Niclas Müller-Hansen from Sweden's Metal Shrine spoke with legendary photographer Neil Zlozower recently about a number of topics. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Metal Shrine: You've got any plans for a new book?

Zlozower: "Yeah! I'm working on it now. It's gonna be an Eddie Van Halen book, that Eddie's working on with me. It should be out around August or September this year. It´ll be Eddie in his heyday from '78 to '84. I mean, I wasn't a big fan of Van Halen with Sammy Hagar and I wasn't a big fan with Gary Cherone. To me, the David Lee Roth years are the best!

Metal Shrine: When was the first time you met Mötley Crüe?

Zlozower: "I think it was probably late '82 or very early '83. It was way before Shout At The Devil came out and I met them in a recording studio. I used to shoot photos in the 70´s with photographer Barry Levine. Me and Barry were friends for ages and we´re still friends, I just had lunch with him about three or four weeks ago. He called me up one day, 'Neil, I'm working with this band Mötley Crüe and I'm just wondering if you wanna meet them and do some work with them?' At the time they weren't really big and they were still pretty small in everything, but part of being a photographer is you've gotta sort of in your mind say 'Wow, this band's good! I think they´re gonna be really huge!' and you gotta catch them on the bottom floor. If you wait till they're big, all the other parasite, maggot, leach photographers come out and they want to work with them too. You gotta get the band when they're nobody and that's pretty much what I did with TED NUGENT and that's what I did with AEROSMITH and I did it with VAN HALEN and then GUNS N' ROSES, RATT and POISON, you know. That's part of the beauty, being able o tell that 'this band´s good and they´re gonna go somewhere!'”

Metal Shrine: I talked to Ross Halfin just a few days ago he said that Mötley Crüe were the ones that really didn't care. They just did whatever they did and that was it.

Zlozower: "Good friend of mine. Yeah, that's probably true to some degree, but honestly, everybody likes to think they're the bad boys of rock and roll, Guns N' Roses or Mötley, but honestly, the things that I witnessed with Van Halen were the most human debauchery as far as things they did with girls. I went on tour with Poison, I went on tour with Bon Jovi, I went on tour with Guns N' Roses, I went on tour with Ratt and I went on tour with Mötley and a billion other bands, but to me the antics with Van Halen, nothing really ever compares to that."

Metal Shrine: Who was the main instigator? Was it David Lee Roth?

Zlozower: "Well, they all had different personalities. Michael was married and is still married to the same girl. She's fantastic and I love her, so Michael, he liked to drink Jack Daniels and he never really got involved in too much of the debauchery that was going on. Eddie was pretty mellow. He did the shows… he's one of the greatest guitar players that ever lived, but I'd say Alex to be honest... Did you ever see those films where they throw pieces of meat to the shark and you get about 50 sharks that just fucking lose their mind and go ballistic, that's how Alex was if he saw like a naked girl or whatever! He just would lose his fucking mind. He reminded me of those sharks and the shark eating frenzy. It turns out that me and Alex probably hung the most out of any of them. Usually after the shows, Dave had three of four girls and he would just take them up and do whatever he did, but me and Alex hung and I have tons and tons of photos of different adventures we had. I'm sure that the Mötley guys did it, but I never really saw it. Nikki was one of my closest friends in the world in ´83 and ´84! Me, him and Robbin Crosby went to Martinique on our trip to the Caribbean and we caused quite a bit of drama on that trip, to say the least, but I just never witnessed the same type of antics that I witnessed on tour with Van Halen."

Read the entire interview here.

For more info on Neil Zlozower visit Zloz.com.