Entertainment, Music - Marine Corps Times

Talk about a motley crew: Singer Neil dishes

After stunning the music industry in 2005 by reuniting and staging one of the most successful concert tours of that year, the rejuvenated Motley Crue has not slowed down.

The ’80s glam-metal pioneers, who are touring this summer with their Crue Fest, have signed a reported $100 million deal with global music giant Live Nation to record and tour for another decade.

The band’s new album, “Saints of Los Angeles,” finds the Crue playing the slick, nasty rock of its heyday and looking back on the days that Vince Neil, Tommy Lee, Nikki Sixx and Mick Mars ruled Los Angeles’ Sunset Strip.

Lead singer Neil, 47, called with an update on the band and this year’s tour, which teams the Crue with Buckcherry, Papa Roach, Sixx:A.M. and Trapt.

QUESTION: Motley Crue is in classic form on the new album. Was it fun to look back on the ’80s musically?

ANSWER: It’s got a great sound; the songs are all fun. There’s a lot of memorable stuff in those songs.

Q: The album has some parallels to your band’s autobiography [2001’s “The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band”]. Why did it take seven years to record it?

A: When we started writing songs, we started going by things with the book. But it wasn’t like we sat down and said, “Now we’re going to write an album about the book.” It just kind of happened.

Q: “Down at the Whisky” recalls the days when you owned the stage of the Whisky a Go Go. Do you ever drive up the Strip to reminisce?

A: I have homes in Las Vegas and San Francisco. When I recorded and [during] rehearsals, I have to live in LA. So you drive by that stuff. It’s still there. I go in the Rainbow [Bar & Grill] once in awhile and have dinner. That place hasn’t changed.

Q: You seem to have as much energy as ever onstage.

A: Playing live, you feed off the audience. You just go out there and rock. I don’t feel any older when I’m onstage. We could be playing Whisky a Go Go, for all I know.

Q: Has the recording process changed through the years?

A: With technology these days, you don’t really go to a recording studio and sit around like you see in the movies. This record, I never even saw the guys in the band. I did all my vocals at the producer’s house.

Q: The Rolling Stones once did that when they weren’t getting along. Should we read anything into this with Motley Crue?

A: No, not at all. It’s just easier. We all travel on separate buses because we can afford it. People like to read stuff into it. You make your life easy and make the things you have to do enjoyable.

Q: Nikki has said the band was a gang, but a musical one, in the ’80s. Is that how you still feel?

A: Back then, we lived together, we were never apart. That’s how we approach everything. We’re a gang of brothers. I’ve known Tommy for 30 years; we went to high school together.

Q: You left the band twice but always returned. Is it similar to working on a marriage or relationship?

A: That’s why a lot of bands don’t make it. Once they hit a bump in the road, they quit. We took some time off from each other at one point — but Motley Crue isn’t Motley Crue without the four of us.

Q: Back in the band’s wildest days, did you ever look at yourself in the mirror and say, “I’m pushing things too hard?”

A: I tried to be sober back then, but it was tough because there was no support system. After I got into the accident in ’84 [which left a passenger in Neil’s car dead[ and I did some jail time, I was ordered by the court to be sober. ... You have to stop when you want to stop, and back then, I didn’t want to stop.

Q: You’ve appeared on a few reality-TV shows [“The Surreal Life,” “Remaking Vince Neil”]. Any more on the horizon?

A: I don’t have plans to get into any more TV stuff. I’m a rock star, not a TV star. Those things were kind of fun to do. It was an opportunity. I didn’t have anything going on. “The Surreal Life” was only 10 days out of my life.

Q: What is the key to being a rock front man who lasts for decades?

A: You have to really enjoy what you’re doing and try to deliver the songs to the people out there the way they want to hear it. I try to stay as close to the records as possible because I hate going to see a singer who sings it differently. It drives me crazy.

On the Web:

http://www.motley.com, the official Web site for Motley Crue, offers tour information.