“We Were Fighting or Fucking”: The Boys of Mötley Crüe Meet Mel Ottenberg

“Back then we were fucking, fighting or fucking. It was always relationship dramas, police dramas,” Nikki Sixx, bassist for Mötley Crüe told Interview’s Mel Ottenberg when they met up in L.A. last week. Infamous for their stage antics and open affinity for sex and drugs, the band aren’t short of outrageous anecdotes from their time spent as the world’s most famous heavy-metal group. “The more ridiculous we could be, the more fun we had.” Fast-forward four decades, they’re keeping the volume turned up on their new songs, just minus some of the drama. A mega-fan of their autobiography The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band, Ottenberg caught up with band members Tommy Lee and Nikki Sixx before they head out on tour to talk about transforming into zombies for their new music video for Dogs of War, getting sober, setting hotels on fire, and why doubling-down on offending people paid off.

———

MEL OTTENBERG: When I heard we had a little time with you guys, I was like, “Oh, I’m going to be in town, and I want to get a copy of The Dirt signed.” Because I fucking love this book, so hot. 

TOMMY LEE: It blew through the fucking roof.

OTTENBERG: I’ve read it twice. It’s really interesting, because it’s true. For drugs, sex, but also the whole cog theory is very interesting. I’m a fucking fan.

SIXX: We wanted to do it in a different way, so we all separately told the same story, which I love. You know with an old friend, you’re like, “Hey, remember the time we did this?” He’s like, “What? We weren’t there.” Somebody’s telling one story, and someone’s telling another.

LEE: It’s funny because if we didn’t do it that way, it may have been a very different book. We did it separately and each of us reminded each other of all of things that were fuzzy and we’re like, “Oh, fuck, that’s right.” 

OTTENBERG: How was it set up? Was someone with you guys separately recording it or were you doing it yourself?

SIXX: No, it was Neil Strauss. He had a sit-down with each of us, and I didn’t read Tommy’s or Vince’s or Mick’s. I never even saw mine. Then when it was coming together, I was like, “It’s fucking perfect.” No one would do that book now.

OTTENBERG: Because no one wants to talk?

SIXX: No one would have published it in the first place. Everyone is scared of getting canceled and losing their advertisers. It was kind of a magic time, the end of what we grew up on in the sixties and seventies.

OTTENBERG: Were you guys in a good place as a band when you created the book?

SIXX: I can’t really remember.

LEE: I don’t remember.

OTTENBERG: And what about now?

SIXX: Now it’s fucking great. 

LEE: Yeah, this might be the best of the best times, because we’re actually still alive to fucking remember what’s been done and seen. 

OTTENBERG: That’s awesome.

SIXX: We’ve grown into so many different levels of our life, like personal levels, career levels, sobriety, being parents. You put us all together, it’s like fucking hundred years of history. Me and Tommy talk about gratitude all the time, and I’m just so happy to be here doing interviews.

LEE: Yeah, when that shit was going down, I don’t know about you, but for me, there was no gratitude. We didn’t slow down enough to go, “I’m really thankful for this.” 

SIXX: When you’re younger, a problem always seems bigger than it is. Now with any problem, there’s a solution attached to it. That means there’s always a positive outcome. Back then we were fucking fighting or fucking. It was always relationship drama, police drama. Now we’re on the same freeway in the same car, going in the same direction.

OTTENBERG: Yeah. You dropped a song today which sounds fucking great. When does your album come out?

SIXX: No album.

OTTENBERG: Just doing songs?

SIXX: Songs.

OTTENBERG: Sick.

SIXX: It’s a little different now. You get a thumbnail of a picture of the album art. You listen to a few songs, you get sidetracked. It’s on a playlist. So we’re like, let’s do more A-level songs instead of trying to write 10, 11 songs. Even Dr. Feelgood, one of our most successful albums, I could probably go in and name some of the songs that are not as on par as “Kickstart My Heart.” It doesn’t mean they’re bad songs, but I’d rather have 10 “Kickstart My Hearts” over the next 10 years than four “Kickstart My Hearts” and “Rattlesnake Shake” and “Five Years Dead.” Those are great album tracks. It’s just the way we’re thinking now.

