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.”