by Tommy Lee
After getting my wedding feet wet and muddy that first time, I was totally against getting married again anytime soon. It wasn’t hard to be single at that time in my life—in fact, it was the best way to be for a maniac in his early twenties whose band was starting to really make a dent in pop culture. By now I was twenty-three, and Mötley already had multiplatinum hit albums with Shout at the Devil in 1983 and Theatre of Pain in 1985. We’d toured the world two times over, committed what some call sins and others call fun, and turned the youth of America out on its ass like a cheap hooker. It was already crazy in our little world, but it got more insane before we drove it into the ground. Looking back now, 1985 was a turning point before we became a full-blown circus, touring constantly, partying hard enough to kill a family of elephants, and bedding more women than a sultan in Saudi Arabia. It was during that circus of crazy that I met Heather Locklear.
Heather was my first taste of a world that was new to me, a world that has been nothing but headaches ever since. She was my first experience living with someone involved in the universe of television and tabloid popularity, which back then, even more than now, was a very, very different brand of fame. At the time, Heather was a star on two hit TV shows at once, T.J. Hooker and Dynasty. She’d work a few days on one show, then a few days on another. She worked all the time, and I wasn’t used to having to schedule my time with someone either. Heather was a very big star in her world and she came with a lot of extras I wasn’t used to. We’d step out for dinner and there was always a crowd of crazy people taking pictures. It was insane. I didn’t know what the word “paparazzi” meant until I met Heather. As a rock guy the only photographers I ever saw were in the pit at the front of the stage during our show or on a set at a photo shoot—to which we were usually late, but that’s another story. Heather couldn’t bat an eyelash in public without someone taking a picture of it.
I was willing to deal with all of that and more though, because the first time we met I knew that there was something really special about her—and that I wasn’t going to let her get away. I had seen her on TV, of course, and then one day when I was talking to my accountant about who I thought was hot, he told me that his brother was Heather’s dentist.
I’D LIKE TO GIVE HER AN ORAL EXAM.
I perked up immediately, looked at him sideways a little, and said, “Dude, do you think there’s any way your brother would cut loose with Heather’s number?” He wasn’t sure, but he said he’d work on it. He was very concerned that I’d tell people where I got it, which would land his brother in a pool full of shit for violating the sacred doctor-patient confidentiality pact. I told him he had nothing to worry about—I’d tell anyone who asked that I just found it. Remember, people, I was in my early twenties at the time.
I should have waited longer to get up the balls
ARE YOU KIDDING? MY BOYS GOT THAT COVERED!
and prepare a speech before I called her, because when I did, I was such a fucking jackass.
BRO … WHY DIDN’T YA JUST HAND ME THE PHONE? I’VE GOT A LIST OF LINES.
When she answers the phone I just say, “Hey, what’s goin’ on? My name is Tommy Lee and I got your number, and I wanted to say hi.” She’s friendly as she ever is, but completely suspicious as she should have been. She says, “Oh, hi, how are you? How did you get my number?” Tommy, boy genius says, “Oh...I just got it.” And she says, “Oh, really? You just got it?” I’m sitting there, going full speed ahead blind
IF WHAT THE PREACHER SAYS IS TRUE, DUDE, WE’D BE BLIND A LONG TIME AGO.
and trying to set up a date with her. I say, “I’d love to take you out to dinner, you know, go bowling or whatever. I’m down for anything, anything you want to do.” As I’m trying to make this thing work, I’m watching TV and see her, and of course use it as another way in. “Oh, shit, check it out,” I say, “I’m watching you on TV right now.” There’s silence for a minute, then Heather says, “No, Tommy, that’s not me, that’s the other Heather.” It was Heather Thomas. I was watching a rerun of The Fall Guy, not T.J. Hooker. Open mouth, insert foot....Idiot!
All I could think was, “Ah, fuck, I just blew it. This girl is never going out with me.” I mumbled something about the two of them looking alike and Heather’s just silent on the other end of the phone while I’m groveling. I could tell she’s sitting there thinking, “This jerk-off doesn’t even know who I am. He thought he was calling Heather Thomas. And how the hell did he get my number?”
