DISGRACELAND - Mötley Crüe Pt. 1: Sex, Drugs, and Even More Sex and Drugs: How Are These Dudes Still Alive?

Episode Date: July 17, 2018

Mötley Crüe frontman Vince Neil totaled his Ford Pantera on a beer run, and in the process took the life of his friend Razzle Dingley, drummer for Hanoi Rocks. Bassist Nikki Sixx survived multiple heroin overdoses. Guitarist Mick Mars walked away from a blackout drunk drowning and drummer Tommy Lee lived through his own Caligula-like Sunset Strip sexcapades. Mötley Crüe, a degenerate band of death-cheating rock gods has us asking, “how are these dudes still alive?” Maybe they’re the undead. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at ⁠www.disgracelandpod.com⁠. This episode was originally published on July 17, 2018. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠Instagram⁠ ⁠YouTube⁠ ⁠X⁠ (formerly Twitter)  ⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠ ⁠TikTok  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about 80s L.A. metal band, Motley Crew, are totally insane. They had a violent, fuck-it-all approach toward anything and anyone who got in their way. Bass player, Nikki Six, once hammered a nail through a so-called poser's ear. Bored, on tour, the band would break bottles over each other's heads and see who could swallow the most broken glass. In the early days, they would pimp out their 17-year-old drummer Tommy Lee for beer money in studio time.

They had sex with or tried to have sex with anyone in anything that moved. Nikki once went so far as to try to bed Tommy's mom, and of course they all slept with each other's girlfriends behind each other's backs. And when they made it big, they took their earnings and bought a plane. But it wasn't enough just to own their own jet. Motley crew had to paint a giant dick and balls on the tail so that when they landed, it would literally look like they were flying in to fuck the city. The excessive sex, drugs, and violence led to several near-death experiences,

multiple car crashes, fires, fights, drownings, and drug overdoses. Yet Motley Carew made a habit of cheating death and made some great music along the way. That music I played you at the top of the show. That wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Vienna Waltz Marimba Low, MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the license for faith by George Michael. And why would I play you that specific slice of diddly-esque pleather cheese could I afford it?

Because that was the number one song in America on December 23rd, 1987. And that was the day that Nikki Six bass player of Motley Crew died. And of course, it was also the day he came back to life. On this episode, Pleather Cheese, waltzing marimbas, cheating, death and motley crew. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgrace land. In 1977, Frank Farana was a 17-year-old teenage delinquent. He was a pill-popping weedhead and devoted Johnny Thunder's wannabe. Frank Ferrana was a vacuum cleaner salesman who dealt quailudes on the side with his next-door neighbor, a neighbor whose wife he was secretly sleeping with. Frank Ferrana was also a punk, a fiend, a single-minded

rock and roll animal whose one ambition was to become the biggest, baddest bass player in the world's biggest, baddest rock band. Frank Farana was Nikki Six. Frank stole his stage name from a childhood musician friend whom he deemed unworthy of such a badass moniker. So Frank did what came natural to him. He saw what he wanted, and he took it. And voila, Nikki Six was born. Fuck that other guy. So Nikki Six took to the streets of late 70s Hollywood. Hell bent for action. Unlike most, he didn't see his idols as people to live up to. He saw his idols as people to outlive.

For Nicky, Johnny Thunders of the New York Dolls and Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols were warm-up acts for the real thing. Him. Nikki Six might not have been in a band yet, but he lived the life. He stole, cheated, fucked, and fought his way to the top with the sunset strip heavy metal heat. Punk rock was burning out of the public's consciousness and fast. His beloved sex pistols were over, as were the New York dolls. Bands like The Clash and Elvis Costello's attractions were, in Nicky's mind, too soft

and had sold out the promise of punk rock from mainstream and were more concerned with being political and seeming smart rather than being rock and roll. Too clever by half. Fuck that. Nicky envisioned a world where the sleaze and glamour of his beloved punk and British glam bands would dominate the pubescent imaginations of teenagers everywhere. He began dressing the party with scripting for himself. Silver studs, skin tight black jeans, capizio boots or better yet,

capizio's with stiletto heels, hair dyed jet black and piled up high to the Hollywood Hills. And of course, eye makeup. It was part bleaker and bowery punk and part spiders from Mars glam. It was endrogynous but masculine at the same time. It was tough. And it was sexy. You didn't know whether he wanted to fuck Nicky or fight Mickey or both. It didn't matter.

