Classic Rock Magazine Polls #3: 1989-1990

Motley's two & a half year hiatus from releasing new music meant that a whole lotta upstarts jumped into the limelight. By 1989, bands like Warrant & Skid Row & Poison came to define what has become popularly known as 'Hair Metal'. Motley were always a Glam band in the mold of 1970s pioneers like Alice Cooper, New York Dolls & Kiss, but with the emergence of 1980s Hard Rock, Glam got a new look and a new cast of characters. In those two & a half years, a highly successful breed of bands would emerge & threaten to topple the Crue from atop the Hard Rock heap.

 In 1989 Hard Rock was still big business & Motley released Dr. Feelgood unto a world which had already heard Guns N' Roses, Cinderella, Poison, Skid Row, Warrant &, in a different vein, Metallica (as can be seen by their placing in many of the poll categories). And although songs like 'Dr. Feelgood' & 'Kickstart My Heart' are powerful examples of 1980s Hard Rock at its finest, the Crue were not offering anything overly revolutionary or new. In a way, it was the first time in their career they could be said to have been overt followers of trends in Hard Rock. 

Despite this tough competition, Motley fares out well in this Circus Magazine poll for the year 1989 (published in the February 1990 edition), winning the coveted top spots: 'Band Of The Year' & 'Album Of The Year' for Dr. Feelgood. Vince hadn't won the 'Lead Vocalist Of The Year' for two polls running but was happy to comment on Motley's other wins in the article above. He talks about the band's success despite not much radio or video play & remarks how the band's audience has expanded to include younger & more general Rock fans (a trend that two years later would make Metallica the world's biggest Rock band). Vince congratulates Skid Row on their success & once again remarks on the different nature of Motley & Bon Jovi.

Sharon Liveten catches up with Nikki while the Crue are rollin' on the Feelgood tour in 1989-90. The Sixxster is in high spirits & discusses the bass guitar (he won 'Best Bassist') & laughs that the band also won 'Comeback Of The Year', insisting the Crue were assured of their success with Dr. Feelgood all along. Tommy also won 'Best Drummer' (again) but we do not get a feature on the Motley basher.

Circus printed a chart of all the Reader's Poll winners from 1984 to 1989 & Motley's dominance & popularity in those years is surprising. They certainly were not as successful or as popular as bands like Bon Jovi, Def Leppard or AC/DC, so why were they the darlings of so many of these teeny-bopper Metal & Hard Rock magazines? Was there something more personal & intense about the Motleys?

 

Tommy & Nikki sound politely impressed when Metal Edge Magazine Editor Gerri Miller presents them with plaques for their wins in the 1990 Reader's Choice Awards. The duo often won in their respective categories, a testament to their talent (Tommy) & their popularity. MORE Magazine Poll Awards to come at the Sleaze Patrol Files!!

Crue Cards & the Motley Universe in Early 1991

At Paul Miles' Chronological Crue we see this entry for January of 1991:

16/1/91
Dr. Feelgood becomes Mötley’s highest selling album, now reaching quadruple-Platinum status. Brokum release a series of trading cards called RockCards, featuring Mötley Crüe and other popular hard rock bands.

The Motleys had wrapped up their successful Dr. Feelgood tour in the Fall of 1990. In early 1991 Nikki had his first son, Gunner, with his then wife Brandi Brandt. [At the time of this writing (Sept 2014), Brandi Brandt has been convicted of charges of smuggling cocaine & has been sentenced to  prison time.] Motley also won an American Music Award in January 1991:

Tommy played drums on pop singer Richard Marx's tune 'Streets Of Pain' after the two met at an L. A. Kings game in February:

The boys were nominated for Best Hard Rock Performance at the Grammys in February but lost to then Rock Critic darlings, Living Colour [go to 5:40]:

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***