In 1987, Mötley Crüe was a Heavy Metal band on the climb. They had their big hit "Girls Girls Girls", which became a legendary MTV video. Mötley Crüe was filling arenas as they performed wild concerts on tour for their fans. I found two interesting short videos on You Tube from 1987. The first video is with Nikki Sixx discussing Mötley Crüe's music, the generation of fans at the time, and the direction of the band. Nikki Sixx had a good perspective of the Glam Rock music scene which was starting to peak. While the Nikki Sixx interview was more of a serious tone, the second video is an interview about the partying and fun the band, the road crew, and fans were experiencing. Check out the clothes, the hair and the Heavy Metal music in the videos below. - Kenny Leibow
The two video interviews are from Good Rockin' Tonite a Canadian television series, which aired on CBC Television from the early 1980s to 1993. The program, similar to the American Friday Night Videos, played popular music videos. It was produced at CBUT Vancouver and aired on Friday nights at midnight. The program also featured interviews with musicians, viewer contests and a countdown of the week's most popular singles and albums. The program's original host was Terry David Mulligan, who left to join MuchMusic in 1985. He was replaced by Stu Jeffries.
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In my post on Mötley Crüe in June 2009, "Mötley Crüe - Dr. Feelgood", I discussed the history and success of the band. I included some infamous music videos, which I invite you to go back and check out on this blog or click here: Mötley Crüe. ** There is another great interview with Motely Crue back in 1987 by Rolling Stone Magazine, where Mötley Crüe was on the cover "HEAVY METAL, It's Loud, It's Ugly, It Won't Go Away, On the Road with MOTLEY CRUE". Visit Rolling Stone to read the article.
Update September 2, 2012: Canadian Interview of Motley Crue pulled down from YouTube. Below are 2 very cool interviews I have replaced it with from back in 1986-1987. ~Kenny Leibow
Mötley Crüe Nikki Six and Tommy Lee Promoting Girls Girls Girls New Album
Mötley Crüe's Dr. Feelgood album went number 1 on the Album Billboard Charts in 1989. This album propelled Mötley Crüe to worldwide fame. You can read Mötley Crüe's biography below. I remember listening to and watching the video from the band's 1987 hit "Girls, Girls, Girls". Mötley Crüe seemed to get the most press coverage at times over the other glam bands. You can scan all the Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson gossip on any number of thousands of websites. This blog posting is focused on the music.
Below see all the information regarding Mötley Crüe's "Dr. Feelgood" album; and watch the video of the live performance of the song "Dr. Feelgood" from 1989. I also included from the Dr. Feelgood album the music video of "Don't Go Away Mad (Just Go Away)". Of course, check out the bonus video which I am sure will bring back memories, "Girls,Girls, Girls". - Kenny Leibow
The poster boys for Eighties hair metal, Mötley Crüe parlayed whip-lash hard-rock songs, melodic power ballads and a hedonistic image into platinum-level heavy-metal superstardom, topping the charts with Dr. Feelgood (Number One, 1989) and coming close with Theatre of Pain (Number Six, 1985), Girls, Girls Girls (Number Two, 1987) and a greatest-hits collection, Decade of Decadence — '81-'91 (Number 2, 1991).
Nikki Sixx was a member of a successful L.A. metal band called London when he decided to form his own band. Tommy Lee came aboard as drummer, and they decided to call themselves Christmas. Guitarist Mick Mars was discovered through a classified ad reading, "Loud Rude Aggressive Guitarist Available." Vocalist Vince Neil was plucked from a Cheap Trick cover band. Mars came up with the new, strangely umlauted name. Their eponymous, independently released debut was picked up by Elektra Records and retitled Too Fast for Love (Number 77, 1983).
Shout at the Devil (Number 17, 1983), with its canny hints of Satanism, followed, but the band did not catch on in a big way until Theatre of Pain. Fueled by a cover of Brownsville Station's 1974 hit "Smokin' in the Boy's Room" (Number 16, 1985) and the power ballad "Home Sweet Home" (Number 89, 1985), the album sold more than two million copies.
