They were the first to do it all. Rocking Los Angeles' Sunset Strip with high-rise hair-dos. Engaging in a decade-long bacchanalia. And getting ultra-nasty with a telephone and a groupie. Mötley Crüe's Nikki Sixx and Vince Neil recall the decade many thought they'd both forgotten.
VH1: Why do you think metal was so popular in the '80s?
Vince Neil: Back in the late '70s, punk was ending and the New Romantics were coming in. Metal was something that hadn't been heard in a long time.
Nikki Sixx: The funny thing is, it was an extension of punk for us…
Neil: Things go around in circles all the time. Since Black Sabbath ended, a whole other breed of people came up, and then it was something new again.
VH1: How did punk inspire you?
Sixx: We were influenced by AC/DC and Led Zeppelin and at the same time, the Ramones and the Pistols. Throw a little Cheap Trick in there and a couple margaritas, you've got Mötley Crüe.
VH1: How would you compare '80s metal to '70s hard rock?
Sixx: The '70s was an experimental time. It was easy to learn "Ocean" by Zeppelin and mix it with the aggression of a Ramones track. It came naturally to us. [Few bands beyond] Guns N' Roses had the same punk influence we did.
VH1: In the '70s, Zeppelin and Black Sabbath were never favorites with the mainstream critics.
Neil: But that's what made them great.
Sixx: We were never favorites with the critics, either.
VH1: Why do you think the music press was so hard on metal bands?
Neil: David Lee Roth put it best. He said, "Critics love Elvis Costello 'cause they look like him."
Sixx: There's nothing critically wonderful about sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. It's like cheap whiskey and McDonald's. We love playing nasty, dirty rock 'n' roll. So when we don't get accepted by a little niche of people, it really doesn't bother us.
VH1: Was the early '80s glam metal characterized more by the sound or the visuals?
Neil: When we started Mötley Crüe we didn't go, "You're gonna cut your hair and look like this." We just happened to look like we did. If you look through the albums, we changed every single year. When somebody started doing what we were doing, like with Shout at the Devil - the bondage thing and the devil stuff - we changed to glam. When the Poisons and the Warrants started doing that, we did Girls Girls Girls, which was biker stuff.
Sixx: Our first album was a punk record; the second was a heavy metal record; our third record was influenced by Bowie and the Stones. Then we had a blues-based influence on Girls Girls Girls and went pop/metal on Dr. Feelgood. Whatever we were doing at the moment, we saw 10 other bands doing it. It felt cheap to us, so we would abandon it. Including our logo, which drove our record company crazy.
Neil: We've never had the same Mötley Crüe logo ever.
VH1: Was your life offstage as decadent as your life onstage?
Sixx: It wasn't like a glass of champagne and a little line of cocaine. It was half a pound of cocaine and the whole champagne truck. I remember being at [L.A. rock club] the Cathouse. Riki Rachtman and Taime Downe were running it at the time. I asked them if they had a beer bottle cap. I spit in it, poured some cocaine in it, and shot up right in front of them. They flipped out. I was like, "What's the problem?" I didn't get it, because that's who we were. Our music didn't really suffer. But we started to suffer as human beings, which started to affect our music.
VH1: How important was MTV's role in popularizing metal in the early '80s?
Neil: When "Home Sweet Home" came out, it pushed us to the next level because of the channel. It did that for a lot of bands.
Sixx: It's almost a form of brainwashing. Right now if you took a Mötley Crüe video like "Girls Girls Girls," and rammed it down everybody's throat, that record would blow up and sell 4 or 5 million copies again. That's the power of video channels like that.
VH1: By 1992, hard rock's share of the market had definitely slipped.
Neil: That's because alternative came in and overshadowed the rock thing. It never went away, but you didn't see it anymore.
Sixx: Grunge was just [existing music] repackaged. Let's be honest - Soundgarden were the new Black Sabbath. Pearl Jam was like Doors-ish type stuff. It's all coming from the same roots.
Neil: But in flannel.
VH1: What is the legacy of '80s metal?
Sixx: When you hear "Dr. Feelgood" or "Shout at the Devil" come on the radio, that's the legacy. It's not the logo or stage set. It's really the music. That's what's gonna last.
Neil: The coolest thing is when guys and girls come up to me and say, "You got me through high school. If it wasn't for you, I don't know what I'd be doing right now." That's cool.
Sixx: I took my daughter to a Backstreet Boys concert, and this mom comes up to me and whispers in my ear, "You were my Backstreet Boys." That was pretty powerful.
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