Mötley Crüe (Album)

Mötley Crüe
Studio album by Mötley Crüe
Publication (s)	1994
Label (s)	Elektra Records
Format (s)	LP , MC , CD
Genre (s)	Hard rock , glam rock , hair metal
Title (number)	12
running time	60 min 23 sec.
occupation	John Corabi : vocals, guitar Mick Mars : guitar Nikki Sixx : bass guitar, vocals Tommy Lee : drums
production	Bob rock
Studio (s)	Little Mountain Sound Studios, A&M Studios
chronology Dr Feelgood (1989) Mötley Crüe Generation Swine (1997)

Mötley Crüe is the sixth studio album by the American rock band Mötley Crüe and was released on March 15, 1994. It is the only album by the group that does not feature singer Vince Neil .

background

After the success of the Dr. Feelgood from 1989 and the 1991 “Decade Of Decadence”, Nikki Sixx , Vince Neil , Tommy Lee and Mick Mars met again in the studio in 1992 . After a disagreement between Neil and Sixx, singer Neil left the band and was replaced by singer and guitarist John Corabi . In advance, the rock band had signed a contract worth 25 million dollars with the record company Elektra Records , which had already released their previous albums. The sudden exit of singer Vince Neil endangered the content of the contract and with it Mötley Crüe's further career in the music business, whose success curve had so far been steadily increasing.

The original working title of the album was Til Death Do Us Part , which the new singer John Corabi, whom the other Mötley Crüe members called by his nickname Crab , even got a tattoo , which was annoying singer Corabi afterwards After completion, the album was simply titled after the band name. With the arrival of Corabi, the musical and lyrical direction of the band changed from catchy musical to complex, expansively arranged pieces that convey an aggressively dark atmosphere. Compared to his predecessor Vince Neil, who sings bright, high and clean, John Corabi has a dark and rough vocal organ. Drummer Tommy Lee in particular was thrilled by the expressive voice of John Corabi during the first rehearsal together. The band recorded the tracks for the album together for the first time and processed lyrically personal topics such as fascism or stereotyping. In the song Uncle Jack , Corabi let the experience flow that his uncle had abused the singer's siblings. In addition, the lyrics deal with the subject of censorship in music and the civil unrest in Los Angeles following the Rodney King court ruling in April 1992. The album corresponds less to the band's usual glam metal, but more to classic hard rock spiced with a dash of zeitgeist. During the creation of the album between 1991 and 1994, the newly emerged style of grunge was in trend, with commercially successful genre representatives such as Nirvana , Pearl Jam , Soundgarden and Alice in Chains , which made the traditional hairspray metal of the 1980s in the public eye was displaced. Tommy Lee found the younger bands that appeared in the rock scene in this phase and sounded much harder than Mötley Crüe, exciting and inspiring for their own musical work, for example Pantera and Prong .

Musically, the album is characterized by excellent, very traditional solo play, precise rhythm guitars by Mick Mars, as well as complex, tricky and solid beats by drummer Tommy Lees. Add to that the powerful bass from Nikki Sixx. According to the author of Vampster.com, Oliver Loffhagen, the orchestral ballad Misunderstood is one of the best pieces the band has ever recorded. In the accompanying booklet of the first pressed edition of the album, there was a photo of bassist Nikki Sixx wearing sunglasses and a dark uniform with a swastika armband, imperial eagle and SS badges. When the record company discovered this delicate photo in the booklet, they crushed 500,000 CD booklets. The NS symbols on the Nikki Sixx photo have been retouched for the reprint of new booklets . In the 2002 German autobiography The Dirt by Mötley Crüe, the original photo in question is uncensored and in color. With this provocation Sixx wanted to express that one should not judge people based on a first impression and question one's own prejudices. Because in earlier cultures the swastika, which the Nazis misused in the Third Reich for their inhuman ideology, was a symbol of peace. The song Misunderstood also deals with the subject of misunderstandings . The tour, whose stage scenery also included the aggressive flirtation with swastikas, had to be canceled after a few concerts due to the lack of concert visitors. For the opening concert of the tour, which included no pyrotechnic effects and no flying drum pedestal, on June 9, 1994 at the Community Center in Tucson , Arizona , only 4,000 of the 15,000 tickets sold. Only at the concert on June 15, 1994 in Mexico City in the Palacio de los Deportes did Mötley Crüe appear in front of 20,000 visitors. Otherwise, the rock band played for between 1,600 and 50 people at the remaining concerts, so the performances had to be moved to smaller halls and music clubs. In order to save the booked tour, Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee each invested $ 75,000 from their private assets to cover costs, and singer John Corabi completely waived his fee of $ 10,000 per week. Nevertheless, the tour was ended prematurely. The reasons for the failure of the album and the tour are diverse, on the one hand Mötley Crüe, who stood for melodic glam metal of the 1980s, were no longer asked, on the other hand there had been a personnel change in the management of their record company, which only left Crüe received little support and promotion from the label.