For all the album sales, Crüe also was known as an extravagant live band, a scrappier Van Halen doing a rock version of a Vegas review, with elaborate sets and lighting, revolving drum platforms, pyrotechnics and dancing girls. Still, subsequent albums Girls, Girls, Girls and Dr. Feelgood continued the band's streak of platinum discs, selling two million and four million copies, respectively. In addition to its selection of greatest hits, Decade of Decadence included new material, such as a hard-rock cover version of the Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the U.K."
Off stage, Mötley Crüe lived the rock & roll lifestyle to its fullest, with celebrity marriages — Tommy Lee to actress Heather Locklear, from 1986 to 1994, then to Baywatch bombshell Pamela Anderson from 1995 to 1998; Nikki Sixx to former Prince protégée Vanity in 1987 — substance abuse and scrapes with the law. Sixx spent more than a year addicted to heroin. In 1986 Neil was convicted of vehicular manslaughter after a drunken car accident two years earlier resulted in the death of Hanoi Rocks drummer Nicholas "Razzle" Dingley. Neil served twenty days in jail, performed 200 hours of community service and was assessed $2.6 million in damages.
After the band replaced Neil with singer John Corabi in 1992, Neil filed a $5 million wrongful termination suit and released a couple of solo albums, Exposed (Number 13, 1993) and the weak-selling Carved in Stone (1995). Mötley Crüe (Number Seven, 1994), the band's first album without Neil, produced two songs that charted on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Tracks, "Hooligan's Holiday" (Number Ten, 1994) and Misunderstood (Number 24, 1994). The band fired Corabi two years later to bring Neil back on for a reunion of the original lineup. The resulting album, Generation Swine (Number Four, 1997) attempted to cash in on the alternative-rock craze, with songs exploring grunge and industrial metal, but despite the band's carbon-copy re-recording of an old hit, re-titled "Shout at the Devil '97," the album quickly fell off the chart.
Greatest Hits (Number 20, 1998) and Live Entertainment or Death (Number 33, 1999) continued the Crüe's commercial skid. Shortly after completing the subsequent tour, drummer Lee spent four months in jail for assaulting his then-wife, Anderson. Upon being released, Lee left the band and formed the rap-metal band Methods of Mayhem, in which he played guitar and sang. Mötley Crüe replaced Lee with former Ozzy Osbourne drummer Randy Castillo and returned to its original hard rock formula for its final album, New Tattoo (Number 41, 2000). Castillo died of cancer two years later. The band went on a recording hiatus for five years but its members, appearing on reality shows and in gossip columns, never left the public eye. In 2005, the Cr ü e hit the road for a reunion tour that coincided with another greatest-hits compilation, Red, White & Crüe (Number Six, 2005), that included three new tracks, "If I Die Tomorrow" – penned by pop-punkers Simple Plan - (Number Four, Mainstream Rock, 2005), "Sick Love Song" and a cover of The Rolling Stones' "Street Fighting Man."
All four members of Mötley Crüe convened in 2008 to record Saints of Los Angeles, a musical autobiographical companion to the band's 2001 tell-all book, The Dirt. A planned movie stalled in the production stages. The title track holds the honor of being the first single to be debuted in the influential Rock Band video game series, and the album debuted at Number Four.
In 1987, Mötley Crüe was a Heavy Metal band on the climb. They had their big hit "Girls Girls Girls", which became a legendary MTV video. Mötley Crüe was filling arenas as they performed wild concerts on tour for their fans. I found two interesting short videos on You Tube from 1987. The first video is with Nikki Sixx discussing Mötley Crüe's music, the generation of fans at the time, and the direction of the band. Nikki Sixx had a good perspective of the Glam Rock music scene which was starting to peak. While the Nikki Sixx interview was more of a serious tone, the second video is an interview about the partying and fun the band, the road crew, and fans were experiencing. Check out the clothes, the hair and the Heavy Metal music in the videos below. - Kenny Leibow
