Tuesday night I went to see a film of Mötley Crüe's
final concert in Los Angeles at the Staples Center. All night I was dealing with a paradox: I both like and don't like
Mötley Crüe.
They are good musicians. Watching Mick Mars shred is
still amazing, and I saw Tommy Lee play while moving and upside down. They are
good at what they do, and just hearing the intros on a lot of the classic old
songs is exciting.
But generally speaking, I don't like their music
thematically. Strippers, smoking, drugs - these are not my favorite things, and
they get tiresome. It's not unexpected, like the apparent impossibility of
completing a sentence without using any expletives, but it grates a little.
That aspect may have been best demonstrated by the
two dancers. They had microphones sometimes, so I guess they were backup
singers, but I never heard them, there was nothing in the music indicating that
backup singers were really needed, and the choreography wasn't anything special
to add to the songs. They were simply there to indulge male fantasy, and
completely unneeded when there was so much other spectacle.
And there was spectacle! It was such a big show. In
addition to Tommy Lee's roller coaster drum kit, Nikki Sixx had a flamethrower
bass, which was a lot of flame, but small compared to the overall sea of
pyrotechnics. Toward the end of the show, large arms descended from the
framework, and Sixx and Vince Neil jumped on them, getting their own turn to be
raised above the crowd as confetti flew. Just as you thought Mars was the only
one being left bound to the stage, the platform beneath him - which had showed
no previous signs of being able to do so - began moving upward, lifting him
too.
Much of that was new for their final show. The drum
coaster has been traveling with them, and in what I believe was unplanned but
perfect, it broke as Tommy reached the far end. Normally it would have taken
him back to the stage.
They just rolled with it. He released his sticks,
letting them drop to the crowd, and talked a little while two techs climbed up
and helped release him. Then he climbed down the frame like it was no big deal.
(The concert footage was interspersed with interview footage, so I have no idea
how they got the drums back for the rest of the show.)
The malfunction underlined the finality of this
performance, but that came through in the interviews too. Mötley Crüe is done.
They've been very clear about that. In separate interviews they all confirmed
that they will probably not see each other anymore. Their tour manager
confirmed that on the tour they ride separate buses and usually stay at
separate hotels.
It makes sense because they are obnoxious. They want
to be. Their philosophy for planning the tour was think of the most obnoxious thing
possible, and then double it. They are awesome being obnoxious, but it can
grate, and apparently that includes them grating on each other.
Being Mötley Crüe may mean being obnoxious, but they
own it. They do it gloriously. They may fight with each other, but if anyone
targets one of them then the rest have his back. They each got their own moment
on stage. Instead of playing a bass solo, Sixx talked to the audience for a
while, and it was a sweet moment that would have seemed a mismatch with the
rest of the show, but it was about persistently disobeying his grandparents and
getting a knife.
And that's the paradox of Mötley Crüe. I may shake
my head at them, but then I'm smiling too. I wouldn't want to be in that band,
and maybe even they would be happier in a different kind of band, but they've
still had something pretty cool. When they decided to go out they did it in the
biggest way possible, hitting every city they wanted with a huge show, and
closing by bringing in 2016 in the city where they got started.
Good on them.
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