Hotly Mötley
Larry
Rodgers
The Arizona Republic
Mar. 17, 2005 12:00 AM
With
Mötley Crüe's Tommy Lee and Vince Neil's recent venture into reality TV, the
excessive serving of fantasy on the current tour reuniting the band's four
original members might be seen as a balancing act.
The
band's Better Live Than Dead Tour, which visits Phoenix on Saturday, features
acrobats, fire-spewing little people, clowns, sexy dancers and motorcycles
onstage, the latter revved up for the '80s hair-metal anthem Girls, Girl,
Girls.
"We've
always joked about bringing the circus to town," says Lee, 42, who
attended a semester at the University of Nebraska for the upcoming NBC reality
series Tommy Lee Goes to College. "This tour, we're actually
bringing the entire (expletive) circus. It's absolutely insane."
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The
group wrote three new songs, including the power-ballad single If I Die
Tomorrow, for a new greatest-hits package that debuted in the top 10 of the
Billboard 200 album chart, and the artsy video for the song is getting strong
airplay on VH1.
Lee, who
is single after failed marriages to starlets Heather Locklear and Pamela
Anderson, says rock fans of all ages are hungry for the type of spectacle that
Mötley Crüe delivers.
"There's
always been a certain attitude that's been attached to us since day one,"
says Lee, who dropped out of high school two months short of a diploma to
launch Crüe in 1981.
"If
somebody has seen Mötley Crüe play before, they know exactly what to expect -
an absolutely over-the-top rock show with all kinds of crazy stuff going on. No
one really does those shows anymore."
As they
cultivated a reputation as one of rock's most decadent bands, graphically
detailed in the 2002 book The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most
Notorious Rock Band (currently being made into a feature film), members of
Crüe also got a dose of life's hard side.
A
drunken Neil crashed his car in 1984, killing passenger Nicholas
"Razzle" Dingley of glam band Hanoi Rocks. He was convicted of
manslaughter and ordered to pay Dingley's family $2.6 million. Sixx nearly died
after overdosing on heroin in 1987, an incident that may have encouraged the
four band members to enter rehab in 1988. (Sixx says he's now drug free.)
Neil's
4-year-old daughter, Skylar, died of cancer in 1995. Three years later, Lee was
charged with spousal abuse as his marriage to Anderson waned. Last year, Mars
underwent hip-replacement surgery for a disease affecting his spine.
Through
it all, Lee has endured harassment by tabloid reporters and paparazzi eager to
document his latest divorce or legal run-in. He got into more hot water when he
tangled with photographers.
"It
used to really freak me out," Lee recalls. "Then it cost me a bunch
of money in court for breaking people's cameras and bodies. I learned my lesson
after a while."
The
drummer says he has chilled out after attending 54 court-ordered
anger-management classes resulting from his troubles with Anderson.
With Lee
in a better frame of mind and Neil, 44, a happy man in his fourth marriage - to
a fan he spotted in the front row of a Crüe show - the two rockers agreed to
have some fun with reality TV.
Lee
moved into a dorm at University of Nebraska, attended four classes and joined
the marching band.
"I
carried on like a normal student. I was taking tests, studying, I had a
roommate, I started my own frat - the House of Lee.
"We
had a ball. It was a lot of work, but I left there having made a bunch of new friends,
and a little smarter."
The
series is expected to air this summer.
Neil,
meanwhile, did a double-dose of reality TV.
Late
last year the singer allowed VH1 to film him undergoing plastic surgery,
getting his blond hair dyed brown and working out to lose 30 pounds.
In 2003,
Neil moved into an LA home with roomies including M.C. Hammer to be filmed for
WB's The Surreal Life.
Now Lee
and Neil, who have had verbal and physical confrontations in the past, seem
ready to return to their real jobs as musicians.
Lee
downplays recent comments by Neil that the two still dislike each other.
"Time
is always a good healer," Lee says. "I've been away (from the band) a
little over six years. We're getting along really great and having a blast out
here."
But when
he slips in a comment that having each band member travel in a separate bus
might allow the tour to "last a lot longer," Lee acknowledges that an
offstage explosion is a daily possibility.
Asked
whether Mötley Crüe will make it through all 35 tour dates, Lee laughs and
says, "That remains to be seen, my friend.
"You
never know with this group. It could last a month or a year."