The look was meant to confuse, to compel. And who was this hot chick hanging out at the club who looked like you wanted to kick your ass? Oh yeah, she's a he, and he's in a band. What kind of band? He doesn't look punk. He doesn't look glam. What the hell is he? Shock.

Aw. That was the idea. If you didn't like it, you could fuck right off. Head downtown with the new wave geeks or out to Venice with the hardcore kids and gangbangers who never got laid and took their frustration out on each other in the pit. Slam dancing. a bunch of pent up late and homosexual frustration if you asked Nikki. Nikki Six was at the club for two reasons.

To find his future bandmates and to fuck your girlfriend. And if he didn't like it, well, that was your problem. When not at the bar hanging out, Nikki was either sleeping off a buzz or regrettably working. And Nikki hated work. But he didn't hate where he worked at the liquor store. Chicks from Sunset Strip were always wandering in and eager to check out the glamazon Italian kid.

with the makeup and dreamy eyes working the register. And worked the register he did. Nikki was regularly skimming off the top to buy drugs, booze, and musical gear. But the real reason he didn't hate where he worked was because it was close to the action. Musicians from bands playing and hanging out at nearby clubs, the Starwood, the Rainbow Room, and the Trubidor

were always popping in. Most of them were posers, hairdressing weekend warrior types who wouldn't know a sweet from cheap trick. But Nikki was optimistic. One of these nights, a like-minded rock and roll warrior would walk in and Nikki would finally have a bandmate. And so it happened. The dude looked like he was Gene Simmons' mini-mee.

That is, if Gene Simmons were actually as badass as his image purported him to be. This dude was far fucking out. He was dressed, head to toe, and black, a beat-up Les Paul guitar case in hand. Platform boots with duct taped heels, silver studs, his eyes heavily masqueried and buried beneath his jet black bangs. He spoke in barely audible mumbles. And Nikki commented on the guitar, asked him his name, and wanted to know the bands he was into.

And the little alien-looking Cousin-It dude told Nicky, but Nikki wasn't listening, because it didn't matter. A cousin It could have said John Devere or Judy Collins, and it wouldn't have mattered at all. Because the dude's look was right. And like the rock gods, Jagger and Ronson before him,

his name was Mick, Mick Mars. And he was perfect in all ways but one. He was on his way to Alaska for a tour with his lame band. Shit. Nicky wasn't deterred, though. He was determined and kept up the search. Through a mutual friend,

he hooked up with a 17-going-on 12-year-old drummer and ball of frenetic energy named Tommy Lee. Tommy was young, but he had chops, and he was a skinny Adonis. The chicks loved him before he even sat down at his kit. Plus, he and Nikki had legit chemistry. And Tommy idolized the older Nicky Six, who'd already gained a rap on the strip as a dude.

not to be fucked with, and a dude was going places. But they still needed a guitar player. So they started combing Recycler Magazine's classifieds. Tommy spotted the listing first. It read loud, rude, and aggressive guitarist available. And there

was another listing with the exact same number, and this one with even more spot-on descriptors. Extraterrestrial guitarist available for any other aliens that want to conquer the earth. Tommy couldn't get the little wheel on the rotary telephone to spin fast enough. He quickly dialed the number to set up a jam session.

And in a couple of days, a Faye knock on the door produced none other than the alien-looking cousin it dude from the liquor store. Nikki could not believe his eyes. It was the universe talking. Mick Mars had arrived. Three down. One to go. They needed a singer. Tommy knew a guy.

