Tattoos & Tequila: To Hell and Back with One of Rock's Most Notorious Frontmen

by Vince Neil

  “They wheeled him out with a sheet over his face,” Boris reported. He’d driven me around a couple of times. I guess mine was the only number he had. I was like, What the fuck do you want me to do about it?

  I woke up Sharise and told her what was going on. I think we got hold of the tour manager, Rich Fisher. I was pretty good friends with him. He’d later turn me on to offshore speedboat racing, which was really a rush, just really fun. We had Rich call all the hospitals and find out what was going on.

  In the meantime, I guess, a whole lot else was happening. News of Nikki’s death spread fast, quickly reaching radio stations, causing a minor stir around town; impromptu memorials went up along the Strip. Slash called Tommy and explained how they’d tried everything to keep Nikki alive. Doug Thaler called Doc McGhee, who had just finished dinner with Bob Krasnow of Elektra Records. Then Fisher called Mick. Somehow, it was decided that the original Cousin It—the person who had always talked the least of everyone in the band—would call England and cancel the European leg of the tour, due to start in like two weeks. Mick called our old friends at Kerrang! magazine and made up some lame excuse for why were weren’t coming.

  After what seemed like an eternity, Fisher called me back. “Yeah,” he says, “Nikki ODed, but he’s not dead.”

  I’m like, All right, cool.

  Then I went back to bed.

  (To finish the story, as many of us know, it turned out the paramedic was a Mötley fan. He wasn’t going to let Nikki die in his ambulance. After a second attempt at a double-dose jab of adrenaline, he managed to… kick-start Nikki’s heart. A few hours later, Nikki discharged himself from the hospital and was picked up by two female fans who thought he was a ghost, having just heard on the radio the news of his demise.)

  The next morning, Christmas Eve 1987, the members of Mötley Crüe, looking more motley than ever, assembled in Doc McGhee’s living room for a hastily called meeting. We were informed that the Girls European tour had been eighty-sixed; compensation to the promoters over there would be coming out of our own pockets.

  And then our esteemed management dropped their bombshell: They were prepared to resign if we didn’t get our act together and get straight before going into the studio to start recording the next album, Dr. Feelgood.

  If you ask me, compared to the other guys I wasn’t really in bad shape. I wasn’t totally sober anymore, but it didn’t rule my life. I didn’t sit and drink all day long. I have never been the kind of guy where you’re like, “Okay, it’s ten in the morning; I’m going to have my first drink.” It was never like that, never in my life. I usually woke up, and then I went and worked out. I went to lunch; I did things. I didn’t start drinking until the show… or really after the show for real. If you watch the “Wild Side” video, or other videos from those days… I looked fucking great. I was a young guy with my shirt off, fucking running around the stage. For me the drinking was always after the show. It was a way to keep the excitement going. It’s not for before the show. Maybe just one drink. Or two. Like a glass of wine. But traditionally, for me at least, drinking was done after the show.

  The truth is, I can’t sing drunk. I mean, I’ve done it. Don’t get me wrong. But not with Mötley. I’ve done it with my solo band—sometimes it has happened. Especially during the early solo band stuff. I was pretty messed up during that period. So maybe I’ve sung drunk on early solo band stuff. And maybe with early, early Mötley Crüe stuff, you know, ’cause you’re drinking when you get to the gig and you might be a little more buzzed than you want to be when you’re onstage. But after thirty years I can maybe remember two times that I might’ve been really drunk onstage.

  Thinking back about what happened next… we may or may not have gone to different residential rehabs. I can’t remember. All the times in rehab blur together for me. It seems like I’ve been to five or ten different rehabs over the years. Maybe I’ve intentionally blocked it out, I don’t know. But I do remember that at some point, before recording the album, instead of going to rehab, per se, we worked with this counselor named Bob Timmons. It was fucking lame. Nobody wanted to do it.

