How many of you are gonna see this Netflix movie based on the story of the career of Motley Crue?
If this movie is successful, and I believe it will be, what bands would you most like to see movies made about their careers?
I’d like to see movies about Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Ronnie James Dio, Van Halen, Ted Nugent, KISS, and Aerosmith to name a few of the ones that come to mind the quickest. Pantera has an interesting story as well.
Maybe a movie about a band that had talent but for some reason didn’t make it big, or at least didn’t make it big until late in their careers when they changed their name and their music such as Savatage struggling in the 80s and 90s until they became a massive success as The Trans Siberian Orchestra.
Watched “The Dirt” here in Thailand yesterday on Netflix. It was a watered down version of the book, but still has enough craziness to seem shocking on its own and does include some of the legendary bits.
For a band with a great guitarist that didn’t make it big due to bad decision and tragedy, I’d recommend this documentary on 80s group Tuff Luck:
Thanks for the suggestion of the movie about Tuff Luck. I’ve never heard of them but I’m interested!
Just tell me this: Were the actors they hired convincing as the members of Motley Crue, especially when they were in the early part of their career? Did they play their parts well enough that you could really believe they were who they were supposed to be?
I’m not surprised that they watered down some of the stories from the book because it would have been rated NC-17 if they hadn’t!
I’m mostly interested in seeing the stories of their nightclub days in Hollywood and the parties they had at their apartment after their shows back when they had strippers supporting them while they pursued their dream.
It’s funny you asked. I was a huge Crue fan as a kid, won a radio station contest in 1984 when MC were touring for Shout At the Devil and got to meet them (with Ratt) at the radio station and backstage after the show. Never met them in person after that, but from my experience I’d say the characters in the movie were pretty spot on. Tommy was animated and funny, Nikki was easygoing but a bit dark, Mick was dour but friendly (talked with him most), and Vince was a jerk. If anything, the actor that played Vince downplayed his ego.
To really drive the point home… backstage I had some papers and asked each of the Crue members to autograph the papers and draw something on them. Here’s what I got:
Mick: an alien
Tommy: drumsticks beating a drum
Nikki: himself crying
Vince: Wouldn’t draw anything, just wrote No! and walked off.
There were some antics with a bottle that my 15-year old self should probably not have seen. I went home and started practicing guitar. Rock in the 80s, I think that sums it up perfectly.
Haven’t watched but did the book.
Even though I was a sex, drugs and rock n roll freak in my youth that book made me glad I never lived their life. Very dark. I Had enough problems. Lol
Yea I read the book when it came out, I thought the movie was excellent. They did a really good job. Really brought me back to those days.
11th and 12th grade just going nuts over the first couple of albums and even getting my hands on a cassette of a bootleg of the original recording on Leather records, that had an unreleased song on it (Stick to Your Guns). I’ll never forget going nuts over that in the school parking lot and cranking it up! And of course getting to meet them was amazing. My friend’s mom was best friends with Jeannie Thaler, and got tickets and backstage passes from her and met them at Madison Square Garden on the Theater of Pain tour, I was like 18 or so and that was incredible!!
Loudness was opening and 4 glammed up little Japanese dudes asked us which way to the stage! Lol…
In retrospect, knowing of Mick’s progressive bone disease, that he was definitely suffering from even back then, the rest of them were running around in the hall but he was sitting in the dressing room. I saw him in there and dumbass, excited 18 year old me waved at him and called him over, and he got up and came right out and was super kind and gracious, encouraged my guitar playing (because of course I had to tell him that I played…lol) and signed an autograph for me. Kind of crazy, realizing he had that and getting why he was sitting in there by himself all these years later.
I also saw them at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan in like 84 with Ratt opening, amazing show, and saw them at Nassau Coliseum opening for Ozzy on the Bark At The Moon tour.
If you have limited time, I’d start and stop with “Shout at the Devil”. It captures pretty much what their best songwriting sounds like, and the recording quality and playing is great. The riffs are catchy and cool, the guitar tone is raw and in your face, and the drums do not sound sample replaced like most '80s stuff — they sound like a great drummer in a big ass room.
Sorry, I don’t mean the song, I mean the entire album. Pretty much every song is great. Many start out in true '80s fashion with strong examples of clever riff-writing. These are just two of many:
Even the spoken word intro thingy, “In The Beginning”, is notable. I would imagine many adults would think this was silly. But when I first heard this I was in probably sixth grade or something, and upon recent re-listien it still sounds kind of epic to me:
Starting with the very next album, “Theater of Pain”, is when they jumped the shark for me. The riff-writing originality went out the window. They started doing covers like “Smokin’ In the Boys Room” which especially did nothing for me. By the time we get to later stuff like “Girls Girls Girls”, I actively dislike that material. There’s a “cool rock star” style-over-substance happening there, and the attitudes toward women have not aged well at all.
