Speaker 1: Hello, Shirley fans, thank you so much for coming to
listen again. As per usual, we will keep this episode
family friendly, but given that this is Motley Crue, the
subject matter may not be suitable for younger listeners, so
please bear that in mind. But without further ado, on
with the ship Man. Welcome to the Shirley You Can't
Be Serious Podcast. I am here with my metal studded
leather pants and my mass scare and blush on and
Jason is in the spinning drum set of above me. Jason,
have you got everything? Are you ready to go?
Speaker 2: Let's go dye?
Speaker 3: Ready to rock?
Speaker 1: Man?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've got my top fuel funny car, I got
my custom Bilt bike that does one O three. I've
got a Filipino girl here in a silvan dress, and
most importantly, I've got a packages Candy Kane.
Speaker 4: Hello everybody, and welcome to the Surely you Can't Be
Serious Podcast, discussing and debating the iconic and the forgotten
of eighties and nineties pop culture with your co hosts
James D. Graves and Jason Kliband.
Speaker 1: All right here we are for our much anticipated Motley
Crue Doctor Feel Good Versus skid Row skid Row matchup.
I am so excited we're gonna be talking about Doctor
feel Good today. I don't know that I've been this
excited to talk about a band in all of the
episodes that we've done. I'm just I'm chomping at the bit.
This is such a great band to talk about.
Speaker 3: There is so much interesting stuff that we could not
cover at all in one podcast. Literally, there's three or
four podcasts that we can do on Motley Crue.
Speaker 1: Yes, it is a storied life that they have led,
and we fully anticipate that we're going to do several
Motley Crue albums over the course of this podcast. So
we don't want to spill everything now, but my gosh,
there are so many fantastic stories out there there. I mean,
it's an amazing combination of folks. You have two guys
from the gutters who get together with two guys from
the suburbs and they create the most hedonistic, kick in
the butt awesome mix of music. It's incredible, It is incredible.
Speaker 3: It's gonna be amazing. So hold on to your seats.
Let's get into Motley Crue Doctor Filger.
Speaker 1: Okay, So our story begins on December twenty second, nineteen
eighty seven. It is the end of a year long
battle with Heroin that Nikky six has gone through and
he is in Hong Kong. He has a flight out
at nine pm. Doc McGhee has a flight out at
six pm. Doc McGee makes his flight. Nicky, knowing Doc
is gone, deliberately skips his flight. He goes to the
interpreter Lee and says to her, if Doc finds out
what I did, I'm gonna have to kill you. And
then he laughs, but he doesn't think it's very funny.
So they go out to explore the streets of Hong
Kong and he happens to see an old man on
street sitting next to like this steam coming out of
the street, and he asks Lee, the interpreter, about it,
and she says, oh, it's a fortune teller, and he's like, okay,
let's go check it out. And so they walk over
there and the fortune teller looks at Nicky six and
he says, I don't want to tell his fortune, and
Lee tells him and he says, come on, I mean
it's no big deal and pushes his way into to
the fortune and the fortune teller says Okay, give me
your hand, looks at his hand, says something to Lee,
and Lee says, He says that if you continue to
do the things that you were doing, you will not
live to see the end of the year. And Nicki
six says, tell him thank you, because that gives me
about a week longer than I thought I had. Reminder,
this is December twenty second. He flies home and on
December twenty third, as he arrives in La, his limo
driver shoots him up after picking him up from the
and he calls up Slash and says, let's go party.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: So Slash, Steven Adler, Robin Crosby, and Slash's girlfriend Sally
Sally McLoughlin all go out and they go to the
cathouse and as they're there, living life to the fullest,
Slash and Nicki keep going back and forth to the
limo to do cocaine, keep coming back in, and finally
they just leave and go back to the hotel, leaving
Sally behind. This is her first night in La. She's
a little bit pissed. She has to walk back to
the hotel. Steven Adler's got one room, Slash has got
another room. When Nicky and Slash get to the room.
He's like, can we get any junk anywhere? And Slash says,
I know a buddy who's a dope fiend. We'll get
it from him. He brings it over. When Sally walks in,
Nicky is obviously messed up, and she is obviously pissed
at Slash for leaving her behind. So Nicky walks over
to Stephen Adler's room and shortly thereafter comes back over
to slash His room, looking like a ghost, and as
Sally opens the door for him, he falls into the
corner of the floor and stops moving and stops breathing,
and the drug dealer that they have goes, oh crap,
he's dead, and he jumps out the window and runs away.
Sally is trying her best to wake him up, and
he's not waking up. Slash, who is drunk and coked
out of his mind, starts screaming Todd because he just
had a friend a few weeks before who had died
of a heroin over to us named Todd. He starts
screaming Todd and tearing up the bathroom, breaks the glass
door in the shower, glass shards fall over Sally as
she's trying to revive Nicky six, and she gets up,
punches him in the face and lays him out. She
continues to try to revive Nicky six and he's not
coming around all is the limo driver and says, I
think he's dead. The limo driver calls Vince Neil and
says Nicky's dead.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: At this point, Vince Neil, who hated Nicky six, says,
I didn't cry at this time, and I hated Nicky,
but when I heard this, I broke down in tears.
The ambulance comes. They put a white sheet over him
because he is dead, and it's only at the behest
of some fans, some young girl fans outside saying please
don't give up on him. That They give it one
more try and they get his heart beating again. They
take him to hospital. He's in and out of several
operating rooms. They finally have him in one room. His
heart is beating and he wakes up. He puts pulls
all of the tubes out of him, walks out in
the december cold in nothing but a dirty pair of
leather pants. The girls who would beg the EMTs are
standing outside with a candlelight, hoping that he doesn't die,
and so he gets a ride from them back to
his house. He goes into his house and he shoots
up again. He wakes up with the needle still in
his arm, blood in his hand, and he realizes what
has happened, and he decides, I can't do this anymore.
This is what he writes in his journal. Maybe there
is a God, Maybe, just maybe there is such a lifeline.
Something happened last night. I died. Sounds insane, doesn't I
feel differently today. I think, for the first time in
my life, I feel hopeful. I can't remember ever feeling happy,
but I feel like something has snapped. I feel I
don't know. Last night was not unlike many nights for me,
driving toward hell, hoping to be welcomed into death's arms,
or simply to kill the pain and fill the whole
of emptiness inside. I saw something. Okay, here we go.
I was on the gurney. The sheet was over my head.
I saw something. There was my limo. There we were
people crying. There was an ambulance. There was a body
with a sheet over it being loaded into an ambulance,
and it was me. I saw it all, I was
up above it all. I couldn't know this if I
was dead. I don't understand it. But something feels different
in me. I'm just going to have to write later.
I need to collect my thoughts. And he goes and
he starts cleaning out all of his drug stuff and
the paraphernalia, and he comes across an AA book because
he has tried rehab multiple times, and he sees this
phrase step one. We admitted that we were powerless and
that our lives had become unmanageable. He feels more tired
than he's ever felt in his life, and he falls
asleep for two days. When he wakes up on the
twenty fifth, this is his entry, good morning and Merry Christmas.
I decided to put this diary away and start a
new one.
Speaker 3: That's beautiful, nice, It's incredible.
Speaker 1: He says he doesn't know how he survived the year
of addiction that he had, but he felt on this
day that it was a new day. It's awesome.
Speaker 3: That is awesome.
Speaker 1: So that's the end of one chapter, which is the
beginning of the next chapter, which is the chapter leading
into Doctor Feel Good. So this guy, who, among other things,
felt like he needed to do these drugs because all
of his heroes did these drugs and they said they
wrote their best stuff on drugs. And so what happens
when he stops doing the drugs. Does he lose his creativity? No,
he writes the biggest selling Motley Crue album of all time.
