The Dirt (44 page)

So we killed the pain like we always had. In Australia, Vince slipped off the wagon. After they scraped us off the floor in Australia and poured us into Japan, Nikki stumbled. And when they dragged us to Hawaii, I went to a strip club with Vince and fell victim to a big-titted waitress with a tray of Day-Glo alcohol shooters in test tubes. Soon, with our relationships at home suffering from neglect, we were all sneaking alcohol, buying drugs, and reverting to our old self-destructive habits, with the possible exception of Mick, whose fiancée happened to be on the road with us as a backup singer.

Near the end of the tour, Elektra sent over a film crew. They were having a massive sales conference with the buyers for all the record chains and thought that it would be a good idea for us to tape a message sucking up to the retailers and thanking them for their support. So we gathered backstage in front of the crew, they started the cameras, and we behaved like good puppets: “Hey, guys, we’re Mötley Crüe, and we’d like to thank you for making our record number one.” But then, suddenly, the puppet strings snapped. “And we want to let you know that we hate you and we hate Elektra. You guys aren’t giving us a break. You’re all a bunch of greedy fucking assholes, and we know where you live, and we’re going to come slit your throats if you don’t let us see our families.”

When the cameras shut off, we fucking collapsed on the floor and full-on sobbed. We couldn’t even speak. We were so exhausted, so depleted, so devoid of all thought and emotion.

Doug Thaler looked at us, shook his head, and said, “Maybe it’s time we took you guys off the road for a little while.”

Dude, you’ve never seen four motherfuckers split up and go their own way faster than we did.

fig. 1

THE APPLICATION OF COG THEORY TO THE DEVELOPMENT AND MATURATION OF A COMMON ROCK GROUP

by Tommy Lee, Mick Mars, Vince Neil & Nikki Sixx, Ph.D.s

Center for Studies in Popular Acoustics, Discordia University, Los Angeles, CA

Summary: An Introduction to Cog Theory

Cog theory is an attempt to pull back the curtain of the popular music business and examine the mechanics of success.

There is a machine which all musical artists are put through, hereafter referred to as “The Machine” (see Figure 1). Artists’ success in navigating their way through the intricate cogs, gears, hammers, and grinders of The Machine determines the arc, scope, and course of their career. Such navigation requires talent, timing, luck, and a strong personal constitution.

Mötley Crüe and Cog Theory: A Stage-by-Stage Analysis

A) Stage One: The Platform and Conveyer Belt

At the bottom of The Machine, there is a platform. And on that platform there is a long line of artists, who wait their turn to climb a ladder which leads to a conveyer belt. As the artists travel along that conveyer belt, they make and release a record. At the end of the conveyer belt is the first of several interconnected cogs, each higher and larger than the previous cog. If the artists time their jump at the end of the conveyor belt just right, they can land on the first cog. But most artists miss the cog and land on the platform again (at the rear of the line) or, in some cases, into the abyss below.
Too Fast for Love
as an independent release didn’t even make the first cog.

B) Stage Two: The First Cog

Once artists reach the first cog and experience a degree of success, they become caught in the machinery. The gear is moving, the cog is rolling, and there’s nothing that can be done to stop The Machine (see Figure 1a). Soon, a second, larger cog looms ahead, the grinding of its bottom teeth adjoining and turning the first cog. Artists must jump at exactly the right time to catch the second cog, otherwise they will be crushed in the machinery between the cogs and either dropped back to the platform or rolled around to begin anew on the cog.
Shout at the Devil
made it to the first cog, which tossed the band onto the second cog.

C) Stage Three: The Second Cog

Once artists move as high as the second cog, it is a long way down to the bottom (see Figure 1b). They realize that the machinery is stronger than flesh, and that they are caught in it and there is no way off. The Machine tears skin, grinds limbs, and slowly infects and possesses the brain. If the act is a band, The Machine can easily rip the members apart from each other and crush them individually. On the second cog, a band experiences true popularity. But to reach the next cog—the big cog, the final cog, the cog reserved for true phenomena—it is not just a matter of timing a long and arduous leap. Getting onto the big cog is something that is out of a band’s control. That power is in the hands of the mighty cog god, a whimsical, wrathful, and unpredictable deity at the top of The Machine, turning the gears.

