Mick Burgess at Metal Express Radio caught up with MÖTLEY CRÜE guitarist Mick Mars on the band's recent UK tour with DEF LEPPARD and STEEL PANTHER. Mars discusses the tour line-up, the band's residency in Las Vegas in February, his blues inspirations, why he would rather release singles instead of albums, and his charity for spondylitis. Check it out via the audio player below:

Mars on upcoming Las Vegas residency: "They would like us to do more of what we did in Red White & Crüe, with the tent circus thing and having clowns and that kinda stuff running around, and doing that kinda stuff which is fine cause I love dwarf tossing."

Mick Mars

NYPost.com's Darryl Harrison has issued an interview with Mötley Crüe’s Nikki Sixx, who recently got behind the camera to shoot a sexy, glam rock-inspired feature in Alexa, The New York Post’s fashion magazine in the newspaper last week.

An excerpt from the interview follows:

Q: Why is Nikki Sixx doing a fashion shoot for the New York Post/Alexa? What is that about? I don’t think your fans would expect you to do an editorial shoot.

A: "You know for me, one thing that I preach is to shoot no matter what. Shoot with your digital camera, shoot with your Holga, shoot with your expensive high-end camera (if you have one), shoot with your iPhone.

I’ve been documenting so much stuff — whether it’s street photography or some of the stuff I did in my book, This Is Gonna Hurt — that was sort of a different view on beauty, and how social reaction is to what beauty is. When the opportunity came to do a fashion shoot for the New York Post, it just felt like another adventure for me.

Meeting everybody from The Post, I realized they were looking to do something that’s dear to my heart, which is a ’70s-glam theme. We collaborated on how the light would be, on how the models would be, and the clothes, and it’s been a really exciting process for me. I’ve shot a little bit of what I would call a simple setup using my girlfriend. I’ve shot a few times using just a white psych and a flash. It’s definitely cleaner.

The challenge is inside of a clean box, so to speak, how do you create the energy, how do you get expression, how do you get it to feel a little snarky or edgy, how do you fit within what would work in an editorial piece, rather than what would work in a book, or that you would use on your photography site.

There are boundaries. You actually have to push yourself more, because it’s not just wide open. It can’t be topless, it can’t be as saturated with colors, the contrast can’t be as drastic. So you find yourself thinking, 'This is going to be printed in the newspaper but it’s also hopefully going to be printed on the website, but it’s definitely not for a book, it’s for a different medium', and it’s forcing me to try and make it a little more challenging for the eye for the person looking at the newspaper.

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