by Tommy Lee
The other way Gerald helped me was by ordering children’s books for me through Amazon, then buying the same books for my boys. After I obtained permission from the court to talk to my kids, I would read them the stories over the phone while they looked at the pictures in the same book. It was important for me to keep that connection with my boys, because while I was in jail, Pamela was not only telling them that I was crazy but also trying to turn my own mother and sister against me. It was impossible for me to defend myself: not just from Pamela, but from the media, who were making me out to be a monster. What hurt me most, though, was not being home for Father’s Day and for Brandon’s birthday. That’s something a child doesn’t forget.
Every now and then, I would call home and Pamela would answer the phone. We would start talking, but within minutes the old hostility, oversensitivity, and accusations would rise to the surface and then suddenly—bang!—one of us would hang up on the other. End of communication.
I’d sit in my cell and cry for hours afterward. It was so frustrating not to be able to do anything about it. After a while, though, with my therapist on the phone as moderator, we learned to communicate again. I started responding to everything she said not with insecurity and defensiveness but with my own natural love, which was one good habit I had picked up as a child. I also learned that to be able to talk or even live with Pamela, I needed to stop testing her love for me, because when you test someone and don’t tell them, they’re bound to fail.
One Thursday, we were having a great conversation with my therapist and making a lot of progress when I heard all this loud talking and banging outside the cell. I stood up and yelled, “Man, can you guys keep it down!” But as those words came out of my mouth, I realized it wasn’t prisoners making the noise. It was that big no-neck motherfucker guard who had called me a faggot on my first night in jail. He stormed into my cell, grabbed the fucking phone cord, and ripped it out of the wall as I was talking. Then he filed a report to the sergeant stating that I had been mouthing off to him. They suspended my phone privileges for fourteen days. My lifeline to the outside world was fucking yanked, and I was in tears every day.
During those long-ass weeks, I worked on songs for what I decided would be a solo project, read parenting magazines and self-help books, and learned to write poetry, mostly about Pamela. She had started sending letters to me. And it was so frustrating, because she would have her assistant address and mail the letters for her. It made them seem impersonal, like I was just a chore her assistant could take care of. I tried so hard not to think like that, not to judge every little action as a sign of whether she loved me or not, because that was how I got into trouble in the first place.
Cut off from the telephone, I began to learn for the first time to be selfreliant—for love, for help, and for music. I also began to communicate with the other inmates and see that my problems were not so bad in comparison. The trustees who swept the hall began slipping me notes from guys in other cells. Sometimes a dude would be asking for an autograph, others would just want to have a pen pal. Most of them were in for much more serious shit than me. There was a sixteen-year-old Mexican mafia dude who had fucking murdered six people; a really remorseful twenty-one-year-old who had panicked and shot an old lady when he was robbing Norm’s 24-hour restaurant for drug money; and a police officer who had gotten busted pocketing drugs during narcotics busts. He was so worried that the rest of the population would find out he was a cop, because they would kill him in a second if they knew.
As I tapped into this internal mail system, I learned that there was a whole secret world in jail. And there were more fucking drugs in the system than on the street: people were offering fucking heroin, blow, speed, weed, everything in exchange for food, candy, money, and cigarettes. But the penalty if you were caught was a minimum of one year added to your sentence, so I wasn’t fucking with that. Other guys made a type of alcohol in their cells they called pruno, which was like a wine made from orange juice, sugar, and, for yeast, a loaf of bread. It took two weeks to make a batch, and when one was done, you’d hear everybody getting drunk as fuck and partying. It practically turned into a nightclub in there.
One dude taught me how to take my trash bag, fill it with water, and tie a knot in the center to make ten-pound dumbbells to work out with. So I started doing curls with fucking water bags, which were illegal, so I had to hide them under my bed. Other dudes would make dice by filing down the balls from their roll-on deodorant on the cement of their floors until they were square. Or they’d make knives by rolling up a newspaper tighter and tighter for hours until the paper basically reverted to its original form—wood—and could be used to stab someone like a stake.
