Tommy and the Crue, Summer 1987

This article written by Arlett Vereecke for BLAST! Magazine details an interview with Tommy in the summer of 1987. It is a candid piece; the Motleys stumble into their Burbank rehearsal space to play tunes and do press. Mick and Nikki and Tommy are hungover following a night of merriment after an evening photo session. Vince is sober and ready to play! Their back and forth is transcribed for a few columns ["Mars Aide", Puma-donated sweat pants, Tommy and Nikki's proposed production company "Unlimited Funz"]. This is a slice of a busy afternoon of the band about to depart on a reckless and dangerous tour that would be cancelled before the year was out.


Arlett corners Tommy and they chat. Tommy talks about how he started playing drums and his important role in the Crue. Arlett criticizes the sound of the live "Jailhouse Rock" on the new Girls, Girls, Girls album and Tommy shares the details of its recording. He then expresses excitement to soon go back on tour and regret in having to leave his bride, Heather Locklear, at home. Ha ha. Tommy would often talk about touring and being married in these years. 

Tommy shares what the new tour stage show will look like including his drum solo and new back-up singers. The interview ends with Tommy and band heading into the rehearsal room to work up the 1987 set-list. New tunes like "Wild Side", "Girls, Girls, Girls", "Dancin' On Glass" and "All In the Name of Rock N Roll" would join already-classics like "Live Wire", "Shout At The Devil" and "Home Sweet Home".

Motley Used Images From the Sleaze Patrol Files . . .

 . . . on their trailer for the 30th anniversary release of GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS. I noticed when it came out and even contacted someone involved with the band, asking for a free CD but no luck. You can see the quick montage as it goes along with Tommy's fill at the 26 second mark. All the same tears and blemishes as my original copies. Kinda cool.

Motley Pin-Ups #1

Here's some random pin-ups from Motley's glory days. These were collected and plastered on my teenage walls as I moved from place to place and thirty years later I've somehow been able to keep most of them. You'll see that many of the images at the Sleaze Patrol Files have that vintage look: I taped, tacked, puttied, stapled and pasted these pics to my various bedroom walls from about ages 9-16.

Motley had three members who were regarded as sex symbols (Sorry, Mick!) and so many of the magazines provided content specifically for the female fan. I would reluctantly put up some of these pics but only if I didn't have something cooler to take their place!

Motley in 1987. This photo session was a popular one and I have posters, 4 page pull-outs, centerfolds and stickers of it. After the gonzo glam of the Theatre Of Pain era, the above style was described as "street." Sure thing, guys!

More stylized "street" or semi-Glam Rock look for the Motleys in the Dr. Feelgood years. After a very glammy album artwork photo session of the boys in straight jackets they toned down their on and off stage clothes to the point where they just kinda looked like Rocker dudes. The other difference is the sleeves of tattoos! An extreme lifestyle choice in 1988-89, not so much in the tattooed 21st century.

Come the Decade Of Decadence release in late 1991, the Motley's looked more and more straight and relaxed (minus Tommy's brief run in with a shaved head) and were destined to enter new phase of music that would add experimentation to their groovin' heavy Rock . . .

A Crue Of Pals, Part 1: Poison & Ratt

 Nikki Sixx & Ratt's Robbin Crosby show us what rock stars looked like in 1984. 

 Motley & Ratt were buds in the glory days of the Sunset Strip in the early '80s & both enjoyed early success. Ratt didn't have the second career Motley did but their tunes like 'Round And Round' continue to be played on classic rock radio & used in movies & commercials.

 Nikki & Tommy appeared as cops in Ratt's video for their tune 'Back For More.' 

  They made another appearance alongside Ozzy Osbourne with brief glimpses of Carmine Appice & Jake E. Lee in Ratt's video for 'You Think You're Tough'. Man, what's with Ratt using actors & musicians who are more famous than they are for their videos?!

In the 21st century, Nikki especially liked to distance Motley from cliche' 1980s Hair Metal music. Although it can be argued Crue started the whole fad in 1985 with the release of their commercial Theatre Of Pain album & extreme glam image, probably no other band can be so perfectly labelled 'Hair Metal' as Poison.

The two bands do not seem to have crossed paths very often & the two photos from my collection date from the year 1987. Although Nikki would bad-mouth Poison in the 2000s & insist that Motley was a different creature they still toured with the band in 2011, using openers The New York Dolls to add legitimacy to the bill.

Here's the Poison boys covering Motley's 'Looks That Kill' from an early show before they became Hair Metal superstars.

             
                 More Motley and their Rock Star pals to come at The Sleaze Patrol Files!!

Girls, Girls, Girls Part 8: Crue Confessions, 1987-'88

    

Here are a couple Metal Edge Magazine items from the years 1987-1988. 'Crue Confessions' is a collection of quotations & 'Crue Confidential' sets the record straight about a bunch of Motley rumours in early 1988. We learn about Matthew Trippe, Vince's divorce from wife Sharise Ruddell & the demise of Motley's popular S.I.N. fan club.

[To view these pages closer & read, right click & open in a new window.]

  

Girls, Girls, Girls Part 7

 Let’s drop ourselves into the year 1987: in a way, the band’s most infamous year, the year of heroin overdoses & tour derailments, all detailed in the 21st century Motley tomes THE DIRT & Nikki’s THE HEROIN DIARIES.

