by Tommy Lee
After leaving the sheds with Van Halen, we headlined a club tour on our own, which was even more humbling because I hadn’t played in places that small since Rock Candy. Now that I was solo, I had to do all the interviews, write all the songs, make up the set lists, figure out the marketing, approve all the artwork, and deal with everything. I learned more on that album and tour than in my entire time with Mötley. But the grind quickly wore me down and as soon as I found an opportunity to get off the road, I retreated to the comfort of Malibu and Skylar.
My house was the most opulent place I had ever lived in, with a spiral staircase running through the center topped by a dome of stained glass. It looked like the perfect setting for a porn movie, so I started renting it out for porn shoots and for Penthouse centerfold shoots when my daughter wasn’t around. Afterward, I’d get to date the Pets. Life reverted to the time before I met Sharise and I was playing at being a mini–Hugh Hefner. I’d invite my buddies over all the time, and we’d kick back and watch the shoots. If the crew was cool, we’d throw beach parties and neighbors like Jon Lovitz and Charlie Minor would come by.
On one of the Penthouse shoots, there was a makeup artist named Alexis, who also worked on the big Playboy shoots. She was showing me her Polaroids, and a chill ran through my body when I saw the cover model for the April issue of Playboy. She was as skinny, blond, and big-titted as could be. And that was all I needed to see. “I have to meet this girl,” I told Alexis.
Alexis couldn’t promise anything, because the girl was an actress from Palm Beach. But soon after, she came to town and was staying at the Playboy Mansion. She called me, introduced herself as Heidi Mark, and said she could go out with me that night but had to be back early for a 7 A.M. photo shoot. I picked her up at the Playboy Mansion and took her to a friend’s birthday party. I was amazed when Heidi wasn’t disgusted watching us toss hundred-dollar bills at strippers like confetti. She was a tomboy trapped in the shell of a Barbie doll, and she enjoyed the whole spectacle. Afterward, I offered to drive her back to Hef ’s but she said, “I don’t really need to go back there. Ever since Hef ’s been married, the mansion’s been dead.”
“But what about the seven A.M. photo shoot?” I asked.
“I sort of made that up in case I didn’t like you.” She smiled.
We went to my house, and she stayed there for a week, until she had to leave for Orlando to tape a show called Thunder in Paradise.
Our second date was in the Bahamas. Michael Peters, who owns the Pure Platinum chain of strip clubs, had become a good buddy of mine. Back when we were recording the single “Girls, Girls, Girls,” I had played it for him in his Lamborghini, and he promised on the spot that the song would be played every hour on the hour in every club he owned—and he has kept that promise to this day. After my week in L.A. with Heidi, Michael and I flew fifteen girls—each smuggling baggies of coke in whatever orifice they could hide them—in two Lear jets to a place called Hurricane Hole, where he had a ninety-foot yacht anchored and a film crew hired to document it all. On day three, I was cruising across the bay in a waverunner with a topless blond on the back when I happened to glance toward the beach. Sitting there on top of a pile of luggage, with her arms folded angrily over her chest, was a girl who looked very familiar. It was Heidi. I had forgotten that she was arriving that day. Instinctively, I jabbed my elbow back and knocked the blond off the back of the waverunner, and then sped to the beach. I thought somehow, when she saw me arrive alone, she’d think the topless blond was a trick the 3 P.M. sunshine had played on her eyes.
After a few days of hanging out with nude women on Michael’s boat, Heidi decided that if we were to have anything resembling a healthy relationship, we would have to find somewhere to stay on our own. So we moved into a house Michael owned and used it as a love shack until, a few days later, my jet ski hit a coral reef and I flew over the top, cracking two ribs on the hard coral.
