When I was about thirteen or fourteen I was the chosen guinea pig among my friends to go into the store and steal candy. It turns out that I was really good at it—I stole pounds of it, I’d wear a big down jacket in the middle of summer and let my buddies fill every pocket, the hood, the insides, and even my underwear. When I could barely walk straight, I’d stroll out of there with candy falling down my ass. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was great training for feeding my other family later in life.

In 1980, Mötley Crüe nailed down its lineup: Me, Nikki Sixx, Vince Neil, and Mick Mars. Mick is older than we are, so he had no interest in living with the rest of us. He was smart—the rest of us were still in our late teens and we were disgusting, insane party maniacs. Mötley was no overnight success story and while we waited for the world to notice how much we kicked fucking ass, Nikki and Vince and I lived in a nasty-ass house in Hollyweird, right off Sunset Strip. We played shows in clubs, we never took out the garbage, we never cleaned up the empties, we had nasty sex, we never did dishes—and we only had one dish to do. We killed the armies of cockroaches climbing all over our walls with a lighter and a can of hairspray. We had no food because we had no money. And when we did have money, we sure as fuck didn’t spend it on a meal when we could spend it on the essentials—more liquor and more hairspray.

We were part of the Sunset Strip scene that spawned bands like Quiet Riot, Ratt, Poison, and a bunch of other motherfuckers. But back when it was getting cooking at the dawn of the eighties, no one did it like we did. Our first album, Too Fast for Love, was something the other bands weren’t doing. Everyone was stuck on the Knack and “My Sharona.” Every band—all my friends—were cutting their hair off, wearing skinny ties, and jumping on that bandwagon. Cool song, but fuck. It was either that or they were into something very different, like Black Flag.

We were definitely the kids doing our own thing, going against the grain. Nikki was writing songs that were poppy and all I heard was ways to make them heavier and more rhythmic. And as much as we changed over the years, those two elements remained the same. We recorded our first album in ten days—at least that’s how it felt to me. We were recording in the Valley (I think).* The album was recorded live, off the floor, with all of us in one room. It’s a lot of people’s favorite and I get why: It’s raw, it’s fast, and it’s us in the early days. Sonically, it’s my least favorite record because anyone who knows about recording can tell that it was done way too quickly. We didn’t have any money so we didn’t have a choice. In fact, to get free studio time I fucked a female engineer every night for a week or so after we finished recording. It wasn’t easy, but it had to be done.

 

I took many for the team over the years, but she was the roughest.*

Our early shows were ridiculous: We had alcohol-burning funny cars,† fake blood, mannequin heads, and any other cheap horror props we could think of that would freak people out. We’d walk around all the time, in stiletto heels with makeup on looking like chicks, so we got in fights with people just about everywhere we went.‡ We used to set Nikki on fire while he played bass by rubbing pyro gel on his legs that Vince would light with a torched sword. It was fun practicing that routine in our apartment. We’d dress all in leather and rock like we owned the fuckin’ joint—and we did. And afterwards, we’d invite the entire show back to our shitty little apartment just off the Strip. It’s amazing that that shit shack didn’t just fall down, because after not too long there wasn’t much left. Our door was smashed in because the cops had kicked it in so many times. Even if the door did close or lock, you could still just get in through the front window. It was smashed by a fire extinguisher heaved through it by my old girlfriend (the squirter). I don’t remember what I did, but she was craise.* We didn’t have much besides a stereo, a couch, and some records on some crappy little entertainment center, but trust me, she trashed all of it that day. Our bedrooms weren’t much better: The mirrored closet doors in the room I shared with Vince were toast. One of them fell on David Lee Roth’s head one night, and I’m proud and amazed to say that when the door hit his dome, he didn’t flinch, he didn’t stop rambling about whatever the fuck he was talking about—and he didn’t spill a speck of the cocaine he wasn’t sharing with anyone.

In some ways, those were the days, because nothing mattered, none of us gave a fuck, and we thought we’d made it. In our little world, we had reached the top. Even so, we were still scum-ass poor most of the time, so my skills as a klepto came in handy. I usually made a run or two a week to keep all of us boys fed, and I always got the five-finger discount. I don’t recommend it unless you are really desperate, but I will say that it’s pretty easy to justify that kind of shopping when your attitude is “Dude, we gotta eat.”

The liquor store catercorner to the Whisky A Go-Go, just down the block from our house, was one of my regular targets. In 1982, I believe it was, that establishment provided us with a meal I’ll never forget. It was Thanksgiving Day and we all decided that we needed to get ourselves some form of turkey, any shitty form of turkey, to get into the spirit. Our attitude was, “Hell, we deserve turkey, dude.” So we slid into that liquor store and the dudes stuffed a few turkey potpies in another of my trusty down jackets. I was a white puffy Michelin Man in a black coat filled with turkey potpies. When we got back home, we turned to one another, all excited. We hugged and jumped up and down, just shouting, “I love you, bro! Happy Thanksgiving, bro!”

Before the money started rolling in and before we were picked up by Elektra Records,* we started to realize that there was an alternative: dating girls who would either bring us food or were rich enough to give us money for food on a regular basis. We never talked about it, but it became the unspoken rule. They were our sponsors between the day we first laid our songs on vinyl and the day we signed our name on the dotted line. It was bizarre sometimes, and maybe it was wrong, but I look at it this way: It wasn’t illegal. To all those girls: Sorry where sorry is due. And a thank you, and you, and you, you, you, and you. You know who you are. I hope you do, because I do.