  Timmons was an ex–Hell’s Angel who’d done thirty years in prison. He’d killed some people. He was an imposing dude. He would come to rehearsal or we would go to somebody’s house. He specialized in rock bands. He did Aerosmith; I think he did a thing with Metallica; he’d seen a lot. Also at that time, there were these special AA or NA meetings we went to. They were like private meetings held at people’s houses—because if you’re a celebrity and go into a regular meeting you’re not going to be able to open up about yourself ’cause you’re famous. We would go to one house one week and another house the next. Kind of like a movable meeting. My future roommate the actor Rob Lowe was there… all kinds of fucking people showed up at these meetings. I took my turn hosting them, too.

  At the time, I had this huge house in Bell Canyon, near Chatsworth. It was an amazing house in a gated community. Forty minutes out the 101 from Hollywood, there were boulder-capped hills and verdant oak-lined forests—it was very rural out there, what they call horse property, five-acre lots. The actor Jamie Farr, from the old TV show M*A*S*H, lived across the street. Our house had a church steeple, its own moat, waterfalls, a stream running through the backyard. The front door was nine hundred years old; I had a train track with big electric trains that ran around the ceiling in one of the rooms. It was pretty cool, a great house—only a couple million bucks, I think.

  The only problem was the house was haunted. I don’t know who the ghost was—friends would stay in the guest bedroom and they would hear things hit the wall and slide down. They’d turn on the light; there’d be nothing there. Or the master bedroom—that was weird. My dog used to always bark at the TV nook. See, the master suite was almost like two rooms; there was a part where the bed was, and then there was like a pony wall, and then there was the nook, the place we had a TV and seating area. The dog would bark always at that section.

  One night Sharise was in bed and she heard a baby crying in that corner. And she froze, you know, because I wasn’t there or whatever. She didn’t even want to look in that direction. But then she said she felt a hand turn her face toward the direction where the sound was coming from, where the baby was—actually physically turning her face. It’s like, Holy shit! I still get goose bumps thinking about it.

  We got outta there and found a new house. It was even better. It was in this community called Summit Ridge. It was in Chatsworth, at the very top of this ridge. It overlooked the whole Valley—kind of like the way Lovey’s parents’ place had back in the day. I guess in a way I would become a prisoner of this house, too. But what a prison: The place was even featured in the Robb Report. I had a car collection by then of like thirty-five cars. The house had a huge garage. I had cars stacked on top of each other, using those lifts they use in New York, Ferraris stacked on Ferraris, Lambos, what have you. I had a whole bunch of cars. It was lifestyles of the rich and famous.

  In March 1989, we all picked up and moved to Vancouver to record Dr. Feelgood at Little Mountain Studios with Bob Rock. It was amazing. All of us were actually sober.

  We brought our motorcycles. We were up there a long time—eight months or something. We went through the seasons; we saw winter and spring and summer. It cost like around six hundred thousand dollars to produce that album—I always think about the three days it took to record Too Fast for Love.

  Rock’s demanding work ethic pushed us to new limits, I think. I feel like he brought the best out of Mötley Crüe. I’m sure the sobriety helped, too. We still managed to have fun, though. We went out every night; we just didn’t drink or do drugs. But we still had hookers come in and we still had fun. Aerosmith was recording next door. They were working on their big comeback album, Pump. It was pretty cool that we both came out with important albums from the same studio at the same time. Steven Tyler came and sang on a couple songs on our album; Bryan Adams came in and sang after Tommy met him in
a Vancouver strip club. Cheap Trick came in also. And Jack Blades from the Night Rangers. While I’m being interviewed for this book, Blades is here in Vegas, producing the audio version of Tattoos & Tequila. He has been one of my closest friends for years. He is the fuckin’ man.

  The cover artwork for the album was originally going to have our band mascot, Allister Fiend, drawn as a mad doctor holding a big syringe. However, the final design—a dagger and a snake—is a piece of tattoo flash, designed by Sunset Strip tattoo artist Kevin Brady, who also designed a new Mötley Crüe logo. In August of 1989, the first single from the album was released: “Dr. Feelgood” became a huge hit, reaching #6 on the Billboard chart—our first gold disc for a single.

  The album by the same title was released one month later. By October we had our first #1 album on the Billboard charts. By November it hit double platinum, 2 million copies sold in the U.S.