I’ve thought about this many times, and I still can’t figure out how I backpedaled out of that one.
DUDE, WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO LEARN? YOU DIDN’T DO IT. I DID.
I CAN PEDAL FORWARDS, BACKWARDS, SIDEWAYS, UPSIDE DOWN, AND LOOP-DE-LOOP, MY MAN.
Our conversation must have either been spicy enough or Heather was curious enough to agree to a date, because a day or so later, there I was at her house to pick her up. I stood there in the entrance to her house with her sister waiting for Heather to come down the stairs, and when she did only one word came to mind: Whoa!
YOU GOT THAT RIGHT, PRIVATE.
I had a champagne-colored ’82 Corvette back then and we went out for Italian food. I barely heard anything she said and I didn’t taste my food at all. I was tripping! She was so beautiful and so out of my league. At the time, I was living in this kooky apartment complex, which is still around and still inhabited by actors but mostly musicians who need some kind of temporary living arrangement. It’s like a flophouse and it’s bunk as fuck: just gnarly one-bedroom apartments that far too many maniacs have worn into the ground. Heather, on the other hand, is this gorgeous, famous actress with a huge, crazy spread up in the hills in Tarzana. I was intimidated by her success and by her beauty. So weird that Samantha Carrington was having dinner with me and wasn’t a bitch like she was on TV. Her smile paralyzed me—it was deadly. I sat at dinner, staring at her, and I kept saying, “I’m sorry, but can you just keep smiling?” If you met her then, she was so sweet that you’d never know that she was one of the biggest stars at the time—and I can tell you, she’s just the same way today.
I dropped her off like a good boy that night and couldn’t stop thinking or talking about her from the minute she closed the door until I saw her again. Our second meeting was a daytime date: She asked me to come over during the day to go swimming and hang out. I thought I’d won the lottery when I got over there and she was rockin’ out by the pool lookin’ hot floating around on some crazy inflatable lounger. We spent the day like it was adult summer camp: dancing, swimming, drinking champagne. It was amazing and I remember asking God what the fuck was happening because I was loving it all so much that I didn’t think it could be real.
All that sun, fun, blond beauty, and bubbles went to my head though,
NOT MINE, BABY, I WAS IN PARTY MODE, READY TO POUNCE!
and after a few hours I told her I had to lie down for a minute and wandered upstairs because I was fucking toasty. I found her bedroom and sprawled out facedown on the bed like I always do when I need a power nap. While I was out like a busted lightbulb, Heather’s dad, who was a dean at UCLA, calls to say he is stopping over for a quick visit. Heather’s dad is a great guy who likes to drink wine and hang out, but that’s after you’ve known him for a while. On first impression, it’s safe to say that he’s straitlaced. He isn’t the kind of man who would be excited to see a half naked, tattooed rock guy come stumbling down his daughter’s staircase.
Heather and her sister came upstairs to wake me up and later she told me that they had just stopped in their tracks. I was lying there at such an angle that my dick and balls
YOU TALKIN’ TO ME? HEY, YOU TALKIN’ TO ME?
I’M THE ONLY ONE HERE!
were hanging out of my shorts.
I NEED SOME AIR SOMETIMES TOO … AND SHIT I WAS LOOKIN’ FOR BLONDIE.
WHERE THE HELL DID SHE GO?
Apparently, my big-ass balls were just dangling out there and she and her sister turned to each other in surpri
se when they saw my dick.
DAMN RIGHT THEY DID! THE ANACONDA WAS TAKING A WALK.
They woke me up and put me into a long-sleeved white dress shirt that covered all my tattoos. They explained that their father was very conservative and that I needed to hide the ink and look a bit more presentable. I’m still not sure how presentable I looked in a dress shirt and swim shorts. Actually, I do have an idea. When I shook his hand and said it was nice to meet him, he looked like he’d just smelled raw sewage and his expression said, “What is this over here with my daughters?”
