 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
"I knew I wanted to do a book on Motley Crue," New York Times music critic and reporter Neil Strauss said, "because first it was a story that hadn't been told, and second when you think of decadent '80s rock, you think of Motley Crue."
From 1981 to '91 Motley Crue embodied every glorious cliche associated with L.A. metal. Singer Vince Neil, bassist Nikki Sixx, guitarist Mick Mars, and drummer Tommy Lee consumed Olympian quantities of drugs, committed countless sexual indiscretions, laid waste to arenas around the world like rock Visigoths, and cleaned up their act by decade's end. Though their commercial heyday is well behind them, Motley Crue still exert a powerful fascination. The band wriggled out of a contract with Elektra Records with millions intact; Neil left the Crue, then rejoined; Lee quit the band to form the rap/metal group Methods of Mayhem; and, most notoriously, Lee and then-wife Pamela Anderson's videotaped sexcapades fell into the wrong hands to become the best-selling pornographic video ever. Marilyn Manson and Strauss wrote The Long Hard Road out of Hell, an account of the artist formerly known as Brian Warner's early years in Ohio and Florida, and of Manson's career in pop-cultural antagonism up to Antichrist Superstar. "The greatest measure of that book's success," said Strauss, "is when we read that some kids were arrested for digging up a body and smoking the bones," which echoed a notorious passage in Long Hard Road. "That's when we knew we'd written a book like something a young Marilyn Manson would have read." Strauss met the Crue when he profiled them for Spin magazine in 1998; he was reading the Manson book's proofs while on tour with them for the story. They liked what he'd done with Manson, so when HarperCollins secured their participation for a book, Strauss was enlisted as co-author. He went on tour with the band three times in the course of his research and visited the band members at their homes. "Nikki is a very driven guy; he's got his history set in his mind. Mick is super-shy. It's very hard to get Vince to open up, because he's been through so much. The hard part with Tommy was getting him to do one last project with the band." Strauss admitted it was often difficult to get the band members to relive the highs and lows of their altogether eventful lives. And no session was as poignant as the one in which Neil recalled his 4-year-old daughter Skylar's death from cancer. "He was crying, I was crying. It tore me apart. When I gave him the book, I said, 'You might not want to read this.'" Stories about the Motley House, the fetid pit on Sunset Strip where Sixx, Neil, and Lee perfected their rock-pig lifestyles, provided more levity. "Everybody's going to look for Pamela Lee stories," Strauss predicted, "but those early days, when nobody knew who they were, when they were the kings of the Strip, when there were no consequences, are my favorites." The ancillary Crue figures Strauss interviewed included John Corabi, Neil's ill-fated mid-'90s replacement; Tom Zutaut, who signed the band to Elektra only to discover that Neil had sex with his date at the 1983 US Festival; former Crue manager Doc McGhee, who rues the day he became associated with the band; and Scott Humphrey, disgruntled producer of the 1997 reunion album Generation Swine. Strauss is now at work on a book with former Jane's Addiction and Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Dave Navarro. "He was working on his [as-yet-untitled] solo project, and we came up with the idea of documenting his life for a year." Don't Try This at Home, as the book will probably be titled, will depict visitors to Navarro's home and delve into his history, including his mother's murder by her boyfriend when he was a child. "Manson's gift is manipulating the public," said Strauss. "Dave's gift is manipulating himself." For more news, pictures, and songs, visit the Motley Crue Fan Club.
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
