Former Ozzy Osbourne bassist Phil Soussan discussed working with Motley Crue singer Vince Neil on his album Exposed in 1993 in a new Love is Pop interview, and how despite co-writing 5 out of the album’s 11 songs, he didn’t get any credit for playing.
He said his story behind working on the album “was an unfortunate one. I had put the whole project together with Vince and we started writing songs and many of those songs were songs that were leftover that I had been writing for Ozzy. When I left Ozzy, I took those songs with me. That’s why a lot of that material comes in. So, when you listen to ‘The Edge’, it’s ‘S.A.T.O.’, when you listen to ‘The Look In Her Eyes’, it’s like ‘Bark At The Moon’. Equivalent tracks. And you can hear that. The unfortunate thing is Steve Stevens [Neil’s guitarist for the album], who turned out to be, you know, a bit of a snake in the grass.
I don’t know what his personal issues were, but he walked into the project and once he got in there, he basically had expressed his frustration. He was planning on writing all the songs and playing bass on the record and doing all these things. And I said, ‘No, that’s not how it’s gonna work. It’s gonna work as a band.’ He said, ‘Well, that’s how I do it with Billy Idol.’ I said, ‘Okay, that’s Billy Idol. That’s not Vince Neil.’ And then he started a process of manipulation. Not a pleasant guy. I don’t know to this day why he did that. I sort of backed out.”
He added, “At a certain point, it looked like it was going to be very challenging going forward. We had so many problems. The manager had just passed away — Bruce Bird. He was keeping Vince and everybody together, and at that point, it started becoming a mess, and I backed out. And that would’ve been the end of it. Then one day my business manager called me up and said, ‘Oh, you need to know that Steve Stevens has not only put his name on some of your songs, but he’s cut you out.’ I said, ‘That’s it,’ and I served an injunction on Warner Brothers.
He had no evidence to support his claim. We had everything. We had all the demos. We had all the lyrics. We had tapes that were recorded that were pre-dated Steve being in the band. He had no way of substantiating this. At the end of the day, that’s how it worked out. But, unfortunately, if you look on the credits on the album, his name is on a bunch of songs even though he did not participate. There’s nothing I can do about that.”
“It’s sad when you meet somebody who’s kind of a jerk and that’s kind of how he was. Nothing against Vince. I still see Vince all the time. And the guys in the band as well. Robbie [Crane]. I love Robbie, who was originally playing guitar in the band [before switching to bass].”
