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Tag: Motley Crue

  • This Day in Rock History: February 26

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    In 1965, Feb. 26 was the day sales of 45 rpm singles outperformed sales of 78 rpm record version for the first time. The smaller 45s were introduced in 1949, and the interest continued to grow. Did the growing popularity of rock music have anything to do with this change in preference? We’d like to think so. Let’s discover more rock history trivia from Feb. 26 that has left its impact on the industry.

    Breakthrough Hits and Milestones

    Several rock bands had breakthrough hits and milestones on Feb. 26, and these are a couple you might find interesting:

    • 1983: Michael Jackson’s Thriller album made it to No. 1 on the Billboard albums chart, mainly due to the success of the “Billie Jean” single. It spawned seven singles in total and spent an astonishing 37 non-consecutive weeks at the top spot.
    • 1966: “These Boots Are Made for Walkin‘” by Nancy Sinatra climbed to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Since its release, the song has been covered by several bands and featured in many movies.
    • 1977: From their fifth studio album, Hotel California, the Eagles hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart with “New Kid in Town.” This was the band’s third No. 1 hit in the U.S.

    Cultural Milestones

    Over the years, these cultural milestones that happened on Feb. 26 have influenced rock music:

    • 1928: Rock and roll pioneer Fats Domino was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. His debut single, “The Fat Man,” is widely considered to be the first-ever rock and roll single to sell over a million copies.
    • 1932: Johnny Cash was born in Kingsland, Arkansas. He grew up listening to gospel music, and he started a stellar career in the mid-1950s, after serving in the Air Force for four years.
    • 1980: After watching U2 perform at Dublin’s National Boxing Stadium on Feb. 26, Rob Partridge and Bill Stewart from Island Records decided to offer the Irish rock band a contract. The group signed the contract within a month, released their first single by May, and debuted their first album in October.
    • 1987: For the first time, The Beatles released albums on CD. Four of their albums came out on Feb. 26 — Please Please Me, With The Beatles, A Hard Day’s Night, and Beatles for Sale — but the albums were only released in mono.

    Notable Recordings and Performances

    Your favorite music genre had these notable recordings and performances on Feb. 26:

    • 1965: Jimmy Page released his debut solo single, “She Just Satisfies” b/w “Keep Moving,” in the UK via Fontana Records. He sang on the track, played all instruments except drums, and was also its producer.
    • 1979: The Sex Pistols released their album The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle. It would later become the soundtrack to a movie of the same name about the band.
    • 1995: To promote their reunion album No Quarter, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin launched their world tour, playing the first show of the tour in Pensacola, Florida.

    Industry Changes and Challenges

    It took these rock industry changes and challenges occurring on Feb. 26 to get this popular genre to where it is today:

    • 1991: The nonfiction interview show Rockline premiered on MTV. The 30-minute show included interviews with a wide range of musicians and rock stars.
    • 1998: Just hours after Tommy Lee of Motley Crue was arrested on domestic abuse charges, his wife Pamela Anderson filed for divorce for the second time. She cited the reason for the divorce as having irreconcilable differences with Lee.

    As the rock music landscape continues to evolve, you can be sure that the past events of Feb. 26 played a part in shaping the genre’s future. Without the breakthrough hits, milestones, cultural changes, notable recordings, and challenges that occurred on this day in rock history, we wouldn’t know rock music as it is today.

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    Dan Teodorescu

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  • Sexual Assault Lawsuit Against MÖTLEY CRÜE’s TOMMY LEE Revived Thanks To A New California Law – Metal Injection

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    Heather Taylor has refiled her sexual assault lawsuit against Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee, citing a new California law that opens a retroactive window for claims previously barred by the statute of limitations. The move comes nearly three years after Taylor voluntarily dismissed her original 2023 complaint, which accused Lee of sexually assaulting her in a helicopter in 2003.

    Taylor‘s renewed filing relies on Assembly Bill 250, signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in October 2025 and effective January 1, 2026. The statute allows adult survivors of sexual assault to bring civil claims against individual perpetrators without having to prove a cover-up or involve a business entity, which Taylor‘s attorneys had identified as a barrier in her original case.

