Classic Motley Cassette Art

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I got all the original Crue records on vinyl but mostly for the artwork because cassettes were my main mode of listening to Motley music.[Click HERE to see my Motley vinyl collection]. One of my ‘80s Crue fan memories was finally seeing the LP of Shout At the Devil again after years of only having the cassette: it had a lyric sheet! Finding out what Vince was actually saying is maybe fodder for another post. And, oh yeah, this is sposeta be about the old ‘80s cassette liner notes & artwork!

Too Fast For Love. I didn’t actually own this album ‘till about 1987-88. But I had an uncle who had the early Canadian release of the Leathur version which is a different mix than the one Elektra put out after Crue signed with them. After years of asking for it & waiting, he finally gave me the cassette. That Canadian version of Too Fast has the Elektra track list on the cover but the Leathur mix on the cassette with ‘Stick To Your Guns’ & etc. I can’t remember where that red Too Fast with the ‘pentagram’ inside photo (above) came from but I would have shat my pants when I saw it. Crue stuff was rare in my neck of the woods & anything from this era to 1984 was like the Holy Grail.

Shout At the Devil was really butchered, art-wise, as a cassette. The sleek black-on-black pentagram cover replaced with 4 tiny cropped portraits from the LP’s amazing gatefold. The lyrics & the big red pentagram didn’t make it either. The liner notes were kept & were a source of wonder as a kid.

I found a serious Motley collector’s page that shows the different international versions of Crue cassettes & it looks like us Canadians fared well with our artwork extending across the full back of the panel. So our Shout has that extra photo on the back from the publicity shots for the album BUT the front photo was minimized by a stupid black border on the bottom with the title & the Elektra logo.

Theatre Of Pain had a lyric sheet which was cool because, believe it or not, some of us really dug Nikki’s lyrics.

It’s been the hard road, the edge of an overdose

Well no matter how high, well, you’re still too low

I’ve been the dancer, the wicked romancer

A never-ending nightmare, edge of disaster

Girls, Girls, Girls was a dark album for me as an 11-12 year old. It had the outer appearance of being a pop record that a lot of people bought & listened to but it had these sinister elements to it that made it different than other hard rock music of the day. I got in trouble when my aunt read the lyrics to ‘Wild Side’ & said I was perverting her kids. I’ve always liked the Girls album because it is so sleazy & heavy & bluesy. Nowadays I find tunes like ‘Dancin’ On Glass,’ ‘Five Years Dead’ & ‘Bad Boy Boogie’ to be examples of Crue at their best. Heavy, dirty, groovy & with a touch of Motley class.

Somewhere down the line I seem to have lost my Dr. Feelgood cassette but I still have a couple of cassette singles from the album. I really don’t know how many of these things would have sold or remember how much they cost. They may even be rare.

We’ll be dipping into the 1990s with my collection. If ‘Primal Scream’ wasn’t such a good song I might’ve disregarded the Decade of Decadence album of 1991 . . . actually, ‘Angela’ is a pretty great tune too. If the boys had made another record with songs as strong as these two, it would’ve been a monster. Alas, it was never to happen & DOD & ‘Primal Scream’ would be the last great gasp of the original incarnation of the Crue.

Checking out that crazy Motley collector’s cassette page again I see he does not have the Canadian version of the DOD cassette up there. It’s a nice 8-panel booklet that, upon purchase, I immediately separated from the cassette & threw in a plastic sleeve with my collectibles. She’s in great condition to this day. 

Check out these kids on Youtube giving reviews on Crue cassettes. Motley gets four stars for ‘not making that many mistakes’ on Shout, ha. Wait til you hear Vince live kid.

Motley Cruise To Nowhere . . .

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I think this is from a 1987 issue of Metal Edge. The last 2 scans are all I have of a Faces article on the MTV contest. Fans got picked to hang with the Motley boys on a boat. I didn’t have MTV in those days (still don’t, who the hell would want it) & no YouTube to check out the airing until the last few years so all I‘ve known or seen about this event was this article & pic. Nikki mentions the event in his The Heroin Diaries.

