by Tommy Lee
And that’s when Heather and I came in. We wanted to go to Jamaica. But we didn’t know anybody there and Leigh, of course, was connected to fucking everyone in the Caribbean. So we had Doc get in touch with him, and he said he’d meet us in Jamaica to show us around. Unbeknownst to him, however, the feds had made a deal with the Jamaican government and the second his plane touched down in Kingston, they surrounded it, pulled him off, put him on a jet for Tampa, and arrested him there. Heather and I felt terrible: We had no one to show us around Jamaica.
Shit turned out cool for Leigh, though. He got sentenced to life in prison, sent us a couple letters, and then we didn’t hear from him. Next thing I knew, when we were in Tampa on the Decade of Decadence tour, Leigh was at the show decked out in fucking Armani. He wouldn’t tell me how he weasled out of a life sentence in less than ten years, but he did claim that he was keeping his nose clean. By then, I was keeping my nose clean, too.
So was our manager, Doc McGhee. Before he met us, he was living a secret life that blew up on him when he got busted for helping smuggle forty thousand fucking pounds of pot from Colombia into North Carolina. It wasn’t his only bust, because he was also being accused of associating with some well-connected madmen who had conspired to bring over a half a million pounds of blow and weed into the United States in the early eighties. So just as we were going through rehab, the law slapped Doc with a fifteen-thousand-dollar fine and a five-year suspended prison sentence, and made him set up an antidrug organization, the Make a Difference Foundation, after he pled guilty in the North Carolina case.
Doc knew that anyone else probably would have been in jail for at least ten years for that shit, so he had to do something high-profile to show the court he was doing the world some good as a free man. And his brainstorm was to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of Woodstock with the Moscow Music Peace Festival, a giant spectacle of sobriety and international love that included us, Ozzy, the Scorpions, and Bon Jovi. All the money was supposed to go to antidrug and anti-alcohol charities, including the Make a Difference Foundation.
But it was all bad from the moment we stepped on the plane. We had a pact as a band that we were going to stay sober, and as a sober band we were going to take our music to the fucking top. Dr. Feelgood was coming out in a couple weeks, and Doc told us that a warm-up show in Moscow would be a great way to kick it off. He explained that everyone would be equal on the bill, there would be no headliners, and everyone would play a stripped-down fifty-minute show with no props or special effects. The running order would be the Scorpions, Ozzy, us, and then Bon Jovi.
But as soon as we stepped on Doc’s plane, which was covered with stupid psychedelic hippie paintings by Peter Max, memories of the Theatre and Girls tours flooded back. We were looking at a daylong plane ride with absolutely nothing to do. Then, there was a so-called doctor on board, who was plying the bands who weren’t sober with whatever medicine they needed. It was clear that this was going to be a monumental festival of hypocrisy. Even Mick was in a shitty mood the whole flight: He had been helping pay for all our drug problems for a year, and now here he was flying to Moscow to help pay his management—the guys who are supposed to be taking care of us—for their drug problems.
When we arrived at the gig, it started to become clear that this was a total cluster fuck and Doc had told each band something different in order to get them to do the show. Jon Bon Jovi thought it was just another stop on his world headlining tour, while we thought it was supposed to be a small-scale, reduced set. Then the production manager broke the news to us that we’d been demoted. We were on before Ozzy and the Scorpions. I was fucking livid. Doc was supposed to be our manager, looking out for our best interests, and he was favoring one of his newer clients, Bon Jovi, over us and the Scorpions, who, in Russia, were massive.
“Fuck you, Doc,” Nikki said to him. “We didn’t fly all the way to Russia to be an opening act while Bon-fucking-Jovi gets to headline for an hour and a half. What’s up with that?”
“Dude, we are fucking going home!” I screamed at Doc. I was pissed. “This show isn’t even about us. It’s about Bon Jovi.”
“You guys can’t do that,” Doc pleaded. “That’s fucked up.”
