Mick Mars didn't hold out back when discussing his former Mötley Crüe bandmates in a new interview with Variety saying “I carried those bastards for years.” 

Mars is suing Mötley Crüe, claiming they kicked him out and ripped him off, financially. Complete details can be found here. Mötley Crüe is contending in a follow-up report that Mars quit after “struggling to remember chords, playing the wrong songs.” More here.

Mars tells Variety, “Those guys have been hammering on me since ’87, trying to replace me. They haven’t been able to do that, because I’m the guitar player. I helped form this band. It’s my name I came up with [the Mötley Crüe moniker], my ideas, my money that I had from a backer to start this band.”

“The thing that they keep pushing, for many years, is that I have a bad memory. And that’s full-blown, out-of-proportion crap. Around 2012, when they first started saying that my memory was bad and I didn’t remember the songs, I came home and saw all my doctors, because I keep myself together, because I’m an old bastard. They had all the 10th Street people there [from the band’s management] — probably about five or six people — (versus) all my doctors going: ‘There’s nothing wrong with him.’ And now they’re still playing that game with me.

“So, no, the truth is: I want to retire from touring because of my AS [Ankylosing spondylitis, an inflammatory, arthritic disease that causes vertebrae to fuse]. I don’t have a problem remembering the songs. I don’t have a problem with any of that stuff. But I do have a problem with them, constantly, the whole time, telling me that I lost my memory. No. Wrong. That’s wrong. Absolutely wrong.

“But my stupid body is telling me ‘No, don’t do that’ [stay on the road]. You know, I’m gonna be 72 years old, and I’ve been touring with these guys 41 years, helping build the brand, helping do this and that. And you’re served with papers and going, this is crazy. This is stupid. I mean, come on.”