Rip Presents Motley Crue, 1989 – Part 2

(click images to enlarge & READ)

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 . . . . . .

Rip Presents Motley Crue, 1989 – Part 1

This is a real nice Motley tribute mag published just before the release of Dr. Feelgood in 1989. Rip was a Metal mag from the mid ‘80s to the early ‘90s that featured a wide variety of Hard Rock & Metal acts. They had great articles (as compared to say the writing of a Metal Edge or Blast) & quality photo reproductions. This tribute collector’s edition seems to have been a labour of love with articles on the Crue by Adrianne Stone & Steffan Chirazi & an introduction by Editor-In-Chief Lonn M. Friend.

The Adrianne Stone history of the band, ‘A Hair-Raising History Of Motley Crue,’ is a well-detailed account of the band’s first 8 years, focusing on 1981-84, & was probably the best writing on the band I had read up to that point. The photos in the article from the ‘Too Fast’ period were some of the earliest I had seen by 1989. This was of course before the days when you could just Google ‘rare early Motley Crue photos and articles.’ THIS kind of Rock culture is still not well represented on the Internet, much of it still only available in print.

Having seen the Crue as talking heads in so many docs over the last 20 years, telling the same old stories the same old ways over & over, this article comes as a pleasure. It’s crazy to think that even by 1989 journalists were talking about the band as if they had always been legends.

Parts II & III