We’re going to look at two separate Motley articles/interviews from Circus Magazine in the years 1987-1988.

 ‘Motley Crue ‘87: Huge triumphs, small disappointments’ sums up the year as the band’s most successful & doesn’t seem to be privy to some of the late developments. The unfortunate Rolling Stone Magazine cover story is mentioned as is Nikki’s book of short stories. This is a very early reference to a book that wouldn’t get published until 20 years later under the title, ‘The Heroin Diaries.’

One of the great things about these classic old articles & interviews is we get to hear candid details about the Crue’s lives during their most successful years. The above Circus Magazine interview with Vince is chock full of information & anecdotes about the Motley’s world in early 1988. Adrianne Stone speaks to Vince after his first visit to Hawaii. Motley had just cancelled their European tour in late 1987 & the article addresses all the speculation about the affair. Vince deflects the drug allegations & insists exhaustion & the economy kept the Crue home in the States. He discusses rehearsals for the next record & blasts MTV for banning several of the videos from the Girls, Girls, Girls album promising that the band would never cooperate with the network again (that turned out not to be true). Vince then regales the interviewer with a tale of speeding in one of his new vehicles, revealing he had just purchased a Lamborghini & a Porsche because he couldn’t make up his mind which one he wanted! The interview ends with a mention of Guns N’ Roses’ success & their friendship with Vince & the gang & Vince’s nuptials to Sharise Ruddell.

Welcome (a slight clean-up Re-post)

Welcome to The Sleaze Patrol Files, a collection of Motley Crue memorabilia from the 1980s to the early 1990s, their Decade of Decadence. This blog is also, in part, a tribute to the vibrant print culture of the times; established and fly-by-night Rock and Metal publications in the years immediately before the Internet would drastically change how entertainment is consumed and packaged.

This blog is mostly a tribute to the best years of one of the great American Hard Rock bands. It is here for the many new Crue fans around the globe who weren't around in those days to experience the Crue in their first and best incarnation . . . how they were reviled and adored by the media, how they rose to the top of the Hard Rock heap throughout the 1980s and were the archetype that so many lesser bands copied. My main Crue ‘collecting’ days ended when Vince Neil left the band in the early 1990s and that is the scope of this blog. But, as the Crue are still somehow together (as I write) and are even touring (they ceased in 2016) and are seemingly always in the news, I will be commenting on the present Motley universe at times as well.

This is not so much a collection and I was not and am not a collector as it has become today with fans spending thousands of dollars at a time to get band memorabilia . . . I was just a big fan of Motley’s music and lived in an area where not a lot of Motley stuff was going to find its way . . . but the band was so popular and present in those days that there was still much to be had for someone who was looking for it. My youth and lack of money meant I had to make due with mostly magazines and posters and T-shirts and certainly vintage magazine content is the meat of this blog . . . as well as the most interesting aspect to me. The music industry has changed in many surprising ways since the Crue ruled the 1980s and there are elements of the media of those days that almost seem to have more in common with the world of the 1950s-60s than it does with our present time. Ephemera such as Rock mirrors from carnivals, pins or stickers from bags of chips are almost artifacts compared to the present-day move towards digital.

But more importantly . . . this stuff is here to enjoy, for the Crue fans old and new, the real shit from the dirty ‘80s and early 1990s. These pinups and posters were hung up in school lockers, bedrooms and garages (I got stuff from everywhere) and are older than many of the Crue’s new fans! And some of this stuff is pretty beat up: 

!!!!THIS IS NOT A FANBOY SITE!!!!

Motley Crue have many faults as people and as a band, or at least that’s what they’ve been telling us for the past 30 years, and I will say unflattering things about them when it’s appropriate and when it is tied into my reminiscences of the band and what it was like to be a Cruehead in the 1980s. The Crue don’t need tasteless drones saying ‘Motley Crue Rules!!’ all the time and never telling shit like it is. The only way for the Crue to live on in people’s minds is if the crap is separated from the good. When it comes down to it the main reason anybody should even give a shit about this band is because of how great they were from 1981-1991. And they were great. They’re not Rolling Stones, Beatles or Led Zepplin great, but Motley is a classic, important and perfect-in-their-own way band much like T. Rex or the Misfits and should be more frequently discussed in those terms despite even their own selling-short of their brand and legacy. So this blog is a thank you and a fuck you to my Rock n’ Roll heroes.

Before the VH1 Behind The Music, their best-selling autobiography The Dirt, and their branding as THE most hedonistic Rock band in the land they were a true Rock n' Roll phenomenon. Much that has been said about the band in the last 20 years had already been been revealed and mythologized by a vital Hard Rock and Metal community of fans and critic-journalists of the day. So let’s go back to those days, thirty years and more ago now, when the Motleys tore through the landscape and established themselves as the Kings of Sleaze Rock n' Roll!!

***All articles and images are from my 1980s-‘90s teenage Motley Crue collection unless otherwise stated. Images are scanned or are my photographs and some video has been converted from my private VHS collection. ***

***If the articles still do not blow up to a size that makes the print easy to read, remember to use your computer’s own zoom options***