Motley’s first two albums, Too Fast for Love and Shout at the Devil, came out before MTV even existed and it’s weird to think that it used to not exist. Some people think hip-hop divides the generations more than anything, but if you ask me, it’s MTV. Before MTV, you had to do more work to find your scene and learn about music. You had to interact, talk to people, and go to certain stores and certain clubs to get to the music you liked. Now you can stay inside and have it all beamed to you. Whatever.

I’ll be the first to say that Mötley profited a fucking ton from MTV. We were one of the first bands on there and we were on there constantly because those fuckers didn’t have too many other videos to show! Our image, our attitude, and our message was as antiauthority, proshock, and indulgent as you could get. It didn’t hurt that we looked insane, that we were insane, and that all of us, separately and especially together, were trouble magnets. Naturally, MTV always had editing issues with us. They were always telling us what we had to cut out of our video to get it on the air. We learned that it was best to send our videos to them in the worst format, with as many R-rated elements as possible. That way, after the edits, it would still be kick-ass. Our music was a soundtrack of pleasure-seeking, adolescent rebellion, danger, and extremism that was as fucking rock-and-roll as you could get at that time. If you go back and hear it now, it still is. Times might have changed, but maniacs still crave a theme song—and Mötley hit that shit on the head. We definitely stood out in 1983, when Shout at the Devil broadcast us into households across America.* At the time, bands like Men at Work, Hall and Oates, or Michael Jackson were at the top of the charts and people were paying money to see movies like Mr. Mom and Flashdance. Next to that, we were like a freight train from hell that tore the ass out of pop culture.

As we settled into our style and became bigger over the course of the decade, with records like Theatre of Pain in 1985, Girls, Girls, Girls in 1987, and Dr. Feelgood in 1989, we watched our effect on music and on younger bands coming up. We were always about the rebellion at the heart of America not only because we lived that way but also because rock-and-roll has always been salvation for horny, aggressive teenagers as much as it’s always been nothing but a fucking racket to their parents.

We were a group made up of very different guys and if you ask me, that’s why it worked. Each of us brought to the mix so many different influences. Nikki brought his love of punk and pop and melodic glam-rock songwriting style. Mick was a full-on blues monster, who would rather listen to classic guitar players like Jeff Beck and Jimi Hendrix than any new band I’d try to force-feed him. Vince, well, Vince liked Robin Zander, and since Cheap Trick is God, that was cool. He didn’t bring much to the musical table, but like David Lee Roth, he didn’t need to—he knew how to be a good front man. And me? I brought all kinds of shit: the funk, the big beats, the drum solos from hell, and a sense of musical arrangement that we needed. In the studio, I was usually the guy who figured out where all our parts should go and how we should take the pieces we worked out jamming and make them into songs. Being a drummer, I got turned on by the rhythm in all kinds of music, from George Clinton to Pantera. I was always the guy blasting some new tunes over the rehearsal PA system. I’d be shouting, “Dudes! You gotta hear this shit!” It didn’t always go over well. Whatever.

I’ve got to take a moment here to say that Mötley’s break came courtesy of the rock royal family, when we were picked up by Ozzy Osbourne as the opening act on his Bark at the Moon tour in 1983. That was a huge tour for him as a solo artist because the album kicked ass and rock-and-roll fans were going crazy for it that year. The tour was sold out everywhere and playing a sold-out gig at an arena was fucking heaven for a band at Mötley’s stage in the game. Sharon and Ozzy could have picked any band to open that tour—plenty would have done it for free, including us (I’m just glad they didn’t ask). They picked us and I’m forever indebted to them for seeing that Mötley wasn’t fuckin’ around. Sharon and Ozzy gave us the chance to rock shit every night and we earned ourselves a huge fan base in return.*

Theatre of Pain was what we made of all those days on the road and everything that happened to us after making Shout at the Devil. We’d seen friends die, seen girlfriends come and go, we’d broken shit, done everything we wanted, and had a huge success with that album too. But “Home Sweet Home” was the first song we recorded for Theatre of Pain and it says it all.† That tour was itself a Theatre of Pain. Nikki and I were at our all-time high in terms of drugs and alcohol: We’d shoot up cocaine and heroin onstage if we wanted to and we’d shoot Jack Daniel’s or gin to come down after the show. It was ridiculous. Thank God we’re alive.

The Girls, Girls, Girls record, in my opinion, brought together a huge chunk of all-American subculture: tattoos, Harley-Davidsons, strip clubs, the New York Dolls, plus a dose of English glam shit like T. Rex. It was everything we were into: We all rode Harleys and we had a riding club called the Dark Angels. We were all into strip clubs and that’s what the title track is about.* That album was Mötley and it was everything American that no one else on MTV talked about back then.†

Dr. Feelgood was when we really hit our stride. It rocked like fuck—it had melody and pop hooks you couldn’t forget. All of us were clean and sober while we recorded, after I led the charge for each of us to enter rehab, and it shows. It even hit number one the week of my twenty-seventh birthday in October 1989.‡ Still, we never won a Grammy—and that year we should have. I remember sitting in the same row with Metallica at the ceremony that year. They were nominated for And Justice for All and we were for Dr. Feelgood. As they named the nominees, we all looked at one another because we knew those were the two fucking biggest, baddest hard rock albums of the year. We knew one of our bands was going to take it home. You’ve never seen a bunch of guys more fucking shocked to lose when the Best Hard Rock Album of the Year went to... Jethro Tull. Are you fucking kidding me? The lead singer plays flute, what the fuck is that? Another example of the tired old fuckers on the Grammy committee voting for their favorite fellow old fuckers. Thank God the Grammys have gotten a little bit better. Still, every year, there’s always some big crime against music at that ceremony where the out-of-touch board members’ choice wins over what was good and what people really loved. Whatever. After we lost, our band and Metallica looked at each other, shook our heads, got up, went straight to the bar together, and got drunk as fuck. We didn’t need the Grammys to tell us we kicked ass.

