I’m a little all over the place with some of these posts, apologies. For part three of the Feelgood era we’re going to back track a few months before the tour started & there was nothing but excited talk in the Crue camp & the Hard Rock media about Motley’s fifth album.
(click to enlarge & READ)
It is really quite astounding how much hype was generated for this album. The Crue were really quite beloved in their own way & if history has proved anything, WERE the Kings of Sleaze Glam Metal Rock or whatever they were. Their continued success is a result of their ability to generate hype & to highlight their 1980s heyday, which, despite being outsold by others, was never as surely defined or as fondly remembered, it seems.
A magazine called Hot Rockers took the opportunity to do a retrospective article on the boys & I distinctly remember picking up this issue on a family trip & nestling into the back seat of the family car & reading the rather long article. I seem to have lost the accompanying pin-ups which were pretty rad if I remember: one centerfold from their gnarly Too Fast ‘Satanic’ session (see B&W Vince pic above). Michelle Avello & Amy Kinder weren’t the best writers but that opening paragraph had me hooked (click to read).
This was one of my favourite Crue articles & I recommend you read the last page (if not the whole thing) to see how beloved the Crue were & how much they meant to their fans (in those days & even today). You do not get this kind of writing for bands like Poison or even Bon Jovi. Crue fans knew the difference & I’d have to say the excellence & early presence of the Crue’s first two albums especially is what made them a different beast than their later 1980s contemporaries.
Above is some random stuff, an incomplete Nikki interview from Hit Parader which almost waxes philosophical at the end; a Girls tour shot of Vince with a Dr. era quote & an interview with Tommy when he was up in Canada in September 1989. Tommy discusses Moscow, the new record & another mention of a Ballads record the Crue were talking about at that time but never saw the light of day (thank God).
To round out today’s post I got a bunch of pages I ripped out of a friend’s Kerrang! from late 1989. Kerrang! is a UK publication (beginning in the same year as Motley) & you can read more about it HERE (& it’s still in operation!). Above, we see a not-so-flattering Ross Halfin photo of Tommy from a classic photo session taken just before the band’s sound check at Wembley Arena on November 2nd, 1989.
Kerrang! must’ve been in a retrospective mood, detailing Rock & Metal events from years past. We get a great Motley shot & mention for the year 1981 & then a big shot of Nikki in Moscow for the year 1989.
Above is an ad for the new Crue single & also a listing of some of the Crue’s UK dates. Next, we get a mention & a photo of Matthew Trippe, the man who claimed to have impersonated Nikki Sixx after Nikki’s 1984 car crash apparently left him incapable of performing his Motley duties for several years. Take a look at the dude: sorry bud, but you just don’t look like the Sixxster. You can’t impersonate those genes.
In the above left-hand page we have a fan writing into Kerrang! to defend our Mr. Mars. I seem to remember reading somewhere that Mick & the band got some bad reviews from a UK journalist when they performed in Europe in late 1989, something to the effect that Mick proved you could be a mediocre musician & still be in a major Rock act . . . must’ve been having a bad night. Finally we have a page of quotations, one from Nikki & notice the aggressive one from Bon Jovi concerning our Mr. Lee. I’m assuming this was a result of the Moscow madness from earlier in the year. Kerrang! was also kind enough to furnish us with a pic from the 1984 Motley tour with Ozzy . . . one that has gone down in the annals of decadent Rock tours. As a kid I did not know what to make of such photos as these: Ozzy dressed up like a woman & the Motley’s pawing at him & gesturing to stick bottles in his orifices . . . ah, 1980s backstage fun!
More SP Files to come . . .
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