So NICKI started off as a kid with a really
crappy childhood. He can remember being a little kid where
his mom and her boyfriend go down with him to
Texas at about six years old, and he's sitting on
the he's playing with a really crappy Tonka truck on
the front porch, and his mom and her boyfriend are
getting wasted drinking and smoking dope. And at six years old,
they invite him in and give him his first hit
on the joint and his first drink of whiskey, and
he says he felt more live at that moment than
he had ever had before. Suddenly the crazy voices in
his head were quiet.
Speaker 3: Six years old, nice, really great, really great.
Speaker 1: Tommy lived in Suburbia, had an Ozzie and Harriet life.
So did Vince Neil Mick Mars, who I thought had
to be at least twenty years older than the rest
of the guys. But I think he's only like three
or four years old. He looks like Joan Jet and
Gollum got together and had a baby. Did you know
that Nicky's mom dated Richard Pryor?
Speaker 3: Oh I didn't know that. Yes, No, he.
Speaker 1: Was dealing like black Jacket Lake Tahoe or something, and
he walked in and their eyes met and it was
love at first sight. Like they were in a really
serious relationship when Nicky was like six years old, five
years old something like that.
Speaker 3: Richard Pryor dated Margot Kidder. Yeah, also dated Nicky Six's mom. Yes,
that's incredible. Okay, keep going, all right.
Speaker 1: So McK mars, his real name is not Mick marsh.
You know what his real name is.
Speaker 3: Bob Ellen Deal bad had He's been bad since the
day he was born.
Speaker 1: So he I mean, what a very unfortunate face that
that man has. But my gosh, when you turn out
the lights and he plays the guitar, you gotta think
that he looks like a Greek god because he is phenomenal.
Speaker 3: He's a great guitar player.
Speaker 1: So Nicky bounced between his mom and his grandparents quite
a bit. At some point when he was living in
Seattle with his mom, made some friends who had a band,
and he realized that he wanted to be part of
the band. And they're like, well, we'll let you play
bass if you can get a bass. So he walks
into a guitar store with a guitar case in his hand,
and he asked the guy at the counter for an application.
And when the guy goes in the back to get
the application, Nicky very calmly opens his guitar case, picks
up a guitar, sticks in the guitar case, closes the case,
and waits for the guy to come back with the application. Yeah,
takes the application, goes back out. He's all excited, opens
up the guitar case to show his friends who are
in the band, and they're like, dude, you got a guitar.
We said bass, not a guitar. You're supposed to get
a bass, and he's like, oh no. So ultimately ends
up with a bass, but he's terrible at it. He's
I mean, it's interesting because I remember, you know, watching
the videos back in the day, and I can't remember
which video it was, but basically he's kind of crawling
along toward the camera in this very seductive way, and
I'm looking at him and I'm going, he's just a
pretty boy in the band Like this, it's the guitar solo,
but they're showing the bass player because the guitarist is
one hundred years old and frightening, and this is pretty.
But Nicky six is the architect of Motley.
Speaker 3: Crue Oh, without a doubt, Without a doubt.
Speaker 1: When he realized he wanted to be in a band,
he had an entire system that he was going to
go through to put together the perfect band. He didn't
have it perfect the first time that he put a
band together, but when he eventually went out to la
he started a band. The band that was called London
with Lizzie Gray and a couple other guys, and their
singer was a singer who had been in Monta Hoopo,
the last singer that Monta Hoopole had before it broke up.
Right and after gigging for a while, the singer was like,
I'm not going to be in a band with that
guy anymore. He has no idea how to play the bass. Yeah,
Like Nicky, he's our guy. He's the one put us together,
and he's like, it's either him or me, and they said,
we're not kicking Nicky out of the band, and so
the singer for the band that was called London he left,
and after he left, of course the band falls part.
So Nicky's looking for a drummer and happens to come
across Tommy Lee, who's playing for a band.
Speaker 3: Called Sweet nineteen.
Speaker 1: Sweet nineteen, and Tommy had known Vince Neil from high school.
They went to high school together and Vince was kind
of in this poppy band called rock Handy, which played
some his cover band. Yeah yeah, it was a cover band,
but Vince knew how to get the Bad girls and Tommy.
He introduced Tommy to the Bad Girls, and so Tommy
was like, oh, I like Vince. But whenever Tommy and
Nicky got together, they're like, all right, we need a guitarist.
And they start looking in looking in the one ads
in the and they see something that says, you know.
Speaker 3: Loud rude and aggressive guitar player available, and this came
from the recycler. Yeah, so I find this super interesting.
So they're like, loud rude and aggressive guitar player, that's
our guy, right, So they call him up and they
said he shows up black leather, about five foot two.
Tommy said he looked just like cousin it from the
Adams family. And then when he started to play, they
were like, this is the guy. He know one thing
about this guy, but this is it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he is phenomenal. And they thought the fact that
he looked like an alien actually would help them out.
They thought it made it. So they've got a drummer.
And Tommy was an awesome drummer. He was really young.
He was the youngest of them all and was still
in high school when he got together with Nicki and
but he had been playing drums since he was a
little kid, and he was phenomenal. He just did it
all the time. He put in his ten thousand hours
to become an expert. And so he was a drummer
in the marching band in high school. Yeah, he was
in the band before. He was in a band. Very cool. Yeah,
And so yeah, so they're thinking, Okay, we need a singer.
Vince is already with a band, and so they're like, well,
how do we get Vince to come play with us
instead of playing with rock Candy, And they offered to
pay him one hundred and fifty bucks a week.
Speaker 3: Here's the deal. Motley Crue was formed on January seventeenth,
nineteen eighty one, and that's the date that Nicky and
Tommy sort of got the nucleus together, right. Vince was
hired on April first of eighty one. Once Vince was
hired April first, the band played its first gig at
the Starwood Nightclub on April twenty fourth. So they needed
a name, right, And so Nicky sat down and he says,
all right, guys, this is what I'm thinking. I'm thinking
about calling it Christmas okay, And he even played with
like the spelling like xmass, you know, x muss, you know,
and they were all like, no, no, terrible, terrible, terrible.
So so, and Mick Mars remembered something from a long
time ago when I was with a band called White Horse.
The guy working the sound booth said, well, this is
a motley looking crew, and Mick Mars was like, man,
that's a that's a pretty cool name. And he wrote
it down and he kind of played with the spelling
of it, and he brought it out and he said, guys,
I've been waiting for a long time and I think
this could be a really cool band name, and when
they saw it, they were all like, that looks awesome.
And then Vince Neil, who apparently they were drinking a
lot of Low and Brow beer at the time, loved
the little two little dots umlatz, the umlatz. Yeah, and
so that's why, Oh.
Speaker 1: That's fantastic. I did not know that the umlatz came
from Low and Brown beer. You didn't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's it. So Low and Brow we look at
their Low and Brow beer and we're like, yeah, how
about a couple of little dots over the O, A
couple of little dots over the you, and that is
how you have Motley Crew.
Speaker 1: That's fantastic. So yeah, so they start playing and it
so the punk crowd isn't interested in them, but because
they've they've adopted this glam style and this is interesting
that they've you know, they're they're they're looking at Kiss,
they're looking at David Bowie, all these guys from the
seventies who had done this clam stuff, and they're trying
to bring that back, I guess. And so the punk
guys hate them. But what they would do, in addition
to plastering their posters everywhere on Hollywood Boulevard is they
would go to local high schools or in the suburbs
and hand out their posters to the hottest chicks, because
you got to figure, if the beautiful girls are going,
the guys are going to come right.
Speaker 3: Oh smart, It's brilliant marketing.