It was a long shot. The guy was beyond cool, way cooler than Tommy. Maybe even cooler than Nikki and Mick, but Nikki and Mick didn't give a fuck and really what's cooler than not giving him. of them. Nothing. But Tommy's ex-schoolmate was like the coolest dude on campus. He was a singer in a local band that jammed on cheap trick and arrowswit, and that mainly existed as means for the band to get laid. Not that the singer, who Tommy coveted, needed any help. He was gorgeous. He had that Spicoli look before that Spicoli look was even a thing. Long, blonde, sunstroke surfer hair, eternally tanned, ripped Levi's, devilish eyes, and the dude could not only hit those high Robin Zander

notes. He could work to crack. like Stephen Tyler. And Tommy's timing couldn't have been better. The singer was on the outs of this band, so a rehearsal with Tommy, Nikki, and Mick was arranged. The 280Z roared into the parking lot at Burbank's IRS rehearsal studios with authority. An 18-year-old Vince Neal hopped out of the driver's seat trailed by his very attractive, very rich, older girlfriend,

the owner of the 280-Z, who proceeded to tell anyone who was listening, no one was. Just how stupid an idea it was for Vince to be seen. stooping to Tommy Lee's level. She was thoroughly ignored. A gallon of peppermine schnapps was shared, as were a few words on musical references, and the usual suspects, the dolls, the pistols, sweet, Sabbath.

And when they got down to it and picked up their instruments, the chemistry was instant. Tommy's energy pulled Nikki's sloppy bass playing into a makeshift pocket. Mick's guttural riffs provided a dark platform for Vince's anthemic voice, and they quickly demonstrated a knack for making powerful, electrifying music, and in no time Motley Crew was born. And throughout their life, as a band, they would demonstrate an uncanny knack for cheating death. Everyone knows vampires aren't real.

Everyone except Angelinos. L.A. residents have a special relationship with the creatures of the night. A weariness almost, like an acceptance that, yeah, if vampires exist anywhere, and they probably exist here in L.A. Up the road in Sacramento in the late 70s, Richard Chase, an enterprising 27-year-old serial killer, drank his victim's blood before cannibalizing them. He was known publicly as the vampire killer. And in Hollywood, there'd long been rumors of secret vampire societies

where members were known to subsist on raw filet mignon and to drink the blood of teenage girls during sex. Whenever residents read in the paper about a Jane Doe turning up dead, maybe underneath the bridge down in the valley. They couldn't help but think about the lost boys out in Venice or the bad boys out on the strip, standing in the shadows, with designs and the blood pumping through the good girls,

home with broken hearts. Dom Menendez was a god-fearing man, and he was outside his apartment complex, watering the flowers in his front yard like he did every Sunday morning before church. Went out of the front door, stumbled what Dom believed to be one of Hollywood's rumored creatures of the night, In the flesh, before his very own eyes, could it be? Tall, menacing, dressed like an extra from a Mad Max movie, with skin the color of milk and one tattooed arm shielding his eyes.

But what was most telling and most frightening was the blood. It covered his face, and it was most intense around the vampire's mouth, fresh from a feeding frenzy in Dom's apartment building, on a Sunday before church. Dom dropped the garden hose and passed out, face down, in his petunias. And Nikki Six didn't give him a second look as he bounded by and hopped into his Porsche. He flipped down the driver's side visor to check his mascara in the mirror, and that's when he noticed the blood. Shit. No wonder the old man was looking at him strange. Nikki looked like a glammed out Vlad the impaler. The blood must have been from the nerdy neighbor he'd been going down on earlier that morning.

She clearly had her period. and judging from the amount of blood, it was day one. Nicky didn't care. He was spiraling out of control. It was 1984. Motley Cruz's second album, Shouted the Devil, had established them as a band not to be fucked with. Critics hated it, kids loved it, and it was selling big time.

