There is perhaps no band more emblematic of Los Angeles ‘80s heavy metal than Mötley Crüe. If at times the music has been overshadowed by the bad behaviour and celebrity shenanigans of various members, well that lifestyle is as crucial a component of the scene as hot licks and hair spray, and of all the Sunset Strip show ponies, there is no other that possesses a back catalogue like Mötley Crüe. Let’s face it, without albums as strong as Shout At The Devil, Theatre Of Pain and Dr. Feelgood to drag attention back to the music, the band would have become little more than tabloid fodder years ago, and if later albums have not been up to the standard of the first decade, the band’s killer live show has kept them at the top of the heap.
We were recently granted an all too brief telephonic audience with guitarist Mick Mars, so getting straight down to business, began by asking him how it was that he first realised he wanted to be a guitar payer.
“I was three years old and I was at a 4H fair is what they call it here, it’s like one of those things where they show off all their cattle, and all of their pigs and their geese and all that kind of thing, where it’s all stinky and smells like horse poop. Anyway, I saw a country band playing there. The guy I saw, his name was Skeeter Bonn, I don’t even know if he’s still alive or not [he is not, Bonn died in 1994], but I remember it vividly. He had a black and orange outfit on, with all these sequins, and a big white Stetson hat, and he was playing a Martin. I went, ‘that’s what I’m going to do’. I knew it ever since I was three. I started like really playing guitar when I was seven, but that’s how I got into it.
“The first guitar that I got was a plastic Mickey Mouse guitar. I learned how to tune it and I started picking out notes, single notes on it. If you can imagine, in 1958 and 1959, what some of the hits were like, like Frankie Avalon songs and stuff like that. I was picking out the melody lines on my guitar, this little plastic guitar.”
A plastic Mickey Mouse guitar picking out Frankie Avalon tunes is one thing, but the youngster christened Bob Deal was never going to grow up to become the famous rocker Mick Mars without switching to something a little more substantial, both in terms of his axe and the music he was attempting to emulate with it.
“I think my first real guitar was when I was 10 or 11. It was an old Stella, it cost 12 bucks. I discovered different bands, like the Ventures, and the Beatles came out, and then all these other things were coming out and everything else. Then it was like my acoustic guitar was not good enough, I had to have an electric. My first electric guitar was a St George, it cost me 49 bucks. I moved on from there, learning all that stuff, and discovering different kinds of music, discovering blues, and discovering how to bend strings, and how to do stuff, feedback and sustain, and all sorts of stuff. I still try to learn something new all the time, trying to discover new things. Not reinventing the guitar, because it’s already been done, but just like moving onto different things, you know. Just keeping it new.”
Time is relentlessly ticking away, so we quickly move onto talk of guitar collections and favourite instruments. Not surprisingly, Mars has amassed quite a collection over the years.
“Good lord. I have a lot of different guitars. I have some old Fender Esquires, quite a few Paul Reed Smiths, maybe 12 Les Pauls, but mostly Stratocasters, from ‘50s on up. I have different kinds of acoustics, Martin D-28s, some Gibson 12-strings. I have quite a big collection. I have all sorts of stuff, but I’m mostly a Strat guy.”
We ask Mick how he gets his sound, which the guitarist happily admits continues to be a work in progress. As with guitars, he has no attachment to any one manufacturer, using Marshall, Rivera and Soldano amplifiers. He uses a range of rackmounted and pedal-based effects, including Heil Sound and Rocktron Banshee talk boxes, which is the effect that gives the solo of ‘Kickstart My Heart’ its distinctive sound.
“I’ve been developing and experimenting, and I still do to this day. At rehearsals or when I go in by myself, I’m always playing around with different combinations and different configurations. Different ways of plugging them in make the guitar sound different, so I play around with that kind of stuff. Different cabinets. Different heads. Different combinations of cabinet and speakers, that kind of thing. It’s kind of like a mishmash of a bunch of stuff squashed all together. It is what comes out.”
We are running out of time rapidly and I still haven’t had a chance to ask Mick about the early days with the Crüe. Mars is a little older than the other members of the band and had been playing around Los Angeles for almost a decade when he placed an ad offering his services as a guitar player. Contacted by Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee, he was recruited by the youngsters for a band, which they soon named Mötley Crüe at Mars’ suggestion. So Mick, how was it?
“How was it? It was difficult. You know how it is, I was already older, but the other guys… a couple of them were teenagers, and one of them was just barely in his 20s, and all of a sudden its like they’ve got a lot of money at their disposal. I had already been experienced with this stuff and came through a bunch of crap. I’d say, ‘don’t do this, don’t do that’. Well, you know how kids are. I’m still their Dad. To this day, I’m still Dad! I’m still raising the kids.”
The operator interrupts to let me know my time is almost up and that I might have time for one more question if I talk fast. Taking a deep breath I quickly ask Mick about the band’s sound, how it was that the various members contributed their own style to formulate a sound that proved to be perfect for the time and place in which it developed.
“We all kind of brought what we did to the table, and it worked. Tommy and Nikki were more into the glam, like Kiss and that kind of stuff, and T-Rex, a bunch of stuff like that. I was more into deep blues and funk, Paul Butterfield and Mike Bloomfield and George Clinton, you know, and people like that. I brought that to the table, and the mixture all together worked. Then we spotted Vince, and I go ‘that’s the guy we need to sing, because sex sells’. There were girls going nuts over him. So it all came together, it was very good. It’s still going on so we must be doing something right.”