Speaker 1: Exactly what happened. So the suburban kids are the ones
who were like buying all the tickets to Motley Cruz
shows when they were playing at the Whiskey of Go Go,
And of course at the end, you know, at the
end of every show, they would go, all right, everybody
come back to our you know me, keep on party.
And so like, you know, five hundred people would show
up at this absolute crap hole of an apartment that
they had. But the door had been kicked in so
many times that it was no longer on its hinges,
it no longer had a lock. And one night, David
Lee Roth comes over to do some coke with Motley
Crue and somebody tries to come in the door and
it falls over on top of David Lee Roth. And
I just got to think, if I'm sitting here doing
drugs with David Lee Roth and the door falls on
top of him, I've made it.
Speaker 3: I have arrived exactly. So, just to recap, we got
the four members of the band, and so I always
think it's interesting these guys have such rockstar names, but
sometimes it's interesting for us to look at what they
were actually named. Right, so you have Vince Neil who's
the lead singer. His name is actually Vincent Neil Wharton,
a little less rockstar than Vince Neil. Mick Mars. We
already talked about Bob al Deal, right, Tommy Lee Bass Okay,
Nikki six his real name is Frankie Farana, which he
got the name NICKI six from his driver's license. He
was looking at the number and he saw just the
end of it it said N six and they're like,
what's your name.
Speaker 5: He's like, Nicky six, yes, and he actually legally yeah,
he had it legally changed. And when the guys from
the band that he played with in Seattle called him
up after a couple of years, he was like, I'm
just gonna tell you.
Speaker 1: This one time. Yeah, frank Farana is dead. Do not
call that name. I am Niky six.
Speaker 3: I will mention this. The first on their first album,
Too Fast for Love, there's a song called on with
the show, and the lyrics start off with Frankie died
just the other night. Some say it was suicide, but
we know how the story goes, and so it's just
kind of an auto biographical song about putting to death
who he was.
Speaker 1: Now, so they put on a show like we know
that Tommy is awesome, we know that Mick is awesome.
We know that Vince has a unique voice. It's probably
not a great voice, but it's a unique voice. And
we know that Nicky is terrible at the base, but
write some incredible songs, right right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a magic recipe. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There. They have figured out that it's all about the
show that you put on, and so that's why they
wore the makeup, That's why they wore the crazy leather
clothes that they had. That's why they had the pyrotechnics
and the flamethrowers out of the guitar and all the
other stuff that they would do. They knew it was
all about the show. And so when all these suburban
kids started coming to the show, they had a line
out the door, like they were like they're they're looking
at it and they're like, what the heck is going on?
There's a line going all the way into the parking
lot and our show has already sold out. What's going
on here? This is crazy? And as it happens, Tom
Zutat is driving by Yes and he sees this line
out the door and he's like, what is going on here?
And he sees Motley Cruez sold out on the marquee
and he's like, I got to check this out. He
walks in, he watches the show, and he comes backstage
and says, I want to sign you guys, let me
sign you to Electric Electra Records. He would probably go
on to regret that later on because at some point
while they're touring, he has a new girl that he's
been dating and he brings her backstage and Nicky's like,
so you guys pretty serious and he's like, well, you know,
we've been on a two or three days. We're just
getting to know each other. And Nicky says, you're really hot,
and within three minutes is having sex with.
Speaker 3: The Sorry the movie The Dirt shows Vince Neil having
sex with her.
Speaker 1: It's a different girl, like Tom Zutat got his girl
ft by two different numbers Motley Crew.
Speaker 3: The point is, don't ever bring your girlfriend around, Molly Crow.
Speaker 1: Exactly right, exactly right. If you don't remember, Tom Zutat
is the guy who also signed Guns N' Roses a
few years later, Right.
Speaker 3: That's it. That's the same guy.
Speaker 1: He actually wanted Nicky six to produce Appetite for Destruction.
Did you know that?
Speaker 3: No? I did not know that.
Speaker 1: Yes, and nick as strung at as he was realized
there's no way he could produce an album. He's like,
I would have been able to barely push the play
and stop button. There was no way I was going
to be able to produce an album.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's awesome. I did not know that.
Speaker 1: Tom Zutak realizes that these guys need management. He calls
up Doug Thaylor, who's been a band manager before, who
has recently partnered with Doc McGhee. They fly out to
see him and they said it was like a three
ring circus. The fans were going friggin' nuts, and they thought,
we got to show this in every city and that
we can across the country because this is going to
be a hit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And Nikki and Tommy they used to talk about
how they would in their apartment. They would practice setting
themselves on fire.
Speaker 1: So before Doug Taylor and Doc McGee started managing them,
their former manager, the Kaufmans, put together the money to
produce their own album on their own label called the
Leather Label.
Speaker 3: This album was this is Too Fast for Love Right.
Speaker 1: And when Electra Records has at this point moved over
to New York City, they've got a new CEO and
his name is Bob krass Now and when he sees
Motley Crue, he's like, we're not putting these guys on
electric records. I don't know what you guys are thinking.
And they're like what, and he's like, listen, we got
Joni Mitchell, We've got Linda Ronstat, we have artists on
our record label. We don't want to sell our albums
to people who live in the gutter. So they're at
this weird position where they know that they've got a
hit on their hands, but the record company's like, we're
not going to do anything with it. And so they
realize they've got to start with touring. And the first
big show that they do, do you know what it is?
US Festival nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, wow.
Speaker 1: And so the US Festival that we've mentioned a couple
of different times. Now we've mentioned it within excess. We
mentioned it obviously with Van Halen. It opens with Quiet Riot,
second band to play, Motley Crue. They go out there
and they play the worst piece of crap show they've
ever played in their entire lives. They are missing cues,
the bass and the drums aren't syncing up, and at
some point Tommy, you know, after the show, he realizes
that there's a television station there filming everything that's going on,
and he starts crying and begging Doc McGee. He's like,
you got to do something. We can't let anybody see
how badly we did tonight. But what Doc McGee and
Tom's Zoutat and Doug Taylor see that the guys don't
see is that all one hundred thousand people that are
there are loving it. They don't care that the band
can't play for crap right put on a show. They
have the right look, and they know if this is
the way the crowd reacts when they play like crap,
there's no way that we're going to fail.
Speaker 3: Okay, So this is nineteen eighty three and by this
time there they've got an album called Shout At the Devil.
This ramped up on MTV, and this is where I
first heard of them. They're putting out videos like Looks
That Kill, and they've got the pinogram and the makeup
and the girls, and so.
Speaker 1: I wonder why some people thought they were Satanists.
Speaker 3: They were going with the burning Pinogram. I mean, they're
pretty bold and out front.
Speaker 1: Right, and your and your song is called Shout at
the Devil, Shout Out the Devil. Yeah, and Nigg's like
I said, shout at the Devil, Shout with the Devil.
Speaker 3: Right, and every church youth pastor said, oh, okay, no problem.
Speaker 1: When they got together to make that album, Tom Warman
it was the producer, and he calls up Doug Taylor
after a couple of days and he says, listen, nick
and Tommy easy to work with. Neil painting and this
guy can't play the bass, and Doug Taylor goes, no shit,
We've known that he can't play the bass. It doesn't matter.
Just record the music and yeah, Shout of the Devil
makes them mega hits.
Speaker 3: It's really interesting. I mean, I know we've talked about it,
but the fact that Nicky can't play and yet still
is the most important member of the band.
Speaker 1: He is the cornerstone of the band.
Speaker 3: He writes all the songs. Yes, every hit ever made
made by Motley Crue was written by Nicky six.
Speaker 1: He is a great songwriter, a great performer, and a
terrible musician, or at least he was in the early eighties.
I probably learned a thing or two in the last
forty years.
Speaker 3: I think you're right. I think you're right.
