UK MOTLEY CRUE REVIEW
“Mick Mars looks like he is actually dead and has just been reanimated for the purposes of performance”
By:
The Telegraph — Is rock just ritual and theatre, a particularly loud and lairy form of pantomime?
The question occurred to me in an arena blasted with dry ice, fireworks and flamethrowers, whirling lights and flashing images, musicians hovering about on hydraulic arms and a drummer performing a solo whilst travelling upside down on a rollercoaster over the heads of the astonished crowd.
With no outstanding talent and zero artistic aspiration, Motley Crue have enjoyed 35 years of success, sold over 100 million records and are staging a farewell tour using all the tools at their disposal to go out with perhaps the biggest bang ever seen at a pop concert.
There was a time when guitar music was viewed with romantic idealism and artists and fans alike were prepared to believe that rock might change the world. To be fair, many rock bands still carry that sense of higher purpose in their DNA.
And then there is heavy metal.
Since the early days of the genre, it has gravitated towards the more sensationalist end of the rock spectrum, where everything is louder, faster, harder, with lyrical and visual imagery drawn from fantasy and horror.
I don’t mean this as insultingly as it sounds but individually Motley Crue are average in every aspect. Singer Vince Neil can hold a tune but his high notes make him sound more like a startled bird than a wailing banshee. Lead guitarist Mick Mars relies on fast fingers and distortion to disguise his complete absence of melodiousness, tone and imagination.
Songwriter and bassist Nikki Six has aspirations towards seriousness but his best songs just offer a shallow reheating of familiar rock tropes with a huge debt to seventies British glam rock.
Drummer Tommy Lee has the hard-hitting, time-keeping basics down but displays absolutely no flair as a soloist, albeit it must be hard to concentrate on your hi-hat action whilst suspended upside down. Crucially, rock is a team game, and Motley Crue’s brilliance comes from combining what talent they have in ways that are punchily forceful, comically dramatic and riotously entertaining. They throw everything into the pot with a sense of determination that more than makes up for an absence of real inspiration.
The truth is they were always more about the gang camaraderie aspect of rock culture than anything musical. Their prime motivation as a young Eighties band seemed to be escape to the drudge of nine to five life and take as many drugs and have as much sex as possible.
Now, at a time when most veteran groups seem to be getting back together, Motley Crue are retiring. Once leonine and sexy in their leotards and make up, Vince Neil looks like Keith Lemon impersonating a wrestler. Mick Mars, who has suffered from debilitating health problems most of his life, looks like he is actually dead and has just been reanimated for the purposes of performance.
Read the entire review from above at The Telegraph
