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Nothing wrong with stroking your chin to the likes of , but sometimes you need to throw a few shapes to something patently ridiculous yet undeniably great. This is where Mötley Crüe’s fifth and, by some considerable distance, best record comes in. Reissued yet again to celebrate its quick-think-of-something 35th anniversary, this is where the reprobates who made seem abstemious and resembled what might arrive if you ordered off Temu got it utterly, and perhaps unexpectedly, right.
Sobering up at least a bit and drafting in the production know-how of Bob Rock, they birthed an album so gloriously over the top it’s coming down the other side screaming and shouting. Kneel in awe before the titanic title track which sports a riff sharp enough to use in a street fight then genuflect in thanks before , which quite rightly declares that the band are ‘ ’. OK, the rest of it isn’t quite up to that high standard but it’s still great sport.
Going by the evidence presented in big ballads and (and you could see that key change coming from the moon) Vince Neil was never really going to make it as an opera singer (or a poet) but you’ll still be looking around for a cigarette lighter to wave in the air. If you find one, hang on to it for the marvellously monikered . What remains – the what’s-wrong-with-being-sexy glam grind of (hey, if it’s good enough for Steven Tyler and to provide backing vocals.
..), She Goes Down and Slice Of Your Pie – is pretty much by the numbers, but they’re good numbers and Mick Mars is always just around the corner with the kind of guitar solos tennis rackets were invented for.
If does nothing for you then, well call a doctor. Dr. Feelgood, for example.
This hey-why-not edition is fleshed out with some surprisingly robust live tracks and several superfluous demos, including the god-awful which shows how easy it is to stray across the line from inspired to insipid, but the main event is the essential meat of the matter. It would soon be all over, bar the shouting for the Crüe, the grunge horde from the Pacific Northwest moved in. But their stupid-like-a-fox masterwork still rocks like a rowboat in a typhoon.
Pat Carty is a writer for Irish monthly music and politics magazine Hot Press. You'll also find him at The Times, Irish Independent, Irish Times and Irish Examiner, and on radio wherever it's broadcast. Black Stone Cherry, Michael Schenker and more announced for Maid Of Stone festival “Within my lifetime there could be some natural disaster or a third World War that could destroy everything.
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