  In early September of 1989, Mötley was invited to present the award for Best Heavy Metal Album at the MTV Music Video Awards at the Universal Amphitheatre in Universal City. It was a huge honor. We were stoked to get the exposure.

  After we did our bit, we were sitting in the audience when Guns N’ Roses came out to play with Tom Petty. Earlier in the year, while I was away on a white-water rafting trip with some guys, G N’ R rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin had tried to pick up Sharise, who was partying with some friends at the Cathouse. When she told him she was married to me, it didn’t faze him one bit. He was all over her; finally she pushed him away.

  Izzy was really drunk, I guess. He starts this fight with Sharise—maybe not the best move. He pulled down her top in front of everyone. When she slapped his face, he fuckin’ kicked her in the stomach. What kind of an animal does that?

  One thing a lot of people don’t know about me is that for years I studied Tang Soo Do, a Korean martial art. I have a red belt. Which isn’t a black, I know, but I can still kick some ass if I want—I have the arrest record to prove it.

  As G N’ R was playing, I made my way back to the wings. When Izzy came offstage, I was like, “Hey! You fucked with my wife”—or something like that. I don’t remember the exact words I said, but I said something. And he’s like, “Fuck you!” And then I’m like, “Yeah, really!”

  And then I fucking hit him with a solid right and he went down. He was out cold.

  Suddenly there was security everywhere—these awards shows are lousy with moonlighting cops and other paid thugs. It was a fucking madhouse. Finally they take me into custody or whatever; there’s a guard on either side, holding an arm. That’s when big, tough Axl Rose comes up. He’s so brave with the cops holding me back. He’s like, “I’m going to fuckin’ kill you. How could you hit my guitar player?”

  What a fuckin’ puss.

  I’m like, “I’ll fucking go right fucking now, bitch!”

  And then security dragged me away.

  As you might remember, this started a whole feud. I don’t even know how Axl got into it. This had nothing to do with Axl. It was between me and Izzy. And as far as I was concerned, the Izzy shit was over. But Axl goes to the press and starts running his mouth, saying that I sucker punched Izzy and all this other shit. Fuckin’ Axl—I had taken that ungrateful motherfucker under my wing when they were touring with us on the Girls tour. I helped him out with his throat when he was having problems; I showed him a few tricks to help his voice. And here he is, challenging me to fight him. He came up with several different challenges. He’d say Tower Records on Sunset. He’d say the boardwalk at Venice Beach. I actually went a few times, but fuckin’ Axl never showed up. Meanwhile, Izzy called me and apologized for his behavior!

  Finally I’d had enough. I went to my buddy Dr. Jerry Buss, who owns the Lakers, and we cooked up this scheme for a fight at the Great Western Forum—located in Inglewood, near where I grew up. At the time I think they had Wednesday night boxing at the Forum. Dr. Buss was one of my drinking buddies. Always a guy who admired a good-looking woman. He was like, “Come on, let’s do this.” I went on MTV and challenged Axl to a three-round fight. As far as I was concerned, it was on.

  Bigmouth Axl never responded. My offer still stands. I’m sure Dr. Buss would help us get into the Staples Center if we wanted.

  And so it went, basically, for the next three years. We kept on minting hits and minting money, filling arenas, filling the hallways of our hotels. It was like these girls were standing in line for the toilet, but they were standing in line for us. There didn’t seem to be any limit to what we could achieve.

  In December 1989, we celebrated our tenth anniversary with a huge sell-out show at the Meadowlands in New Jersey. In March 1990, Dr. Feelgood went triple platinum. By the end of the Feelgood tour, in August 1990, we were all feeling very good indeed: Despite the astronomical expenses associated with our upkeep—something like $325,000 a week, it’s been said—we each walked with a payday of over $8 million. Not bad for a quartet of high school dropouts.

  As we began work on Decade of Decadence, Feelgood hit quadruple platinum. Nikki’s son Gunner was born. Nikki was writing more and doing his own thing. Mick was still in love with his Emi, whom he’d since married. She had her own band now called She Rock. We all fell off the wagon at different times in different places. I was drinking a lot again, and I was getting more and more into racing cars.