In just a few years, Mötley went from nothing to a crew of guys who had everything. We are all extremists, so in a way it makes sense that our career, once we hit, went from zero to sixty that quickly. It doesn’t mean that we were capable of dealing with any of it then. Before we got clean, we were drunk, we were crazy, we snorted mountains of cocaine, Nikki and I shot heroin and drank Jack Daniel’s like the world was ending tomorrow, and none of us, for a while there, would have cared if we were the biggest band in the world or died the next day. If anything, that to me is Mötley: four guys who were the greatest fucking rock band and the biggest fucking train wreck at the same time. From moment to moment, it was either win it all or lose it all.

It was rad and it was intense, but I look back at it now and I’m like, “Jesus, that was so... then.” The eighties were definitely incredible for us. It was raw dog, all the time.

 

Please, chicks would come backstage or up to my room and fucking boom, their clothes were off and it was on.

 

Now there’s a bit of negotiation involved, where they said, “Hey, you have a condom? Can we do this?”

 

Those days were so fucking insane that I don’t remember a lot of them. I’m just glad that I left a mark and that my band made such a big-ass dent in the decade it made people copy us so much that we just had to laugh. If you check in with VH1 Classic for a minute, you’ll see hours of what pissed me off as the eighties came to an end. We watched metal bands get more theatrical and Mötley-lite acts like Great White and Warrant enjoyed their one-hit wonder success by offering up a safer alternative to the real thing. That shit was wack and all of us in Mötley just sat there and watched it all go down—downhill, that is. We’d come out with a rad new album and video and then see other bands hire the same director, work with the same producer, throw on the same style of makeup, and shop where we bought our clothes. It was ridiculous.

We did it right and I dare anyone to say we didn’t. We rocked harder and we looked better than anyone out there. And though some people tripped, I liked being as naked as I used to be on stage—no one else did that shit. Yes, I do like to be naked,

 

but part of it was strictly comfort: Do you have any idea how hot you get beating a drum kit for two hours? Trust me, you don’t want clothes you don’t need. It was all good, though, because when I was hidden back there behind my drum kit I got away with shit someone like a guitar player couldn’t. It was easy to get hooked up with a bottle cap full of coke as often as I wanted, which was pretty often. My roadie could come up and jam a beer cap full of it up my face without anyone knowing shit about it. Not that I’d give a fuck if they did know back then.

Playing drums and rocking the fuck out of the place—that’s as primal as it gets.

 

You realize that you have the power to move the entire audience with every beat you play. It’s scary and amazing at the same time. You are dictating the cadence, sending out the energy to the fans. It isn’t a one-way street—that electricity goes through them and comes right back at you, amplified. It’s the World Series and the Superbowl taking place on New Year’s Eve and that night, you’re fucking your favorite porn star. Still... that’s not even close.

Let me take a minute or ten to talk about my drums. Once Mötley had some money, I was like Dr. Frankenstein creating his monster. I got into this insane tradition of retardedly large drum sets and bigger than Jesus solos. By 1987, I had a kit that I was strapped into that spun full 360s like a gyroscope at the front of the stage. Are you kidding me?

It all started innocently enough. I just wanted my minute in the spotlight during showtime to fuckin’ rock so as we got bigger, I built bigger drum risers. It got to the point where I had nowhere left to go but up in the air. And of course I was told that I couldn’t do that, so I went and did it. I don’t like “no” and “don’t”—those words have been as much of an inspiration and motivation to me as the sound of a drum. If you think about it, when you’re told you can’t do something, it’s not true. There’s always an option. Trust me.

The drum monster grew to the point where we had to fly. I met this cat, Chris Dieter, who was a former hydraulic specialist on a navy submarine and he told me, “I will make you fly and we’ll make history.” And we did.

That guy built me two rigs: the one that spun me upside down on the Girls tour and the one that flew me out above the crowd on the Dr. Feelgood tour. He was a master. That whole cage he built me for the Girls tour was welded to a fork-lift, somehow mounted on yolks from your neighborhood garbage truck, all connected with a ton of cables and pumped up into flight by some crazy hydraulic fluids. Before I met him I had a recurring dream about flying through the arena, above the crowd, playing drums. I told the band and our managers about it, and they just looked at me like, “Whatever, Tommy, party on.” But I’ve got to give props to my bandmates because once I found the maniac who could build the machine I needed, they let me do my thing. It was like eighty grand to build that rig and they were like, “Cool. Fuck it, let’s do it.”

When I’d rotate on the Girls tour, I could only make five revolutions because there was only enough slack in the microphone cables to turn that many times before we had to rotate me backwards to unwind them. If we did it today we could do the whole thing wireless. Damn, if we did it today I could turn 360s until I puked.

Thing is, my monster became a problem. The fans left our shows just saying “What the fuck!” * And that means the next tour I had to give them even more. I couldn’t let them leave saying that our last tour was better, you know?

After spinning circles on the Girls tour, it was hard to outdo myself. I figured all I could do was give the people way back there in the shitty Stevie Wonder seats a front row ticket. The only way to do that was fly the drums all the way out from the stage to the very back of the arena. So I did on the Dr. Feelgood tour. And it was rad. For a few minutes, the worst seat in the house was now a front row ticket. All those kids in the back had the best view, and I could see them every night freaking the fuck out. It made the whole thing worth it.

