The Greatest Band of All Time (pt 1) - Honorable Mention

Motley Crue 

Ninja's Note: Beyond Saints of Los Angeles, I’m unclear if this band is still putting out new material. I’m proceeding as though they are not, and I’ll make it known that I don’t think being wrong about this would change their position on my list. 

THE GOOD:

Nikki Sixx – You can spend your entire humanoid lifetime praising Nikki Sixx for all the various reasons out there, and when you die, you’ll probably have left a few things out you should have mentioned.

You know how our dads all have that Magic Manly Nostalgia spot in their hearts for John Wayne, where – let’s face it – deep down, they're completely incapable of accepting the fact that John Wayne was a mere mortal and not some black-&-white Cowboy Superhero? Seriously, they only admit that Wayne is dead because they’ve learned that they must in order to fit into society. If you hooked any of our dads up to a polygraph and asked them “Where’s John Wayne?” the only response that would not produce a violent needlescratch is “Oh, he’s out riding around right now…probably shooting Indians…killing cancer...maybe looking for a lost girl…driving cattle with a group of kids...flying a tank into a Nazi plane...”

That’s how my generation feels about Sixx. For those not in the know, here’s the deal with Sixx: he simply walks through life fist-fucking people with the force of his will. That’s Sixx in a nutshell. If you have something he wants? He will figure out a way to get it.

Example: his name. You know how he came up with it? Someone else had it, and he found out about it. He thought to himself: “you know…I want that name. For me.” And the next thing you know, the real Nikki Sixx please stands up and the other guy probably ended up unconscious in a Hollywood bathroom somewhere with his forehead kicked in.

Also, we have to talk about the drug use. For crying out loud. This guy was the World Heavyweight Champion of Drugs, there’s not really any other way to say it. Not only did he keep ticking when lesser men would have dropped dead…when it came Sixx’s time (maybe even times, might have been twice, can’t quite recall), he did what I would do – he died with a needle hanging out of his arm, waited until he was pronounced dead, and then willpowered his way back to life. In all your wildest, wettest fantasies, I challenge you to come up with something better than that.

Oh, and Sixx also wrote all the Crue songs.

Shout at the Devil – This second album is, to my recollection, the album where the trademark Crue backup vocals first truly appeared. Being a person who is a bit of an audiophile, I am usually able to reverse-engineer vocal sounds in my head and determine just “how they did that.” In this case? No f*cking clue. It’s as though someone drew giant-headed cartoon caricatures of the band members and taped them singing the parts.

The writing was all top-notch for this album. If memory serves, Sixx is credited with all the songwriting (as per usual), but the guitar parts developed by Mars are worth mentioning in their own right. The title track, Red Hot, Too Young to Fall in Love, Bastard…oh man. I’m shouting at the devil right now just thinking about this.

Additionally, this album captured an attitude that the other records failed to reproduce; that pure, balls-out, punk rock attitude. Song themes: sex, revenge, stabbing, more revenge, murdering thy significant other, and – of course – shouting at the devil. Of the 80s mainstream hair bands, only one other managed to capture that same attitude, and guess what? They were never able to recreate the magic past one album either. More on that when we get to (spoiler alert) Guns ‘n Roses.

The autobiography (The Dirt) – This bio was released maybe a decade ago and simply defies description. If you like mystery stories, and are interested in a mystery story where the mystery is “how the f*ck are these maniacs still among the living?” then this book is for you.

THE BAD:

Girls, Girls, Girls – This was the Crue’s first album to hit number one on the charts. It’s also my personal least favorite, in spite of the fact that it opens with two of their best songs (title track and Wild Side, arguably their best song ever in spite of the fact that Sixx’s sixteenth-note bassline should have been given a better position in the mix during the verse sections). Imagine an album that blows your balls off with the first two tracks, and then just falls off. After the end of the first week of listening to it, you realize you will never listen to it past the first two tracks. That’s this album.

Their Reaction to the Nineties – This was the point in time where the group should have just taken a ten-year vacation, waited, and then announced a reunion tour. When public tastes shift so dramatically (ie “when you’re in Motley Crue and you suddenly see a dirtbag like Eddie Vedder propelled into stardom”) as they did in the early nineties, you know volatile times are ahead and you need to just hunker down and wait out the storm.

Instead, they parted ways with their awesome singer (Vince) and hired some dirty-looking guy named…actually I forget.

It was awful. The tried to re-tool their sound to fit in with what was popular, never seeing the forest for the trees – namely, the sh*t that’s popular now is popular because it’s not Motley Crue. People have had hairspray and makeup (on dudes) shoved in their face for fifteen – twenty years now. They just need a break, that’s all.

Eventually, Vince & the Crue got back together and they went on tour. No new material to speak of, instead these were large shows where they did what the people wanted – played their old stuff. Awesome.

Tommy Lee sans Drumsticks – don’t get me wrong, the guy is an integral part of the Crue. As long as he shuts up and bangs on his drums like he’s supposed to, we’re all good. It’s when he puts the drumsticks down that we get into trouble. Don't get me wrong, I don't give a shit about the Pam tape, or Pam getting roughed up a little, or supposedly getting Hep C off Tommy.

I give a shit about having to see the Crue with the female drummer from HOLE filling in because Tommy the Dipshit is out playing under the name METHODS OF MAYHEM.

Fun fact: at one point, he quit the band to pursue a career as a hip-hop artist. 

What an idiot.

WHAT WENT WRONG: Seattle.

No, seriously, it was simply the end of an era. The roller coaster ride that had been Motley Crue's Eighties had reached its pinnacle, and people were ready for something new.  That's all it was.

Had they handled the ride down a little more gracefully, they may have made it higher on the list. Still, they will always be the band that my brother and I were forbidden to listen to (which made us buy every album available and listen to them all nonstop).

Fun fact: I once had a T-shirt that said "Crue fans are the best, fuck the rest."  Yeah.  What were you wearing when you were twelve?  Probably nothing that cool.

Much love, Motleys.