OTTENBERG: So does time heal wounds or what? How’d you get to this era?

LEE: I don’t even know if there’s an answer for that. A lot of things are meant to be or not meant to be. At the end of the day, we really don’t have control of much.

SIXX: The only constant is change. Some of my favorite artists that had longevity, like David Bowie, were just fucking chameleons. Every time you saw him, he sounded a little different, he looked different. It was this constant evolution.

SIXX: We follow our hearts and then do our best version. I mean, think about Shout at the Devil, going into Theater of Pain and then Home Sweet Home. People were like, “Career suicide.”

OTTENBERG: Wait, why?

SIXX: The record company’s like, “What are you fucking doing?”

OTTENBERG: They’re like, “No, no, no. You guys were Satan worshipers, you can’t do this sweet ballad.”

LEE: Yeah.

SIXX: Because we didn’t look at it as, “Oh, we’re going to do Home Sweet Home against the backdrop of Shout at the Devil.” It was more to us like, we love Aerosmith and we love that song “Home Tonight” at the end of Rocks. We wanted a song like that. But for some reason that seemed like a real shocker. But it really wasn’t because Tommy’s always been tinkering at piano as long as I’ve known him.

LEE: It was the first time piano was ever on a Mötley record.

SIXX: That’s right, yeah.

OTTENBERG: That’s my favorite Mötley Crue song, to be honest. It’s my karaoke song.

SIXX: It’s a good karaoke song.

OTTENBERG: Because you always want to crush it, but you’re always going to fail.

SIXX: But as soon as you go, “You know I’m a dreamer,” the whole place is like, “Yeah.”

OTTENBERG: You guys crushed the way the pop world works in this book. Do you pay attention to the comings and goings of rock and pop today? Do you think about the cog and how it’s changed over time? 

SIXX: It don’t feel good to get kicked in the nuts. But it’s part of being in the street fight.

OTTENBERG: Right.

SIXX: It’s going to happen. Even the Eagles, they had their moments. It’s just the way it is. You do your best, sometimes you strike out.

OTTENBERG: Do you guys still have mad beefs with other bands or do you not give a fuck anymore?

LEE: I don’t think we have beef.

SIXX: Not really. But it’s fun, every now and then I’ll get these people out of the blue taking swipes at us.

OTTENBERG: Right.

SIXX: My wife came to me and said that some guy in a band said, “Mötley Crüe needs to wash it up.” I go, “I don’t know who that is. I don’t know who the band is.” And she goes, “Okay, what do you want for dinner?” The video’s a great example. Have you seen it?

OTTENBERG: No. Did it come out?

SIXX: Yeah, it came out today.

OTTENBERG: Oh, fuck, we’ve got to watch it.

SIXX: So the video is basically–

LEE: All these people are trying to kill us.

SIXX: The lawyers would shoot us down, the dogs… And we just keep coming back. At one point we’re zombies. We’re missing body parts. 

LEE: You’ll see.

OTTENBERG: Wait, I swear, 12 hours ago, I said, “No one’s killing it with a CGI video,” and now I’m watching this.

SIXX: There you go.

OTTENBERG: It’s very real.

SIXX: It’s fucked up.

OTTENBERG: It’s very much the true story of Mötley Crüe right now.

SIXX: Wait ’til you see the end.

OTTENBERG: I keep saying I owe people this book because I talk about this shit all the time.

LEE: Dude, you know what? I have a fun story. I’m in the middle of the fucking Maldives. Do you know how far that is from here?

OTTENBERG: It’s far.

LEE: It’s fucking far. There’s fucking nobody there. And then out of the corner of my peripheral vision I see this dude just walking down the beach and I’m like, “Oh, weird, somebody here.” He gets closer and I see he’s holding something and I’m like, “What are the chances of a fan out here in the middle of nowhere?” He comes up, he’s all, “Dude, would you fucking sign this for me? This is my fucking bible.” And I looked at him. I go, “Dude, what are you doing here?” He goes, “I’m on my honeymoon.” I go, “You brought this book on your honeymoon?” He goes, “Dude, there’s no way I would come on my honeymoon without it.”