Our relationship pretty quickly became one disaster after another: After the Bahamas, Michael took it upon himself to butter up Heidi’s father. So he looked up the address of her father’s office in Palm Beach and sent him a motherlode of paraphernalia from the Doll House, Pure Platinum, and Solid Gold: everything from T-shirts to soft-porn videos of the girls. He’d been in the business for so long, he thought that any red-blooded male would be glad to receive his stripper gifts. Unfortunately, he didn’t know that Heidi’s dad was a divorce lawyer and her grandmother worked as the receptionist in his office. When the old lady opened it, she had a fit. To make matters worse, Michael had enclosed a note with the package that read: “Dear John, Thank you for raising such a great girl. Love, Michael.” So Heidi’s whole family thought she was dating Michael. When they read in the local papers that Michael had gotten arrested for violating the RICO anti-racketeering act in Florida for drugs, money-laundering, and liquor license violations, they practically disowned her. The only good that came out of it was that when they discovered Heidi was dating me, they were actually relieved.
Now that my single life was over, I pulled out of Bar One; my partners went on to start the only strip club to get a license to operate in Beverly Hills, the Beverly Club. Instead, I spent my time with Heidi at a Malibu restaurant called Moonshadows, where Fran Drescher, Gary Busey, and Kelsey Grammer all hung out. Everything began to return to normal, except for my mail: once a week, I’d receive a manila envelope that contained a photograph of me and Heidi lying out by the pool or in bed. I thought we were being stalked by a jealous fan until Heidi told me that her ex-fiancé had been a vice cop and was sending DEA helicopters to spy on us. I interpreted this as a warning and flushed all the cocaine I could find in the house.
My contact at Warner Bros., Michael Ostin, hooked me up with a pair of producers who called themselves the Dust Brothers for my next album. They had made a great album with the Beastie Boys but had not yet struck pay dirt with Beck and Hanson, and it was very frustrating working with them. I would record something with one of them while the other left the room to smoke pot. When we were through, the guy who had left would return and say what we did sucked. Then they’d switch places and we’d go through the same routine again. It was like trying to make an album with Cheech and Chong. They weren’t into songs or production at all. They were computer cut-and-paste guys, so that whatever I finished when I left the studio one night would sound completely different the next morning.
It was a frustrating experience, but, somehow, as if by the magic of the marijuana fairy, we ended up with a pretty cool album. Eight years before Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit, it mixed rap beats with rock guitars. And because no one was making any music like that at the time, Warner Bros. didn’t know what to do with it. As they were deciding, drama struck in the executive suites and a power struggle resulted in massive firings. Suddenly, I was at the label with nobody on my side and a completed record with a release date that kept getting pushed back month after month.
I was ready to hit the road again, but I was stuck in limbo. I had become obsessed with racing since leaving the band, so I plunged myself into that world. I had driven half a season in the Indy Lights, and loved it. The focus, the fans, and the rush were like being onstage at a rock concert. If you made a mistake, everybody saw it. At the Long Beach Grand Prix, a car hit me on the third lap. My car swerved sideways and the wing hit the wall, snapping the bracket that holds it to the chassis. In the pit, the crew took off the wing, which is what keeps the car’s back end from flying off the ground when you drive, and I tried to finish the race without it. I cruised out of the pit, down the straightaway, and, as I hit a kink in the road, flipped into third gear. Instantly, the car spun out of control and slammed into the wall. The crowd roared, and I stumbled out unharmed except for the red flush of humiliation on my face.
The team I was driving for was called P.I.G. racing, and it was mostly made up of cops and former cops. The crew consisted of guys from their S.W.A.T. team, and I had put millions of dollars into my cars and engines and a tra
iler. One day, one of the officers who ran the team disappeared and I received a notice that he had been arrested for selling coke out of the police evidence locker (which was probably how he funded the team) and gone bankrupt, so everything I had was seized. I never saw my cars again, though I later saw him hanging around the races.
After finishing the album with the Dust Brothers, I began driving in the amateur celebrity races. That April, after celebrating my daughter Skylar’s fourth birthday, I went to Long Beach to drive in the Grand Prix again. I finished in second place, and came off the track exhilarated. That night, there was a party at the hotel where most of the drivers were staying, and I started to celebrate. An hour into the debauchery, a hotel staff member ran up to me. He said I had a phone call in the lobby.
I picked it up, expecting Heidi. I wanted so badly to tell her how well I had raced. But it wasn’t Heidi calling at all. It was my estranged wife, Sharise, and she was crying so hard she could hardly complete a sentence.