Speaker 1: So the success that they have with the crowd at
the US festival leads to them touring with Ozzy Osbourne,
where they learn even more about putting on a good
show and and drinking and drugging and sexing to the max. Yes,
So between Shout at the Devil and Theater of Pain,
the band has a major event occur in the history
of the band.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. On December eighth, nineteen eighty four, Vince
Neil was making a liquor run in his car, which
was a Pantera, and he had Nicholas aka Razzled Dingley
from the band Hanai Rocks in the pasture seat with him.
They went to make a run to grab some more
beer and was involved in a head on collision that
killed Razzle and Vince was in serious trouble of doing
actual hard jail time for his death.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which having the history that I do, him getting
as little time as he did is amazing to me.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's it's incredible. He was charged with DUI and
vehicular manslaughter, was to only thirty days in jail, it's crazy,
and only served eighteen of those days. That's crazy, and
then was subsequently sued for two point five million dollars.
The short jail term was negotiated by his lawyers, which
would allow him to go on tour and make this
money to pay the estate of Razzle. Right, But I
heard Doc McGee talking about this, I thought this was
such an interesting story. Doc's talking to the lawyers and
talking to Vince, and the lawyers like, Vince, they really
want you to do some hard jail time for this.
And Vince's response was I can't, and they're like, what
do you mean you can't. He's like, I got a tour,
I can't take time off. And Doc McGee is like,
that's when I knew these guys had no idea that
their real life consequences to problems that they're causing around them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So this this moment and Doc McGee also traces
back to whenever Nicky's heroin addiction began to get truly
out of hand. He thinks that the notion that suddenly
all of this work that he had done putting this
band together, having the success that they had had up
until that point, could suddenly be taken away without him
having any control over it. And he feels like that
is when this his drug addiction really ramped up. And
it was after this point that Vince Neil says, I
didn't really feel like I was a member of the
band anymore. I felt like I was a singer for
the band. It was. It was an entirely different dynamic
after this happened. And he, of course he had to
stay clean while he was on his probation, which with
these guys, I mean that's like trying to jump in
the pool without getting wet, right, And they were not.
I mean, they'd ask him to pass drugs and drinks
and stuff like that, and it was it was a hard,
hard experience. This is where Vince Neil and Nikki really
started hating each other.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, So after Shout of the Devil, which
sometime we've got a podcast about that, and that's that
one has tons of great songs on it. But in
nineteen eighty five they come out with the Theater of
Pain album and they cover the first song out of
the Gate. They cover the old Brownsville station song called
Smoking in the Boys Room. But the song that really
really sort of ramps them up into the next level
of rock groups is the second single off Theater Pain.
It's called Home, Sweet Home, maybe the greatest rock ballad
of all time. After Theater of Pain, a couple of
years later, in nineteen eighty seven, they come out with
the Girls, Girls, Girls album. The funny thing is that
all these stories sound tremendously sad. Yeah, and they are
pathetic stories. But this band was full tilt, out of
control rock and roll fun right. It wasn't sadness. It
was full on you know, the top fuel, funny car
going one hundred and three miles an hour.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, and Vince Neil and pretty much Yeah, Vince
Neil's objective in being a part of a band was
he got to be with He got to sleep with
a lot of girls.
Speaker 3: Oh as many as possible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Nikki six said girls were my crush. I fell
in love with Heroin.
Speaker 3: So in nineteen eighty seven they come out with the
album Girls, Girls, Girls, Yes, which I love this album
and I've heard them talk a little bit critically about it,
but there's some great songs on this album. Wild Side
is great, Girls Girls Girls is great. You're All I
Need is great. I'm a big fan of this album.
But this is when they are full on out of control.
Speaker 1: So I saw them is off of probation at this
point and it started drinking and drugging again. Oh yeah,
oh one.
Speaker 3: I heard him talking about this. Tommy Lee said this
happened every single day. He would wake up, pull himself together,
drink drug Girls, showtime, drink drug Girl. He said it
got so out of control that Doc McGee would chase
him around the hotel and when he caught him, he
would punch his lights out and handcuff him to the bed.
And the next day, when they finally get out of
bed after doing all this, they would make fun of events
for taking a shower.
Speaker 1: You mentioned wild Side, So here's the story. On wild Side.
He wakes up from a night of drinking and drugging
and the girl that he's been with that night is
putting back on her Catholic school girl uniform, not because
it's the sexy thing to wear because of Britney Spears,
because that hasn't happened yet. She's actually a Catholic school girl.
And so he says to her, hey, is the Lord's
Prayer actually, you know? Important? And she says, yeah, of
course it is, and he says, could you give me
a copy of it? And she shows him where it
is in the Bible. Then he drops her off on
his motorcycle at the Catholic school. The nuns are looking
at him disapprovingly, and he goes, I can't imagine and
how much more disapproval they would have on their face
if they knew what I was about to do with
the Lord's Prayer. And that was the wild side.
Speaker 3: Now that we're on Girls Girls Growth, I want to
mention something that I thought was interesting and this will
come into play when we talked about Doctor Feel Good
here in a second. So, the band's fourth album, Girls,
Girls Girls, was released May of nineteen eighty seven. It
debuted at number two on the Billboard Top two hundred. Okay,
Nicki has come out and publicly talked about how he
feels like they were screwed out of a number one record.
He feels like the record executive somehow cook the books
to show that Whitney Houston's album sold more copies than
their's did. And I don't know the full story, but
he felt screwed over, which is why what doctor Phil
Good accomplishes later is so fulfilling.
Speaker 1: Right right? Did you know that Nicky six dated Lead Afford.
Speaker 3: I did know that.
Speaker 1: Apparently the first time they met, she walks up to
him and puts half a quay lude in his mouth,
and three days later they were living together.
Speaker 3: The girls involved here, let's let's just cover some of
these famous women, right, So Tommy has been involved with
Heather Locklear yep, Pamela Anderson, yes, Bobby Brown, who you
may know from the Cherry Pie video. Okay, okay, Annie,
Kataine Toni Kataine yep. Right, which became.
Speaker 1: Interesting when White Snake started touring with them and she
was married to David Coverdale at the time.
Speaker 3: That is interesting. That was the Girl's Girl tour. Nicky
was involved with Vanity yep.
Speaker 1: Nasty not her, that's just the song they sang. Okay,
I'm sorry, but yes, she was also a nasty girl.
But Okay, go ahead.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Vanity the Nasty Girl, right uh, Leada Ford and
then subsequent playboy playmates, right Vince Neil has a list
too long to even discusses. Yep, and it's mostly filled
with playmates and porn stars.
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah. When when NICKI was dating Vanity, I mean
it was a it was a long relationship, but she
had been involved with Prince before that. And one time
he goes over to her apartment and she's got twenty
four dozen roses sitting in the corner, and he's like,
what's up with the roses? And he goes over there
and he looks at the card and it says something
like come back to me, I love you, Love Prince,
And he was like, if I find that little door,
if I'm gonna kick his head. And then a couple
days later he finds out that Vanity had actually sent
the roses to herself just to f with his head.
And that kind of defined the relationship that they had.
It was a constant let's do a lot of drugs together,
let's scream and fight with each other, and let's screw
with these with each other's heads.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I heard him discuss this. She would yell at
him for drinking like a Coca cola, and then an
hour later they'd be doing Heroin together.
Speaker 1: So while they're on the Girls Girls Girls Tour there,
Nicky runs into this guy who's who says, Hey, I
don't know if you remember, but you guys were here
a couple of years ago and I kicked open the
door to get in before everybody else, and like the
whole crowd came after me, and he's like, I do
remember that. And this kid is now performing in the
opening band, and the band is called VO five, and
the kid says, I'm going to be a rock star,
and it turns out he was right, because just a
few months earlier he had joined a little band called
skid Row and he's finishing up the VO five concert
sets that they had, which is why they were opening
for Motley Crue, and within the next two years he
would have that rock star stardom.