    In a statement to Rolling Stone, Taylor said, “If anyone thought my prior dismissal was a retreat, they vastly miscalculated my stamina. I dismissed my own case to await this legislation. Now that I have the law in my favor, I’m seeking justice.”

    The lawsuit largely mirrors her original complaint. Taylor alleges that she was coerced into a helicopter flight with Lee and pilot David Martz in early 2003. According to her filing, Lee allegedly groped her and attempted sexual assault while Martz watched. Taylor says she was traumatized and too afraid to report the incident at the time. Martz later died in a 2015 plane crash.

    Taylor‘s renewed complaint includes claims for sexual battery, gender violence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and negligence, and requests unspecified compensatory and punitive damages along with a jury trial. Her attorneys maintain that her allegations are credible and that the assault caused long-term emotional and psychological harm.

    Lee‘s lawyers have not yet responded to requests for comment.

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    Greg Kennelty

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  • Motley Crue Announces Documentary Series Based on 2001 Memoir The Dirt

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    Motley Crue will make a new documentary series drawn from The Dirt, their 2001 memoir that became a movie in 2019. Bassist Nikki Sixx dropped the news at the Jackson Hole International Film Festival, where he led a discussion about the movie If These Walls Could Rock.

    “The documentary is about Motley Crue,” Nikki Sixx said, as reported by Yahoo. “It’s an interesting look at our career and people are going to discover a lot about us and the music and the lyrics.”

    The series will include input from Nikki Sixx, drummer Tommy Lee, and frontman Vince Neil. All three will talk about their time in the band, sometimes on their own and sometimes together.

    “Storytelling is really important to me,” Nikki Sixx said. “You’re going to hear from the band individually and collectively as we had quite the life. It’s warts and all.”

    “When The Dirt film came out, younger music fans had only kind of heard who Mötley Crüe were,” he said, according to the Daily Express. “When those kids saw the movie, they went: ‘Holy s***! They don’t make bands like that anymore!’”

    The bassist said young fans still dig into rock bands from earlier decades. “There are still plenty of kids who love rock’n’roll who are discovering classic rock like us, Guns N’ Roses and Metallica,” he said.

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    Dan Teodorescu

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  • Mötley Crüe Bassist Nikki Sixx Shoots Down Band Retirement Rumors After Vegas Shows

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    Nikki Sixx struck back at swirling rumors on October 4. The Mötley Crüe bassist fired off a quick response when fans started guessing that their Vegas stint might be the final bow.

    After a fan wrote that he thought these would be Mötley Crüe’s final shows, Sixx replied on X. He wrote, “Whoa, slow down. We never said that.”

    In 2015, the group signed a Cessation of Touring agreement and said that they were done playing city after city. However, seven years later, they co-headlined The Stadium Tour and The World Tour with Def Leppard. They also performed at several music festivals, where the GRAMMY nominees played for tens of thousands of fans nightly. Sixx said, “We were wrong in retiring, obviously,” according to People.

    The band just wrapped up their Las Vegas residency at Dolby Live at Park MGM. Starting on September 12, they rocked the house for three wild weeks, concluding on October 3. Each night brought fresh energy to the stage.

    John 5 now plays the guitar, stepping in after Mick Mars quit touring. The new mix hasn’t slowed them down. They keep packing venues worldwide with no signs of stopping.

    Night after night in Las Vegas, crowds packed in at 7:00 p.m. By 8:00 p.m., the walls shook with Mötley Crüe’s signature sound. The fixed location let them craft a massive show that hit harder than their usual touring setup.

    Live Nation backs up the band’s future plans, and the band’s website lists tour dates and an upcoming album, indicating that these rockers aren’t hanging up their instruments anytime soon. The Vegas run was just one stop on their packed schedule.

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    Laura Adkins

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  • Def Leppard Set to Drop 4K Concert Film From Epic Sheffield Show

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    Def Leppard will release Diamond Star Heroes Live from Sheffield on November 21. The live album and concert film captured their electric hometown performance at Bramall Lane Stadium in Sheffield, England, last May. The concert supported their 2022 album, Diamond Star Halos. The band performed 17 songs, including live European debuts of “Take What You Want,” “This Guitar,” and “Kick.” “This Guitar” was a tribute to late co-founder Steve Clark. 

