Los Angeles – Motley Crue, the hard-living Los Angeles heavy metal band that symbolized rock’n’roll excess in the 1980s, is reuniting for a world tour beginning next February in Florida, it announced on Monday.
The foursome’s original members last played together six years ago, when drummer Tommy Lee – embroiled in domestic difficulties with then-wife Pamela Anderson – quit to form a short-lived side project.
Vocalist Vince Neil, bassist Nikki Sixx and guitarist Mick Mars briefly continued with other drummers, before pulling the plug a few years ago. The hiatus marked the end of a two-decade run that produced hits like “Dr. Feelgood,” “Kickstart My Heart” and “Girls Girls Girls,” as well as enough debauchery to fill a book: the band’s 2001 memoir “The Dirt” (co-written with journalist Neil Strauss).
“For as much as it’s like ‘Wow! This is like the ultimate rollercoaster ride in life’ it was kinda nice to get off that for a little while. But I’m jonesin’ for the thrill now,” Sixx told Reuters ahead of a Hollywood news conference where the reunion was officially announced.
The first leg of the tour, taking in North American arenas, will begin on Feb. 17 in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. Even though 2004 was a dismal year for touring and Motley Crue’s last few jaunts were not exactly hot tickets, Sixx was confident the band had the goods to bring the fans in.
“We wanna be louder, we wanna be f n’ ruder. We want more, more, more. That’s f n’ Motley Crue style,” Sixx said. “We’re back in… It’s gonna freak you out. Trust me, no one’s seen anything like this in years.”
ANOTHER HITS ALBUM
The tour will coincide with a new 2-CD hits album, “Red, White & Crue” (Island Def Jam/Universal), despite a flood of similar Motley Crue compilations in recent years. The new release will include several songs the band has recently recorded, including the newly released single, “If I Die Tomorrow.”
The ballad, which Sixx wrote with the members of Canadian pop-punk band Simple Plan, confronts the Crue’s tawdry past: Neil killed a friend in a 1984 car accident, Sixx flatlined and nearly died during a 1989 heroin overdose, Lee went to jail in 1998 for beating Anderson, and Mars is battling a debilitating disease that fuses his vertebrae and forced him to undergo hip replacement surgery earlier this year.
Despite plenty of friction within the band in the past, Sixx claimed the atmosphere was now “perfect… We don’t stop laughing.”
The secret, as in any relationship, he said is communication.
“Our heads are haunted,” Sixx said. “We don’t think like anybody else that I know. When I talk to Tommy and I say A, he says Q. He doesn’t say B. And Vince says Z. And that’s why things that happen, happen in a weird dysfunctional way.”
Motley Crue will tour Latin America in May, Europe in June, play North American amphitheaters in August and September, and head to Japan, Australia and New Zealand at the end of 2005.
