10 Year Anniversary of The Sleaze Patrol Files 2010-2020

We somehow forgot that this blog turned ten years old last month!

So much has happened in Motley Land in the last ten years . . . seriously, do these guys ever stop?
And, yes (knock on wood), they're all still with us.

From 2010-2020 Motley retired, had a successful biography movie released about their career, reformed and then had to halt their activity like everyone else due to the semi-global shutdown caused by the Corona-virus in 2020.

Mick still hasn't released a solo album; Nikki moved from California to Wyoming and is doing his best impression of a soccer mom on his Instagram account; Tommy released an album in 2020 and is a social media celebrity with his wife Brittany; Vince is battling weight issues and preparing for the potential reunion tour in 2021-2022 and is doing some solo shows, as always.

Here's an unpopular opinion: we hope this co-tour with Def Leppard and Poison and whoever else doesn't happen. We hope, if they must tour again (and they really shouldn't), they do it headlining alone in arenas like they're supposed to. We MIGHT go see that reunion.

Mick Funz is not a real person and over the last ten years has been the pseudonym of several people. Motley Crue are interesting as a subject of nostalgia and vicarious entertainment. In our real lives we enjoy and produce and partake in many other styles of music and culture: The Sleaze Patrol Files is an attempt to make something meaningful out of our childhood collections of 1980s Rock Culture. We still love the old Motley music, we even think the true character of the band has not been represented by any movie, book or documentary. The "phenomenon" of Motley Crue has yet to be shown accurately and can only be done by writers, researchers and publishers not associated with the band.

Motley Crue will turn 40 years old on April 1st, 2021. Although the band often cites January 1981 as their birthday, it was actually just the date Nikki decided he was going to create a band like Motley Crue . . . Vince didn't join the band until April 1st with Tommy and Mick being recruited months earlier. Too Fast for Love was released in November of 1981. What an opportunity for an amazing 40th anniversary boxset next year! But all the good stuff is owned by private collectors that Nikki hates so there goes that legacy.

As we stated 10 years ago in our introduction to this blog: This is Not A Fan-Boy site.
Let's be frank: Motley Crue, in 2020, suck.
They haven't put out really good music since the 1990s; the bio movie was a cheapo straight-to-Netflix campy romp with no substance; they put on bloated, poorly-executed concerts in the 2010s; Vince Neil has become the subject of endless parody videos showing the atrocious state of his live vocal . . . it is what it is. We stick around to get more of the old days. More and more photos and stories and info are revealed as the years pass, this is the best part about the ease of sharing on social media. Uber Crue fans and collectors and folks formerly associated with the band are talking and sharing their memories and collections and it's been a bit of a Crue fans' dream since the movie came out in 2019 when the band got that much more popular.

Thanks to those who have visited over the years. We'll try to keep the ship afloat. We do have more Crue collectibles to share. Have a Motley Christmas and a Happy Crue Year!

The Crue and the BLM Movement - Some Fun

Here's an "essay" I recently wrote at a chat-board. It was a tongue-in-cheek response to trolls wondering why T-Bone and the Sixxster have had nothing to say about the 2020 BLM movement. Anyone who knows Motley knows that their history with race relations is complicated.
Copyright 2020, Mick Funz.


THE MOTLEYS AND THE BLM MOVEMENT

The Sleaze Patrol Teen Bedroom, 1991

The walls of the Sleaze Patrol Files Blog have been decorated with vintage Motley pin-ups, posters, shirts, mirrors and assorted memorabilia since the mid 1980s. Here we are in the year 2020 with the original members all still alive and with a recently postponed tour (until summer 2021). It seems unreal. No one thought the Crue would be alive let alone performing and recording music this late in the game. 2021 is their 40th anniversary! Here is a video of the Sleaze Patrol Files headquarters back in the year 1991 when the Motleys were still in their original Decade Of Decadence heyday and before Vince would leave in 1992.

"THE DIRT" Movie/Motley's Music and Fame - World Of Motley Crue

This post was originally published in March of 2019 when the movie had just come out. Although I still pretty much believe today what I wrote at that time I would say that if I enjoy the movie at all it's as a cheesy, guilty-pleasure romp. I was hoping for something more along the lines of "Boogie Nights" but the director and the scriptwriters for THE DIRT were not at that level of awareness or talent.
For comparison, I only recently watched the Queen bio movie, Bohemian Rhapsody, and I can see why "The Dirt" did so well: the Queen movie is only marginally better. What a cheesy, dishonest, vapid film. The Live Aid ending was strong and Queen's music is great but it was only a step above the Crue movie. I'm very surprised it's been so successful.

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THE DIRT (2019) - Netflix

This is what happens when you spend the last 20 years of your career celebrating your bad behaviour and not your music.
They did an autobiography with a director and a cast and, probably, a whole production team who aren't even fans of the band's music.