“Skylar’s in the hospital.” She struggled between sobs to expel each word. “Her appendix exploded. She wants her daddy.”
fig. 4
Vince Neil with son Neil
Theatre of Pain cost less than two hundred thousand dollars to make. Dr. Feelgood was six hundred thousand dollars. And both times we got our money’s worth. After a few months, the Corabi album already cost as much as every prior Mötley record combined. But no one could talk to these guys anymore. Even Chuck Shapiro was afraid of them.
So I called a band meeting in Vancouver and passed around some spreadsheets that Chuck had prepared. “You guys have been working on this album for five months, and it’s over a million dollars so far,” I told them. “Here is where the million dollars went, and that doesn’t even count the bills coming in from the last five weeks.”
Nikki took the spreadsheets and threw them at me. “You’re just negative,” he raged. “You’re killing all my creativity by telling me this kind of shit.” And he stormed out of the room. Meeting over.
Fourteen months and two million dollars later, the record was finally finished. The week it came out, it entered the pop charts at number seven. I wiped the sweat off my forehead, thinking that maybe everything was worth it after all and the new band actually did have a shot. The next week, a friend who gets the chart numbers early called me. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said. “Your album dropped from number seven all the way to twenty-eight.”
And that’s when the freak-out began.
TABITHA SOREN, MTV NEWS HOST: Hitting the road in June, we hear, will be Mötley Crüe, who recently returned to the scene with a new, self-titled album: their first in four years, and their first with John Corabi, who’s replaced original vocalist Vince Neil. We spoke with the Crüe recently about the new album, the new sound, and the new guy. When we brought up the old days, however, things got ugly. Take a look.
VOICE-OVER: Mötley Crüe is back. And with a new album and lead singer, they say they’re bigger and better than ever. But in a time when metal groups are having trouble staying in the Top Ten, do the fans even care? It was only a few short years ago that the group was fronted by Vince Neil. The new one is the first with former the Scream lead John Corabi.
TOMMY: It’s a pretty natural evolution. When John came in to audition, we were looking for a singer. He came in and strapped on a guitar. We were like, “Whoa, what’s going on?” And we started jamming, and he was like, “Hey, check out this riff.” It was just real natural for us to jump on the riff as a band and all jam together and all of a sudden the sound got twice as fat. And all these things just naturally started coming, so it just kind of really flowed and happened and did its thing.
VOICE-OVER: And with Corabi now in place, we thought we’d get the deal on the much-publicized falling-out with Neil.
INTERVIEWER: What happened with Vince?
NIKKI: Uh, we’ll save that for the book.
TOMMY: {Laughs.}
NIKKI: We don’t want to talk about that. No one cares anyway. VOICE-OVER: Okay, but do they care when their former bandmate sustained several broken ribs and internal injuries while jet-skiing a few weeks ago?
NIKKI: {Laughs.}
MICK: My heart goes out to you. {pauses} Hey, what happened to the coral reef, then?
NIKKI: Oh, man. Hey, when three hundred pounds of blubber landed on the coral reef, you know there was some dust flying around.
MICK: {singing “Girls Just Wanna Have Lunch”} “… how come they don’t weigh a ton?”
NIKKI: Okay, here we go. Now, you know that’s going to be run.
VOICE-OVER: At least the group showed they still had a sense of humor when asked about women, fire, and hair spray, the main components of their videos in years past.
NIKKI: Dude, that is a {bleep} stupid question.
TOMMY: “Dr. Feelgood” wasn’t like that! “Same Ol” wasn’t like that!
NIKKI: You know what? Let’s knock the interview off. This is {bleep} getting really stupid. Women, hair spray, and fire?! {removes microphone clip from jacket lapel and rises to leave}
{On-air collage shows scenes from Mötley Crüe videos: Women at strip club from the “Girls Girls Girls” video, hair spray spritzed at the camera from the “Home Sweet Home” video, and fire exploding around Tommy Lee’s drum set from the “Wild Side” video. In the background there is an audio loop of Nikki complaining, “Women … hair spray … and fire?” synchronized with the corresponding images on the screen.}
NIKKI: Dude, who wrote those questions? {rest of band walks out of interview}
We made a great record with John Corabi, and we were sure it was going to sell millions of copies and blow up bigger than Dr. Feelgood. We were going to tour without pyrotechnics and dancing chicks and spinning drum cages, and still kick the audience’s ass. We were going to show them that without a front man dancing in the spotlight, we could play heavy four-piece rock and roll like never before. And we were going to challenge them with lyrics and images about fascism and stereotyping that would blow their minds. We were going to do whatever we wanted because, after all, we were Mötley Crüe.