“Hey,” Nikki said. “We’re not doing anything wrong. You told us something that wasn’t true. You said that everyone was supposed to be equal on this show, and now every band is getting more time than us. This is turning into a fucking joke.”
Finally, Doc appeased us, and, more out of respect for Ozzy (who took us on tour with him when no one knew shit about us and was now playing with our friend Randy Castillo on drums), we said we’d do it.
We played a decent show the first night, and it felt good to be busting out “Dr. Feelgood” and “Same Ol’ Situation” live for the first time. Ozzy was fucking crazy and great, as usual, and the Russians went ballistic for the Scorpions. The audience, which was about 125,000 people, started to stream out of the theater after the Scorpions. But then old Jon made his grand entrance, right through the middle of the audience, as lines of Russian police officers split the crowd in front of him like the Red Sea. As soon as he reached the front, the whole stage went BOOM—fireworks and flash pots and pyrotechnics exploded into the air. The crowd went apeshit while I fucking shit in my pants.
You need to get permits to get those kind of pyrotechnics into Russia, and it was clear that Doc knew all along what Bon Jovi was planning for its show. So as soon as those bombs went off, everyone in the crew and other bands looked at us. They knew that someone was about to get hurt. I hunted Doc down and found him backstage. I walked right up to him and pushed him in his fat little chest, knocking him over onto the ground like a broken Weeble. As he lay there, Nikki broke the news: “Doc, you lied to us again. This time you’re fucking fired.”
We did the honorable thing and played the next day, then had our tour manager book us a flight home on Air France. We didn’t want to have anything more to do with helping Doc pay his legal bills.
We flew back via Paris and New York, and talked with Doug Thaler about ditching Doc and helping him start his own company to take care of us. The whole ride home we felt like suckers for even going to Russia but also like dumb fucks for dumping our management on the eve of releasing the first record we ever really felt pumped about. I holed myself up with Heather, just depressed and fighting the urge every day to make a big togo order from the liquor store. I did interviews, I listened to the radio a little, and I could feel maybe a little momentum growing. But I had no idea. Then, on October 3, my twenty-seventh birthday, I received a fax. It was from Nikki.
If you could have just one thing on your birthday,
Some way for the world to say,
That it will all be okay,
Then I would wish for you with all my heart,
A number one album on the Billboard chart.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TOMMY. YOU HAVE A NUMBER ONE ALBUM.
I drove to the newsstand, bought Billboard magazine, and had the album chart shellacked and mounted. Then I called everyone I knew.
It was a dark time in my life, and I was trying to do something about it. I was trying to do something for everybody: for the world, for the bands, and for myself. The Moscow Music Peace Festival wasn’t like promoting a festival in Poughkeepsie or Woodstock. This was something completely new. And nobody got it. For the bands, it was all about them and who got what time slot and who got the biggest dressing room and how come someone got to shoot a firework off.
By the time the show started, I was tired of hearing all the bitches bitch. Since Nikki’s overdose, I knew that Mötley and I had to split for one simple reason: I didn’t like them. There was nothing I liked about them. I had to start dealing with my life and the bands in my life that were willing to let me help them. Mötley never let me help: instead, we just beat the shit out of each other.
It had taken me a decade to get to that point with Mötley Crüe. From the moment I first saw them at the Santa Monica C
ivic Center and rode home in a merchandise truck that was completely empty because the guys had sold every single item, I knew they were beginning a career that could only go up. But I had no idea that as human beings they were in such a complete downward spiral. I’ve managed Mink DeVille, James Brown, the Scorpions, Skid Row, Bon Jovi, and Kiss. I’ve been dragged through the deepest shit by all kinds of mentally ill people. But I have never been through what Mötley Crüe put me through. One day, Mick would try to jump out a window. “Why’d you do that?” I would ask.
“I dunno.”
The next day, Nikki would punch some guy in a suit off a bar stool.
“Why’d you do that?”
“I dunno.”
The next day, Tommy, the happiest kid in the second grade, would knock me on my ass.
“Why’d you do that?”