Speaker 3: Okay, So on the Girls Girls Girls Tour, the drinking
and drugging and partying was the next level rock star stuff, right.
They did not have any consequences. They were completely out
of control. And when they saw events kill a guy
and have no consequences, that just meant it was full
speed ahead for everyone, right. So but at that point
Doug Theair and Doc McGee pulled an intervention and said, guys, listen,
we are not going to Europe. If we go to Europe,
somebody's coming back in a body bag and we are
not going to be present for that. So they shut
down the European leg of the tour. Just said that's it. Well,
you guys need to go to rehab and get your
act together, right, and so that's what they did. They
got they went to rehab, all four of them got
their you know, got their act together so that they
could be completely sober for their next album.
Speaker 1: Yep. So during the Girls Girls Girls tour, Aerosmith leaves
a note on their jet like a ticket, like you
get a parking ticket. They leave the note in the
window of the jet from the crew that says, if
you don't ease up, you're going to crash and burn,
just like we did back in the seventies.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: Now here's something interesting that you may not know. Dude,
looks like a lady was written about was written about
Vince Neil.
Speaker 3: This is the craziest story. Okay, tell me this story.
Speaker 1: No That's that's all I got. Okay, you got more,
go for it.
Speaker 3: Okay. So I heard this story. I think it's hilarious.
Speaker 1: Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 3: They go into a bar Steve Tyler. Steven Tyler looks
over across the room and notices a full blonde mane
of hair and says, whoa look at that. And when
he goes over, he goes over to talk to this wonderful,
you know, wonderful looking woman. He is shocked to find
that it's Vince Neil. So his band and Molly Crue
proceed to beat him to death with that, and that
gave birth to the song dude looks like a lady.
Fantastic rock and roll history right there, and dire.
Speaker 1: Straight song Money for Nothing is about Motley Crue, is it?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I did not know that. That is good.
Speaker 1: Look at that he's got his own jet airplane. That
is a millionaire.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there you go. Okay. So I thought this was
As they're prepping for their fifth studio album, they dropped
the producer of their previous three albums, warmon Tom Mormon,
and they pick up this guy named Bob Rock. Up
to this point, he had produced to an album called
Kingdom come and he had done Sonic Temple by The Cult, okay,
and so he's kind of a rising star, and so
they pick him up and he works with them, does
Doctor Feel Good, But then he goes on to do
the Black Album by Metallica, Keep the Faith by bon Jovi,
and I think he even does Britney Spears later on
Michael Boubla.
Speaker 1: He he does her album Excuse Me and and does
his album as long as.
Speaker 3: He does their albums. Let me correct that. So Bob
Rock is a climbing star, and in fact it's so.
Lars Ulrich, after hearing Doctor Feel Good, says, I want
that producer for our next album, which is funny because
Metallica is known to have hated Motley Krue. So they
hire Bob Rock and they pick up and they all
move to Vancouver to record Doctor filgad for nearly a year.
I think getting out of LA they're newly sober and
they can go in sort of this college slash summer
camp type of atmosphere where all they do is get up,
go to the studio and work. I think that was
key to the success of the album. I Got Something
That's Gonna blow your mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, tell me.
Speaker 3: Okay, this is my little nugget. Okay, So they dropped
Tom Mormon and they're going to go with Bob Rock.
But before they hired Bob Rock, they thought about having
Quincy Jones produce their album. Wow, how about that?
Speaker 1: That would have been an interesting Yeah. Their formula which
is make stuff that has their signature on it, but
things that are hooky. They're all about hooky melodies. I mean,
you've they're fantastic at it, right. They've got the they've
got the look and the attitude and the right guitars
and drums for a killer metal band. But they have
almost a pop sensibility about the melodies of their music.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, for sure. I think it's interesting that while
they're in Vancouver recording Doctor Feel Good in the studio
right next door, Aerosmith is recording Pump And we'll have
some crossover here in a minute when we dive into
the tracks in the album Doctor Fielgod was released on
September first, nineteen eighty nine, their only album to reach
number one. Are We ready to dive in? Are you
ready to dive in?
Speaker 1: I am ready to dive in.
Speaker 3: Let's dive into the tracks on Doctor field Good. The
first track on the album is called TNT, otherwise known
as Terror in Tinseltown. It's not really a song, but
it's the intro to Doctor field Good.
Speaker 1: And what perfect intro for the first album that they've
done in sobriety about a seventeen year old who's odeed
on drugs.
Speaker 3: It's really interesting. I think it sets a serious tone
for the album. This is not screw around party rock.
This is this is serious stuff, right, And then you
have this hard break that sounds like a crash. Reminds
me a little bit of maybe a head on collision
from a few years before.
Speaker 1: Ooh, didn't even think of that. Good call.
Speaker 3: One little tidbit on this I found that I thought
was interesting. Hm, this is the exact same sample used
by the band Queen's Reich for their song Eyes of
a Stranger. If you listen to Eyes of the Stranger,
it's the same deal, Doctor Davis telephone, please Doctor Davis.
So two rock albums using the same sample. Kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: Wow, it's crazy all right.
Speaker 3: So that brings us to the title track, first real
song on the album, feel Good.
Speaker 1: I love the drums in this song. I love it all.
I love it all, but Nicki talked about how he
would get together with Tommy whenever he was writing a song,
and Tommy had this amazing ability to find the heartbeat
of the song, like he just knew the rhythms. He's
an expert drummer who could find the way to bring
the words that Nicki had written to life with the beat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I almost say that this is like a drum riff.
It's just really good. Really, these guys are at the
top of their game with this song. This song was
released August twenty eighth, nineteen eighty nine, reached number six
on the Hot one hundred, peaked at number six on
October twenty eighth, nineteen eighty nine. And clearly this song
is about an LA drug dealer that Nicki six knew.
Speaker 1: This song grabs you from the first moment. You know,
you talked about how you felt about want to be
starting something, and this one just that bump bump bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump,
bump bump. It grabs you instantly, and you know that
what you're listening to is going to be a song
that's going to be timeless. It is still good it's
still totally listenable right now. It's it's awesome.
Speaker 3: I love it. It's a scarface type of story with
this guy Rattel Jimmy or jig Son Jimmy. I love
the part where he's talking about he sells powdered goods
and packages candy cane and he's going to be your Frankenstein.
I mean it just it's just really great, really really
top of their game. Great song. I think the guitar
solo in this song is killer. I mean, Mick is
just shredding.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing. And it's interesting that
you know, they're getting off drugs and Mick has always
always been like the quiet member of the band, and
he was, i mean, more than anything, was a drinker.
But he was going through something that none of the
band knew about.
Speaker 3: Did you know this, Yeah, the bone diagnosis. Yeah. Basically
it fuses your spine together where you can't turn your
head and yeah, like curves you down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, And it's intensely painful. And so he at
some point had gotten significantly addicted to the painkillers that
he had had. And it was the guy who was
those guys who were so drug addled during the Girls
Girls Girls tour. That had to come to him and
go hey man, we got to get you cleaned up.
Like he was ready to die. He had wasted away
to nothing. Just hold up, and he was about to die. Yeah,
before they saved him. He's still around yep, looking still
like the cripkeeper keeper from the Tails of the Crypt.
That's exactly what.
Speaker 3: So Nicky wrote all the lyrics.
Speaker 1: Mick is the one who came up with the guitar riff,
yeah chords for the chorus, and Nicky laid the lyrics
and melody over the top.
Speaker 3: That this was ranked in two thousand and nine as
the fifteenth greatest hard rock song of all Time by
VH one. Okay, so that brings us to the second
title on the album, a song called Slicy or Pie.