Or were we?
It only took one concert—the first stop on our tour—for all those hopes and expectations to crash and burn at my feet. The show was in Tucson, Arizona, and only four thousand tickets had been sold for a fifteen-thousand-seat amphitheater. I went on the radio before the concert and said to the fans, “Listen, it’s the first night of the tour. So I’m doing something special. Meet me outside the radio station after the show, and I’ll put each and every one of you on the guest list.”
If I had said that in 1989, there would have been ten thousand teenagers rioting in the parking lot. That afternoon, two Mexican kids showed up. And that’s when I realized: It was all over.
It had been four and a half years since Dr. Feelgood came out, we had a new lead singer, and alternative rock had not only come in the meantime, it had gone as well. The world wasn’t holding its breath for a new Mötley Crüe album.
To make matters worse, our entire record label abandoned us because Krasnow and most of the top Elektra and Warner Bros. executives were fleeing their jobs as a massive battle was being waged in the corporate boardrooms. Plus, true to our nature, we had just alienated the only people who could still save the album: MTV. (They conveniently edited out the part of the interview where I threatened to knock the host’s teeth out if he asked us about women, hair spray, and fire one more time.)
At our next gig, one thousand six hundred people showed up, then it was eight hundred. Soon we were sending trucks home and scaling back arena shows to theaters, and theaters to clubs. Last time out, we were flying in jets and playing sold-out arenas. Now, we had to change in our bus at some shows because there was no dressing room backstage, creep through the bus aisle with our instruments, and walk onto a tiny stage illuminated by flashing beer lights to play for fifty kids.
Every now and then, though, we’d be surprised. In Mexic
o City, twenty thousand people packed the arena, and we played a set that made it all seem worthwhile. Afterward, Chuck Shapiro called and told us the tour was going under. “What?” I refused to accept defeat. “There were twenty thousand people here tonight screaming their heads off. Are you crazy?”
The next day, we had a band meeting. I wrote a check for seventy-five thousand dollars to keep the band on the road, Tommy wrote a check for seventy-five thousand dollars, Corabi forfeited his salary of ten thousand dollars a week for the remainder of the tour, and, as for Mick, he couldn’t contribute a thing because Emi had taken all his money. (He couldn’t say we didn’t warn him about shitting in his own backyard.)
But our efforts were futile. Mexico City was a fluke, and it only took a few more depressing club shows before we had to cancel the tour and come home making all kinds of excuses to rationalize what had happened to us.
For ten years solid, we had been invincible. No one could touch us. Tommy and I had raped a drunk girl in the closet, and she had forgotten about it. Vince had killed someone in a car accident, and gotten away with it. We had released two albums we hardly even remembered recording, and they still sold like crazy. I had overdosed and forced the cancellation of our European tour, and our popularity only increased. Our egos were out of hand. Tommy and I thought, to hell with Vince Neil. He doesn’t write a single song, he drinks a lot, and he can be a pain in the ass. We thought it was all about us, Nikki and Tommy, the Terror Twins. We forgot that we were a team, and Vince was the quarterback. We forgot what made us Mötley Crüe: the chance collision of four very driven, very flawed, and very different personalities.
fig. 1
While I was on my own, I tried to avoid two things: One was listening to any John Corabi songs, which wasn’t difficult since they were never on the radio anyway. The other was my own press clippings. I was so tired of the band saying that I was selfish, that I walked around with the attitude that the world owed me something, that I was a pampered pretty boy who had inflicted suffering on everyone and never had to suffer a day in his life. Nikki was cool because he was a street kid, Mick was cool because he had spent so long in so many bands. But nobody knew a thing about me. Nobody cared where I came from. And I came from the worst place you could imagine: Compton.