When Your Musical Heroes Fall Short

2024-07-17

Motley Crue. A handful of bands that are among the most popular in the world but can't get along. It really breaks my heart to see these musical heroes fight.

Motley Crue are musical heroes, but they’re fighting – Author: Anne Erickson, Photo via Ken Settle

A handful of bands that are among the most popular in the world but can’t get along. It really breaks my heart to see these musical heroes fight, especially after decades of playing nice. Why can’t we all just get along and make some great rock ‘n’ roll?

Motley Crue: When Your Musical Heroes Fall Short

The main band I’m thinking about is Motley Crue. I was too young to be a big Motley Crue fan back in the day, but I’ve definitely enjoyed the band during their resurgence the past decade or so. I’ve interviewed three out of four of the members of Motley Crue in Nikki Sixx, Mick Mars and Vince Neil. The only member I haven’t interviewed is Tommy Lee.

Now, they say to never meet your musical heroes. Actually, make that not to ever meet any of the celebrities that you adore, in any field. But, I’m happy to say that when I interviewed those three members of Motley Crue, every one of them was super nice to me.

The past year has brought a lot of turmoil for Motley Crue. What’s really sad is to see Mick Mars and Motley Crue fighting amongst each other. I mean, these guys have been together for decades, through thick and thin. They’ve created some of the best rock songs of all time together, from “Kickstart My Heart” to “Too Fast for Love” to “Looks That Kill.”

Last year, news broke of Mars and the Crue splitting and fighting over various things, such as rights to songs. In a statement provided to Variety at the time, Mars said, “Those guys have been hammering on me since ’87, trying to replace me. They haven’t been able to do that, because I’m the guitar player. I helped form this band. It’s my name I came up with [the Mötley Crüe moniker], my ideas, my money that I had from a backer to start this band. It wouldn’t have gone anywhere.”

Mars added, “The thing that they keep pushing, for many years, is that I have a bad memory. And that’s full-blown, out-of-proportion crap. Around 2012, when they first started saying that my memory was bad and I didn’t remember the songs, I came home and saw all my doctors, because I keep myself together, because I’m an old b**tard. They had all the 10th Street people there [from the band’s management] — probably about five or six people — (versus) all my doctors going: ‘There’s nothing wrong with him.’ And now they’re still playing that game with me.”

Motley Crue are currently on tour with John 5 as their guitarist. They also have a new song out with John 5. So, things are moving ahead, but this is certainly a moment when I feel like our musical heroes have fallen short. Hopefully these guys can patch things up one day. They could leave such a great legacy of music and friendship behind if they could just get along.

Anne Erickson
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Posted by Anne Erickson | Metal, Music, Rock, Rock News

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