The re-release, published in 2003, contains three additional pieces that were previously unreleased or difficult to obtain. Hypnotized and Livin 'In The Know were previously unreleased tracks, Babykills was originally released in 1994 on the EP "Quaternary".

Track list

No.	title	Remarks	time
1.	Power to the music		5:12
2.	Uncle Jack		5:28
3.	Hooligan's Holiday		5:51
4th	Misunderstood		6:53
5.	Loveshine		2:36
6th	Poison Apples	together with Bob Rock	3:40
7th	Hammered		5:15
8th.	Til Death Do Us Part		6:03
9.	Welcome to the Numb		5:18
10.	Smoke the sky		3:36
11.	Droppin 'like flies		6:26
12.	Driftaway		4:05
10.	Hypnotized	only published with the re-release 2003	5:30
11.	Baby kills	on the re-release 2003 (originally appeared in 1994 on the EP "Quaternary")	5:26
12.	Livin 'In The Know	only published with the re-release 2003	4:23

success

The album reached number 7 on the Billboard charts and was a relative flop in the band's history, as its predecessors performed better in the charts.

Two singles from the album were released in the same year. The singles Hooligan's Holiday and Misunderstood , which, however, only managed to place themselves in the charts of "mainstream rock" with positions 10 and 24.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Review on Rocktimes.de
2. ^ Mötley Crüe : The Dirt . Autobiography of the glam metal band Mötley Crüe, co-authored with Neil Strauss , from the American by Kirsten Borchardt , Hannibal Verlag , Höfen , 2nd edition, 2002. p. 276
3. ^ Mötley Crüe : The Dirt . Autobiography of the glam metal band Mötley Crüe, co-authored with Neil Strauss , from the American by Kirsten Borchardt , Hannibal Verlag , Höfen , 2nd edition, 2002. p. 282
4. ^ Mötley Crüe : The Dirt . Autobiography of the glam metal band Mötley Crüe, co-authored with Neil Strauss , from the American by Kirsten Borchardt , Hannibal Verlag , Höfen , 2nd edition, 2002. p. 281
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Review on vampster.com
6. ^ Mötley Crüe : The Dirt . Autobiography of the glam metal band Mötley Crüe, co-authored with Neil Strauss , from the American by Kirsten Borchardt , Hannibal Verlag , Höfen , 2nd edition, 2002. pp. 307 f.
7. ^ Corabi interview on screamermagazine.com , accessed January 14, 2013.
8. ^ Mötley Crüe : The Dirt . Autobiography of the glam metal band Mötley Crüe, co-authored with Neil Strauss , from the American by Kirsten Borchardt , Hannibal Verlag , Höfen , 2nd edition, 2002. p. 291
9. ^ Mötley Crüe : The Dirt . Autobiography of the glam metal band Mötley Crüe, co-authored with Neil Strauss , from the American by Kirsten Borchardt , Hannibal Verlag , Höfen , 2nd edition, 2002. p. 291
10. ^ Mötley Crüe : The Dirt . Autobiography of the glam metal band Mötley Crüe, co-authored with Neil Strauss , from the American by Kirsten Borchardt , Hannibal Verlag , Höfen , 2nd edition, 2002. p. 288
11. ^ Mötley Crüe : The Dirt . Autobiography of the glam metal band Mötley Crüe, co-authored with Neil Strauss , from the American by Kirsten Borchardt , Hannibal Verlag , Höfen , 2nd edition, 2002. The Nikki Sixx photo with Nazi uniform is in the colored pictures -Gallery in the middle part of the book
12. ^ Mötley Crüe : The Dirt . Autobiography of the glam metal band Mötley Crüe, co-authored with Neil Strauss , from the American by Kirsten Borchardt , Hannibal Verlag , Höfen , 2nd edition, 2002. pp. 307 f.
13. ↑ Single placement at Allmusic (English)