When Mötley Crüe arrived in the UK in early 1986 for their first tour here, they seemed genuinely dangerous. Bassist Nikki Sixx was apparently on a heroin-assisted path to an early grave, drummer Tommy Lee was engaged in a tumultuous marriage to Hollywood star Heather Locklear, and guitarist Mick Mars was at the beginning of a decades-long battle to stay in the band. Singer Vince Neil, meanwhile, had been lucky to avoid prison after driving Hanoi Rocks drummer Razzle to a tragic and violent death.
What they didn’t have was a very good record to promote. 1983’s Shout At The Devil was inspired, with Mars’s sleazy riffs and Lee’s thumping rhythms augmenting Sixx’s undoubted ear for the kind of tune that made the blood pump. By comparison, follow-up Theatre Of Pain sounded flaccid, and 40 years on, it’s still drooping. Sixx himself has called it “a pile of rubbish”.