OTTENBERG: Oh my god.

SIXX: Wow.

LEE: One of those scenarios where I was like, “What an awkward, weird thing. What are the chances?” So I signed his book.

OTTENBERG: Yeah. It’s got it all. I’m sober, but I love a dramatic story of drugs and destruction. What’s more fun than that? You guys just did it way better than I did it, so hats off.

SIXX: Better or way worse.

OTTENBERG: [Laughs]

SIXX: Sobriety’s interesting. It’s like, “I love my life being sober. Fuck, I never got to take X.”

OTTENBERG: Right.

SIXX: God dammit. I wasn’t around for MDMA or whatever it is. 

OTTENBERG: Right.

LEE: I never got to try ketamine.

SIXX: Ketamine. I’ve never heard about that.

LEE: I missed that one.

OTTENBERG: That one’s rough. That one got me back to sobriety. 

LEE: Just give me a CBD gummy and I’m good.

SIXX: Yeah, dude.

OTTENBERG: Sick. We didn’t really discuss the new music video. Tell me about it.

SIXX: There’s so many Easter eggs in that video. 

LEE: I saw you almost reach for the pause button. There’s a bunch of signage and some stuff.

OTTENBERG: Yes. I was like, “This is Satanic.”

SIXX: Exactly. People are like, “This is offensive.” And we’re like, “Yes, we scored.”

OTTENBERG: Absolutely. Who taught you that best? 

SIXX: I’ll be honest with you, when I met Tommy, then Vince and Nick, we didn’t care about what people thought, and that gave us power. The more ridiculous we could be, the more fun we had, and the more it offended people. And the more people were offended, the more we liked it. It became this stupid game, especially with the media. And we had the best publicist, Bryn Bridenthal. She just loved the band and she would follow us around going, “Tommy drove a fucking golf cart into the fucking pool. We’re putting that up on The Wire.” It was constant chaos.

LEE: She threw fire on it.

SIXX: Yeah. Then we had MTV News. We weren’t going, “Let’s light a hotel on fire to get in the press.” People were just documenting us and nobody told us no.

LEE: Nobody’s ever said no.

SIXX: No manager ever sits and goes, “Look guys, we love you, but you guys are going to die.” Because we probably would’ve been like, “Cool, cool.”

OTTENBERG: You gave each other the strength to get to the wild side.

SIXX: We went to The Whiskey one night. We were getting in fights and drinking and we lost Vince. He had gone out the back and had passed out and was underneath the car. We saw his feet and pulled him out, and me and Tommy carried him up to our apartment, threw him into the bed, and then an hour later he pops up and he’s back out at the Rainbow. Somehow we didn’t die. 

OTTENBERG: Fuck yeah. What’s the song that you guys still love playing together the most? 

LEE: I don’t know if there’s one song, it’s the whole spirit of the thing. I can’t explain the feeling you get when you look out into your audience and you see two, sometimes three generations are watching, listening, participating. At a Motley show, you see a 6-year-old on top of his dad’s shoulders going, “Shout, shout, shout at the devil.” You’re like, “Dude, that kid’s six years old, how does he even know about this?” 

SIXX: We’re talking about gratitude a lot.

LEE: Yeah, that makes you really grateful. I’m watching it happen like, “Dude, it’s happening. We’re part of this thing that’s still going.”

SIXX: It’s bigger than us, I guess.

LEE: Yeah.

OTTENBERG: Where is the crowd still the most fun? 

LEE: I’m going to say South America.

SIXX: Nothing touches it.

LEE: From Buenos Aires to Columbia. Dude, that whole area down there. It’s a different energy, completely.

SIXX: When they’re moshing to “Home Sweet Home,” you’re like, “These guys are on a whole other level.”

OTTENBERG: Wow.

SIXX: They love their music and that inspires us. 

OTTENBERG: Amen. Guys, thank you so much for giving me the time. I really appreciate it.