My real dream is to build a true roller coaster where my drums roll on a track to the back of the arena and do a loop in each direction. I want cameras mounted all over my kit so everybody can see on the big screen what I’m seeing and feel what I’m feeling. I want a seat at the back of it just like an old hot rod. I want to strap fans to it every night and take them for a ride. It can be done—I’ve checked on it. The companies that build roller coasters can hook it up. The only problem is insurance. And don’t get me started on that—paying money to cover your ass just in case something happens? That’s tight. But in a lawsuit happyland, you’re fucked if you don’t take precautions.

When Mötley was preparing the Generation Swine tour in 1997, I was told that a roller coaster wasn’t going to be part of the package, so I settled for making the drums disappear, magician style. I asked David Copperfield how he’d do it. Then I met the guys who are the real magicians in Copperfield’s show—the engineers who blow shit up and create diversions so that you don’t see them hiding that 747 right in front of your eyes. I’m not going to give away their secrets because stuff like magic and Santa Claus make the world go ’round for kids of all ages. But I will tell you that those cats fuck shit up. They make the big shit disappear into itself. They can take a truck and outfit it with hydraulic systems that make it fold up into a shoe box. It’s crazy. You should have seen them grinning with ideas of how to make a drummer vanish into thin air. And we did it. We did it big.

I had it dialed. When it was time for my solo, I started out ripping it on the set I used throughout the show while Aborigine dancers with bones through their noses danced in dust with their titties bouncing. We got into this insane tribal drum thing that I fucking loved! As I went off, another drum kit was rolled out onstage. I went over and continued the solo on that kit. We had a full video production going, capturing the dancers and flashing pictures of atom bombs going off and roller coasters dropping as I played. When I moved to the new drum set, the video stopped and the magic began. As I was playing, a space man came out and watched me play. He walked around me a few times, and then raised a white curtain around my drum set. You could see me through the curtain, but what you didn’t know is that we could also project images onto the curtain. We had prerecorded footage of me playing that we rolled while I was behind the curtain and the drums were lowered onto the floor. The spaceman came behind the curtain, and I changed into his outfit really fast. While I was changing, the audience watched what they thought was me playing the drums. When I was done, I came out from behind the curtain as Mr. Spaceman and started watching the videotape of me playing drums. I loved that part. Then we’d start playing one of my favorite songs, Josh Wink’s “Higher State of Consciousness,” which is one of the most fucked-up dance tracks I’ve ever heard. I’d start raising my arms up and the drums would start elevating, higher and higher. When they were at their peak, while the projected image of me wailed away, I raised my spaceman gun and shot myself. The gun exploded, the drums exploded, and the curtain dropped, revealing an empty drum set, hovering up by the lighting rigs. That’s when I’d turn around and peel off my space helmet. Abracadabra! It’s me! Looking out at a sea of confused faces every night was epic. For a second there, I was David Copperfield and I realized how much magic is just one big illusion.

Oh, fuck, I wasn’t supposed to tell you how we did that. Sorry. While we’re at it, there is no Santa Claus, there is no magic, and there is no fucking Easter Bunny. The Tooth Fairy was your goddamned mom, storks don’t deliver babies, Pop Rocks and Coke won’t kill you, there is no Middle Earth, Mikey never liked Life cereal, you can’t get pregnant from kissing, you won’t go blind from jerking off, and when Jack and Jill tumbled down that hill, they was definitely fuckin’.*

 

 

Mötley was always about intensity and indulgence, and we were always a band living on the edge. I’m fearless, but there were more than a few situations that I got into in my Mötley days that scared the fuck out of me. Here’s one of many. We had a pilot I nicknamed Dick Danger and a private jet service I nicknamed Dangerous Airways during the Shout at the Devil tour (I think).* Dick Danger nearly destroyed us several times. Ol’ Dick was flying a tiny, tiny plane—a twin-engine prop plane, which is the kind of plane that goes down all the time if you check the obituaries. Anyway, Dick was this older guy, in his fifties at least, with white hair and a suitcase full of Hawaiian shirts.

I liked to keep an eye on Ol’ Dick, not because I thought I’d be able to do anything if some shit went wrong, more because he was like a trippy math problem: I needed to know what made this motherfucker tick. So I’m sitting up there in the cockpit next to Dick Danger one day, and I’m definitely toasted and I’m like, “Dude, could I fly this? Is it hard to do?” Dick’s all, “Take the wheel. Go ahead.” Our manager at the time heard this and completely freaked. “Do NOT let Tommy fly,” he said. “No, no, NO.” I look back at him and of course I take the wheel. I guess I thought it would be like a car or a video game, so I’m not even fully realizing that I have my entire band’s future at risk. I’m just thinking, “Fuck... I’m flying!” I’m glad Ol’ Dick didn’t tell me how to do a barrel roll—because you know I would have.

There we are: me, piloting this two-engine tin can, while next to me, Ol’ Dick has his hands free. I watch as he reaches into that Hawaiian shirt pocket, pulls out a vial, and pours himself a huge cap of cocaine. Woah … he does blow? That’s fucked up. Pass the cap, dude. I thought it was amazing to sit up there in the cockpit while the pilot did gaggers and I flew the plane. (I’ve grown up a bit since then.)

