Earlier this week, word came down from upon high that Mötley have added more US and Canadian dates to their mammoth farewell tour, the theme being mortar between the bricks, or “B-cities” that didn’t get hit with the ol’ loud goodbye the first time around.

BraveWords got to chat with Mötley Crüe axe-master Mick Mars about the situation, and we must remark, Mick was sounding healthy and in good spirits. “The AS that I have is like, it can bother you if you let it,” explains Mick, on the topic of the state of his ankylosing spondylitis bone disease. “The doctors say, ‘You’re going to end up in a wheelchair’ and this and that. I call bull on that. So I’m out there and sometimes it’s not so bad. But I love my music, I love playing, I love touring and that keeps me going. I’m not sitting here feeling sorry for myself.”

 

 

Mick and the bad boys are of course in the midst of a massive tour, with the added benefit of being immersed in an emotional dialogue with their base. “We get lots of people saying, ‘You’ve saved my life and you’ve helped me through the years and now my kids are listening to it,’” says Mars. “And then I get kids tweeting and saying, ‘Yeah, I found my dad’s Mötley Crüe records—they’re cool.’ Things like that. So we’ve reached different people in different age brackets. I think maybe like, we must’ve written some really good songs (laughs). Kids are saying it’s my parents’ music, but these younger people are liking it too. Accomplishment is how I feel about it—we really put a dent.”

The appeal, however, of Motley to millions of fans has to go beyond the positives of the band’s party appeal. There’s been much nastiness to this career, and the tabloid nature of the band’s lives turned inside out in public, that’s got to generate interest as well.

“Yes, well, I think people are attracted to negative things,” laughs Mick. “You know, I really don’t know, but there’s an appeal to good and evil, and being the mean guy or the bad guy. We were—and we are—the bad boys of rock. Here’s an example, and it’s very old: the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. They were both loved a lot, but the Stones were the old bad boys. I don’t want to say they’re old, because they’re not, but it’s that kind of thing. I think people kind of lend themselves to wanting to be bad once in a while. And what better time than to sneak a couple of beers or some whiskey or vodka or whatever the heck, and watch the bad boy band? It’s a hard thing to put a finger on.”

 

 

But what Mick can put a finger on—Segue of Pain—is his guitar, which one can see in the six minute solo he performs on these farewell tour dates. 

“Well, you know, I’m not a very fast guitar player,” answers Mick, asked what his solo reveals about his personality. “I don’t sit there and play a lot of scales like a lot of guitar players do. I’m not saying all of them do, but a lot of them do, and the same licks over and over and over. What I’m thinking and what I’m trying to do when I do my solo, it’s not to show off as much as to show what you can do with the guitar—tone-wise, playing-wise, weird bend-wise, sounds, different kinds of effects. To show what this thing can do is what I try to do. So it’s not just dramatically fast scales. I just play what comes out. But it’s mostly about, if the instrument could really speak to you, that’s what it would be saying. Anything and everything about a guitar that I can share, I’m saying, hey, look, watch, watch this weird thing, check this out. And I think that a lot of people get it, but then there’s some that are like, ‘Eh, you can’t play.’ And that’s okay too. I’m not standing up there playing like I’m this great guitar player. I guess that I’m mostly sharing what’s in my heart. And what my guitar does for me, and what it can do itself, and what it can do for somebody else who picks up the guitar and goes, ‘Wow, I’ve learned something from Mick; that you can do this.’”
“It’s bittersweet, mixed feelings,” offers Mick, back to the reality at hand, namely the finality of what he’s doing right now. “But Motley is a business, and the four of us will always be in a business together, probably for the rest of our lives, as Mötley Crüe. There probably won’t be any records or singles or anything like that, but our corporation will still keep going. So it’s not like we’re going to be out of touch with each other. As for the guys, as an observer, I don’t really think that they’re going to feel the impact until the last show is done; that’s my feeling on it. While we’re touring, while we’re doing this, it’s business as usual. But when we play our last show, I think it’s really going to hit home.”

 

 

And then after that, it’s finally time to get that Chinese Democracy solo record out!

“After 35 years playing the Mötley Crüe stuff,” laughs Mick, in closing, “I can go into the studio and write a Mötley Crüe song in minutes. ‘All Bad Things,’ I wrote the initial music for that and took it over to James and it became the goodbye song for Motley. I had Mötley Crüe specifically in mind for the riff and everything else that I came up with. Which is different from the solo stuff I’m writing now, which is more an expression of my inner feelings. My new stuff is heavier, punchier, but I don’t even know how to explain it because I haven’t heard anything like it. I’ve played it for some people that I know, and they’re just flipping out. A lot of people want to put it on the radio and I’m like, well, not yet.”

(Mötley Crüe slider photo by Paul Brown; live shots by John Lowry)