North American syndicated rock radio show and website, InTheStudio With Redbeard: The Stories Behind History’s Greatest Rock Bands,  celebrates the 25th anniversary of Mötley Crüe’s 1989 #1 album, Dr. Feelgood.

The ‘80s was a decade of excess and Mötley Crüe was its poster child and willing participant. Their reckless abandonment and debauchery has been well documented, but what makes the Mötley Crüe story so fascinating is that with all the increasing mayhem came an unbelievable string of hit songs and albums.

 

 

Mötley Crüe’s 1987 album, Girls, Girls, Girls was a #4 seller despite the band’s drug and alcohol-fueled crazy existence, but eventually, one by one, the members of Mötley Crüe all found help for their substance issues. With the newly found clarity, the songs which Nikki Sixx composed and which singer Vince Neil, piledriver drummer Tommy Lee, and guitar monster Mick Mars recorded including “Kickstart My Heart”, “Same Ol’ Situation”, “Without You” and the groove thing “Dr. Feelgood” blew every previous Motley Crue standard away, notching the #1 album in America with over six million albums sold.

Sobriety didn’t stop the party on the road though, but it did allow them to remember it! The Dr. Feelgood tour would become the band’s biggest production ever, as Nikki Sixx tells InTheStudio host Redbeard.

“Dr. Feelgood tour, at the time 1989, (cost) $325,000 a week just to break even. A million two a month, and were gone for fifteen months. So we spent about $20 million just entertaining. So anything after that was ours. ‘Wow, you need a better business plan. What’s your exit strategy? Pee in the corner and blow everything up’.” (laughs)

InTheStudio's Dr. Feelgood special is streaming at this location.