One old dude taught me how to light a cigarette: take a pencil and chew the wood off until you get to the lead, which carries electricity. Then take a disposable razor, break it open with your shoe, and remove the blade. Afterward, bend the razor until it snaps in two. Take both pieces and stick them in the power outlet, then slip the razor blades alongside them in the outlet together, which heats them. Wrap the piece of pencil lead in toilet paper, touch the two razor blades in the outlet together, and, presto, an electrical zap will ignite the toilet paper and make a fire. It was like total MacGyver shit that people had spent years in there perfecting. My own innovation was to make drumsticks out of pencils and razors, and drum heads out of food trays and plumbing. As I sat there, banging with pencils on my bowl, I realized that I had come full circle and was sitting here at age thirty-six doing exactly what I had done at age three when I made my own drum set in my parents’ kitchen.
One day, I was sitting in my cell and I heard a commotion outside. I jumped up to my little square window and smashed my face against the glass, trying to figure out what was going on. Walking down the corridor were two guards carrying a guy who was dead as fuck: his whole body was stiff and his lips were a purplish blue. I banged on my cell door, asking everyone in sight what had happened, but no one said a word. Later, I asked a sheriff who passed my cell, and he just kept walking.
A few days later, one of the orderlies gave me a newspaper, a rare gift. Inside, there was an article about the Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail I was in downtown: a black inmate had died because the white guards beating him didn’t stop in time. The article said that advocacy groups were fighting for the county to install a surveillance system in the prison because conditions were so bad. As I read that stuff and thought of the dead guy and all the beatings I had heard in the last two and a half months, I began to freak out. Where was I? I used to be a fucking rock star!
In jail, I wasn’t shit. I was just a maggot on lockdown. I couldn’t fucking whine to my manager every time I didn’t get my way; there was no audience to laugh at my goofing off; and no one wanted to hear my bullshit. I couldn’t be a whiny little baby anymore; I had to be a man. Or at least a big maggot, because I was being stepped on all the time—both in jail and in the real world. Pamela had started writing me some awesome letters and leaving me sweet voice-mail messages. But just as my hopes began to lift, I found out from fucking Nikki and some other bros that she was dating her old boyfriend, Kelly Slater. I couldn’t fucking believe it. I spent hours on the phone with my therapist crying. I couldn’t understand how this shit could be happening to me. If I was home, at least I could be with friends or drive over to her place to talk about it. But here I was completely fucking powerless. I just sat in my cell on fire. Then I learned my next important lesson: how to let go of things very quickly. I realized there wasn’t shit I could do about it. Suck it up and leave it be.
On Saturdays, I was allowed to have visitors. Nikki came down a bunch of times, and Mick stopped by once but said he was never coming back because the guards were mean to him and made him tuck in his shirt and remove his baseball cap. Vince never visited—and I wasn’t surprised. The best visit of all, however, came from my lawyer, when he informed me that, if nothing went wrong, he’d have me out in just under four months instead
of six—and that meant I only had a month left to go.
I began to meditate on what it would take to make Tommy happy again. I had been spending a lot of time thinking about being a good father, husband, and human being, but I hadn’t really been taking care of my creative problems. And the musical part of me is like fucking 80 to 90 percent. I needed to do something new and, the way I saw it, that frustration had spilled over into my personal life. So I made a fucking decision.
When Nikki visited the next Saturday, I looked at him through the bulletproof glass and squirmed in my seat. He was my best fucking bro, but I had to tell him: “Bro, I can’t do it anymore.” It was the hardest thing I ever had to say to anyone.
His eyes widened, his mouth dropped open, and he just said, “Whoa.” He looked like a guy who thought he was in the perfect marriage suddenly discovering that his wife has been cheating on him. Of course, I had been cheating on him. Earlier in jail, I asked a friend to leave a message on my answering machine saying that it accepted all collect calls. That way, whenever I had an idea for a melody or lyrics, I could just record it on my machine to listen to when I got out. And these weren’t melodies or lyrics for Mötley Crüe. I was ready to move on to some new shit.