“I dunno.”
Every day was like that. It was a constant. We were thrown out of hotels in every city. That’s the difference between chicken shit and chicken salad. They weren’t like Poison, who raised hell because they thought that was what rock stars should be doing. Mötley Crüe did stupid things because they were Mötley Crüe. There was no reason for anything, just a Mötley reason. They didn’t even have to try: Their life was the rock-and-roll life.
That band was poised to be the Zeppelin of its era. But they could never get it together. Even today, I still believe that they could come out roaring again with something that’s new and meaningful and true to where they are at in their lives. But if they do accomplish that, it’s not going to be with me. I’ve already spent ten years of my life apologizing for that band. As their manager, that’s all I really did. Apologize. For years afterward, I’d walk into a hotel lobby and the receptionist would call to me, “Mr. McGhee.” And I’d run up and drop to my knees and say, “Oh, Jesus, I’m really sorry.”
They’d look at me funny and say, “No, nothing’s wrong. You have a telephone call.”
And I’d breathe a sigh of relief and thank the good Lord above that I wasn’t managing Mötley Crüe anymore.
Tharise was your average mud wrestler: blond hair, big tits, and a killer hard body. When the girls from the Tropicana came back to my house to wrestle for my friends, she was always the most vicious fighter. She won every time and looked good doing it. She was just my type.
When we started going out, she stopped dancing. Instead, she developed a twenty-thousand-dollars-a-month purse habit. And instead of wrestling other chicks she fought with me all the time. Sobriety may have been easy for the other guys, but I was being driven to drink every night.
Before the Feelgood album came out, I called up some of my buddies and went white-water rafting down Snake River in Idaho for ten days. It was the best way I could think of to stay sober: away from Sharise, the telephone, the band, the bars. It was just sunshine, rapids, and exercise.
As soon as we returned to civilization, I called Sharise and she was in tears.
“I was at the Cathouse,” she sobbed. “And Izzy was hitting on me.”
“Izzy Stradlin?”
“Yeah, he was all fucked up. And I told him to get his hands off me because I was your wife. Then he grabbed my shirt and pulled it down.”
“That fucking asshole!”
“But that’s not even the bad part. I slapped him across the face, of course. And then he karate-kicked me as hard as he could. In the stomach. He knocked the wind out of me. It really hurt. And everyone saw it.”
“That little shit! The next time I see his motherfucking ass, I’m going to fucking kill him!”
“Oh yeah, I almost forgot,” she added. “Your album’s number one.”
I don’t think anyone had disrespected me like that since the bikers outside the Whisky hit on Beth and Lita so many years ago. But Izzy wasn’t a biker. He was the guitarist in Guns N’ Roses. I had taken that fucking band on tour as an opening act for a few of the Girls shows when nobody believed in them. They were nice then: Axl was a shy, humble guy who was a lot of fun to be with. But now they were starting to believe their own press clippings, and this guy who was supposed to be my friend was disrespecting my wife.
“Did you hear me? Your record’s number one.”
Izzy had picked the wrong time to fuck with me, because the MTV Video Music Awards were just weeks away at the Universal Amphitheater. At the show, I left the band waiting in their limos outside and hung around backstage while Guns N’ Roses played with Tom Petty.
When Izzy walked offstage, looking like a cross between Eric Stoltz in Mask and Neil Young, I was waiting for him. “You fucking hit my wife!”
“So fucking what?” he spat.
All my blood rushed into my fist, and I decked him. I decked him good, right in the face. He fell to the ground like a tipped cow.
Fred Saunders pinned my arms. “The next time you fucking touch her, I’ll fucking kill you!” I yelled at Izzy’s prone body as Fred dragged me away.
I shook myself loose and we walked toward the door to make our escape. Before we reached the exit, Axl came snarling after us like an overdressed Doberman. “Come on, motherfucker, I’m going to fucking kill you!” he yelled at our backs.
