The Dirt (59 page)

Certain people in that studio had a problem with arrogance and, in order to maintain their confidence, had to push their problems onto other people, which is why I was ready to quit. How many times do you have to hear “no” before you start believing it yourself? I was really becoming convinced that I was no good as a guitarist, that maybe instead of kicking Corabi out they should have booted me. Then they could have Vince as a singer and Corabi as a guitarist, and they’d all be happy.

But if I had left, the Great Invalidator would probably have started working on Nikki next and driven him out of the band. That guy, Scott Humphrey, didn’t know what he wanted. On
Dr. Feelgood
, his job was to move stuff around on Pro-Tools and pitch-shift vocals. That’s what he was good for. But now he was starting to believe he was a musician. I wanted to say: “Then write a song, prick.” I’d never been so upset during my entire time with the band.

He would even tell Tommy that he was a better guitarist than me or he’d have Nikki, who’s a bassist, playing my guitar parts. I bought stacks of books on invalidation, trying to figure out how I could survive this experience and still have the confidence to play onstage. The last straw came when the Great Invalidator called a big powwow with the management company. The reason for the meeting: my hat. He said he didn’t like the baseball cap that I wore every day. It was a problem for him. That’s how fucked-up this asshole was. Then he told the whole management company that I wasn’t bringing anything to the table.

“So what?” I finally snapped. “Why don’t you just get rid of me, then?”

I was ready to join John Corabi. Maybe we could start a blues band or something. There are only two occasions when I write: the first is when I have an idea about politics or the world. That can be anything from different ways of thinking about major events (like what if the
Titanic
actually struck the iceberg intentionally because, with a world war looming, Captain Smith was under secret orders to test out then-new high-carbon steel plates and watertight cabins) to just random thoughts about how stupid people are (for example, fat people who insist on wearing red even though they always look like jolly ol’ St. Nick). The other reason I write is when I’m pissed off, and after that bullshit meeting, I was pissed off.

Dear Nikki
,

I’ve been with you for so many years, playing guitar on every one of our hits. Suddenly it seems that I can’t play guitar anymore. Let’s see what’s changed between then and now. What’s different? There’s only one element I can see that is different, and that’s Scott Humphrey. You have excluded me in all the songwriting because you don’t want it to be guitar-oriented, you haven’t been happy with anything I’ve tried to contribute, and you’ve replaced all my playing on the record. It seems to me that the only thing you haven’t done is replace me in the band. Maybe Scott Humphrey could come in and play guitar, since he told Tommy he’s so much better than me anyway. So now I leave it in your hands: Have I gotten worse as a guitarist or have you gotten worse as a judge of character?

Your friend and bandmate
,

Bob Deal

I’m not great with words or anything, so that letter was the best I could do as far as talking to them and telling them what was really going on. Scott had his nose so far up Nikki and Tommy’s asses that they couldn’t even see the shit all over his face. After the letter, we had another one of our famous meetings and I told the band that it was my last album, because I couldn’t work with them anymore.

But I guess that I had turned into an old broken-down coward. Where I really had been ready to leave the band when they were being assholes because I was dating Emi on the
Girls
tour, now I was a little too scared to go through with it. What else was I going to do? I saw what happened to Vince on his own, and I’d seen a dozen other bands where a guy splits off and it doesn’t work out for him. There was nothing else for me to do but be the guitarist in Mötley Crüe. Even if that meant just hanging in and taking the abuse.

So every day after the studio I’d bitch to John Corabi, who, after his latest woman problems, was staying in my guest house again. Then we’d drive out to the woods and let off steam by target-shooting. Before he left the band, he had met a couple of strippers and invited them to go shooting with us.

We drove with them past Lancaster and into the open desert. We put on our safety goggles, gloves, and earplugs and ran into two local sheriffs, who were admiring my guns. One of them grabbed a plate of steel, set it up twenty-five yards away, and said, “Here, shoot this.” He had been shooting at it all day with a .22, and wanted to see what would happen with a bigger gun.

It was tilted upward, and I nailed it right in the center. As I did, I heard a voice behind me yell, “Ouch.” It was John’s date. “A bee just stung me,” she whined. But I knew what had happened: a tiny piece of copper shrapnel from the bullet jacket had ricocheted off the plate, whizzed past my face, and hit her in the side.

“That wasn’t a bee,” I told her. I pried her hand off her stomach and blood came squirting out. I cleaned the wound, which was only a superficial cut about one-sixteenth of an inch wide. The piece of shrapnel was the size of a fingernail, but I had enough experience with people like her to know that if I didn’t take care of her, she would sue my ass off. I drove her to the hospital in my car while John held her hand, and she said she’d be fine and promised not to sue.

I brought her home from the hospital and told her I’d pay the medical bills, get her plastic surgery so there’d be no scars, and make sure everything was taken care of. On the way back to my house, I apologized to Corabi.

“That’s all right,” he said. “She was a bitch anyways.”

While she was in the hospital, hundreds of lawyers called her. Suddenly, she was claiming she was disfigured and that this sixteenth-inch scar had ruined her promising career as an exotic dancer. She became as greedy an enemy as an ex-wife, claiming that Corabi and I had been drinking and smoking pot that day, which was bullshit. I ended up paying her something like ten thousand dollars out of court, which was just about all I had left to my name. She probably used the money to get her tits fixed or something.

When the story about the lawsuit leaked out, the newspapers reported that I had gone out and purposely shot my girlfriend. That’s why I never trust what I read. Believe me, if I was going to shoot somebody, it wouldn’t be in the side of the stomach. It would be one shot to the head. Fuck body shots.

