Full disclosure: As unseemly as it may sound from the lofty perch of 2019, I was fully on-board with the 1983 iteration of Mötley Crüe. Upon my first viewing of the heroically ridiculous video for “Looks That Kill” -– finding the band looking and sounding like a louder & stupider KISS, if such a concept is imaginable -- I immediately rushed out to buy myself a copy of the album that spawned same, that being the not-just-a-little-stupid Shout At The Devil. As I mentioned on this post last year, while this album and –- yea verily -- the band that spawned it are, for all intents and purposes, roundly indefensible on pretty much every quantifiable level (musical ability & execution, taste, basic human conduct), I will never part with that record. I’d guess one could call it a “guilty pleasure,” but as a crotchedy almost-52-year-old guy, I no longer feel the compulsion to harbor any guilt about my listening habits. While we’re at it, I also quite enjoyed the band’s first record, that being the equally idiotic Too Fast For Love, and think they had some fine mid-career moments like “Primal Scream,” “Kickstart My Heart” and the title track to Dr. Feelgood. Don’t agree? Too bad. Go listen to your Joni Mitchell discs and leave me alone.
In any case, despite my stubborn affinity for the Crüe, I have always been well aware that the gentlemen in the band didn’t exactly qualify for membership in any think tanks. The descriptor “cerebral” is not an adjective frequently used in tandem with the likes of Vince Neil, Nikki Sixx, Mick Mars and Tommy Lee. That’s not an indictment, but rather just a fact. While I’m sure each of those guys might be happy to oblige, one wouldn’t normally seek out Mötley Crüe to ruminate on pertinent issues of the day. That’s just not what they were renowned for.
Beyond their music, the band was quite renowned for its cartoonishly prurient antics as captured in epic style in the oral history, “The Dirt,” partly ghost-penned by an old colleague of mine, Neil Strauss and later turned into a needless film I did not see. Beyond what’s detailed in “The Dirt,” the boys’ extracurricular activity used to serve as frequent fodder for low-grade tabloids. By all accounts, Mötley Crüe personified a certain hirsute variant of rock idiocy. That’s what they did.
As such, I stopped paying attention to the Crüe’s doings some time ago, perfectly content to relive their hoary glory days via the occasional spin of Shout At the Devil. As of 2019, I believe they’ve officially retired after numerous farewell tours, but am not entirely certain -– nor do I really care.
This all said, when I spotted the below tweet from Crüe drummer Tommy Lee, this morning, I felt compelled to dust off the complete Mötley Crüe discography.
Enlightened words come from unlikely sources, sometimes.
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