Speaker 1: Okay, hold on, these guys are doing a bluesy thing.
Wait a minute, my hard rock band is doing what?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 1: What's going on here?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Oh, there they are. There's the band that I know
and love.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I love this song. I love it so
every one of these songs. As I was listening to
the album, I thought every single one of them rock
ballad or skipper, heavy metal or songs written for strippers.
Speaker 3: There we go. Okay, that's great, man.
Speaker 1: And so Doctor feel Good is a is obviously a rocker.
I mean it's a hard rocker for sure. Tatoo crawl
on down our leg so sexy, so young. Ever get caught,
they'll arrest me.
Speaker 3: Okay. So this song is Slicy Your Pie. That the
very beginning, the voice you hear in the background is
Steven Tyler.
Speaker 1: Wow, I did not know that.
Speaker 3: Yes, nice and I.
Speaker 1: We didn't talk about this before, but you were a
crew guy like you. You love Motley Crue growing up, definitely,
definitely it was. I heard their songs, but I was
never I didn't buy the albums. I was never into
their stuff. So when I heard this slice of Your Pie,
this is the first time I had heard the song,
was in preparation for the show, and my mind was blown.
It's great and this has given me dynamics that I
didn't know that Motley Crue had had them coming in
with this kind of acoustic bluesy intro before they get
back into the Motley style. It is amazing. But then
when you get about two minutes and forty five seconds
into this song, you have a break down that occurs
and you started to hear that kind of uh Tyler
was doing at the beginning, and it goes into this
part and if you listened out now, I want you
to listen to a song called because by the Beatles.
Speaker 2: Wait for the voices to come in and you come
in here in just a second. So that's that's awesome,
I mean.
Speaker 3: Incredible, And that blows my mind because I did not
know that Slice of Your Pie steals from Abbey Road.
Speaker 1: It's it's not the exact same, but the style is
obviously there, and especially when you come in with that voice.
Oh man, they do it. They do a great job
with it. Great, great song.
Speaker 3: It is a great song. It's blues and then it's
that sleezy motley rock. During this song, they say got
something sticky sweet for you. Then later we have a
song called sticky Sweet. And so I'm wondering, did that
lyric come from that song or did that song come
from that lyric? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What do you think they're talking about? This sticky Sweet?
Speaker 3: I'm not exactly sure, like life savers or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sirrup.
Speaker 3: After Slice of Your Pie, the next song on the
album is called Rattlesnake Shake.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go ahead and say that this is a
stripper song, and you would be right. It's interesting because
obviously we listen to both of these albums several times
before we do these podcasts, and I can remember the
first time I listened to Doctor Feel Good, I followed
it up immediately skid Row and I went, man, they
seem to be saying the same thing. Wait a minute.
They both have the same song title. What's going on
with that?
Speaker 3: They both have a song on the albums that we're
comparing called Rattlesnake Shake.
Speaker 1: And they're not the same song. It's not as though,
you know, skid Row is not covering Motley Crue here.
I just I don't you know. You can guess as
to what a rattlesnake Shake is. But the mental picture
that I came up with is Doc McGhee is in
a strip club with both the guys from skid Row
and the guys from Motley Crue, and the girl is
up there shaking her booty and Doc McGee says, it's
the rattlesnake Shake. One of you guys should write a
song about that. Tell me you cannot imagine the stripper
walking onto the stage for that first bit of guitar
that's playing, bomp, bomp bomp.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, it's a stripper sock. It's a one hundred percent
stripper sock.
Speaker 1: Well, let's not let's not jump ahead here. Let's take
a look at the lyrics, just what they might be
talking about. Let's see, she's a sex machine. She keeps
her engine hot, her motor clean, way she moves across
the floor, the way she shakes her hips and licks
her lips. Come on there, girl, won't you shake? That thing?
Could be?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I think so. Stripper song slides through
the night with a viper's smile.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, she's got sassy class. I've said it before,
I'll say it again. If we've learned anything from rock
of the eighties, if you want to have a hit,
write a song for strippers. Absolutely, absolutely, black and blue,
pour some sugar on me, rattlesnake shake.
Speaker 3: Okay, So this song has some horns in it, which
is not typical Motley Cruz style. I think this is
the influence of Aerosmith. Okay, Aerosmith's right next door. Their
their they're idols and Aerosmith is not afraid to put
some some horns in their music. I think this is
the Aerosmith influence. I like this song. I think it's
a fun song. I know all the words. The part
that really kind of bugs me is the chorus everything
but the snake shake to do. It's just got kind
of a little to feel. It's a little corny, it's
a little beaver. I can't say that. On this podcast, Fleetwood.
Speaker 1: Mac also had a song called Rattlesnake Shake. I get wow, Yeah,
it's crazy.
Speaker 3: Wow. Hey, I do want to mention. Okay, so the
one of the opening lyrics is she keeps her engine hot,
her motor clean. That has to be a reference to
you shook me all night long by as of.
Speaker 1: Course it is, yeah, yeah, no question. Yeah. And I
have to think that the Beatles influence that we just
heard also had something to do with Aerosmith, because Aerosmith
did a cover of Come Together, which was a Beatles song.
Speaker 3: I like the breakdown in the middle of the song,
so to break.
Speaker 1: It down into this awesome little bit where you've got
just the bass and the drums going, and I guess
Nikki has finally learned to play the bass at this
point because it sounds really good. Then you get Mick
coming in with the guitar and climbing up the ladder
of the guitar with his speed metal awesomeness. I love it.
Speaker 3: Catch you tune. Good song, definitely not a skipper. Now
we're moving on to one of the great songs on
the entire album. This song is called Kickstar in.
Speaker 1: My Heart like you're in a car, but his guitar.
Speaker 3: And then.
Speaker 1: If you are not banging your head right now, you
should not be listening to this podcast. So good, so good,
so much of a build and a pump and get
you out of your seat and start rocking your freaking
balls off. It's too good.
Speaker 3: Oh it's great, man, it's great, so much fun and
bang your head and pump your fist. Love it. This
is Motley creative best. Nicky wrote this song and brought
it to rehearsal, but he thought it was a throwaway.
In his words, he says it's something that belonged on
Too Fast for Love. One of his former managers actually
urged him to say, look, dude, this is pretty good.
You need to share this with the rest of the band,
and he just kind of did and didn't really expect
a lot of it, and it turned out to be
one of their biggest hits.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, too too good to have left off. That
was I'm so glad that that happened. So this song
is called Kickstart My Heart. I told you the story.
This is about him being dead and them bringing him
back to life. Yeah, kickstart my Heart.
Speaker 3: The two adrenaline shots to the heart are what kick
started his heart. This was the second single, released November twentieth,
nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, this is with them being in sobriety. This
is kind of the message that they're given out, which
is we're finding hour high from something other than drugs now,
which is why you see them skydiving and racing cars
and going back to the place where they first became
a hit. The whiskey of Go Go driven by mister
Sam Kinnison himself.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right where we talk about the video, which
I think we need to talk about the video. But
I've got a quick funny story about this song. On
January seventh, twenty nineteen, a driver in Manitoba, Canada, Okay,
I've got a good friend, Cameron Eckert shout out to
my good Canadian friend in Vancouver, but the driver was
in Manitoba, Canada, was pulled over for doing ninety miles
an hour just one hundred and forty five kilometers per hour.
His excuse was he was listening to Kickstart in My Heart.
The officer didn't go for it because he happened to
be listening to the same radio station. Oh, still makes
for a funny story. That's good, okay, So let's talk
about the video. The video was shot at the Whiskey
of Go Go on October fifth, nineteen eighty nine, during
Motley CRU's warm up show before the Doctor Feel Good Tour. So,
like you said, Sam Kinnison is driving the Doctor Feel
Good Mobile. He pulled back up to the place where
they got their start, the Whiskey of Go Go. And now,
of course they're huge stars.
