Tommy Lee Blames Other Motley Crue Members for Lack of New Music
Six months after playing their final concert, Tommy Lee is opening a bit more about the last days of Motley Crue. In a new interview, he suggested that one of the reasons why they called it quits is that some of the guys weren’t interested in moving forward, although he wouldn’t single anybody out by name.
“It’s clear that at some point the band just stopped making new music,” he told to Billboard, “and what are you supposed to do? Keep going around the country playing the same old songs? No way. In a world that was changing rapidly in all senses, musically and business and style and everything, people need to be really open and not really follow but forge ahead and make something new. That’s a big challenge and you have to have a lot of open minds for that stuff. I can remember experimenting on a couple of our last Crue album efforts and getting resistance from other band members, saying things like, ‘Well, our fans, if it’s a Harley-Davidson they know they’re going to get a Harley-Davidson, and you can’t give them a beefed-up weird version of that.’ And I just don’t believe in that. So there was nowhere to go, really, except to stop.”
Lee’s words echo those of Nikki Sixx back in February when the bassist said they had “ceased to run on creativity, just on pure, mechanical motions.” After Lee rejoined the band in 2004, they only managed one other album, 2008’s Saints of Los Angeles, and a couple of singles. Lee added that they won’t be creating any new music for the film adaptation of their 2001 memoir, The Dirt. And although they had hoped it would be out sometime this year, it has been delayed due to script rewrites and other issues. But Sixx thinks production will soon begin. “I’ve heard different rumblings of stuff,” he said. “Somewhere like fall, maybe. The music business is complicated. The film business is slow and complicated.”
Last week, Lee said that relationships within the band had gotten so bad that he was the only one who showed up to the afterparty following their last concert. Sixx responded by saying that he stayed away because of his desire to remain sober.
Despite the differences, they both praised The End, the concert film/documentary of their final date. “It’s beautifully done,” Sixx said, while Lee called it “a trip to sit in my couch and watch the band I’ve put 35 years into play its last show.” The movie will get a one-night-only screening on June 14, and you can get more details at Fathom Events. Embedded above is a clip from The End in which they talk about their first gig.
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