The later stuff is probably the more popular era of Motley Crue, especially among younger audiences who like “Kickstart My Heart”. But the earlier material is where it’s at for me in terms of originality, and Shout is the apotheosis of that.
Again, I stress “for me”. Others — probably many — will differ.
It is notable. It foretold the future better than anyone could have guessed. If you had to name a band today that’s comprised of musicians the same age as Motley Crue were when “Shout At The Devil” was released and say they’re today’s equivalent; they’re today’s “Bad Boys Of Rock 'n Roll” you couldn’t do it. Yet before Crue, rock 'n roll had rebels going back to 60s guys like Jim Morrison, the Stones, The Who, etc. So why would anyone think it would stop being that way. Society got more extreme with every generation, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and what was shocking in one decade was ordinary by the next decade.It’s just the natural progression of evolution. It’s in the nature of things for that to happen. People always wanted to outdo what came before them.
So who would have thought this would come to pass:
“Now many many lifetimes later
Lay destroyed, beaten, beaten down,
Only the corpses of rebels
Ashes of dreams
And blood stained streets”
I’ll be honest, as a 12 year old kid, I loved the bands that came across as ‘evil’… the more ‘devil’ references, the better, and these guys had all the theatrics of KISS but had a more ‘gritty’ and darker feel.
But it wasn’t until later that I started to really admire the musicianship of the band. Sixx was a very good musician, very under-rated. ‘Looks that kill’ is really kinda brilliant.
I can say the same about Iron Maiden, and Steve Harris.
When I was 15 years old I bought the debut Metallica album (the Megaforce Records version which I had to go to an import store to buy since no other record stores around here carried it) the first Slayer album which had lots of devil references, and the first album by a band from Denmark named Mercyful Fate. The albums was “Melissa” and even though I was 15, the lyrics were so evil and the way King Diamond sang them was so bizarre that it was actually scary! You could do that sort of thing back then - discover Metallica, Mercyful Fate and Slayer within weeks of each other. It was an amazing time for heavy metal.
They were too heavy to get played on the radio, except on specific shows dedicated to the music like “Metal Shop” so I had to get magazines at the import store too. Magazines like Metal Forces and Kerrang! described all these new bands, interviewed them, had puckers, and were the best way to keep up with the newest metal music coming out. Sometimes you;d buy an album and get burned because someone had written a great review of them describing them in a way that didn’t accurately describe them, but there were more good surprises than bad surprises.
More mainstream magazines like Hit Parader and Circus were more like advertisements for ands and said great things about everyone. I wish I still had the edition of Hit Parader that described Motley Crue as “the heaviest new band…” I like their first two albums a lot. They were the best at what they did and inspired legions of copycat bands to try to follow in their footsteps, all of whom found out you never top the original, but to call them the heaviest new band? I don’t think so!
Actually, compared to Theater Of Pain, Shout At The Devil was a heavy album. I liked their original style a lot better. I thought with a name like Theater Of Pain it was going to be a heavy album but it wasn’t. The two most well known songs on it are Smokin’ In The Boys Room ( a cover), and "Home Sweet Home: which was genuinely a tremendously successful hit with the teenage girls - a demographic the thrash bands had a lot of trouble attracting and so they all remained jealous of the glam bands from then on. One night Lars Ulrich yelled “F#$% Motley Crue” at a time when he was in Los Angeles, on or near The Sunset Strip. He recalled that Nikki Sixx run straight towards him to fight him and added “I’m only 5 foot 6 but I was faster than him on his platform boots” so Lars got away without getting beat up. He talks about it around 6:45 into this video
I guess Metallica got tired of it after a while because in the 90s they cut their hair, tried to dress more stylishly, and released radio friendly songs like “Until It Sleeos.” It worked for them in that they finally did garner a much larger female fanbase than they’d ever had before but the original, die-hard fanbase of Metallica was thoroughly pissed off about the whole thing from the music to the short hair and the attempt at dressing stylishly. They certainly had never expected to see Kirk Hammett in green eye shadow (ironically Crue had stopped wearing make-up or at least cut back drastically on it at that time) but that’s exactly what Kirk did and here’s the video which I recall left Metallica fans feeling let down and even betrayed:
EDIT: I had forgotten how heavily Metallica depicted religious iconography in that video. What do you suppose their intent was?
This is the definitely a worthy " off topic"
I recommend viewing Hell Bells 1 and 2 along with rock n roll sorcerers of the new age revolution and they sold their souls for rock n roll.
These documentaries are the most comprehensive examinations of modern music in light of the scriptures.
The intent here is most certainly anti christ and demonic.
Wasn’t this during Lars and Kirk’s “I’m so dark, moody, artsy” phase? That’s probably all there was too it. The same period as “the album cover is blood and semen” maaan.
I may even try to learn it!