I continued to compile music from my cell on my answering machine until September 5, the day I was scheduled to leave. I lay in my bunk, waiting for the loudspeaker to crackle, “Lee, roll it up,” which meant roll up your bed, blankets, and shit because you’re out of here.
I was told I’d be out at noon. But noon rolled by and nothing happened. Slowly, the clock crept to two o’clock. Every minute was agony. Then it was three, four, five o’clock. Next thing I knew, it was dinnertime. I kept telling everyone, “Dude, I’m supposed to be out.” But no one would listen to me. Midnight struck and they still hadn’t called me. The old Tommy Lee would have bashed his head against the bars until someone paid attention to him. But the new Tommy Lee knew that there was nothing he could do but suck it up and accept it.
I stretched out in my bunk, pulled the threadbare blanket up to my neck, and went to sleep. At 1:15 in the morning, I was woken up by a voice on the loudspeaker: “Lee, roll it up!”
So what do you want to respond to first? Their allegations that you are only interested in promoting R&B on the label and not rock and roll?
SYLVIA RHONE: Elektra’s track record speaks for itself when it comes to promoting and supporting rock artists on our roster: Metallica, AC/DC, Mötley Crüe. Mötley Crüe were the major priority for Elektra in 1997. We did a tremendous amount of promotion on the record’s front end. But the market for rock music, especially with veteran bands, is in major transition right now. The album didn’t perform to expectations, and their unhappiness is understandable. But it’s not for lack of effort on the company’s part.
What kind of efforts were made?
In January, the label spent a substantial amount of money to have the band perform at the American Music Awards, after which we mounted a snipe campaign. We did a lot of promotion on the Internet. We supported and underwrote the cost of a live performance at a rock station in Tampa in March. I could go on and on about the different promotional efforts that we’ve made.
What do you think about the incident with the security guard in South Carolina and the fact that they called you a cunt from stage?
Those kind of remarks don’t deserve any comment. But they are very ill advised.
Will they affect how you deal with the band in the future?
It doesn’t affect my attitude toward the band. I’m a very professional person.
Their contract with Elektra expires in two albums. Will you renew it?
At this point, that’s very hard for me to say.
I’m supposed to go into the studio in a couple of weeks and I have a contract with [Sylvia Rhone] and she won’t give me my money. I don’t understand. She’s fucking the fans, she’s fucking herself, and she’s fucking me. I have four kids, a wife. I have house payments, car payments. I have a life. I fucking earned the right to have one of the biggest contracts in rock and roll. I don’t need to be fucked with by somebody who has her opinion and her priorities. Is she a racist? Is she anti-man? What’s her problem? We can’t figure it out because she’s had a hard-on for us since day one. Well, you know what, motherfucker? You’ve got a contract and if you want to go up against this band we are a loose cannon. I will make your life miserable.
—Nikki Sixx, quoted in Spin, March 1998
Anyone who saw the less-than-flattering comments that Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx made about the Elektra Entertainment Group and its chairman, Sylvia Rhone, in the March issue of Spin will not be surprised to hear that the band and the record label have parted company. Sources said that Mötley Crüe, which spent fifteen years on Elektra and sold more than 35 million albums, is looking into alternative means of distributing its catalog material. The band, which gave birth to glam metal with its 1982 album Too Fast for Love, is heading into the studio next month to record new songs.
—The Music Daily, April 16, 1998
Mötley Crüe is set to raise its middle digit to the world once more. This time the vehicle is called Greatest Hits and the wheels have already begun to burn a bit of rubber across a very limp and lifeless music industry. Elektra records has been cast aside in favor of the Mötleys’ own label and distribution network. An international tour of theaters and arenas to support the release is currently being planned and Tommy is, finally, out of jail! Things, as they say, are about to happen.
—Sound420.com, August 1998
My friend Bob Procop, who owned a diamond store on Rodeo Drive, picked me up from jail in his big crazy-assed Bentley. “What’s the first thing you want to do?” he asked.
“Dude, I want a cigarette so fucking bad. And then would you be so kind as to take me to your beach house.”
