BACK AROUND 1980, at the height of the ‘punk wave,’ Nikki Sixx, Vince Neil, Tommy Lee and a couple of guys from what would eventually become Ratt hung out together around Hollywood and the famed Sunset Strip.
Sixx, Neil and Lee had an apartment above the infamous Whiskey A-Go-Go. They called themselves The Gladiators, two bands struggling to make a living in a New Wave dominated Los Angeles. They would play and by the end of the week would only have about $20 to spend on what they called ‘serious drinking and girls.’ As a result, they would steal food and beer to live on.
Eventually The Gladiators became a regular ‘gang,’ with more and more people joining on. things, however, were being blown out of proportion in the media, who called them a street gang robbing from people. Then, both fledgling groups finally began to get regular gigs and The Gladiators disbanded.
Once Mötley Crüe got going (even though they had yet to become an established group on the circuit) they produced and released their debut album, Too Fast for Love on their own Leathur Records label. This was because non of the ‘big’ record labels wanted anything to do with them at the time. The band even said that they had to threaten the local record stores in order to sell the record – the success of which came as a big surprise to most everybody in the music industry. This soon led to Elektra/Asylum’s interest and the subsequent rerelease of the LP – remixed and rearranged on that label.
Originally, the songs were written and that was the way they were recorded. Now, however, they then were partially done in advance and completed in the recording studio, the whole band offering suggestions and revisions. Generally, Nikki and guitarist Mick Mars did the arrangements of the guitar parts and then Vince and Tommy would help with the rest. Nikki said that he felt the group would be peaking by the next LP and by the fourth things would get really out of hand, which turned out to be a very prescient view of the way things did work out, for the most part. Nikki wrote more on the colour of the lyrics, sometimes, as he said, not even understanding what he wrote until much later.
Following the Elektra release there came a period of much trouble for the group, capped by an incident which took place outside the Rainbow night club on the Strip. Nikki, Vince and some girls walked outside and saw a bunch of bikers harassing some fans. They began to push the girls and a fight broke out. Nikki was wearing a chain around his waist, which he removed in order to defend himself.
A passing cop came over to break up the fight, but Nikki had begun to swing the chain and the policeman got hit in the head. Later, Vince said that Nikki had been hit in the head himself seven times with a billy club, though he didn’t remember it at the time. This incident resulted in the song Knock ‘Em Dead Kid, which appeared on the second album, Shout at the Devil. Eventually an agreement was reached with the police whereby neither party would press charges against the other.
When they started recording Shout at the Devil in 1983 they were working on an intro tape for their live shows. In The Beginning, the opening cut on the album is the culmination of that work. They tried everything from David Rose’s The Stripper to Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells (the theme from The Exorcist), but to no avail. Nothing seemed to have that certain appeal they wanted, until they started fooling around with some ideas of their own. Originally they didn’t even intend on putting it on the album, but they felt that it fit in quite well with the title song and the whole concept of the record.
The Crüe didn’t really consider themselves a heavy metal outfit, although they did admit to having some metal mechanics in their songs. They felt that groups like The Plasmatics and Motörhead are HM, as were early Judas Priest and very early Deep Purple. They felt they were merely ‘heavy rock.’
Onstage they were pure leather, metal and power, not to mention speed. They loved to play and they loved touring. They said it kept them out of trouble. At one time they even did a cover of The Beatles’ Paperback Writer as an encore, but they joked about being advised not to play it anymore because they performed it so badly. Once they dropped it they started doing Jailhouse Rock and Helter Skelter instead because they felt that an encore tune should be a bonus and that just another one of their own songs would be more or less a ripoff to the fans.
One tragic post-note to the story. On the night of 8 December 1984, lead vocalist Nick Dingley (aka 'Razzle') of the Finnish rock band Hanoi Rocks had been driving around with Vince in L.A.after a day of hard drinking. When they became involved in a tragic accident, leaving Razzle dead, the occupants of the other car left with brain damage, and leading to Vince's arrest and subsequent charge of 'vehicular manslaughter' because he was drunk while he was driving. Neil wound up serving 15 days in jail of his 30-day sentence, 5 years probation and paying $2.6 million in restitution to the victims in the other car as well as 200 hours of community service. Mötley Crüe's third album, Theatre of Pain was dedicated to Razzle.
No comments:
Post a Comment