Speaker 1: So you were telling me about this breakdown in the
middle of the song, okay.
Speaker 3: So I love the breakdown in the middle of the song,
and particularly let's talk about that part in the video
as well. So it's this nostalgic look at their previous accomplishments, right,
And in the video you see clips from Girls Girls,
Girls Live Wire looks that Kill, Smoking in the Boys Room,
wild Side, too Young to Fall in Love, and Home
Sweet Home, Different videos, and it kind of walks you
through their career as it builds in it ramps right
back up into the kick butt, fast paced Kickstart My Heart,
and it blows me away. We must We've kicked some.
Speaker 1: Love.
Speaker 3: This is the song that they opened the Doctor Feel
Good tour with perfect I mean, is there a better
kickoff to a rock concert than this song?
Speaker 1: No? This is the absolute perfect choice to start off
the set for Doctor fiel Good.
Speaker 3: Okay, I got a quick story. The first time I
heard Doctor Feel Good was about a week and a
half or two weeks before the release of the album.
Somehow the radio station in Tulsa, Oklahoma got hold of
a copy of the album and played it through its entirety,
and one guy on my baseball team had the forethought
to press record on his little blank tape that he
had in his stereo system and made copies and distributed
it to everybody on the baseball team. Uh huh, So
we were blowing out Kickstart My Heart like two weeks
before the album was released.
Speaker 1: Nice.
Speaker 3: So that I feel like, for some reason, I have
a connection with this song because I learned it before
the average person could get their hands.
Speaker 1: On it right, and the fact that it was going
to be a humongous hit was undeniable.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, oh yeah, that's awesome. Great song. Great song
that brings us to the next song. That song is
called Without You.
Speaker 1: So this one obviously is the rock ballad. This is
This is back when Tommy was still married to Heather
Locklear and Nicky and Mick wrote this song together as
Tommy's perspective of Heather Locklear because she was she was
a she had come from a conservative family. We're talking
about like head of the cheerleading squad. Totally different style
than Motley Crue and the girls that they were accustomed to.
But she, at least in the early part of their relationship,
kept Tommy grounded and he was definitely very in love
with her. And Nikki picked up on that and said,
I just saw what she was for him and thought
I can write a song. And he said, I got
a little muchy on this when it is a love song,
but that's okay because it was from Tommy's perspective about
what Heather was doing.
Speaker 3: For this song has got a mixed playing that steel
guitar and you've got some strings. It's a great song.
It's not Home Sweet, Home great, but it's a good
rock ballad.
Speaker 1: I love the song. The video, it's the video has
got some like computer animation stuff at the beginning that
was pretty cutting edge for nineteen eighty eight or whatever
it was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the video is a little corny.
Speaker 1: It's got don't like the panther.
Speaker 3: I always like panthers and videos. But you've got yeah,
you're right. I mean, you got that heart with the swords,
but you've got these Egyptian statues, and you even have
like vins as like Samson from the Old Testament. Right,
puts his hands up, pushes over two pillars for no
apparent reason. Lots of smoke blowing.
Speaker 1: They wisely got a lady to direct this video. This
was by Mary Lambert, who also did the visuals for
Don't Go Away, Mad, Just Go Away. So we'll talk
about that one here in a minute.
Speaker 3: Yeah cool. I do I think this song's great. This
is yeah slow Dance Heaven. In nineteen ninety this reached
number eight on the Hot one hundred and by the way,
this is the third single released March twelfth, nineteen ninety
reach number eight top ten hit.
Speaker 1: It's a great song. I love it. It's a great song,
rock ballad that goes well with the other rock ballads
of late eighties.
Speaker 3: It definitely does it, definitely does. Freddy all right, stop
your tape, kick it out, flip it over side to
starting off with the same old situation.
Speaker 1: Once again, hang in my head, and I'm thinking, this
is where the stripper walks on the stage. The stripper
is leaving you to go be with another stripper, because.
Speaker 3: Yes, okay, let's talk about that for a second. I
think that is hilarious. And ninety percent of people, ninety
nine percent of people who listen to this song have
no idea what this song is about. It's about chicks
leaving you for other chicks.
Speaker 1: Yes, NICKI said, which is worse than a chick leaving
you for a guy, because there's nothing you can do
about a chick leaving you for another chick.
Speaker 3: I think it's funny that they think that this is
like just the same old situation, like this happens all
the time.
Speaker 1: You know, here we go again.
Speaker 3: If it's happened once, it's happened a thousand times. Tommy
so they.
Speaker 1: Play, they play this song for the guys at Electric
Records and they're like, oh, this is perfect for a single,
And they look at each other and they're like, Okay,
we'll tell them what it's about later.
Speaker 3: Okay, I love that man. So this song is pure,
full throat, all Motley fun. Right, you've got in the video,
You've got the they have this little camera and a
Gerbil ball and they just throw it out there in
the crowd and they pass it around and he had
this crazy finch. But this the the video demonstrates Tommy's
overhead drum kit.
Speaker 1: That's super cool, right, Yes, you just this came that
came from a dream he had. He you know, obviously
was probably cooked out of his mind and fell asleep
and had a dream about being inside of a cage
that was spinning around with his drum set in it
over the crowd. And he woke up told Nicky about
it and said, I think I might be I might
try to make that really happen, and by golly, he did.
Speaker 3: Interestingly, at the beginning of this video, you have a
little scroll and it says between August seventh of eighty
nine and August sixth of nineteen ninety almost exactly one year,
Motley played in front of two million fans in fourteen countries.
Speaker 1: And it's great. It's a kind of helicopter landing. And
this really just shows the mentality because both Tommy and
Vince walk by and they make this face at the
camera like any of us would as we were walking
by a camera. And then you see Mick and Nicki
walking up and they just look like they're doing nothing.
But then Nicky makes this awesome like it's like he
knows where the frame of the camera is and he
pulls his head to one side and pulls his chewing
gum out to the other and you're like, wow, he
just turned that into from goofy into cool.
Speaker 3: So this is the video. It was like a live
type of thing, and you get to see him on
stage during live thing. And I always remember, I don't
know why this sticks with me, but the background singers,
the girls, the you know, the good looking girls or
the background singers, they were called the Nasty habits.
Speaker 1: Well I don't know what the rule was on this
particular set, but the Girls Girls Girls Tour was the
first one that they decided to have backup singers at all. Yeah,
and the rule was no sleeping with the backup singers.
Do you know who broke the rule?
Speaker 3: Mick Nick. That's right, that's awesome. So Same Old Situations.
The fifth single, released July thirtieth, nineteen ninety, peaked at
number seventy eight on the Billboard Hot one hundred. This
song is better than number six seventy eight on the
Hot one hundred. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely fantastic song.
Speaker 3: Yeap, love it all right? Ready to move on?
Speaker 1: Yes all right.
Speaker 3: The next song after Same Old Situation is a song
called Sticky Weak.
Speaker 1: This introduction is like a perfect mix of Black Dog
by led Zeppelin and Back in Black by a CDC.
It's just that don't break, dump break, and it's it's awesome.
I love it, kicks butt and once again stripper.
Speaker 3: Song, Stripper song, yep. Okay, so this is not my
favorite song on the album. I'd call this one of
the weaker tracks. It's still fun and all that. The
interesting thing to me is singing in the background on
this song. You have Steven Tyler, you have Jack Blades
from Night Ranger and Damn Yankees.
Speaker 1: He also sing same Old situation okay, yeah.
Speaker 3: Okay, And you also have Brian Adams, What Summer of
sixty nine, Brian Adams singing backup?
Speaker 1: What Motley crue Let Brian Adams come in and sing
back up?