We cruised down the freeway: traffic was zipping by on all sides. After almost four months in solitary, it was too much stimulation for me. I smoked an American Spirit and closed my eyes to keep from throwing up all over the car.
Bob brought me to his house in Marina del Rey, right on the water. He filled his Jacuzzi with half a box of bubble bath and said, “It’s all yours, bro.” I ripped my fucking clothes off, jumped in, tilted my head back, and just sat there for two hours, gazing at the stars. I had forgotten what it felt like to be immersed in actual, as opposed to metaphorical, hot water. It was the greatest luxury in the world.
At about 4 A.M., I asked him to take me home. I missed my house and my bed. Pamela and the kids had moved out, so it was quiet and empty, with the toys and furniture mostly gone. I stumbled through the darkness to the bed where Brandon was born and fell asleep for two days straight. It was always hard to sleep in jail because of all the walking and talking and crashing and banging reverberating off the concrete walls.
When I woke up, my house was full of people. All these dudes had come over to welcome me home. They were kissing me and hugging me and slapping me on the back. But I was so unused to being around people that I didn’t know what to say. I smiled, but inside I wanted to crawl under a rock and hide. It had been so long since another person had treated me with anything other than hostility and suspicion. It was too soon for me to laugh and be happy and carefree. I was still in a lot of pain.
I asked the court for permission to go to Hawaii and fucking marinate. I brought Scott Humphrey along and sat on the beach and did nothing until I slowly returned to Planet Earth. I relearned how to interact with people, and, eventually, the smile came back. I didn’t have to fake it anymore. But the world wasn’t the same as when I had left it. Everyone looked at me differently now: people would pass by and whisper, “There’s that fucking wife beater.” I was really ashamed of myself, and it took a while to realize that the whole world wasn’t against me.
The other thing that had changed was that Pamela had made sure she finalized the divorce before my release. My family life, which had given me my greatest happiness
and misery, seemed completely over. I couldn’t figure out why she would do that to me and the children. But it was clear that, despite all the letters and phone calls, she didn’t want anything to do with me. There was no chance of reconciliation, especially with her dating Kelly fucking Slater. That little turn of events combined with the fact that I heard that she had changed her wedding band tattoo from Tommy to Mommy upset me so much that I later had my wedding tattoo removed. I just wanted to get that shit off my finger and change my life. I had to become a single dad, something I had never wanted to be. My parents had stayed together my whole life. My dad, who was seventy-four, was now ill with myeloma and cancer in his bloodstream. My mom, who was much younger, spent every day and night taking care of him. I wanted somebody in my life to do that for me, and I wanted somebody I could do that for. What made being a single father the worst, though, was that I wasn’t allowed to fucking see my children without a court-appointed monitor there to supervise me. I felt so bad for Dylan and Brandon, because they had no idea who these people were and what was going on.
When I returned home from Hawaii, I put my blinders on, locked the doors, and pulled out all the notes and answering-machine tapes I had made in jail. I invited over this filthy little rapper street kid named TiLo, who I had met when his old band, hed (pe), was opening for Mötley Crüe on the Swine tour. And we started working on our own project, Methods of Mayhem. I buried myself in work, going at it every minute until four or five in the morning, and reaching out to everyone I had always wanted to work with.
On my birthday, some friends threw a party for me because I hadn’t kicked back and relaxed in months. Someone invited Carmen Electra, and we met and started bullshitting. She had married Dennis Rodman four months ago, but they were already, for all practical purposes, separated. I talked to her on the phone a few times and, two weeks later, just as I was about to hit the road with Mötley for our Greatest Hits tour, we started dating. She would tell Rodman, who she claimed she had caught cheating on her with two women simultaneously, that she was going to visit sick grandmothers and shit while she sneaked off on the road with us. We had to smuggle her in and out of shows and hotels so that the tabloids didn’t get hold of the information and have a field day. We were both refugees from the two fucking craziest celebrity insta-marriages of the year. Plus, when Pamela left Baywatch for her own V.I.P. series, Carmen was hired as her replacement.