Eventually, we had to complain to the company we chartered our planes from because we realized that it wasn’t just Ol’ Dick—all their pilots were on drugs all the time. Our managers stood for a lot but they wouldn’t stand for that: We were enough of a problem, they didn’t want to deal with coked-out captains. Think about it, when you’re cruising in a plane with a coked-up pilot, you really start to freak when he gets on the speaker system and tells you to brace yourself for turbulence. You’re sitting there, thinking, “Fuck. I don’t want to be Lynyrd Skynyrd right now.”

On one of our tours we had a security guard named Vinny who beat up a fan. The kid got lippy with him and since Vinny was a crazy New York fucker, he lost his mind all of a sudden and started pounding away. This kid was probably sixteen and his blood flew everywhere. We were like, “Dude! What the fuck? You can’t do that.” I’ve got a picture of Vinny sitting on the curb afterwards. He’s covered with blood, he’s finally realized what he’s just done, and he’s bumming out, because he almost beat that kid to death.

Recently, I had a security guy who should have been with Mötley back in the day. He’d pop out his glass eye with a knife. That was a little much, especially when he would flick it into girls’ drinks. The guy had no peripheral vision on one side. He did the rest of the job well, but I figured that anyone could sneak up on him. I always made sure to stand on the good side—his left—where I’d be safe.* Who is hiring these people? I should have found myself a blind bus driver while I was at it. Back in the Mötley days we would have been into that. We probably would have gotten him really great sonar and a navigation system that talked to him. He would have fit right in.

We did ridiculous things in Mötley, many that worked and some that really didn’t. One of those bunk ideas, the kind you realize you should have thought through a little better, was a photo shoot we did on the top of a glacier when John Corabi was in the band. When Corabi came in the band, Mötley was a different monster. It was 1994, and bands like Nine Inch Nails and Nirvana had changed rock-and-roll. When the rest of us felt that Vince wasn’t taking the music or his duties as a singer seriously, we parted ways and Corabi stepped in to replace him. Corabi’s singing style was different—grittier, harsher, and more where the rest of us wanted to be at the time. Poor guy, he had enough to deal with stepping into Vince’s shoes, he didn’t need to be dragged onto a glacier outside Vancouver, Canada. But he was, and it was an act of sheer dumbassedness. We just jumped in a helicopter in our street clothes. Idiots! I was wearing jeans, a leather jacket, a T-shirt, and sneakers. I had a hat, because the night before, Phil, the singer from Pantera, had shaved my head, so I knew I’d be cold as fuck. My hat put me leagues ahead of the other guys. None of us had gloves and there we are, freezing to the bone at the top of this chunk of ice with hundred-foot crevaces all around us. Corabi didn’t even have a jacket. He had to be sitting there thinking, “What is wrong with these people? Why am I up here?” Corabi and I did have some fun making the one album and tour that we did in 1994–95. But we should ask him about that. Lucky for you, my readers, John stopped by one day while I was writing this book. He posted up at my bar, grabbed himself a beer, and reminded me of all the nasty good times we had. John tells a pretty good story, so without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to let him tell you all about it, in his own words.

 

 

 

Tommy and I got into a lot of trouble on that tour. We were the only two in the band who were single, drinking, and partying at the time, so we had our own bus while Nikki and Mick, the sober, mellow cats kept to themselves. Man, where should I start? One night this chick came up to me backstage, so I took her to the bus and fucked her. We’re just about done when all of a sudden our security guard comes back in the lounge of the bus and tells me that she’s got to go—NOW. Her husband was at the door of the bus and was pissed. I come out of the lounge tucking my dick in my pants and I see this guy through the windshield and he’s steaming. His lady gets her clothes on and as soon as she steps out of the bus, without a word, her husband decks her, just like that. All I could think was, “Welcome to the world of Mötley Crüe.”

Here’s how much of a stud Tommy is: We’re in Salt Lake City and I bring these two girls on the bus, hoping to get something going. One of them sees Nikki and she’s off to the other bus, chasing him around. Her friend is still with me, and she says, as soon as we’re alone, “I’m going to fuck you.” I say, “Okay. Do you want a drink?” I hop off the bus to get a mixer and I see Tommy go up in there. I’m gone from the bus for maybe three minutes and by the time I get back in there, no one is around, but I hear something going down in the back room. I walk back there and the chick is standing on the couch holding on to the roof of the bus while Tommy is behind her just bangin’ her. He was going so hard that the chick ripped a lighted panel out of the ceiling in the lounge. Mormon chicks are fucking insane.

 

One time we were rolling down the highway while in the other bus, Nikki is sitting going over figures with the business manager. Our bus is full of girls and the music, the lava lamps, and the disco-light system we have are bumpin’—it’s a full-on party in the middle of the day. Nikki looks up from his meeting as we pass them, and he sees all of these girls hanging out of the windows. The look on his face is priceless: He gets on our bus the next day and tells us he fucking hates us.

I won’t say what city we were in because I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, but at one stop some cops from the bomb squad paid us a visit because they heard that Tommy likes explosives. They just hand him a brown bag full of these things that are bigger than M80s—they’re like a half stick of dynamite each. It didn’t take Tommy long to get into those. We’re in Chicago and I’m fucking the shit out of this chick when I hear the biggest fucking boom, and then another one, and then another one. The next day, I’m hanging out with some of our crew outside, checking out the divots those bombs took out of the street. Right then, Tommy’s in our bus about half a block away when boom!, he drops another one. The bus driver, who is one of the guys standing next to me, suddenly screams and falls to the ground because a piece of the street has just blown a huge hole in his arm. Poor fucker.

Tommy was definitely crazy for fireworks—he blew like $2,000 bucks on them in Virginia Beach. Our back lounge was like a fort—every cabinet stuffed with mortar rockets, Roman candles, firecrackers. We had it all.