I twirled around. His face was sweaty and twisted. “Let’s fucking go!” I said to him. And I meant it. The blood was still pumping into my fists. He looked at me and squeaked like a little bitch, “Just don’t fuck with my band again, okay?” And he walked away.
Then, Axl suddenly launched a press campaign about me. If I was a record, he would have sold millions of copies of me. Every article I read, every time I turned on the TV, he was claiming that I had sucker-punched Izzy and been insulting Guns N’ Roses for years, and he pledged to put me in my place, which was six feet under the earth. It was like rock and roll had suddenly turned into the World Wrestling Federation.
It was such a betrayal. I had every right to knock Izzy on his ass, and it was none of Axl’s business. On the Girls tour, Axl would come to me when his throat hurt and I’d show him the tricks I’d developed for singing after a night spent destroying my vocal cords. Now he was sending little messengers to me, with instructions to meet him in the parking lot of Tower Records on Sunset or on the boardwalk of Venice Beach. Even though it was such a high school way of settling our differences, I showed up every time, because the only thing that would have given me more pleasure than a number one album on the pop charts was breaking Axl Rose’s nose.
But Axl never showed. It finally got to the point that whenever he arranged a fight somewhere, I just sent some people to the spot to call me if and when he appeared. Maybe someone else would have just let it drop after Axl chickened out a good half-dozen times. But I was pissed: He was in the press acting like he was king of the world, saying that I couldn’t fight and that he was a red belt in this and that. But in real life he was too chickenshit to back up his word. So I finally went on MTV with a message for him: I said that if Axl wanted to fight me, then he should do it in front of the whole world. I proposed Monday night—fight night—at the Forum. We’d go three rounds, and then the world would see who the pussy was.
I was ready to go. I didn’t even care about Izzy anymore. I’d dealt with him. He even called and apologized for what he did to Sharise. As for Slash and Duff McKagan, we were friends through it all—they knew what an asshole Axl was. I wanted to beat the shit out of that little punk and shut him up for good. But I never heard from him: not that day, not that month, not that year, not that century. But the offer still stands.
We didn’t hang out, we didn’t party, we didn’t stick our dicks where they didn’t belong. We just flew into a city, played our asses off, and got the fuck out of there. For the first time, we were operating like a machine instead of four untamed animals. But then we started getting treated like a machine.
The tour started off as this beautiful dream: we had our first number one album, which was so insanely popular that every damn song but one ended up on a single. We were on the cover of every magazine.
And we had a big-ass stage show that filled dozens of trucks and went beyond anything we could have imagined when we were sitting in the Mötley house setting Nikki on fire. There were thirty-six Marshall stacks, thirty-six SVT stacks, and a kick-ass flying drum set, which I’d been fantasizing about all my life.
The crowds were fanatical. They knew every lyric, every chord, every downbeat off every album. And, for the first time, we were sober enough to appreciate it. And married enough. We all had new wives or fiancées to whom we wanted to stay faithful: I was with Heather, Mick was engaged to Emi, Vince had Sharise, and Nikki had proposed to Brandi (though he probably wasn’t looking forward to Thanksgivings at her mother’s house). Mötley Crüe was now four dudes in the best physical shape they’d been in since they were born.
But then fall faded to winter, winter turned to spring, and spring bloomed to summer, and we were still on the road with no sign of stopping. Elektra was still releasing singles from the album and Doug Thaler, who was managing us by himself, had us booked into tours and festivals for another year solid.
After a while, it didn’t matter how much bank we were making or how many weeks our album had been in the top 40, we just couldn’t bring ourselves to put those leather pants on again for another night. Maybe if we were allowed to tour with cooler opening acts like Iggy Pop or Hüsker Dü instead of being forced to bring along cheesy pop-metal posers like Warrant and Whitesnake our morale would have been better. Maybe if we had a week off sometimes, a little time in the Bahamas to veg out, we could have made it through the tour sane. But the record label was worried we’d lose our momentum. We were a money machine, and they were going to keep working us until we broke. And, dude, break we did.