got plastic surgery! More 1989-1990 Blast! Magazine content to come with Tommy & Mick getting their turns.

Nikki Sixx & Steven Tyler: From Foes To Friends

On Nikki’s radio program ‘Sixx Sense’ he recently [2011] interviewed Mr. Steven Tyler about his new book, his relationship with his Aerosmith band mates & his tenure on ‘American Idol.’ It’s a very candid interview & Steven’s frank discussion about Aerosmith’s relationship lead Nikki to almost dish about the Motleys but he steps back & kinda just trails off into empty euphemisms. Tyler tells some killer anecdotes, several pertaining to Crue history, such as one about an interesting night when the boys all fell off the wagon while recording Dr. Feelgood & how the Crue inspired the Aerosmith hit ‘Dude (Looks Like A Lady).’ Check out the complete interview:

[**Sixx Sense has removed this interview from its webpage. If anybody has a copy or a link to this please let me know in the comments section, thank you.]

Listening to this conversation you may never have guessed that when these two bands first came into contact it was not so pleasant a meeting. Crue had become famous during a period when Aerosmith were at a low peak in their career (check out more details about Aerosmith in the early 1980s at their Wiki page HERE). Tyler’s first run-in with Nikki, an obvious long-time fan & disciple (he has said of Aerosmith, ‘They are my Rolling Stones’) left him with a bad taste in his mouth. Here was a young upstart selling millions of records while Tyler’s band was struggling, &, to rub salt in the wound, Nikki had appropriated Steven’s famous ‘jester’ outfit for the Theatre of Pain tour. In a circa 1985-6 Hit Parader article entitled ‘Motley Crue VS. Ratt: Who’s the King of American Metal?’ Rob Andrews rates the two bands above their competition (I love the slag to pretenders ‘Quiet Riot’) & has some not so friendly words from Tyler.

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The two seem to have patched things up over the years but Nikki was initially hurt by the words his hero was saying about him in the media. Here's part of a Circus Magazine article that has Nikki's reaction to Tyler's 'Johnny-Come-Latelys' comment.

20 years later in 2006 Motley & Aerosmith teamed up for a series of shows. Here's Nikki with the boys from Boston performing the Beatles' 'Helter Skelter':

The Man From Mars Turns 60

Mick Mars has always been the shadowy figure of Motley, the most unlikely and the blackest of the Crue sheep. The "Mars Face" was the horror element in those old posters and would stare down from the wall as both a threat and an invitation to the dark side of the Crue.

Mick is a complicated person. He is partly a revision of himself; his success and vindication as a musician with Motley Crue seems to have almost erased his original personality as Robert Deal from Indiana. His alcohol addiction in the 1980s and then his present-day troubles with the rare bone disease Ankylosing spondylitis and his perseverance as Motley’s strange and ragged guitarist has made him a bit of an underground hero. His figure on stage is both Quasimodo and elder Rock God, his restricted movements making him look like Lon Chaney jr. in the Mummy’s garb.

This is s a video of a Mick solo in Quebec, Canada from the Theatre of Pain Tour in October, 1985. He gets pissed at an audience member who’s throwing shit at him and then proceeds to shred.

Mick treated the concert guitar solo like a spectacle so you basically just get a lot of wanking but the man is to be remembered and celebrated for his ensemble playing with the Motleys and the amazing riffs and memorable solos he played on the Crue tunes.

 

Although the guitar sound on Theatre of Pain is dated there is still some great work on that album. Crue were moving into cock-rock territory here but there are still elements of metal and Mick plays some melodic and titanic solos. "Use It Or Lose It" is a tour-de-force all around with Tommy’s double-bass attack and the main guitar riff a rhythmic monster (great lyrics too). Mick’s solo is explosive and has some of that metal sound that Crue were just about to shrug off by Girls, Girls, Girls.

Here’s a very old Mick article from, I think, a Hit Parader in 1985-86. The oldest member of Motley reflects on Vince’s car accident from 1984 and how well the band is getting along despite all the turmoil. Do things ever change for these guys?! Here they are 26 years later, doing it again for their 2011 tour. Mick talks about how they came to cover "Smokin’ In the Boys Room" and it has been announced this song will be resurrected (with a new arrangement) for this year’s tour.

We’ll leave with this rare video of Mick sitting in with a hip-hop band (featuring Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello on bass) doing ‘Dr. Feelgood.’ Very cool.

Happy Birthday Mick Mars!