The biggest bomb he dropped on that tour wasn’t even an explosive. We get to Hiroshima, Japan, and T-Bone gets a genius idea that he keeps to himself. He talks to the sound guy and changes the intro music. As we come onstage—and I couldn’t fucking believe this—the Gap Band’s “You Dropped a Bomb on Me” is pumping through the PA. I turn around and he’s just sitting back there behind the drums laughing his ass off. I’m standing in front of eight thousand Japanese fans thinking, “This is not going to be a good night.” Somehow though, it was.

After the show, I ended up hanging out at some club with this American model who was living over there and after I liquored her up, we’re leaving when I see on the club’s board that the Vince Neil Band is playing the following week. I say something about it and she says to me, “Oh, I’m going to see that show.” So I tell her to say hi to Vince for me and that Vince and I go way back. A week later I get a call from her and she’s pissed. “You’re an asshole,” she says. “I went up to Vince Neil and told him ‘John Corabi says hi.’ He said to me, ‘Who?’ I said, ‘John Corabi, the singer for Mötley Crüe. He says hello.’ “ When she said that to Vince, he said, “Fuck you, I’m the singer for Mötley Crüe!” He flipped a table over, threw a bottle at her, cut his hand open, and went completely insane.

 

Thanks John, you’re a good man and a very talented musician. Thank you for the music, for being my accomplice, and for remembering the details that I forgot. And good luck.

That tour was called Anywhere There’s Electricity and it happened in 1994. It was the last tour I did with Mötley in my full-on debaucherous single-guy mode, after I ended the year of complete sobriety that followed our recording Dr. Feelgood in 1988. In 1995, I met Pamela Anderson, the woman who became my wife and with whom I share two beautiful sons. But that’s a story that deserves its own chapter, if not its own book.

Mötley was a powerful force from beginning to end and I can’t explain how rad it is to hear from fans that our music was the soundtrack to some of the highest points of their lives. We had the power to move people, and onstage you could feel it—on our best nights, it felt like we might lose control of the energy we were sending out. And sometimes we did. We have been charged several times by the authorities for inciting a riot, two of which in particular happened in Charlotte, North Carolina, and in Las Vegas at the Aladdin Hotel.

In Charlotte, in 1997, during the show, we noticed that this one black security guard was punching a girl in the face in the front row. Nikki decided to stop the show and call that motherfucker out. He said, “Anybody who hits a girl is a nigger.” Uh-oh, here we go. It was on. The guard jumped up onstage and went after Nikki. Vince and Mick bailed, but I hopped over the drums and got my boy’s back because shit was about to get ugly. Nikki had his bass by the neck like a baseball bat, looking like he wanted to hit a homerun with the guy’s melon. I jump in and start throwing my drink at the security guy to let him know that Nikki wasn’t alone and that he’d better chill out. By that time, our security had grabbed the guy and calmed him down. They got him offstage and off the premises real quick. A couple of days later we were served with a lawsuit. We spent a lot of money to make it go away.

The Las Vegas incident happened in 1999 during Mötley’s Greatest Hits tour. That ruckus was as loud and as gaudy as Vegas can be, and let me tell you, what happens in Vegas doesn’t always stay in Vegas. We were told before the show that we would be the last band to ever play the original Aladdin Hotel before it was torn down and remodeled. That’s why we agreed to play. Being the nice guys that we are, we figured we and our fans should lend a hand in the remodeling. Nikki gets on the mike and, of course, announces that the building we’re all standing in will be torn down. “We’re the last band that will ever play here,” he says. “So I want you all to help tear this motherfucker up.” And they did. Our fans went crazy—they ripped seats out of the floor and pay phones off the wall, basically destroying the fucking place. The next day, we found out that the Aladdin was remodeling everything BUT the arena we’d just played in. Oh damn. You should have seen the shopping list of destruction that showed up at our office: clean-up charges, union expenses, phones, walls, seats, and personal injuries out the ass. If Mötley did a residence at the Aladdin Hotel, Celine Dion style, starting now... maybe we’d break even in 2010.

The Greatest Hits tour was the last I’d do with Mötley Crüe and that night in Vegas was the end of the line for me. The tour was booked while I was in jail that summer for violating my probation and pleading no contest to spousal abuse (to avoid a serious gun rap). To be honest, I didn’t want to do the tour, but I felt like I couldn’t let my brothers down. “Fuck it,” I thought, “one last rip playing the greatest hits would be good for me.” You have no idea how bad and how hard I wanted to hit those drums after being locked up.

Speaking of hitting, that’s why I left the tour early. After the Aladdin demolition derby, we were shuttled to the airport to go home for a day or two. We’re sitting in the airport because we’re flying a commercial airline home. Ashley from our management office came up and gave me my tickets. Vince starts yelling at her, saying, “Why are you kissing Tommy’s ass? Why are his tickets ready before mine?” He is going off on Ashley, who works for us, and I tell him to relax. I say, “Who gives a shit whose tickets are ready first? We’re all getting on the same plane, dude.” Vince is not having it and he tells me to fuck off. Uh-oh. I say, “Do NOT tell me to fuck off, dude.” And what does he say to that? “Fuck off. What are you gonna do, hit me?” I said, “No, I’m not gonna hit you. You just need to fucking calm down.”