Out of their nine studio albums they've released you could make the argument that only four of them are strong. They would be 1981's TOO FAST FOR LOVE, 1983's SHOUT AT THE DEVIL, 1989's DR. FEELGOOD and 1994's MOTLEY CRUE. I've been reading and discussing Motley online for almost 20 years, have watched thousands of hours of concerts and interviews and media and in my "research" (cough) these four albums are passionately and consistently celebrated at chat boards and in the comments at YouTube and other video streaming services. The 1994 album has John Corabi on vocals and many 1980s Crue Heads don't like it but its cult popularity continues to grow over the years.

"The Dirt" is a bad movie. The positive reviews from music fans (most critics are panning the film) shows perhaps a low expectation from a band they see as a joke anyway. But the movie is a cheap and artless reproduction of cardboard cut-out readings of lurid events from the book. The songs are performed periodically and pop up on the soundtrack but they are barely broached. No band is this famous simply for their reputation. Before documentaries and books they had to write five to seven albums' worth of material and some of it even had to be good. It had to sell millions and kick the asses of millions of mostly immature kids and continue to bring them joy into their middle ages to become a movie on a popular platform that many will watch 30 plus years after the fact.

Or at least you need the perfect songs to carry the narrative and sell the story. "The Dirt," with the same stories and fates as presented in that book, but, with, say, Poison songs as the soundtrack? Or even WASP or Dokken or Quiet Riot or Twisted Sister or Ratt? That book doesn't sell as much and Netflix doesn't commit it to celluloid. Motley are a truly 3D band.

Ever since the success, first, of the bands' VH1 "Behind The Music" special in 1998, then the autobiography in 2001, Motley have been playing out the third and fourth acts of their career. They have not had a creative relationship, the four of them, since 1997's GENERATION SWINE and that was mostly between the "Terror Twins," Nikki and Tommy. Vince and Mick were alienated and almost ousted in those years. 2000's almost parody of Hard Rock and other assorted songs, NEW TATTOO, showed the band forging ahead without Tommy. 2008's SAINTS OF LOS ANGELES and all the singles since are Nikki songs written and partly informed by his SIXX AM crew or friends who do approximations of a Modern Hard Rock sound. Factory assembled-sounding Rock even if some of the tunes are pretty catchy.

But there's four strong albums, by vote. I personally like songs from other albums more than songs off these strong four, but in the end, the point is that Motley Crue have a respectable amount of good music. This is why we are fans. Google "Motley Crue tribute bands." Many more than any other band from their scene. See the many fan-curated pages there are dedicated to, say, Poison or Warrant as compared to Crue. Even bands who sold twice as much as Motley like Bon Jovi or Def Leppard do not have the following that Crue have. Back in the 1980s, Crue would routinely win the popularity contests in Hard Rock magazines. They have always been something of a "people's band" and have received an almost rabid fan base. I recently listened to a 2014 interview Mick Mars did with Eddie Trunk on Trunk's radio show. Fans called in to talk to him and the reverence the fans had for the Man from Mars was touching and impressive. "You are the reason I play guitar." "I think you are the most underrated Rock guitarist EVER" I'm not sure a C. C. Deville or even a Ritchie Sambora or the Def Leppard guys would necessarily draw such a response from the public.

Anyway, we'll always have 1981-1991.

The Pornographic Motley Crue, Part 1 - World Of Motley Crue

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Locker Art #3

Circus Collector's Issue, 1994 (1984 Crue Article)

This Circus Magazine Collector's Issue was published in early 1994 and features classic interviews from the 1960s to the 1990s. Motley joins such illustrious company as Led Zeppelin, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix. This would have been published before the band released their self-titled record with new vocalist John Corabi. The table of contents blurb says

"Til death do they party. It's 1984 and the gates of hell have opened siccing Nikki, Vince and their pack of wacks on a shocked music scene."

Richard Hogan's article, "Motley Crue: Glad To Be Bad," begins by telling us that everyone (except the Rock magazines) seem to be putting the Crue down. Hogan says that MTV Host J. J. Jackson recently reported that Vince punched out a female patron at The Rainbow Bar and Grill when she objected to his Marine outfit (Paul Miles' Chronological Crue page has this happening at The Troubadour in January of 1982). Jackson drops the script and surmises to the camera that Vince may not have been so tough if the objector was an actual Marine!

J. J. Jackson

This video of Nikki and Vince on MTV talking to host Martha Quinn comes from January-February 1984, after the Shout at The Devil album and the premier video "Looks That Kill" had been released. At around three minutes and thirty seconds Martha says that just a few weeks back Vince was in the news regarding the assault. Vince says that it was a man he hit, not a woman  ("You know, everyone in Hollywood looks like a woman  . . . I hit somebody but it wasn't a girl"). This is one of the many stories that never made it to "The Dirt" book or movie.