And Nikki, and the rest of the boys were living the life. But fresh off the road from an epically debauchous tour with the Prince of Darkness himself, Ozzy Osbourne, Nikki was at loose ends. He'd discovered his girlfriend at the time. Former runaway's guitar player and Five Alarmes Smoke Show, Lita Ford, had been set up with another dude by one of her skeezy punk rock guy friends. And Nikki was pissed.

So he grabbed Tommy and a couple two-by-fours and headed over to lead his apartment where he knew her punk rock friend was staying. The two burst in like a heavy metal buddy cop duo and proceeded to beat the punk dude to near death with the two-by-fors. Then it was off to recede a country club. Nikki had dropped Tommy off at his place and picked him. up a date. He was high on quailudes, drunk on Jack, and with this new girl who was hot to try. And the two pulled into the parking lot and hopped out of the Porsche, but only made it as far as

the hood before giving in to their carnal desires. It was broad daylight, and Nicky was fully engaged in intercourse with his date on the hood of his car in the middle of the recita Country Club parking lot. A crowd began to gather and started to egg them on. Nice car, dude. Nice dick, dude. Hey, is that Nikki from Motley? It is. too loud. Nikki, despite the distraction of the crowd and despite his inebriation, brought himself to climax, rolled off his date and onto his back on the hood of his Porsche, with Frank Ferranes Salami still hard and fully exposed.

He looked at the crowd of wasteoid metalheads and staring at him, he wondered, who am I? Is this real? Am I really alive? We'll be right back after this word, word, word. Living long was never the plan. Living fast was the plan. Johnny Thunders didn't have a retirement fund, and Sid Vicious didn't have a fucking IRA. And to paraphrase Farron Young,

live fast, fuck hard, and leave in notorious memory. But Nikki, Mick, Tom, and Vince were beginning to sense their immortality. Again and again, they managed to escape their certain fate. There was the fire in the hotel room in Germany where they managed to get out unharmed. And there was the other fire on stage where Tommy's drum tech set his face aflame

with the smoke machine and flooded the stage. yet the band avoided electrocution. And there was the time Nicky walked away, naked and dazed from a bad car accident, where he wrapped his Porsche around a tree. And there was the constant drug abuse, coke, heroin, speed, speedballs, and yet no overdosing. Not yet at least. And of course, there was constant casual sex.

Casual is too casual a word. For Motley Cruz, sex wasn't casual. Sex was a 24-7 full-time occupation. The band was DTF fully and fucked all the time. They slept with everything and anything. Vince had been having sex with multiple women multiple times a day since he was in high school, before he was even a star. In the early days, they pimped out Tommy for beer money.

They made him sleep with the engineer at the first studio they recorded at for free studio time. To throw the girlfriends off the scent of their sunset strip sexual conquest, the boys would hit the taco truck on their way home at night, buy a couple egg and cheese burritos and stick their dicks in them to mask the smell of sex. And when they became famous, it just became more insane. Sex backstage was a given before and after shows, like immediately after shows, as in walk off stage, grab a girl, any girl, and get right down to it, quick, in public view of everyone else around. It is no exaggeration to say that life for Motley Crew was quite literally a non-stop orgy.

How they all hadn't contracted HIV was a miracle. Yet there they were, living it up and cheating death. Mick Mars have been drinking for days straight, trying to avoid his girlfriend, his bandmates, and any and all sense of responsibility that his newfound fame was now cramping his style with. He was the type of drunk that is hard to explain to people who haven't gone on serious two, three, four-day benders.

The type of drunk where the consistent drinking and lack of sleep creates an alternate reality in one's mind. one where you feel in total controlled, even though, of course, you totally aren't. Your thoughts make sense to you, yet you were completely out of step with reality. You speak to your friends, and you hear the words come out of your mouth, and they sound perfectly articulate,

but what your friends hear is a garbled, backward mess of words. You get ideas like, hey, I don't necessarily want to go swimming, but I just want to walk into the ocean because it seems peaceful. And yeah, I know I've been drinking rum and Coke since last Tuesday, but still, I got this. It doesn't matter that I can't swim. I'm just going to walk into the ocean.