Mötley Crüe rolled around and around on the second cog, with
Shout at the Devil
, with
Theatre of Pain
, with
Girls, Girls, Girls
, and with each revolution they narrowly avoided getting crushed and dropped to the bottom.
Dr. Feelgood
, however, caught the big cog.

D) Stage Four: The Big Cog

The big cog is the cog that Guns N’ Roses got caught on with
Appetite for Destruction
, that Metallica got caught on with their black album. It is the cog that Mariah Carey, the Backstreet Boys, and Eminem have all reached. The big cog is a huge grinding gear, and there’s nothing artists can do about it if it picks them up. They can stand up and scream, “I hate everyone in the world and you all suck, and if you buy a single record of mine I’ll kill you.” And all that will happen is more people will run out and buy their records. Trying to get off the cog is futile: It only makes the process hurt more (see Figure 1c).

The big cog is exciting but overwhelming. Where the second cog can dig under the skin of artists, this one can tear them apart limb by limb. The cog gives artists everything they have ever dreamed of, everything they could ever want except for privacy, solitude, friendship, stability, love (both familial and romantic), and peace of mind.

With
Dr. Feelgood
on the big cog, Mötley Crüe could do no wrong. Every single they released terrorized the radio, every show sold out, every blink of their eyes was reported in the papers. When the band first caught the big cog, it rolled along with the cog. But people get tired; The Machine never stops moving. When the band could no longer keep pace, the big cog tore them apart, destroyed their marriages, and wrecked any chance of them leading a normal life, having any friends, or knowing what to do with themselves when not playing The Machine game of recording and touring.

Yet even when the band grew tired of running around on the big cog, the cruel and impersonal Machine kept turning with them on top. The band put out a compilation of their favorite songs called
Decade of Decadence
, and it sold 2.5 million copies with hardly any promotion. Afterward, the businesspeople whose job it is to stand on the outside of The Machine, monitor its behavior, and see who is on what cog so that they can invest their money in them (much like the stock market) said to Mötley Crüe, “You guys are going to have the biggest tour of the summer.” It was the last thing the band wanted to hear. Because when artists are on the big cog, those who gamble their money on them don’t want them to make new music or record new albums, because that is the quickest way off the cog and into the crusher.

E) Stage Five: The Crusher

At the end of the big cog is a long, heavy rod with the circumference of a large tree trunk that shoots down from above at random intervals, crushing acts on their way off the big cog. Some acts have a lot of stamina, and can run in place on the big cog and avoid the crusher for years. But most get worn down by the big cog. They are knocked off by the crusher and either dropped to a lower cog, to the platform where they wait to return to the conveyor belt, or into the abyss below. Some—like Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin—get smashed completely by the crusher. And, in one sense, they win. The only way to beat The Machine is to die, because that’s the only way out of the game. When you win and make it to the big cog, you ultimately lose. There is no other way to go but down, and it’s a painful drop no matter what.

Those who survive are not the same after the fall. They experience post-cog stress disorder in which, like Axl Rose, they fool themselves into thinking that they are still on the big cog.

With Mötley Crüe, we shall see in the following pages how the band was chewed up and spit out by the big cog, how lives and relationships were destroyed, and how post-cog stress disorder led to a tragic turn of events.

Conclusion: A New Beginning

There is no way to get off The Machine without dying. Like sex, you want it over and over again, even when your organs don’t work anymore. Success, or the desire for success, is a hard habit to kick. On The Machine, an act can get second, third, and eighteenth chances. There is nothing keeping a band from reaching the first, second, or final cog again. The Rolling Stones have been dancing between cogs for years. Madonna has caught the big cog at least three times. And Santana spent a few years on the second cog around 1969, then rolled around on the conveyer belt for decades before his
Supernatural
album suddenly caught each cog until it dragged him to the top.