  It was an interesting combination, I know, but I never did one at the same time as the other, despite what you might think. Maybe, as I entered my thirties, I was having an early midlife crisis, but I was at a point where I wanted to do some new, exciting things.

  Obviously, being a rock star, having thousands of people cheer for you—it’s a hard feeling to replicate when you’re not onstage. It’s a pretty powerful drug in its own right, sort of like shooting up heroin. The rush is hard to describe. So you go from the arena to the bar and you party as hard as you can and you fuck a lot of women, you try to keep the energy at a peak, you try to keep it arena size, if you follow me. You want that high to keep going.

  What I found was that I got the same kind of buzz from racing. Drive 200 miles an hour with other cars just inches away… that’ll ring your bell, I guarantee you. Plus, the drivers are all adrenaline junkies like me. They wanted to keep it revving at the after-party also. So not only did I like the driving; I understood the other drivers and they understood me also.

  I started out with go-karts—I bought a kart and started racing at a track in Oxnard. Then I went to racing school in Sebring, Florida; after that I started racing Formula Fords. And then I kind of just started meeting people, and somebody asked me if I wanted to try racing Indy lights. These cars went like 200 miles an hour—it was nothing like driving a regular car. It’s a lot of concentration, a lot of… everything. It’s just very challenging. To be good you have to be in the car a lot. You have to practice. In my line of work I guess I had the time. I raced against a lot of pro drivers who are famous. Al Unser, Jr., helped me out when I was just starting. He gave me all these different tips on driving and stuff—we’re still friends today.

  Eventually I became the co-owner of an Indy car race team in Long Beach, with former Formula One driver Eddie Chiva. I raced on the circuit for like half a season, six or seven races. I raced in the Long Beach Grand Prix and in grand prix races in Phoenix, Portland (Oregon), and Milwaukee.

  Our races were only like an hour and a half, but they were mentally exhausting. Yeah, of course I crashed. You can’t not crash. If you don’t crash you’re not trying your hardest. I remember in Long Beach I actually slid my back tires around a turn and then hit the wall, which broke the rear wing. The rear wing keeps the back wheels on the ground. It’s an aerodynamic thing. It helps traction at high speeds. It keeps you from lifting off the ground.

  So I pulled in the pits. And my crew chief is like, “You’re done. You can’t drive without the wing, and we can’t replace it here.” And I said, “Well, fuck it, just take it off, I’ll keep going.” And they were like, “The car is goin
g to be loose out there,” meaning it wouldn’t have good traction. But I decided to do it anyway. It’s hard to argue with a rock star who wants his own way.

  I pulled out of the pits, made a right-hand turn and another right, and then I was in second gear, gassing it down the straightaway. But the straightaway had a slight kink to it. And right when you were supposed to shift into third gear, you also had to turn slightly on the kink. I shifted into third, turned slightly…

  And the entire back end of the car just spun out.

  I wheeled around like a pinwheel. The car just spun, spun, spun. Then I slammed into the wall—it was on TV, the Long Beach Grand Prix. That was one of the wrecks. I think I crashed at Portland, too. And in some race in Australia.

  What’s going through your mind when you’re hitting a wall? Well… nothing. You kind of know you’re not going to get hurt. You’re pretty strapped in there, to the extent that you feel like you’re just going to bounce off. So it’s, it’s not like it’s scary to crash. It’s just part of racing.

  December has always been a weird month for us, good and bad. December was the month of New Year’s Eve-il, when we solidified our future as a band by bringing on Doc and Thaler. It was the month I killed a man in a car accident and permanently maimed two others. It was the month Nikki died and came back to life. And it was the month, in 1991, that Mötley signed a five-album deal with Bob Krasnow at Elektra Records, for a $25 million advance.

  Then, on the afternoon of February 11, 1992, things took a bit of a drastic turn in the other direction.

  I was living in Chatsworth with Sharise at the time, in the big house with all the cars, the one that was in the Robb Report. To get to the city it’s a good half hour down the 101, and then you gotta go over Coldwater, over the Mulholland Mountains, from the Valley to get to Hollywood.