I'm not even going to take my clothes out. Besides, it's nighttime. Nobody's even here. Doesn't the water look so peaceful? And so, Mick Mars, like Sterling Hayden in Long Goodbye, stepped into the Pacific Ocean from the sandy shore below Vince Neal's Redondo Beach home. One step, and then another, his mind began to quiet. Finally.

And then, Blackness. Where's Mick? Tommy asked Vince at the party upstairs. stairs at Vince's place. Who the fuck knows? Vince could have cared less. He was busy watching Tommy's fiancé, Honey, take turns, at Tommy's insistence on going down on a row of guys in Vince's jacuzzi.

Honey would do anything for Tommy, and Tommy would do anything for his friends. The Hanoi Rocks guys were in town from Finland, and they were at Vince's Redondo Beach House celebrating the U.S. tour they were waiting to embark on. The party was epic, even by Motley-Crew standards. Not only were the Hanoi guys in town and in need of being shown a good time, but famous producer in Hollywood Hills party impresario, Roy Thomas Baker,

was hanging out. He'd been the first to show Motley Crew how to throw a party. RTV, as they called him. His parties were as legend as the Queen and T-Rex records that he made. So Vince was serious about returning the favor. The only problem was, and they were out of beer. And where the fuck was Mick? The 1972 Ford Pantara is a serious automobile. It was Ford's answer to the Ferrari, Lamborghini and Porsche sports cars. It's a small car, built for speed, a V8 engine capable of pumping out an impressive 330 horsepower. Most Ford Pantara owners are car hobbyists, weekend track rats who use their powerful speedster to race around with other semi-proes. Vince Neal used his Ford Pantara for beer runs after staying up for three days straight, drinking and doing blow. Vince pumped the engine.

The Pantera purred like a panther as it was designed to do. The sign said 25 miles per hour. The odometer said 50 miles per hour. And the engine now roared. Razzled Dingley, drummer for Hanoi Rocks, hung on for dear life. His right hand clutching the handle above the passenger side door, his left hand cradling a couple hundred dollars worth of booze and beer of brown paper bags on his lap.

The curvy Redondo Beach roads were unforgiving. Vince pushed the accelerator, 55 miles per hour. Razzle grinned, exhilarated. Slick with freshly fallen rain, the road unwound before them. Vince wound the engine faster, 60 miles per hour. Faster still, 63 miles per hour, even faster, 65 miles per hour, and a 25 mile per hour zone. Then headlights.

Razzle's heart pumped with fear. Vince pumped the brakes, and the Pantera spun, angling passenger side first across the road and right into the front of the oncoming Volkswagen. Its passengers were pinballed together violently. The side door nearest Razzle, now an accordion, pushed his prone body onto Vince's lap. Blood, Razzle's blood, was everywhere. The impact was too much.

Razzled Dingley, drummer for promising heavy metal band Hanoi Rocks, an expectant father, died later that evening at the hospital. Vince Neal, singer of the world's most hedonistic rock band Motley crew, emerged, unscathed, blew a 0.17 on the breathalyzer, paid a $2.1 million fine, served 30 days in a country club posing as a prison, and hit the road with his band again like nothing happened, having thoroughly cheated justice and death for what seemed to be the umpteenth time. perhaps realizing the STD bullets he dodged up to this point, took himself off the market and married actress, Heather Locklear.

Vince Neal, fresh out of rehab and jail, went right back to being Vince Neal, snorting drugs, banging everything that moved. On that fateful night that Vince Neal's carelessness brought death to his friend Razzle's door, Mick Marr is washed up on the shore beneath Vince's house after his half-hearted stab at suicide. He awoke to the blinding Pacific Coast sun.