Speaker 3: Yeah, he lived. He was living in Vancouver at the time,
and they're like, hey, come on down. Wow, that's pretty cool.
I mean, you got Steven Tyler, Jack Blades, Brian Adams
and Vince Neil all singing on the same track.
Speaker 1: That's pretty that's pretty cool.
Speaker 3: I dig it the lyric where Vince says, oh, good god,
there's a fire in my pants.
Speaker 1: There's a fire pants.
Speaker 3: Moving on to another stripper song. This song is called
she Goes Down.
Speaker 1: I mean like she's up on a ladder and she's
on the stairs, she's on an escalator.
Speaker 3: Yeah. This song starts off with that big, humongous zipper
sound effect.
Speaker 1: The subtlety and restraint that they've shown on this song.
Speaker 3: Really Yeah, she goes down all night long, she goes
down on all my friends, she goes down, she gives
heart attack, she goes down down.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3: Okay, little interesting tidbit on this song. This song again
a little cornball, a little silly, still fun. I mean,
if you don't have songs about sex with Motley Cruze.
There's something wrong. This is a fun song. But singing
background on this song is Robin Xander of Cheap Trick.
Speaker 1: Nice. Yeah, Robin Xander was really close with Nicky six.
He considered Cheap Trick to be one of the best
bands ever, and I believe they toured together for a
little while too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Nicki's been a big fan of Cheap Trick
for a long time. All Right, song after that is
a song called Don't Go Away Mad, Just Go Away.
Speaker 1: Okay, So there are two components to this song for me, Right,
there's this the verse that you have at the beginning,
and there's not really a chorus right this song, right,
it's kind of like Hey Jude, where you've got all
this stuff and then at the end you've got this,
You've got the girl Don't go Away, Mad, Just go Away,
repeating itself over and over again. And so I was
listening to this song when I was running today tonight,
just before we started recording, and I had just finished
The Heroin Diaries by Nikki six, and I remember the
line where he said girls were his crush and he
fell in love with Heroin, And I'm listening to these lyrics,
and I have to think that the beginning part of
the song is not actually about a girl. It's about
him giving up his habit. So it says in here,
let's see we were too young, okay, too young to
fall in love, which is a throwback to one of
their old songs when he first started doing drugs. And
then he says, that's all right, that's okay. We were
walking through some youth, smiling through some pain, which I
think has got to be a neil in the arm.
That's all right, that's okay, let's turn the page. My
friends called us today down from La. They were shooting
pool all night, sleeping half the day. They said I
could crash if I could find my own way. I
told them you were leaving on a bus to go away.
I think this is about he's friends with it in La.
Has got to be they're shooting dope, not pool, and
they're offering him the opportunity to do dope. And he says, no,
I'm not doing that anymore. That train has sailed, that
bus has left. I'm not involved in that bad relationship anymore.
This is I haven't read anything that says this is
my own interpretation of the song. But I think this
is about giving up his addiction.
Speaker 3: Interesting, Okay, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: And then the second part of the song where it
just keeps repeating girl don't go away, mad, just go away.
He said he got it from some movie.
Speaker 3: I think it's in a yeah, it's Heartbreak Ridge by
Niecewood movie. Yeah, he said he was in the movie
and when they said that line, he's like, wow, that's
a great line. And he wrote it down in the
movie theater on his hand or something like that.
Speaker 1: Nice.
Speaker 3: It's a great This is a.
Speaker 1: Fun song, great feel good song.
Speaker 3: The video is a little bit strange. So this is
before their big blow up, which happened just a couple
of years after this. I remember watching this video going,
so Vince is away and they're like, hey, we're getting
the band back together. Come on back. I think Vince
is in New York and come on back to LA
and they were shooting pool all night and said I
could crash if I could find my way. It comes back,
and then as the song ramps up into the repeated
line girl don't go away, Man, I just go away,
Vince shows up and Hey, we're playing and we're back together.
We're having a great They exchange three of the worst
most awkward hugs that you ever. I remember watching this
going they need somebody should have reshot that scene because
it just it was.
Speaker 1: Probably the best take that they had. Mary Lambert was like, Okay,
you guys, come hug each other like I haven't seen
it the like.
Speaker 3: Hug we hate him, hug we hate each other.
Speaker 1: We got to listen to the end of the song
for sure. Oh yeah, it's like a totally different song,
but it's still it's.
Speaker 3: It's it's kind of like Rocket Queen. The beginning is
one song and the end it closes with a different song.
But I think it. I think this one ramps up.
I like the the end of it really a whole lot. Okay,
last song on the album a song called Time for Change,
So injured.
Speaker 1: This song, I'm thinking, Okay, we're reaching out for home.
Speaker 3: Sweet home, right, that's the attempt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and I feel like they fail.
Speaker 3: It's sweet to miss.
Speaker 1: It is a This is Motley Cruze trying to do
we Are the World and it doesn't work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm with you.
Speaker 1: I love every single song on this album so far,
and they finished with this one and I was just like,
you shouldn't have tried to do this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it was at least an attempt to
do something a little bit different. I mean it's a
it's almost like a campfire song with a piano. I
don't buy it. I'm not into the time for change
and all this stuff. I'd rather hear smoking the boys Room,
you know. Can we do something else?
Speaker 1: Can we have another stripper song? Please? We've got rock,
We've got skippers, We've got rock ballads and songs for strippers.
This one is the skipper on the album for me.
I loved every other song up into this one, and
I would just flip the tape over hit rewind to
the bay back at the beginning of Doctor Feel Good,
and go from there.
Speaker 3: I would not I'm with you, this is a skipper this.
I do remember this getting airplay on my local radio station,
which they used to do, right. They would play through
the hits, and once they were done with all the hits,
they would find other songs to play, and I remember
this song actually making the top ten at ten or
whatever on my local radio station.
Speaker 1: But even then I was like, eh, eh no, so
that's it, that's the album. And then the album is
released and it becomes their first and only number one hit.
Speaker 3: The reviews Doctor Feel Good were almost universally positive. I
like this when it says, very entertaining, bringing the listeners
in a world of an everlasting party where they savored
the joys of trashy, unapologetic, decadent fun.
Speaker 1: It's interesting.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: Bob Rock obviously was more meticulous about the way that
this album was produced, but he kept the edge that
Motley Crue had. He did it. He walked that thin
line of overproduced and you know, unlistenable. I guess I
don't know that he walked it very well, where he
maintained this strong hard rock heavy metal sound that they
had while also making it very radio friendly.
Speaker 3: Yeah this, I mean this is the most radio friendly
album that Molly Crue has ever done.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Doctor feel Good and Kickstart My Heart were both
named nominated for Grammy Awards for Best Hard Rock Performance
in nineteen ninety and in nineteen ninety one lost to
Living Color.
Speaker 3: I feel like Doctor field Good and Kickstart of My
Heart should have won, but I stinking love culture personality
by Living Color.
Speaker 1: They did win Best hard Rock Heavy Metal Album of
the Year at the American Music Awards in January of
ninety one for the album Yeah, and.
Speaker 3: They deserved it. Great album, tons of great songs, tons
of fun. I love it.
Speaker 1: So that wraps up Doctor Feel Good. What an incredible album.
Please don't forget to join us next week when we
look at skid Row's debut album, skid Row.
Speaker 3: I am so looking forward to get it into skid
Row's first album.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful. I mean, talk about a guy who has
a voice that was made for rock and roll and
a face and a body and a personnel who wait
a minute, Okay, I guess we'll have to talk about
that next week. Don't forget to join us. Don't forget
to subscribe so that you don't miss the episode. Jason,
it's been awesome man, d I can't.
Speaker 3: Wait to see you next week. Skid Row, finish it up.
The matchup cool