    On Instagram, Def Leppard wrote, “On May 22, 2023, 47 years after their birth, Def Leppard returned to Sheffield for a sold-out Bramall Lane stadium show of 40,000 fans.” This is the band’s first release in stunning 4K UHD format. Fans can also pick up the show as a deluxe two-CD/Blu-ray set, vinyl with red, white, and black splatter, or a standalone Blu-ray. The colors on the vinyl are a nod to Sheffield United’s classic colors.

    Bonus content fills the Blu-ray to bursting. A warm-up concert at The Leadmill shows the band in rare form. This kicked off their massive world trek with Mötley Crüe just days before.

    The band winds down 2025 with a final blast in Gary, Indiana, on October 11. Next year brings bright lights and big stakes. The band will spend 12 nights at The Colosseum, Caesars Palace, from February 3 through February 28.

    In summer 2026, they’ll storm across Europe with Extreme. Starting in Sweden’s Rättvik on June 13, they’ll be at Wacken Open Air by July’s end. A desert-shaking Dubai finale caps the run on August 2.

    Lead singer Joe Elliott let slip that studio album number 13 is taking shape. The new tracks should drop in 2026, picking up where Diamond Star Halos left off. You can pre-order the new album or get tickets to shows through Def Leppard’s website.

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    Laura Adkins

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  • Vince Neil Reveals It Was a Stroke That Delayed Motley Crue’s Vegas Residency, Saying He ‘Had to Learn to Walk Again’

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    Motley Crue began a residency in Las Vegas Friday night that was supposed to commence last March, and singer Vince Neil has now revealed the reason for the six-month delay: He suffered a debilitating stroke last Christmas and has subsequently had to learn how to walk again, let alone rock again.

    In an interview with Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist John Katsilometes published Friday, Neil said that he had the stroke in his sleep on Christmas night 2024 and awoke the next morning realizing that “my whole left side went out.” Since then, the 64-year-old singer said, “I had to learn to walk again, and that was tough. The doctors said they didn’t think I’d be able to go back on stage again. I go, ‘No, no, I’m gonna do it. Watch and see.’”

    Motley Crue kicked off what will now be a 10-show residency at Dolby Live at Park MGM on Friday night, with concerts set to continue there through Oct. 3.

    When the residency opened was first announced as being postponed in the spring, the reason given was more vague — that Neil had to undergo “a required medical procedure.” And even in recent interviews given to promote the residency’s resumption, other band members were cagey about exactly what went down, before Neil himself let the cat out of the bag.

    In an interview with the Los Angeles Times published Thursday, bassist Nikki Sixx talked about Neil’s health issues and concerns that fans had raised after seeing the singer return to the stage with a solo show at the beginning of August. Sixx did not specify that Neil had had a stroke but was clear that it was a serious issue.

    “He needed time to heal, and he’s been working really hard,” Sixx told the Times. “You can tell he’s working up the stamina, and a lot of people are like, ‘Oh, man, he’s not kicking ass like he used to,’ but it takes a lot of courage to have a doctor tell you you will probably never go onstage again and to fight through that. If he’s got some imperfect moments here and there, they’re getting erased as the days go with rehearsal.”

    Neil told the Las Vegas newspaper about doing physical therapy with the help of his girlfriend on his 30-acre ranch for many months this year.

    “I went from people carrying me to the bathroom, because I couldn’t walk myself, finally to a wheelchair,” the singer said. “I graduated to a walker, and then I had a cane. Now I don’t need anything. But it’s like a full-time job getting back to where you feel good again.. …. It takes a while to get your brain to start moving your legs, for them to do what your brain wants to do. You try to walk but it doesn’t come out right.”

    Neil said that he was “90-95% back to where I was before, and it’s going to be great.”

    Both of the aforementioned interviews — Neil’s with the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Sixx’s with the Los Angeles Times — also have their subjects addressing the band’s split with former guitarist Mick Mars in 2022 and the sore feelings and lawsuits that have come out of that. Among Mars’ contentions when he went public about being fired was that the band had relied on recordings in concerts for years.

