It has come to light that Mick Mars claimed that Motley Crue was using backing tracks as early as the “Dr. Feelgood” era, repeating claims that Nikki Sixx didn’t play his instrument live during last year’s “Stadium Tour”.
The guitarist revealed that there was hardly “a single note” he play whened on 1997’s “Generation Swine”, adding that the situation didn’t changed much on the next two LPs. Mars accused his bandmates of “trying to take [his] legacy away”, even though he “covered for them” when “they wanted to get high and f*ck everything up” in the ’80s.
Rolling Stone has now published a list of outtakes from the interview, which also includes the one titled “The band started using backing tracks at their concerts around Dr. Feelgood since the three musicians onstage couldn’t recreate every part of the album live.” In it, Mars is quoted as saying:
“I remember saying, ‘People know what’s supposed to be there. Will they miss it? Some probably will, but a majority will not. They’ll hear it subliminally the way it was recorded as long as the meat and potatoes are there.’
“I didn’t want to fool the audience, but the others wanted to fill in where the holes were. I never liked that garbage.”
In another outtake, Mars once again asserted that Nikki Sixx didn’t play bass live during 2022’s “Stadium Tour”, repeating the claim he originally made in his lawsuit:
“I’ve been with him a long time, and I got fan-based film of him thrusting his arms in the air and stuff when there’s a bass line playing. I’m absolutely positive [he wasn’t playing live].
“I think he did that because he felt too much competition from the other bands on the tour, like Def Leppard. I think they made him feel inadequate about his bass playing.”
Rolling Stone added a note, writing that Nikki emphatically denies that he faked any part of his bass playing on the tour, and that the band produced sworn declarations by seven members of the crew backing up the bassist.
Speaking to Rolling Stone, Mars claims that he was originally intended to receive nothing for 2023’s tour, adding:
“Then they bumped it up to five percent and then seven and a half percent. I was like, ‘No. You’re not going to take that from me. I worked to hard for this stuff.”