Looks like a fun trip, lucky bastards. Here’s what Paul Miles has for this date in his 1987 NEWS section at his awesome Chronological Crue webpage: 

 “29/10/87

Steve Deske and Mary Ann Rizzo win MTV’s Mötley Cruise to Nowhere competition and join the Crüe on a five-hour luxury boat cruise in the Bermuda Triangle, following a private cocktail party at the ritzy Elbow Beach Hotel the night before. Two wild cross-dressers attend the party, one who designed costumes for the band and happened to win a contest and one who later goes on to front The Toilet Boys as Miss Guy. The contest winners are driven around in limousines and given $1,000 spending money.”

And now, I’m going to furnish you with the luxury I did not have as a 1980s Crue Head, I’m going to show you the commercial for the special & then the entire 7 minute segment in all its washy, VHS glory! They were, strangely, more innocent times . . . even when you consider what these guys did for hobbies!

 

UPDATE

Just came across this three part video of one of the folks who were on the cruise. Miss Guy gives us some background to this classic moment in Motley history. Follow the links at YouTube for parts 2 & 3.

 

Rip Presents Motley Crue, 1989 – Part 3

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I bought this magazine from a fellow Crue fan back in 1989-90. I think I paid 10-15 bucks for it but I didn’t feel ripped off. The Crue fan died in a car accident less than 10 years later in almost wild Motley fashion.

So there’s some Motley Trivia for ya above with the answers below. Darn, some of those questions are hard!

I used to see ads in the mags for the Motley Crue S. I. N. Fan Club. At the time I had no money or sense to join & it almost seemed beyond the reach of a kid way up North. The article below is a little history of the club & says that it may have been starting up again. I drooled over all that vintage Motley swag.

 

‘Motley Memories’ is a collage of old Crue clippings from their halcyon days on the Sunset Strip. A revelation to me at the time was the Coffman & Coffman Productions Motley Crue press release with all the old bio info . . . of particular interest was that Mick said he was from Newfoundland, Canada! I had not read much pre-Girls, Girls, Girls stuff so I gobbled this up.

A discography with a tentative Dr. Feelgood track-list closes out the written portion of this Rip tribute to the Crue. There’s a couple more vintage shots & then the back cover of the mag, an ad for a Tora Tora record. Enjoy!

Rip Presents Motley Crue, 1989 – Part 2

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In the next batch of scans from the Rip Magazine Motley tribute (starting above) we encounter a word that was almost their mantra throughout their decade of decadence . . . SLEAZE. Nikki would comment in interviews on how he would listen to the radio & gauge the ‘sleaze factor’ of the other artists, & it soon occurred to me that that was the exact ingredient I was hearing in the Crue’s music that gave it its edge & sound.

My introduction to Motley Crue coincided with my first hearing of Quiet Riot & Kiss as well. A neighbourhood chum played me some records in his parent’s basement. I think I liked all of it but the guy had Shout At the Devil, with the gatefold, & I was stunned. It seemed pretty clear to my young ears that one of those bands meant business, & that band was the Crue. Mind you, I believe the Kiss record was Dynasty, not considered to be their best moment (altho’, nowadays, I think it’s a pretty great record). Nonetheless, I still remember being pretty damn blown away by the sound & appearance of the Crue & borrowed the record & took it home & played it on my folks’ furniture-piece stereo. I was mesmerized & didn’t actually own a copy of Shout (& on cassette) until a couple years later.

I heard sleaze Rock n’ Roll for the first time, at a young age, & it brought me into the world of music, literature, sex, violence: the adult world. It made me curious & hungry for more of that tone: Universal Horror movies, Bela Lugosi, William Burroughs, The Original Alice Cooper Band, the Blues, porno, drugs & alcohol.

UK writer Steffan Chirazi does a better job explaining Motley’s sleaze factor in his great ‘Motley Live: A Ride On The Wild Side’ article (above & below). I’ve probably read this a hundred times in my life. Steffan captures the excitement in hearing Crue for the first time in the 1980s. 

Hey, I guess Rip wasn’t too hardcore, they had Kip Winger on the cover! (RIP actually featured a wide variety of Metal & Hard Rock & Hardcore music).

So photo shoots like the above one from their Theatre Of Pain era are the reason Crue are considered the progenitors of Hair Metal. We here at The Sleaze Patrol Files suggest that the Crue are the archetype, the icon, & are not classifiable by trends or catch phrase appraisals . . . so there :)

Here’s the Motley members’ individual article section compiled by Charrie Foglio. Some great Shout-era shots from the set of the ‘Too Young To Fall In Love’ video.

There’s that word again . . . . . .