    “No, we never did that, ever,” said Neil in his interview, contending that Mars “was the only one on tape, because he kept fucking stuff up, so we had him on tape. … When he started going off on some weird tangent, our sound guy just turned him off and turned the tape on.”

    writes that when Neil returned to the stage with his solo band in Boston on Aug. 2, some of the singer’s fans “applauded Neil’s long-awaited return,” while others in the Crue fandom “were concerned over his comparatively sluggish appearance in videos from the show.” A subsequent solo gig was canceled. With these factors all in mind, clips from the Vegas opening are obviously being heavily scrutinized in Motley Crue fan forums.

    “I am going to push through the best I can,” Neil told the Las Vegas paper of the residency.

    The group has a new compilation out, “From the Beginning,” that includes material from their 1981 debut album on up through a recent duet with Dolly Parton on the venerable “Home Sweet Home.”

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    Chris Willman

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  • Mick Mars Retires From Touring With Mötley Crüe

    Mick Mars Retires From Touring With Mötley Crüe

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    By Melissa Romualdi.
    Published:

    Mick Mars, the lead guitarist and founding member of Mötley Crüe, has retired from touring with the band.

    However, Mars, whose real name is Robert Deal, will continue as a member of the heavy metal group, a rep for the 71-year-old musician told Variety. 

    “Mick Mars, co-founder and lead guitarist of the heavy metal band Mötley Crüe for the past 41 years, has announced today that due to his ongoing painful struggle with Ankylosing Spondylitis (A.S.), he will no longer be able to tour with the band,” read the statement, provided by the rep. “Mick will continue as a member of the band, but can no longer handle the rigors of the road. A.S. is an extremely painful and crippling degenerative disease, which affects the spine.”

    Mars’ replacement for the tour is John 5, the former guitarist for Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie, who recently concluded touring with Zombie.


    READ MORE:
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    Following news of Mars’ retirement, Mötley Crüe’s lead singer, Vince, drummer, Tommy, and bassist, Nikki, released an official joint statement.

    “While change is never easy, we accept Mick’s decision to retire from the band due to the challenges with his health. We have watched Mick manage his Ankylosing Spondylitis for decades and he has always managed it with utmost courage and grace,” the band said.

    “To say ‘enough is enough’ is the ultimate act of courage. Mick’s sound helped define Mötley Crüe from the minute he plugged in his guitar at our very first rehearsal together. The rest, as they say, is history. We’ll continue to honour his musical legacy.” the statement continued.

    “We will carry out Mick’s wish and continue to tour the world as planned in 2023. No doubt will it take an absolutely outstanding musician to fill Mick’s shoes so we are grateful that our good friend, John 5 has agreed to come on board and join us moving forward. We’ll see all you Crüeheads out on the road!,” the band concluded.


    READ MORE:
    Tommy Lee Exits Midway Through First Mötley Crüe Reunion Tour Show Because Of Broken Ribs

    John 5 shared his own statement, saying that he’s “honoured to carry on Mick’s legacy” and is “looking forward to playing these songs.”

    The news comes just days after the group announced that they’re taking their recently-wrapped North American tour worldwide with Def Leppard, their co-headliners. The new tour leg will cover Latin America and Europe between February and July of 2023.

    Mars, whose struggled with the disease since his late teens, previously spoke out about his first experiences with A.S. in the band’s 2001 biography “The Dirt”.

    “My hips started hurting so bad every time I turned my body that it felt like someone was igniting fireworks in my bones. I didn’t have enough money to see a doctor, so I just kept hoping that I could do what I usually do: will it away, through the power of my mind. But it kept getting worse,” he said at the time.


    READ MORE:
    Ex-Motley Crue Singer Blasts ‘Pam & Tommy’ As ‘Full Of Bulls**t’

    “I’d grab hold of doorknobs, anchor my legs into the ground, and pull with my hands to stretch my back and ease the pressure out,” the musician added on how he’d cope with the pain.

    His condition worsened by the early 2000s and eventually he underwent a successful hip surgery, allowing him to tour extensively with his bandmates.

    Mars has yet to comment publicly on his retirement.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv3MfJBHRDk

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    Melissa Romualdi

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