Blam! He cracked me right in the face, right there in front of the ticket counter at the gate while the passengers waiting to board freaked out. That was it, I was done, I couldn’t deal with him or this situation anymore. I tackled him, put him in a headlock, jacked my fist back, and thought, “This is worth going back to jail for.” Before I could send Vince off to the land of emergency rooms and white coats, my security guy Hawk—thank God—grabbed me by the neck and the shirt and while he’s carrying me onto the plane, I’m watching Vince standing there, all puffed up, screaming at the top of his lungs. “Police!” he shouts, with his wife/chick du jour he flew in for the night/whatever standing there next to him. “I’ve been assaulted!” he says over and over. “I’ve been assaulted! Police!” The last thing I saw before he fell out of view was him standing there with no one coming to his rescue—not even an airport rent-a-cop.

Everyone knew damn well that since I was on probation, if I got into any kind of trouble at all on that tour, I was going back to the Gray Bar Motel. Vince and I had had our run-ins before when our egos clashed. I had known him since high school and I had never approved of how he treated people. The more money and fame we got, the worse he was to anyone and everyone. He yelled at everybody and I never dug that, but trying to send me back to jail was it for me. Right there in the terminal that day, it was clear to me that Vince did not give a flying fuck about me. I sat down in my seat and was steaming when Nikki came on the plane. He took one look at me and he knew the tour was over, that was it, my ass was goin’ home—and staying there. Nikki tried to play referee, coaxing me to bite the bullet and finish the dates, but this wasn’t one I was willing to take for the team. “I quit,” I said. “I don’t need this shit anymore.”

I got home and the phone started ringing off the hook as my band members and management tried to reach out to me to talk me into finishing up the last twelve dates on our tour. I didn’t answer the phone and when I did, I just said, over and over, “There’s no way. I’m done.”

I wasn’t done—at some point I realized I’d feel better about the situation if I finished what I had started. I thought about the fans who had bought tickets to see Mötley play their greatest hits and I wasn’t going to let one asshole ruin it for all those people. So I decided I’d do it—with a fucking laundry list of conditions. I demanded my own bus, my own dressing room, and that management and security made sure that Vince and I did not come in contact at any time before or after the show. Still, it sucked being onstage with him. I was doing everything that I said I would never do: I was faking it because even though I didn’t want to be there, the show must go on. The fans had no clue, but I felt like a fucking whore up there every night and I counted down the shows until it was over.

I don’t know why I was surprised. There had been beef between Vince and me for years. We recorded Dr. Feelgood, our most successful album and tour, completely sober—and it wasn’t easy to be straight for that year. At every hotel we checked into, our travel agents and tour managers made sure that all the liquor was removed from the minibars, and in our dressing rooms, where Nikki and I used to have a bottle of Jack Daniel’s each, there was no booze to be found. Hell, Nikki and I would chug an entire bottle of Jack onstage just a few years ago. Mötley world had become a ghost town with no liquor stores. In Hawaii, we scheduled a few days off before the final two nights of the tour and we did it right: We rented Ferraris, hot rods, and Harleys, cruised around, and hung out on the beach. That night Vince and I went in search of tits and ended up at a strip club, which is probably the hardest place to be sober. There we are with all these fine-ass girls parading around us like stallions to every strip club’s theme song, “Girls, Girls, Girls.”

 

When the waitress came around with a rack of irresistible test-tube shots, Vince and I looked at each other and said, “Fuck it.” Between the chicks and our dicks, there was no way we weren’t drinking. It was on.

 

It was fucking awesome, but the whole time while we were whooping it up, I kept thinking about the other guys in the band who were back at the hotel, sober. What was I going to tell them?

The next day, me, Mr. Honest Guy had to confess.

 

The whole band is in the dressing room and I’m sitting there hung the fuck over. I say, “I’ve got something to tell you guys. I’m sorry I let you guys down, but last night I got fucked up at a titty bar.” Vince is standing right there and he says along with the other guys, “That’s okay, dude. You fucked up, but that’s cool.” I’m waiting there, ashamed, bumming, looking at Vince. That’s tight. I look right at him and say, “Thanks, bro, right on.” Dick. He never said a word about it, that fucker. I put myself out there to be straight with the brotherhood and he sat there and watched me do it. I’m convinced that he was drinking here and there behind closed doors throughout the tour. The craziest thing was when I looked at him at that moment he looked at me like I was on crack. He looked violated, like, “Why are you looking at me? I didn’t do shit last night.” Yeah, you did, dude. But whatever.

After that I was officially out of Mötley Crüe and since then people have not stopped asking me to sum up what it was like. I always tell them this: I have been everywhere and I’ve seen nothing. I’ve seen so many hotels and arenas that they’re all just one big room to me now. I saw a few road signs too, and a couple of menus. There wasn’t much time for sightseeing. I’ve made up for it since, but it’s crazy to think about how many times I went around the world with Mötley and how little I saw of it. Most of the landscapes I remember are framed by a van, limo, or plane window. And no matter where I was, the exact same deli tray was waiting backstage. Yuck.

One thing I don’t miss about being in Mötley Crüe is seeing Vince’s bloated, disrespectful, fucking ass every day, and it’s too bad that after knowing each other for so long, we haven’t found a way to get along. Who knows? Maybe someday we will—and I hope we do. I am happy that since the old days ended, I lose less clothes than I used to. From the beginning to the very end of my touring days with the band, I can’t tell you how many times I woke up to find that the chick I had brought back to my room and the clothes I was wearing the night before were gone. Usually I didn’t have a lot of clothes on to begin with, so losing even one item sometimes meant full nudity. It became a little strategy game: trying to get laid without losing my pants. Those girls would take anything—my shirt, my pants, my shoes, my underwear if I was wearing any. I tried to stay aware enough to hear them when they left my room or I’d try to remember to leave my clothes where I’d be able to find them when I made my escape. But it was always a losing battle. Let me tell you, it’s pretty fucked to wake up naked with no pants in sight. It’s much better to wake up in the morning to find that the Japanese fan you brought home has folded all your clothes, cleaned your room, didn’t take anything, and is completely gone. They’re so respectful! Arigato!