W
hat were your first impressions on working with the band?

They are, you know, very unique people. At first, it was a cool thing to be working with them, because there was always drama. When I first met them, the drama was kind of fun. And I loved watching Tommy play his drums, just breaking cymbals in half and busting his drumsticks right and left. But then, all of a sudden, I was sitting in the producer’s chair and it was impossible to get anyone (except Mick) to show up on time. After a while, we instituted a system of fines: one hundred dollars for each hour someone was late. Then it was another struggle to separate everyone from their pagers and cell phones. Days were just wasted without any work getting done.

Things got worse once we moved into Nikki’s gated mansion. Every day, Nikki would have to duck out of recording to deal with the gardener or the pool guy or the fish lady or the car detailer or the maids, who came twice a day to do the breakfast and evening dishes and chores. There was no end to the number of people working to keep that house standing.

One of the things I’d like to talk to you about is Mick’s hat.

Mick’s hat? What?

He said that you called a meeting with management to complain about his hat?

This definitely confirms some of the stuff I’ve heard out of Mick Mars’s mouth. Because that is ludicrous.

So you never had a problem with his hat?

That is just not possible. Mick Mars always wears a hat, except for when he’s on stage sometimes. But who gives a shit whether he wears a hat or not?

Mick’s not one to just make something up, though.

I’m sure if it happened, no one else remembers it but Mick. I think it’s kind of weird. [
pauses
] In fact, you know what? He used to always wear this Mötley Crüe racing hat, and I loved it. I said, “Hey Mick, can you get me one of those?” And months later he got me one. I’m looking in my closet now, because I think I still have it. I was fixated on his hat because I wanted one, not because I didn’t like it.

Here it is. I found it. I’m blowing the dust off it now. It’s got a skull and bones and racing flags on it. It’s a black leather hat. I remember this distinctly now. He must have gotten it all wrong: the hat was all good. What was not good must have been something else.

Well, he did feel like you were invalidating him as a guitarist.

That really didn’t have anything to do with me. Tommy and Nikki both liked the way that John Corabi played guitar, and they were always encouraging John to play. As the producer, you want to be very open and let everyone bring their parts to the table. But Mick just didn’t want anyone playing the guitar. He’d scream out, “I’m the guitar player.” It’s like, “Okay, you are the guitar player, but two other guys in your band want to hear John Corabi play.” Sometimes the sound of two different guitar players playing the same part is a nice sound, like with AC/DC.

It’s funny that he would remember me being the guy who didn’t want his guitar parts because I wanted to make a Mötley Crüe record that sounded like the early stuff. What I really liked was pure Mick Mars raw guitar. In fact, I was always encouraging Mick, and he would bring me these cassettes called table scraps, which were bits and pieces of things he was working on at home. What really used to make this band work well was Mick writing guitar riffs and Nikki writing things over the top of them, and Vince singing it all. That was the formula. Most of the riffs we were working on were based on John Corabi guitar parts, and those were these bluesy Zeppelin guitar riffs. So it was almost like the Mötley Crüe writing machine had shut down. Corabi probably hated me from the get-go, because jamming was something he had brought to the band and I wanted them to get back to writing songs again.

So you were the one who wanted to make a raw Mötley record? And the rest of the guys wanted to sound more up-to-date?

Exactly. Nikki wanted to be Nine Inch Nails one day and U2’s
Zooropa
the next day. Nikki and I were always going at it. We had argument after argument over lyric content. Nikki didn’t like to have his lyrics scrutinized. There was this line in this song called “Glitter” that went, “Let’s make a baby inside of you.” And I was like, “There is no way. You can’t put that line on this record.” It was ridiculous. And he basically tried to say that it was the best thing he’d ever written.

What kinds of things did Nikki say about me?

I think he felt like you were getting into head games and playing him off against Tommy. He said he needed a stronger producer to tell him he was full of shit sometimes.

Really? I think that most people would remember me being the guy who kept saying, “Quit trying to be Trent Reznor. Just fucking sit down with a guitar and write songs.” All I was trying to do was get a hit: I didn’t care about anything but selling records. After all the time and grief and drama we all put in, the least we could have was a hit.

I think the band thought that, in your mind, nothing was ever good enough.

That is the way I felt. The record sounds like a bit of a mishmash, and that it didn’t sell is proof that it wasn’t good enough.

Did Vince’s return make things any easier?

No, the songs weren’t written toward Vince’s singing style or even his range. So, even more so at that point, we needed fucking Mick to do what he did and unite the band. They were so good when they worked together as a band instead of as a bunch of fucking dysfunctional partners.

With John, the problem was that his voice was always blown out. With Vince, there was an entirely different set of problems. We had what we used to call the Vince Neil window of opportunity. It was between beer three and beer six. That was where he’d be warmed up after the hangover but not so drunk that he couldn’t even stand.

And the window could close really fast. Sometimes we’d only have half an hour or twenty minutes with Vince. And if you asked him to sing more than a couple of times, he’d be like, “Fuck you,” and he’d leave. My impression of Vince was to hold up my wrist and look at my watch. He didn’t want to be in the recording studio: he’d rather be on the golf course.

So even when he was back, he didn’t act like he was part of the band?

I think there was a jealousy because Nikki and Tommy were coproducing the record, and he wanted to be a coproducer too. He could have coproduced, but we couldn’t get him to the studio to sing, much less to produce. Vince is one of those guys who you can’t push too hard. If he does show up and he happens to do something and it happens to be good, well, you get what you get.