His clothes dried and wrinkled on his dry and wrinkled skin. The ocean had spit him back out. Death, it seemed, didn't want him on that day. And nor did he want Vince or Tommy. But death hadn't quite made up its mind yet about Nikki. Nikki Six died on December 23rd, 1987 at Cedar Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, California. The doctors pronounced him dead before midnight. Death suited Nicky.

It came with a calm, a sense of inner peace and a balance that he could never quite attain in life. The feeling overtook him, he dug it. A warm wave embraced him as he ascended, out of the ravage, tattooed, and track-marked shell of a body he'd been dragging Nicky Six around in for the better part of a decade. A body he'd been injecting with cocaine and heroin regularly, daily, sometimes at the same time. A body that used to be beautiful, but now was little more than a glammed out road-worn back. of bones. He could see it lying there. At first, exposed to the jarring fluorescent hospital lights, then lying unnaturally still under a sheet atop the gurney he'd been on since back at the Franklin Plaza Hotel. The party at the hotel, with the guns and roses and Megadeth guys, was turned

up to 11 per usual. Someone offered to tie Nikki off with some sweet Persian heroin, and as soon as the drug hit his vein, he went blue and passed out. Someone called 911. The drug dealer jumped out of the window and took off down the street yelling, I just killed Nikki Six! G&R guitarist slashed, confused and frightened, decided it was a good time to trash the hotel room's bathroom. The EMTs quickly made the scene and strapped Nikki to the aforementioned gurney and hustled him to the hospital, and now here he was.

He could see the commotion all around him, but felt no turmoil. Emergency room staff frantically booted him up with adrenaline shots from big, ugly, hyperdermic needles, but nothing. He heard the EKG monitor chirping intermittently, but now it just sang a sad one-note song. A nurse with thick forearms repeatedly smacked Nikki's cheeks. A doctor shouted, we're losing him.

Hospital staff buzzed in and out of the room. He heard someone ask, is that really him? And through all of the tense energy surging around him, Nikki remained calm and watched his death unfold below him. He was content for the first time in his life. Except he wasn't alive. He was dead, lying on a gurney, under a sheet, with his eyes closed.

Yet he could see everything around him. He felt nothing but peace. He had no sense of guilt or ego or addiction, just calm. Then, the worst pain he'd ever felt in his life. A jolt to his heart that was part lightning bolt, part Peterbilt, tracted trailer grow, and bam, Nicky opened his eyes and bolted upright on the gurney. back to life but feeling like a truck hit him.

The pain was immense. His headache was blinding. His eyes burned. His stomach nod. He itched all over. He was admitted, given a room and questioned by police, who wanted to know who gave him the heroin. Nikki asked if he was under arrest.

The cops said no and pressed him again to give up his dealer. Nikki told him the fuck off, ripped the IV needles out of his arms, pulled the tubes out of his nose, and walked out of the hospital shirtless in just his leather pants and motorcycle boots. Sid Vicious died of a heroin overdose, pussy. Johnny Thunders also died of a heroin overdose, also a pussy.

Nikki Six, a mortal, death-cheating, rock god. In his mind at least, Nikki Six, like Tommy Lee, Mick Mars, and Vince Neal, were more like complete degenerates, doing anything at the expense of anyone, even themselves, to live the rock and roll animal life to the fullest. Vince's behavior, of course, resulted in the loss of life of a friend in a stupid and careless accident. And Motley Crew lived hard, so hard that death just wasn't deadly enough.

Or maybe they were actually the undead. Immortal creatures of the night cheating death from its due. You know, kind of like those rumored Hollywood vampires. Of course, they could have just been bad shit crazy and a little bit lucky, insatiable rock and roll animals determined to outlive, out drug, out brawl and outball their heroes. But I don't know. I say it's even odds.

They were vampires. Has anyone ever seen Mick Mars in the daylight? I haven't. I'm Jake Vernon. And this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at

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