What I did see every night and that always blew me away was Mick Mars’s playing. He is one of the most underrated guitar players of the era. His riffs on the Mötley records are amazing. His tone sounds like two or three guys playing at the same time. He took blues guitar and gave it a facelift and plugged it through more Marshall stacks than God on distortion. And nobody gave him props. Maybe it was because he was the quiet guy. Maybe it was because he refused to do interviews, stayed as far in the background as he could and loved the dark. He wasn’t the most popular Mötley member, but he didn’t give a fuck because he doesn’t like people—and I think they could tell. He is the fucking loner vampire of all time, the recluse of all reclusives—that cat does not like people at all, any people, anywhere, any time, any of them, ever. I can relate to that and generally I think people suck. But if you take that feeling too far, you’ll end up at home, alone, every day, never seeing anyone. In my mind, whenever I hear myself saying that people suck, I always add that most people suck—but not everyone.

I’m a lot like Mick in one way: I’m definitely an agoraphobic.* If you rolled with me for a day to the mall, the supermarket, or a rock show, you’d see why I like meeting people, but it tends to get weird real quick.

Funny thing about my agoraphobia is that I live in the town of Agoura. How fucked up is that?

But Mick’s agoraphobia is different: He’s got hate mixed in there, a kind of redneckish, unfriendly, pick-up-truck-with-a-gun-rack vibe. He grew up in Indiana so I guess it’s in the blood. He would never in his life walk up to someone and say, “Hey, dude, what’s happening?” He was cool with those of us in the band and our inner circle, but whenever anyone outside our little army spoke to him his reaction was, “What the fuck do you want?” I fucking love that about him. That is what makes Mick one of the most unique, amazing people I know. I wouldn’t change a thing about him.

As much as there are times when I wish I could get Mick to be a little less Mick and come out and participate in the world, I will never be mad at him for being the way he is. He just wants to be home and if he’s not home, he just wants to be inside playing video games or his guitar until it’s dark. I used to stop by his room when we were touring and invite him out to the pool, trying to lure him out there by telling him about all the girls lying around with us, and he’d look at me like I was crazy and say, “What? Dude, I don’t go out unless it’s fucking dark.” He’d lie around in a white robe, with black socks and black sunglasses on, with all the shades drawn, watching Three Stooges reruns over and over and over. He hated it when I would open the curtains and let some light in. “What are you doing? I hate light. I hate everybody. I hate everything.” It was gnarly. I’d say, “All righty then! See you, bro!” When Mick did have to go out in daylight, he always wore a black hat pulled way down and the biggest, darkest pair of sunglasses he could find. He’d keep those glasses on all night sometimes.

Everyone always asks about it and once it almost happened. For my forty-first birthday I jammed with Sammy Hagar, Jerry Cantrell, and Chad Smith from the Chili Peppers down in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, where Sammy has his club, Cabo Wabo. Sammy called me to come down and celebrate my birthday with him. We’re both Libras, we get along, and we’ve always wanted to jam together and never had the chance. It coincided with the end of writing this book, so I was like, “Fuck yeah!” I grabbed Anthony and we bailed to Cabo the day we handed this book in.* We were ready for a long-awaited celebration after working for four months.

Sammy does this birthday bash for himself every year. It’s two weeks long, he gives away all the tickets for free, first come, first serve. It’s crazy—people fly in from all over the place. He’s got so many friends who come down to celebrate and play with his band that Sammy’s party turns into a freestyle jam, and if you’re not there for the music, you’ve got no business being there. There’s no money to make, no interviews to do, we just rock shit, party, drink tequila, soak up the sun, and dread the day that we have to go home.

When we got there, Sammy informed me that he had intended a whole other kind of birthday present. He had talked to the other guys in the Crüe because his plan was to surprise me with a cake and a reunion. I just looked at him and tripped. I couldn’t believe he would go that far to freak me out. I just sat there going, “Woah.” Then I thought, “Woah, hey, that would be kinda cool.” Well, it didn’t happen. Let’s just say that ninety-five percent of the Crüe was down, the other five percent wanted a contract and payment up front.

From 1980 to 1999 Mötley Crüe was epic. It was half my life. We’ve already published the autobiography of the band and it’s still not summed up. How can I condense that much time into words or anything that will make sense to anyone else? Well... I’m going to try. Thank you, Nikki, Mick, and yes, even you, Vince, for all of it—it being everything you could ever possibly imagine: all your dreams and goals achieved with three other guys who came, saw, and kicked the world’s ass. Thank you for something that every guy wants: a brotherhood, a gang, a home away from home, the biggest block party ever, and all the rad shit that comes with being a rock star! It was us against the world, we made the rules, we broke the rules, and loved every fucking minute of it. Thanks for the music, the money, MTV, the cars, the mansions, the fame, the fortune, the tits, the ass, the drugs, the drama, the crabs, the roaches, the poverty, the pillage, the hairspray, the drum kits from hell, the parties from heaven, the stack of multiplatinum albums, the fans, the road crew who did the impossible, the history, the pyro, the porno, the private jets, the fights, the love, the blood, and if I went on, the scroll would hit the floor and the credits would roll forever. All I can say is what we said every December: Have a Mötley Christmas and a Happy Crüe year.