I had never been nervous to meet anyone’s parents, but I was scared to meet Mr. Locklear. That was another sign that this was something new in my life: I cared in ways I didn’t know I could. Heather and I started dating regularly and soon I was staying at her house all the time and being spoiled in ways I never thought possible.
ME TOO.
She bought me a dirt bike to ride into the hills behind her house. I was really happy, I couldn’t believe it as our relationship grew into the kind of cool romance I didn’t think existed.
YEAH IT DID, AND SHE … OH, MAN … UH, SORRY,
I PROMISED I WOULDN’T TELL.
After about a year I asked her to marry me. We were in a limo, cruising down the freeway, and I opened up the moon roof, stood up, and asked her to come up there with me for a minute. My plan was to ask her to marry me once both of us had our upper bodies out there. It seemed like a great idea, but I hadn’t really thought it through or taken wind velocity into account. It was definitely romantic, but if you want to get an idea of what it was like, stand on a tarmac while a jet is taking off and ask someone a question. I’m shouting, “Will you marry me?” Heather is shouting, “What? What?” It was awesome flying out there with the wind whipping in our faces, but she didn’t understand anything until I pulled out the ring. I couldn’t really hear her, but I knew by her expression that she’d said yes.
My dad had a few words for me when I married Heather Locklear. He was like, “She’s a good one, Tommy, take care of her.” He got quiet for a minute, then looked at me real hard and said, “Son, don’t fuck this up.” That was awesome. I’m still not sure if I followed his advice. I’ll have to ask Heather.
Heather and I were married on May 10, 1986, and it was the whole deal: five hundred guests, massive cake, press coverage, a serious photo session, doves, a sky diver who delivered a magnum of Cristal, and then my favorite part—we jetted off to Fiji, one of my favorite places in the entire world. It’s amazing how you get there. First you fly halfway across the world and then you hop on a seaplane, full-on Fantasy Island style. When you skim to a stop, people meet you out there on the dock with foofy drinks in coconuts topped off with pink umbrellas. (I kept snapping my head around looking for Tattoo and Mr. Roarke.) They never showed up, but we didn’t care, we were in paradise, chilling in a hut on stilts directly in the water. Every morning we’d open our door, and Heather and I would jump into the clearest, bluest ocean I’ve ever seen.
It was the start of an amazing seven years together based on a deep, deep friendship and an incredible bond between us. Heather is such a cool, smart, bubbly woman that I was able to relate to her unlike anyone else I’d ever known. We were both kids when we married—I was twenty-four and she was twenty-five. We did so many of our firsts together, and everyone knows that you never forget your first.
We lived out a lot of each other’s fantasies, but they didn’t always go as planned. I hadn’t been back to Greece since I was a kid so soon after we were married, when Heather was flown to Europe for a work engagement, we went by boat to a few Greek islands. We flew over on the Concorde and I’ll never forget listening to the pilot announce that we were reaching Mach 2. When we did, our heads snapped back as we broke the sound barrier. That plane was fucking insane—we were flying at 80,000 feet, which is high enough to actually see the curvature of the earth when you look out the window. We landed in Nice, France, and hopped on the Four Sails, a beautiful, huge cruise ship with sails. The Greek islands are incredibly beautiful and untouched, and there are a ton of nude beaches I couldn’t wait to get to. I wanted nothing more than to be naked on the beach with my wife, so as soon as we got to one, I was Naked Guy.
FINALLY, A VACATION THE WHOLE FAMILY CAN ENJOY! IS THIS SHIT ALL-INCLUSIVE? CAN I GET A MASSAGE AND A PIÑA COLADA?
“THE NUTS”: HEY … YA THINK
HEATHER WANTS TO PLAY VOLLEYBALL??!
I looked at her, kissed her, and said, “C’mon, baby, let’s get naked!”
DON’T WORRY … WHAT HAPPENS IN GREECE STAYS IN GREECE.