The Circus interview is likely from December, 1983 when the Crue were in Massachusetts rehearsing for their opening slot on the Ozzy Osbourne Bark At The Moon tour in 1984. Nikki and Vince illustrate their violent and wild temperaments with stories of a recent (Nikki) car crash and a (Vince) Halloween incarceration. "We are extremists," explains Nikki. The band members and their current ages are shared as well as the circumstances of the making of their independently-released Too Fast For Love back in 1981. 

Motley were going out of their way to gain notoriety in these years and the Metal magazines ate it up and shared the debauched details. The above video clip also shows that the band was singled out by the PMRC. Nikki's x-rated groupie stories in the pages of the magazines would land the band in hot water soon after this interview and 1984 would end with the death of Razzle Dingley of the group Hanoi Rocks at the hands of drunk driver, Vince Neil.

The Motley Crue drama played out in real time in these years. Fans devoured these popular rags to hear news of their Rock God heroes and to get images for their teenybopper shrines. Circus Magazine almost exclusively featured live shots of the bands on tour. The mixture of video channels, Rock magazines with articles and posters and LPs or cassettes blaring the music was a heady mixture.



Above is the Classified page (for some more flavour of the age) and an ad that reminds us when this Circus was published: 1994. Motley were about to release the self-titled album with new singer John Corabi and Vince was a semi-successful solo artist. This back page ad for Gibson Guitars shows Mr. Neil with two members of his band. He is still playing solo shows today. Vince would get back with Motley by 1996-1997 when the magic of the 1984 years was long gone. That a movie biography of the band would be released in 2019 is a testament to the strength of the music and the allure of the notoriety of the group in the 1980s.

More Rock Magazines to come at The Sleaze Patrol Files!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Motley Drawings, Part II: Not-So-Good Kid Art

In my first post sharing my childhood Motley Crue art from school friends there were some really cool images. In today's post? Not so much. Some friends were better artists than others. Some of these were drawn by really young kids and look like it but I was always happy to receive some Crue art from a friend. Enjoy these pieces from the 1980s to the early 1990s.

 

 

Bullwinkle

Here is a video featuring a woman who may or may not be Bullwinkle.

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".

Rock Power Magazine, Summer 1991

 

Mr. Sixx graces the cover of the British publication Rock Power Magazine in mid 1991.

Here is all the Crue content present in this issue including a gossip item about Vince going into rehab to deal with a drinking problem said to have been partly due the failure of his marriage with Sharise Ruddell. Motley's personal woes were always news in the Rock media of the day.

Tommy took part in the charity baseball game for the T. J. Martell Foundation in 1991. Lee and other Rock celebrities raised money for Lukemia research.

Nikki talks about the soon-to-be-released Decade of Decadence and the upcoming UK Monsters of Rock Festival performances. The next Motley record is discussed and is promised to be a more experimental Crue.

Crue Pin-Ups and Posters Home Video, 1991

Waaaayyy back in February of 1991 I made a three minute video showing many of my Motley pin-ups and posters from Rock magazines. I was fifteen years old. Back in those days, if I met a fellow Crue fan who said they didn't like the tune "Save Our Souls" from 1985's THEATRE OF PAIN, I thought they were jokers.
Enjoy!

School Notebook Crue Art and 2019's "The Dirt"

Going through some boxes at my folks' place recently I stumbled upon these old English and Math class notebook duo-tangs from the early 1990s. Tagging your school books with your favourite bands was a busy pastime for us old-school Metal Heads. I'm glad I went to public school where no one told me I couldn't graffiti my books! Looks like I was listening to Faith No More and Nazareth at the time, too. 

While we're here we thought we'd share the trailer for the Crue bio coming to Netflix on March 22nd, 2019. "The Dirt" is based on the 2001 Motley autobiography of the same same. Looks a little on the cheap side but hope it's entertaining.

They wrote three new tunes and covered Madonna's "Like A Virgin" for the soundtrack. They've released the tune "The Dirt." It's actually not as bad as I expected and grows on you.

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.

Stinky, Old Crue Shirts - Part I

I got Crue shirts from record stores, carnivals, traveling vendors, department stores, mail order and other kids. I have no memory where the above THEATRE OF PAIN era shirt came from but I know I got it from another fan, some time in the 1980s.

As the years passed I kept most of my childhood Motley collection but I did lose a few vintage Crue tees like the DR. FEELGOOD one above captured in an old family movie.

These hearty rags survived. I got the GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS shirt in 1987 and it's in pretty good shape.

More old, moldy and stinky Crue shirts to come at The Sleaze Patrol Files!!