Heather isn’t uptight, but she can be a prude sometimes, and there was no way she was taking it all off in public. She looked at me like I was insane and said, “No, No, NO. There are people from our boat on the beach.” I said, “Yeah, so? Look, some of them are naked too. Fuck it, c’mon!” I already have my pants off, and I’m running down the beach, to the ocean, all “woo-hoo!”* while Heather watches me go, shaking her head. She’s freaked because I was very tattooed and in Greece that attracted a lot of attention. But I did not care—did you expect me to? When I emerged from the ocean, I overheard these two local ladies talking about me in Greek and I had picked up enough of the language from my mom to know they were saying, “Oh my God, look at that man’s tattoos. That is disgusting. He is pathetic.” Clearly they didn’t think I was worldly enough to speak their language, so as I walked by I told them, in Greek, “I understand you. I know what you’re saying.” They were even more horrified. And it ruled. They didn’t say a fucking word after that.
All day long I kept trying to get Heather to go euro and show a little skin and that was silly. It had been my fantasy for a long time to take my wife to the Greek Islands and lie there carefree with her on the sand—so I wasn’t going down without a fight. I’d pull at her bikini top, I’d untie it, and every once in a while, I’d just take one of her titties out. I had no interest in having her go full frontal for me; topless was all I was after, but it didn’t matter. I understood her reasoning: She was a big TV actress and she didn’t want her picture taken naked on a beach. But I refuse to follow that rule. If you are a public figure and you spend your free time walking around worrying about how you are perceived, your life will be reduced to a camera lens. And that ain’t living.
My marriage to Heather taught me a lot—and one of the first lessons I learned involved compromise. We went down to Cabo San Lucas with some friends shortly after we were married and one day I went deep-sea fishing. I hooked this nine-and-a-half-foot marlin that fought me for two hours without breaking free. For those who don’t know about marlins,* let me tell you what they do when you hook them in the mouth. Much like any person or animal you might stick with a hook, they do not dig it at all. They dive straight down as far as they can, which usually breaks the line, but if that doesn’t do it, they’ll also try to cut themselves free with their swords by turning their heads in a circular motion as they swim. But this fish didn’t get away—I fought that whale forever and almost died doing it. I’d let him dive until he got tired and then start reeling him in, but when he’d get near the surface, he’d get pissed off and dive again. By then I’d be so tired I couldn’t stop him, which meant at least twenty extra minutes of work on my end. Finally, after fucking forever, I get him close enough to the boat and the crew guys gaff him, bring him on the boat, and tool the fuck out of him with a baseball bat. I’m watching, shouting, “Dudes, that’s my fish!” It was crazy—one guy is bashing him while the other holds the sword with gloves because the fish is thrashing around, pissed off and still able to cut the fuck out of somebody.
I sat there exhausted, with no feeling in my arms, strapped into this weird dentist chair with a huge rod stuck in a hole between my legs. And man, was I proud of that fish. I’d never caught anything anywhere near that big. The dudes on the boat knew it and they set me up: They arranged to have my fish sent to a taxidermist and then shipped to me. They chopped off the h
ead and tail, put them on ice, and made a shitload of steaks out of the rest of it to give to the poor people in town.
I’m home a week or so later when that huge fifteen-foot wooden crate shows up. I’m so stoked to see my fish that I bust it open right there in the driveway in front of the UPS guy. I pull my prize out and head into the house, all victorious and shit, until Heather sees me. She stops me before I get to the door and says, “What are you doing? Where are you putting that?” That’s when I remembered that I never told her that I had my marlin mounted and dreamed of hanging it above the bar. I look at her and I say, “Baby, this is my fish. I’m putting it above the bar. It’s gonna be amazing!” She looks at me like I’m on crack and says, “I don’t think so, dude.” It was like my birthday party just got cancelled. I say, “But... baby? I caught it. I’m just going to hang it over the bar. I’ve got the perfect spot for it.” I wanted it where everyone could see it as they sat down for a drink. Well, they’d see it way before then—everyone who walked through our front door would see it. My wife was not having it at all.